Magic New Zealand® E-zine

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* Magic New Zealand®
* Proudly sponsored by International Entertainment Ltd (New Zealand)
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Issue Number: #1560
Date: Sunday 23rd February 2020
Editor: Alan Watson QSM
www.watson.co.nz
E-mail: editor@magicnewzealand.com
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Hi here is the latest news
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1. Editor's Message
2. Mark Wilson's Legendary Magic And Memorabilia Sale And Auction!
3. Post FISM Tour Of Quebec And S. Ontario
4. Jeff McBride's - Magic & Mystery School Events
5. Register Now For The 2020 I.B.M.
6. Ongoing Adventures Of Romany! #3
7. PhotOpen Prediction?!?- John Carey #72
8. Buying, Selling & Collecting Vintage & Historical Magician Goods
9. XVIII Masters Of Magic World Convention 2020
10. The Real Magic Roadshow - Paul Richards
11. The Orchante Saga - Beginnings
12. E-zine Archives
13. Privacy Policy and Copyright Notice

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1. Editor's Message
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If you would like to read the Magic New Zealand e-zine in HTML format
go to: http://www.magicnewzealand.com/ezine-archive/2020-Jan-to-Dec-2020/1560-Feb23-2020.html

If you would like to write a regular column for Magic New Zealand or have some magic news drop me a line:
Editor@MagicNewZealand.com

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2. Mark Wilson's Legendary Magic And Memorabilia Sale And Auction!
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Message by Greg Wilson (US)

Their son, Greg Wilson is organizing everything, he says, "It's so big we have it on two days… Near Los Angeles at the Wilson Warehouse in Valencia, CA, USA. Many items are "For Sale" and others are "For Auction"…"

Feb. 29th: Saturday, Leap Day! "For Sale" Items
(Sale & Viewing of Auction Items from 10am to 4pm and on FB Live)

March 1st: Sunday, The BIG DAY! "Sale & Auction"
(Sale from 10am, Auction starts at 12pm PST and on FB Live)

Make a piece of this Legendary collection your own, Come to the event live at the warehouse, or join us On-Line on FB Live. We will have helpers there to show you items, or send your own friend to represent you in-person. We can also accommodate advance bids.
This is a one-time opportunity to own a piece of REAL Magic History. All kinds of treasures from the Wilson collection… From Big Illusions to Mark's personalized thimbles, Costumes, Memorabilia, Items collected during his tours of Europe and China, and so much more! Everything is very limited, most are "One of a Kind" but when it's gone, it's gone.

No magic collection is complete without something from Mark and Nani's Magical Achievements! Find re-enchantment; maybe a childhood memory, or something with a personal meaning… discover connections to all of Modern Magic. Then tell the stories to your friends and family.

Don't miss this rare opportunity!

For complete info, please visit our webpage and sign up for the Auction Catalog (we are still making the Catalog, and adding to the auction):

https://AllakazamArchives.com/Auction

Please sign up NOW, and we will get you the Catalog and more info right away.

As Mark, Nani, and Greg say, "Happy Magic!"

Wilson@AllakazamArchives.com

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3. Post FISM Tour Of Quebec And S. Ontario
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Message by Joan Caesar (Canada)

Post FISM Tour of Quebec and South Ontario August 1-7, 2021

For more information about the tour contact Joan Caesar: JCaesar@sentex.ca

Previous days described in last week's e-zine: continuing a fantastic tour in Quebec City, bison farm tour Montreal, Ottawa, dinner cruise on St. Lawrence River, winery tour, Elora Gorge, Mennonite farm tour ...

Friday, August 6: Niagara Falls (B, D)
Breakfast in the hotel.
Free time in Niagara Falls until the afternoon. Return to the hotel by
4:30 and then proceed to the Greg Frewin Theatre.
http://www.gregfrewintheatre.com/about.html
Have a behind the scenes tour of Greg's facilities, then dinner and a performance.
Return to the hotel after the show. Hotel is located near the Fallsview Casino and close to the Horseshoe Falls.

Saturday, August 7: Niagara Falls, Toronto
Breakfast in the hotel.
Travel to Toronto for a morning city tour.
Lunch in downtown. Free time at the Eaton's Centre, Royal Ontario Museum
or Art Gallery of Ontario, both within walking distance.
CN Tower visit after lunch
Visit to the new Museum of Illusions. http://museumorillusion.ca
Hotel near the airport with shuttle to airport.
Tour ends tonight.

Cost:
Double Occupancy - 2 people sharing a room: $1,795.00 USD
Single Occupancy - 1 person/room: $2,495.00 USD

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4. Jeff McBride's - Magic & Mystery School Events
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Message by Jeff McBride (US)

March, 2020 - Magic & Mystery School Events

21-22 - Master Class in Deal (UK)

April, 2020 - Magic & Mystery School Events

14-19 - 6-Day Magic & Mystery School Spring Training
14-15 - Spring Training Part 1 - Focus on Card Magic
16-17 - Spring Training Part 2 - Focus on the Classics of Magic
18-19 - Spring Training Part 3 - Focus on Grand Illusions

http://www.magicalwisdom.com/

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5. Register Now For The 2020 I.B.M.
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There are only a few days left to register for the 2020 I.B.M. Convention in Pittsburgh before the registration price increase on March 1st. Save by registering now!

To register for the I.B.M. Convention, www.ibmconvention.com

We already have a stellar line-up announced with much more to come. You can find all the information about talent, dealers, contest and more on our convention website at www.ibmconvention.com

Don't forget that all I.B.M. youth members under the age of 18 get a free registration, with a very special price for their non-magician parents.

Did we mention that the two-day Lance Burton Teen Seminar right before the convention is absolutely free for all teens between the ages of 13 and 19?

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6. Ongoing Adventures Of Romany! #3
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Message by Romany Romany (UK)

Bula!

I'm sitting on a beach in Fiji, sopping wet because I just fancied walking into the warm turquoise water in my clothes. By the time I write to you, I'll be toasty and dry again. Fiji is good like that.
Warning! This is an exuberant, 'I couldn't have imagined how amazing this week would be' post! I'll leave some for next week. Deliciousness must be savoured!

I'm here in Fiji to finally deliver my book to Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and my inspiring hero at a women's conference AND to give a brand new keynote speech. Oh, and do a full evening show of course.

I'll tell you about the show first.

I set up on the 'scout hut' stage in the resort with a sinking feeling. Fiji is a paradise but this stage wasn't. My props looked crappy and the best lighting was a listless row of disco lights.
But what can you do?

Hmmm. I wondered whether I could perform outside by the beautiful pool. Yes! Enough space and light with the audience on the far side of the pool or actually in it if they wanted.
Genius! But it was windy.

We re-rigged the PA and weighed down the props against the wind with large stones and by 8pm, two hundred women were watching under the stars, another fifty actually bobbing IN the pool. Ocean, dark sky and palm trees behind me. A couple of large pool spotlights gave enough light. Magical.

I'd invited all the Fijian staff who had never seen a magic show before and stood several rows deep behind the ladies. Beautiful people.

Since the conference was for women only, I needed to use two local men for my volunteers. Gorgeous Fijian Ben and John looked a little wary when invited on stage but we all had a laugh and poof! the show was done.

My best moment? My author hero Liz Gilbert AND her agent from NYC sat in the front row, laughed throughout and led the standing ovation. It was the longest ovation I've ever had and I was deep in true English embarrassment by the end. Remembering now gives me an inner smile and a new confidence. I'm enormously grateful. What magic, to do a show in a tropical paradise for a bunch of fabulous belly-laughing women under the stars? More please!

Then - and I shall treasure this memory for the rest of my life! - Elizabeth Gilbert came up to shake me by the shoulders and shout, "You are a f***ing Goddess!"

My cup is full.

More details next week. Dreams do come true. Keep going!

Love to you all.
Romany

I'd love you to read my book of my unbelievable but totally true magical adventures, featuring all your favourite magicians! Eugene read it before he passed and said "Thank you for writing this lovely book." Mr David Copperfield called it "Perfect!"

See what you think!
Spun Into Gold - The Secret Life of a Female Magician available worldwide and on Audible
Audible adbl.co/2qROlu5
Amazon UK amzn.to/2m3XT2J
Amazon USA bit.ly/spunintogold
Book Depository bit.ly/2ONMFvB with free shipping

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7. PhotOpen Prediction?!?- John Carey #72
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Message by John Carey (UK)
http://www.johncareymagic.co.uk/

I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of Magic apps for smartphones. Don't get me wrong, some are ingenious but it's just not my cup of tea! However, with nearly everyone seeming to own one these days, using a smartphone without apps in the context of a piece of Magic or Mentalism I do find interesting. I've applied it here to an open prediction that appears to have gone wrong until the very end. You need a deck of cards, three business cards, a sharpie and your smartphone.

Have a known card, say Five of Diamonds on top of the deck. Discard the King of Clubs. Ahead of time write Five of Diamonds on the back of one of the three business cards. Place this card on top of the business cards, all three being printed/logo side up. Bring out the deck, business cards and sharpie. Table the deck and execute a double turnover with the business cards. "I'm going to make an open prediction of a playing card. Let's see, the King of Clubs will do." After you make this statement write King of Clubs on the business card. Allow the ink to dry and then do another double turnover turning the card/s face down.

"In fact let's take a little photograph of that prediction." Take off the top business card and pocket the other two. Take out your smart phone and ask your helper to hold the business card out in front of them. Careful management of course is required here so as not to expose the switched in writing. Take a photo of your spectator holding the business card then retrieve it and put it away. I first saw Asi Wind using this concept in his Triumph effect Double Exposure.

Pick up your deck of cards and remove them from the box. Execute an in the hands riffle shuffle retaining the Five of Diamonds on top. We will now use Karl Fulves open prediction method from his Self Working Card

Tricks book to get the job done. Hand the deck to your helper and ask her to cut off less than half and flip them face up on top. A moment later ask her to cut off more than half and flip those cards face up and once again replace on top. "We haven't seen the King of Clubs yet!" Ask the
lady to start dealing the face up cards into a pile on the table and to stop dealing when she gets to a face down card. "Still no sign of the King of Clubs right?" Direct your helper to place the next face down card on top of the face up pile and then have her turn the rest of the cards face up and
drop them on top of everything.

Ribbon spread the deck and ask the lady if she sees the King of Clubs? She won't of course. Ask her to turn over the face down card, which to your 'shock' is the Five of Diamonds? "To the untrained eye it appears things have gone wrong. But what if I told you I manipulated both your
mind and your eyes and you saw something that really wasn't there?" Pick up your phone and open the screen and she should freak out when she sees herself holding a business card with the Five of Diamonds on it!

Notes:

This piece is best suited for very intimate performance, for either one on one or just two or three people. Save it for that special moment.

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8. Buying, Selling & Collecting Vintage & Historical Magician Goods
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Message by David Haversat

We buy Magic - Houdini - Chung Ling Soo - Great Lafayette - Herrmann

Wanted - Posters, correspondence, apparatus, books, cabinet photos and more and more!

100% Confidential Assessments, Cash paid.

Contact David Haversat
(203) 828-8058
Buy - Sell - Trade
haversat@gmail.com

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9. XVIII Masters Of Magic World Convention 2020
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Message by Angela Signoretti (Italy)

The Masters of Magic World Convention will be held in May, from 28 to 31, at the "OGR" Officine Grandi Riparazioni, an extraordinary Congress Center in Turin.

Our dream this year is to reach the largest possible audience to make this 18th edition as an unforgettable and special one.

For more information go to:
https://mastersofmagicconvention.com/en/home-english-2020/

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10. The Real Magic Roadshow - Paul Richards
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Message by Paul Richards (US)

The Real Magic Roadshow is heading your way for one day only - and you're invited!

Experience some of the world's best-selling magic performed live by a select group of the industry's leading creators and producers. This is your opportunity to see and buy astonishing magic, from the people who know these effects inside and out. Our featured creators include:

Mark Mason: The UK's Legendary Demo Man!

Christian Schenk: Direct from Germany, founder of CardShark and creator of the Phoenix Deck!

Chris Smith: The Man Behind MagicSmith, producer of some of the world's best-selling magic!

Dirk Losander: The Undisputed Master of Levitation!

Paul Richards: Roadshow Founder and his super-secret line of magic sold ONLY at live events, just like this!

We'll also be joined by a special guest in each city of the upcoming tour:

Los Angeles - Saturday March 21
San Diego - Sunday March 22
San Francisco - Saturday March 28
San Jose - Sunday March 29
New York City - Saturday April 4
Boston - Sunday April 5

The cost for this incredible day of magic is ONLY $10 (+ $2 booking fee) and if you register NOW you'll receive a $10 gift card for use on the day of the event! It's like getting in for FREE and it's our gift to YOU just for joining us for this incredible day of magic. And that's not all you'll receive - in fact, you won't believe what we're including for less than the price of a movie ticket!

But space is limited (many locations are more than 50% full) and tickets are ONLY available in advance.

Visit www.realmagicroadshow.com for tickets and complete details

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11. The Orchante Saga - Beginnings
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Written by the late Tommy Orchard (The Amazing Orchante)

Tex Morton plus The Great Orchante

Prelude: The other day I was asked why the page headings read "Tex Morton plus The 'GREAT' Orchante, and not The 'Amazing' Orchante, which has been my stage name since the 60s. Tex billed me as 'The Great' in his advertising, so for the sake of completeness, I've kept it the same.

Conclusion
Tex's first recordings were made in New Zealand in 1932 when he was 16 years old. They were aluminium and were played with a thorn/bamboo needle. They were the fore-runners of the half dozen wax recordings of 78s he made in Australia, 3 or 4 years later, at the old Homebush studios in Sydney.

Tex, being a great story teller, delighted in telling me the story of his life, as we travelled from town to town. Here is one of the dozens of tales he related to me - I just wish there had been such a thing as a battery cassette recorder, but they hadn't yet been invented, at that time.

Quote "I made my first records for a flat fee - around £10 - or something like that, but that didn't make any difference, I'm a big recording star one day, and a couple of weeks later, if you looked real hard around the back alleys of Kings Cross, you would have found me Street singing, and passing the hat around. I can always remember making a trip home to New Zealand to see my parents. I'd made these records and forgotten all about them, had my picture on a couple of issues of Sheet music at the time, and that was about as far as I thought I would ever get. So, when I got near to Nelson, my home town, I found that I was once again broke, so I pulled out the old guitar and went Street singing again.

I was singing in this town - New Plymouth, or whatever it was - and I'm working my way along the main street, and going into the shops, as was the custom in those days - asking "anything for the street singer" - and I found myself outside this music shop. While I'm singing, I looked in the window, and there was a huge cut-out figure of some bloke in a country and western shirt, cowboy hat on, with his guitar, his mouth wide open, showing his tonsils; and I looked at him, and I thought 'he's a lucky bloke - he's a big recording star', and in six inch letters across the bottom, it said Tex Morton - The Yodelling Boundary Rider - Australia's Latest Singing Sensation. And here I was, singing outside the record shop, passing the hat around, trying to get my fare down to Nelson.!" Unquote.

After the Tex Morton tour had finished, and I'm back home, in Auckland City, Tex gives me a call asking if I'd meet up with him in this little pub in Vulcan Lane, which just happened to be the favourite watering hole for all the newspaper reporters etc. So I turn up, and there's Tex,
wearing his famous hat, holding the place entranced with his humorous tales. The place was in a total uproar of laughter. Tex introduces me to the crowd, and gets me started on my Close up magic (which didn't take much prompting, really). Also present was a very famous New Zealand
writer/raconteur, Barry Crump! He wrote the books "Bastards I Have Met", with the sequel "More Bastards I Have Met".

Apart from Barry telling funny stories, his main party piece for that afternoon, was the telling of the complete, unabridged, utterly filthy, 'Ballad of Eskimo Nell and Deadeye Dick'. It must have gone on for at least half an hour - all totally from memory. It was one of the funniest, most hilarious and entertaining afternoons I've ever had in my life.

Jump now to 1983 - Veronica and I are living in Sydney, Australia (since 1976). It's July, and we, as are thousands of others, are watching a new series that has just started on T.V., called 'Goodbye Paradise', in which Tex Morton has a major part, playing a crooked politician.

I have a cutting from the Sunday Telegraph, dated July 24th 1983. It is headed: -

"Tex Morton Dies At 67. Country Music King Ruled For 50 Years.

One of Australia's greatest showmen, Tex Morton, died yesterday in Sydney's Royal North Shore hospital. He was admitted last Monday suffering from pneumonia and pleurisy and lapsed into a coma soon after. Hospital officials confirmed his death shortly after 3pm yesterday.

In a career covering 50 years, the man who was born Robert William Lane 67 years ago in Nelson, New Zealand, became Australia's first country and western star. At his peak, he was selling more records in Australia than Bing Crosby.

When he arrived in Australia in 1932, the eager 16-year-old possessed little more than an old guitar, with which he used to busk, and occasionally appeared on amateur radio talent shows.

He worked as a dishwasher, a labourer on the Harbour Bridge, and - as the Depression worsened - became a virtual hobo, jumping trains up and down the East Coast. He managed to record a song called "You're Going to Leave the Old Home, Jim," and talked a Sydney radio station into playing it. It was a sad song that fitted the mood of the times - and it launched Morton's long and varied career.

His style of singing, mixed with yodelling, was copied by scores of other aspiring singers. Tex Morton became a household name in his own and his adopted country.

In the 1960s he was earning as much as $20,000 a week in the U.S. and Canada as a hypnotist and magician, billing himself as The Great Morton.

He was an excellent pistol and rifle shot, a prolific writer and recorder of songs, bush poet (he once recited Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson verse at Carnegie Hall to full houses) and a whipcracker. In recent years he devoted most of his energies to acting, playing in such TV series as Matlock Police, Homicide and the ill-fated Waterloo Station.

He secured character roles in a number of Australian feature films, including F.J.Holden, Stir and We of the Never Never. None won him any great critical acclaim until the release this week of 'Goodbye Paradise', in which he played a crooked politician.

This week he lay unconscious in hospital, unaware of the rave notices this had brought him."

It's now 18 years since Tex died, and what I've written about him is by no means the whole story of the man - that would take a rather large book. (It's a shame Tex didn't write his autobiography). I learned much from Tex in the short time we worked together, the most valuable, to me, was the "show before the Show " - as in, heading for the best pub/hotel in town, and entertaining the patrons, including the Owner/Manager, and also in my case, the show, after "The Show".

"Tex Morton"
One of New Zealand's Greatest Showmen.

Finish
Postscript: I am, according to some, an accomplished Magician, but the mainstay of my income, as a professional entertainer for over 30 years, was as a Fakir - I took what was regarded (and probably still is) as cheap side-show stunts - Fire-eating, Beds of Nails, etc., and with a little help from a professional choreographer and stage producer, transformed them into an International Stage/Cabaret show, but Magic - (Sleight of Hand) has always been my first love. It was my Sleight of Hand which got my foot in the Hotel doors, impressed the punters and the Managers/Owners, and got me all of my work in the major hotels throughout New Zealand - hence, the show before the show, and the show after, The Show. As I've said before, this was a most valuable lesson, which I learned from Tex Morton.

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12. E-zine Archives
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Back issues of the Magic New Zealand e- zine go to:
www.magicnewzealand.com

Click on the red button centre right "Archives"

When you enter the archive the e- zines are in issue order in folders for each year and are Coded, e.g. 001 Nov06 1999.txt first three numbers (001) denote issue number, then the date (Nov06) and the last figures the year (1999)

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13. Privacy Policy and Copyright Notice
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Our subscriber list is NOT made available to any other companies or individuals. We value every subscriber and respect your privacy.

You can subscribe to or unsubscribe from the Magic New Zealand® E- zine at: www.magicnewzealand.com

Magic New Zealand® E-zine is published each Sunday.

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