Our friend Joe Notaro left a hugely intelligent and well-informed comment on last week's post Houdini & Erdnase.
Among other things, Joe commented on the link between Erdnase and Houdini. For those uninitiated, S.W. Erdnase is one of the most mysterious figures both in magic and in publishing. Under that pseudonym in 1902 he published a book, The Expert at the Card Table, which reveals all the most arcane tricks of the card cheater and, almost as an afterthought, the card magician.
Erdnase's book has never gone out of print - it's one of the most successful books of all time, right up there with the Bible and Agatha Christie. It has spawned a flood of second-degree books, including the one pictured here. It was written by the late, great Martin Gardner, who did some serious detective work trying to nail down Erdnase's true identity. The Erdnase thread on the Genii Forum has to be the longest discussion in the history of the Internet - more than five thousand entries and still going strong. German filmmakers are about to release an Erdnase quest documentary....
Here are some of Erdnase's slick moves, done pretty well by a guy who isn't Erdnase:
The beautiful and elegant move we're most interested in - mentioned by Notaro in his comment - is Erdnase's first Transformation. According to our go-to expert on card magic, our old friend Darwin Ortiz, it was really invented by Harry Houdini! Notaro notes that this is disputed by the Canadian magician David Ben, but a close reading of the history of the move, in Ortiz's labor of love The Annotated Erdnase, makes it clear that Houdini was indeed the source.
So there is at least this one connection between the two immortals of magic. Our question is: how well did these two know each other? Did they both hang out at Gus Roterberg's magic shop in Chicago in the late 1890s, dazzling one another with Color Changes, Back Palms and the Mexican Turnover?
Houdiniphiles? Your thoughts and insights?
