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davidpaul$ Inner circle Georgetown, South Carolina 3086 Posts |
Dan,
You started magic as a hobby at age 29. How did that come about, and was there anyone in particular that helped you along the way? You obviously got bit by the magic bug and have developed some pretty amazing effects, so curious minds would like to know a little about your influences. Thanks, Dave
Guilt will betray you before technique betrays you!
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Danny Archer V.I.P. Philly 607 Posts |
Hey Dave,
I have cheated a bit and below is excerpted text from the article written by Lindsay Smith that was published in the June 2006 MUM which had yours truly on the cover ... this should answer your question ... The first time 16-year-old Danny Archer ever went to a magic shop, the gruff, curmudgeonly owner blew cigar smoke in his face. “The night before, I had seen this guy named Dai Vernon do a Cups and Balls routine on TV,” Danny says. “He was the first close-up magician I had ever seen and I was impressed. I looked in the phone book and found a magic shop – I was living in New Jersey at the time – and the guy was totally rude to me. I asked him if I could do the trick that the guy did on TV last night. He actually blew cigar smoke in my face and said, ‘Yeah, kid, with about 30 years’ practice.’” Danny did the math, figured he’d be 46 by then and bought the trick. “It cost me six bucks. The guy was so nasty that I didn’t want to go back, so I learned how to do the trick and worked out my own routine for loads and things.” Danny still has that set of Cups and Balls today. That set the magic hook in Danny, but it lasted only about three weeks. It would be eight years before he would return to what would eventually become his full-time profession in 1993. Since then, he’s made up for lost time. Today, from his adopted home in Denver, Danny manages the Magicians Lecture Network (which has booked 4,000+ lectures worldwide for many of the world’s best lecturers), travels around the country (43 states) and the world (22 countries) with his own lectures (three so far), invents and markets his own line of tricks (two dozen so far), produces instructional DVDs through Five Star Magic Media, a video production company he formed with friend and fellow magician Joe Givan, performs at magic conventions (dozens here and abroad), produces magic conventions (eight so far, three different types) and works a variety of gigs from family shows to corporate presentations, both locally and nationally. He also performs as a colorful performance character he created: “Gino Mozzarella, the Godfather of Magic. You’ll die laughing.” Danny is, as Dustin Stinett, video reviewer for Genii magazine noted in a review of his inaugural COINvention DVD in the November 2005 issue, “perpetually busy.” Danny loved that quote. He showed his wife, Rayetta, and said, “Look, he says I’m ‘perpetually busy.’” It’s likely she already knew that. Ask Danny Archer a question and you don’t get just an answer, you get a story. There’s a story behind everything he’s done – from moving to Denver, to starting the Magicians Lecture Network, to producing conventions. And that’s okay. The answer is embedded in every story and Danny’s a good storyteller. From tuxedos to Twisting the Aces Danny’s interest in magic was rekindled (without the cigar smoke) in 1979 when he was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, working in an upscale store selling tuxedos. One day a guy came in and wanted to buy four. “To sell four was a red-letter day,” Danny remembers. “I asked him why he needed four tuxedos and he said, ‘I’m a magician. I’m going on a cruise ship around the world.’ I told him the story about my experience at age 16 and the trick I bought, and asked, ‘Can you show me a trick?’ He did a quick little coin routine for me, and I said, ‘How can I learn to do something like this?’ He told me there was a meeting of the International Brotherhood of Magicians the next night and invited me to go as his guest.” Danny recalls that his name was Harry Bernstein, The Amazing Brando. He took Danny to Ring 150 in Fort Lauderdale which included a lot of New Yorkers who had retired to Florida. “Many of these guys had been there for 30 years and they’ve all seen each other’s stuff. All of a sudden a young guy like me comes in and I haven’t seen anything. A guy would say, ‘Have you seen Twisting the Aces’? I’d say no, he’d do it and I’d go wow. Then he’d go to the back of the line and someone else would come up and show me something. It was almost like a Conga Line. By the end of the night, I’d seen a lot of magic.” One of the guys Danny met that night was Dave Rumsfeld, who told him there was a magic shop in town where he worked, so the next night after work, Danny was right there. Dave was very helpful to Danny. “I’d tell him what I wanted to buy and he’d say, ‘No, you don’t want to buy any of that. You only want to buy the good stuff.’ So I bought Modern Coin Magic, The Royal Road to Card Magic, and a set of Beggar Coins. He wouldn’t let me buy anything else.” Seven months later Danny attended his first magic convention, the Florida State convention in Orlando, where he saw his first lecture, Daryl Martinez. “It was so long ago that he still had two names,” Danny laughs. He still has Daryl’s lecture notes. Back into magic seriously now, he was constantly practicing and working on tricks. “My girlfriend actually left me because of all the card tricks. ‘One more card trick and I’m gone,’ she said. When I came home from work two days later, she was gone.” From Fort Lauderdale, he moved to Jacksonville, then to New Jersey and moved in with his brother, then back home to Philadelphia. Danny was born and raised there. “The first thing I did when I hit town and found an apartment was look for a magic shop to meet the guys. I found this guy named Marty Martin. He and I would session a lot until early in the morning, working on close-up stuff.” Danny and Marty agreed that they didn’t like the local magic shop and if they had a shop, they’d do things differently. They talked about it, planned it, but when it came time to raise the capital, Marty was able to raise his share of the money but Danny wasn’t so he told him he had to find another partner. And he did. Needing some way to support himself, Danny got into the computer business. He covered the eastern part of Pennsylvania as a manufacturer’s rep for Apple Computer. He did magic on his sales calls to keep his hand in, but it wasn’t with the same intensity that he had before. Then he got married for the first time. He was married for just about two years before it broke up. That’s when he thought it was time to change things. Danny still knew Marty because he went to the magic store and learned that Marty and his partner were breaking up. Danny asked if he still wanted a partner, he said yes, so Danny bought a partial interest in the Philadelphia Magic Company. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t the best when Danny bought into the shop. Although the shop had a good location with free parking, the City of Philadelphia came along with eminent domain rights because they needed the property for a civic center. So they lost that great location and moved to Market Street, right in the historic district of the city. “Our post office was Ben Franklin’s post office, the Liberty Bell was a block and a half up the street, so we had a lot of tourists come in,” Danny says, but it was a smaller store and there was no free parking. “Customers were always complaining about getting $10-15 parking tickets. It was getting much harder to run a retail magic shop, but for the couple of years I worked there before we closed, I learned a lot about performing.” Moving to Denver As Danny and Marty were closing the shop, his girlfriend at the time (now his wife) was pregnant, and Danny wasn’t sure about being married and the whole dad thing, and she was okay with that. Then one day she told Danny that she’s moving to Denver. When Danny asked why, she said she couldn’t work after she had the baby and she had a sister out there she could live with. Danny picks up the story: “So she moved to Denver and I flew out for the birth, and I booked a lecture with the magic club. Naturally, Nikki was born the day of the lecture. So I had to call the guys and cancel the lecture. She had the baby and I flew back home. Now I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got a girlfriend and a daughter and they’re out there, and I’m back here.’” He decided to move to Denver, thinking, “If it doesn’t work out, I know I can always move back to Philadelphia.” So he packed his stuff and moved to Denver, driving cross-county in a U-Haul. “The day I arrived in Denver is also the day I quit smoking cigarettes, which was a good thing. I decided I could never smoke in front of the baby so I finished up the cigarette in the truck, threw the rest of the pack out and never smoked again.” They stayed with her sister for a couple of days, then got an apartment and Danny got another job, also in the technology field, but he hated it. Getting back into magic “What really got me back into magic was my first heart attack,” Danny says. “It was January 19, 1995, the weekend between the playoffs and the Super Bowl. I had these palpitations and I thought it was stress. At this time Rayetta was pregnant with our second daughter, there was a lot going on and we had money problems. “This heart thing woke me up at night and I thought, I shouldn’t have stress while I’m sleeping. It happened again the next day, Sunday, so I said we’d better go to the hospital. They said, ‘Yes, you’ve had a heart attack. We’re going to do an angioplasty.’ The good thing is that I went at 10 a.m. and in a few hours it’s all over. The doctor comes in and says, ‘Congratulations. You made it. A third of the people don’t survive their first heart attack.’ It’s at that point you start thinking about your life.” Danny recalled that his happiest times all involved magic. He also realized that he was single then and had only himself to support. “Rayetta is six months’ pregnant, our daughter is a year old, I just had a heart attack and I tell her, ‘I want to quit my job and become a magician.’ I give her a lot of credit for everything that’s happened to me because if she says, ‘What! Are you crazy?’ I probably continue selling computers. But she says, ‘Do something you love. If that’s what you want, I’ll help you any way I can. I think it’s a great idea.’” Their baby, Alexandra, was born April 25. The next day, Danny quit his job. Between January and April, Danny needed to keep his insurance. During that time, he was thinking of other ways to make a living until his performing career would take off. He came up with two ideas. One was marketing a trick, and he came up with his first trick called Eye Exam. It sold well immediately and still sells well today. And he came up with the idea of the Magicians Lecture Network. |
davidpaul$ Inner circle Georgetown, South Carolina 3086 Posts |
Yep Dan, That satisfies my curios mind. It's good to know the struggles you've went through. I'm sure they weren't pleasant at the time but they molded you and provided a career that you obviously have a passion for. Thanks for posting a personal look into your life.
Dave
Guilt will betray you before technique betrays you!
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Danny Archer V.I.P. Philly 607 Posts |
Your welcome Dave ...
I feel so lucky that I have been able to make a living doing something I love ... my brother changed jobs recently and he asked me if I had ever considered doing something different ... I told him now way ... I have never thought about retiring and hope I can keep performing right up to the end ... wheter I'm doing my stand-up act or a quick coin trick for the guy in back of me in line at the Post Office, I give it my all and love every second of it ... |
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