As founder and manager of this little website it gives me great pleasure to welcome the one and only Jay Leslie as our very special GUEST OF HONOR for the month of July.

Thanks for taking the time to share with us Jay!

Greetings and a magical hello.

I grew up in a magic shop where the owner bought the rights to many effects http://houseofenchantment.com/pages/blog/our%20effects.html which he manufactured. He also acquired hundreds of antiques that I enjoyed learning about. I have also read through tens of
thousands of - letters from the past- which were the correspondence between various magicians during the 30s and the 40s so I have inside information of how the magic business operated during those years.

If you have any questions about manufacturing or how the magic business operated the 30s & 40s and early 50's, I’ll see if I can answer them.

I am also one of the last people in America to perform Movie-Matinee shows. I have lots of stories about traveling the county as a 14 - 16 year old performer, as the Grand Opening Attraction at new malls and shopping centers, along the east coast, with one of the syndicated performers who appeared as Bozo The Clown, in Pittsburgh. It was very common for 5,000 or more people to come to a new shopping center to see us. It was more common for the Host Performer to slip out the back door while I was doing the last trick and leave me holding the bag.

Hello Jay, I am gad to see you here as the 'Special Guest of Honor' and will look forward to read more about your experiences. Thanks for sharing.

JAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's really great to have you here, I have been looking forward to having you here since Steve announced it.

I met you in San Diego years ago & I got to attempt to free myself from your Mergher(I'm sure I'm not spelling it right), that thing ripped up my knuckles something fierce. I didn't get out of it, but I was very proud of the fact that while I was struggling to get out of it, you kept saying that I knew what I was doing(I still have nightmares about that jacket).

We chatted a bit throughout the convention & you told me a really cool story about how you would hang around When the professor would fall asleep & wait for him to wake up.

Thanks,
Mike

I'm sure you can get out of a regulation jacket. The one I brought to the convention was a magician buster, for sure.

I remember watching Mike try to get out of that thing - that's not a straight jacket, that's the jacket of terror!

There are several other jackets that are just as difficult to escape from. Some of the guys who attend the Cannon's Escape Artist Convention (Ontario California) Bring their jackets. This is a good place to try your skills, if you are so inclined.

Welcome Jay! Thanks for chatting with us.

Thank you Bill.

Hi Jay. I met you a couple of times in the past, years ago. I was impressed with the magic you produced and marketed.

We have a mutual friend who was a very active magician that lived in Orange County, CA. Last I heard, he had moved to Arkansas. Perhaps you know whom I am referring to. I lost contact with him and don't know much else. I'd like to know what happened to him and his family and how are they doing? Could you contact me thru private message.

Thanks for your time.

G

Good to have you here, Jay! Thanks for all your help over the years.

Thank you.

What are you working on?

You west coast guys have all the fun. Always have!!

-=tabman