Title: Maurice Fogel: In Search of the Sensational
Medium: Book, hard cover, sewn spine
Arena: Mentalism, showman
Available: Any shop, distributed by Murphys Magic Supplies


The Amazing Fogel takes the stage, the audience is a mix of lay people wanting to see a man considered by many to be the greatest mentalist of all time and magicians. Fogel is blind folded and is turned so his back is to the audience, his covered eyes facing a curtain while a number of people stand in the audience holding items in his hand. Fogel proceeds to identify the individuals by their clothing and hair style as well as stating what they hold in their hands. No one is asking Fogel questions using codes, the people were not pre selected. The means? You’ll have to read the book to find out, but you’ll laugh at its brilliance. Imagine news articles about a mentalist attempting to get licenses for 16 ghost because they work in the nude, a man who fakes a rocket launch and gets away with it, a man who knowingly allows a helper to shoot him rather than back out of a performance of a favorite routine. You get all this and more when you read about Maurice Fogel is this fascinating look at his life.

Maurice Fogel was an Englishman born to immigrant parents from Poland. He grew up poor and while never finding riches he became a great showman, mentalist, and self promoter in a time when such shows were finding it harder to succeed. His creativity and desire to be a working mentalist is inspirational and makes for good reading. The book was written by Fogels son in law and a mentalist who was mentored by Fogel. We not only get the opportunity to see into the world of a world class performer but we get to go through the reasons he was driven to create certain routines and how he was flexible and willing to take risks to give the audience what they wanted. The response from the press and the public was to praise him for his amazing shows and, at times, the press would challenge him to prove his powers were real even though he wasn’t making any such claims.

The press were just another promotion tool for Fogel. He was not only very quick to spot and take advantage of opportunities to get into the press he was absolutely fearless in his pursuit of getting his name in the paper and delivering the best performances possible. He was as outlandish as Houdini ever was and as aggressive as a bulldog. All this wrapped up in an unassuming looking man who was known for his bad driving, complete lack of direction, and a kind spirit who was always helpful to others and a supporter of the magic community. Fogel had many dimensions but they all ended up at the same place, on stage presenting the best mentalism you could find. How many other performers do you know had special certificates made up to present to doctors who did a good job diagnosing him?

The book isn’t chronological; it is presented by category so each chapter might cover events over a 50 year period when Fogel was performing. While a historical biography, and this is one, usually reads better chronological in this case the way it is presented works. This is because we not only get inside the creative process and the shows themselves we also get to learn the routines. The routines range from simple handling of billets, which is more difficult to choreograph than you may think, to major stage presentations such as the Gallows Routine. After reading about the Gallows I want to become a stage magician now, really a great piece of mentalism with a danger hook that is a keeper. They go well into the Fogel Russian Roulette routine but since no one knows quite how he pulled it off there is no instructions and after being shot a few times as Fogel was I wouldn’t advise anyone trying it. The Russian Roulette consisted of six rifles and all were fired at Fogel, five to plates or balloons, one toward his head. You read the stories about Fogel doing his famous bullet catch, bullet heck, he would catch up to six or seven bullets. I told you he had guts.

Other areas covered, and the one I was most interested in, was in the spook show Fogel put on. His routine, fully explained, The Gambler, is the best spirit cabinet routine I’ve encountered and it is making me seriously consider doing a spook show for Halloween. The writers were kind enough to provide the information for supporting text such as Tarbell and other books to help should more detail information be needed. You’ll find the text and instructions for every release Fogel made for sale, copies of his booklets and certificates he gave out, this is as complete a text on Fogel as you will ever encounter. The routines and effects provide range from the amazingly simple to the complicated and from those no one will look at twice to very creative routines that would work today with no problem. For you budding psychics Fogels work on table work is presented in full.

There are some aspects of Fogels shows that cannot be explained because no one quite knows how he did them. He developed his ability to talk to the audience a certain way and cause them to miss certain aspects of his show, intentionally, that the reviews and comments in the paper did not record and those are forever lost. He could read people very well and then use that in a way that convinced many that he had powers of a psychic nature. While never making such claims and being a fly in the ointment of those believers that were around him they still couldn’t figure out how he did what he did, and of course he was able to get the press to state that he did things that didn’t really occur. A great example is the stories about when he was in the military during WW2. He may make a statement that by coincidence hit a date right and problems would come up for him. He later would use the issue for promotion making it seem like he had these amazing abilities. The truth about his shows were enough to draw a crowd, added to it the press releases and his knack for finding out what the public wanted and you get lots of steady work. He is described by so many as one of the best showman they had seen and I would love to see film of him working. One compliment to his abilities came from a writer who had seen a mentalist perform a very strong show in LA. She told her host at the show how she felt everything was done and she hit it all on the head. She felt it was an okay show but she was very intelligent and dissected things. She then saw Fogel and commented that she enjoyed it so much she never even considered how he did it and if she didn’t know better she would think he was the real deal. I think that is the goal for most of us and Fogel made it.

There is so much more to the story than I can put here, or want to. The book was a wonderful read and while the cost is a bit high for some people consider this. You are getting the biography of an amazing man and also getting the routines and releases of Fogel, those alone could have been printed up and sold for more than half the value of the book. If you enjoy the stories about the magicians that paved the way for the rest of us and appreciate the history of our art this book is very well worth obtaining. I enjoyed it immensely and wouldn’t hesitate to suggest it to anyone wanting a book on a magician and it is almost a must read for those interested in mentalism. If anyone knows where I can see film of Fogel please let me know. Great book.

Thanks for taking the time to give us such a wonderful review of this book. I suspected this book was going to be something special, but I was waiting to hear a little more about it. I'm now convinced and will order my copy ASAP!

Nice review Magicsanta thank you!!

Thank you and you're welcome. I really didn't know much about him until I read the book. He was an amazingly gutsy guy. I'm serious when I said he let himself get shot rather than back out of the trick. He also, when being shot at, would have the ones missing on purpose (six guns, one pointed at head, rest near head) miss by inches. I've news for you, I don't want to be in the same room as a loaded gun I'm not holding. The mentalism in the book ranges from a simple card trick everyone likely knows to some excellent stage routines that would work for anyone today. Again, if anyone knows of footage please let me know a link, thanks!

Thanks for the review MagicSanta....I'm going to be getting this book soon

Just bought the book yesterday; I don't even do mentalism, but it's one of those books that transcends the mentalism label and offers wonderful insights into the life of a working magician. Those seeking ideas for publicity stunts will find wealth of information within the pages, and anyway, it's a fascinating read.

I am enjoying this book now.

WONDERFUL!!!! If there were NO secrets in this book, I could see it on the shelf in any main stream bookstore as a popular biography/ historic non fiction book. A GREAT read!

We have a video review posted up at our site that everyone might be interested in:

http://www.theastonishmentproject.com/users/pages/view/lrbs

This is up there with The Mind and Magic Of David Berglas (an epic book and one of my absolute favs)...

Enjoy,
Jason
The Astonishment Project

I read this book at first looking for methods... Then quickly tossed that aside and looked at it from a stand point of magical history. I loved it on BOTH ends!

I really enjoy the magic history part.

Thanks Santa for pointing me to a great new read

You are reading it? Facinating story.