Thanks for the info guys.

Why is this book not mentioned more, it is one of my favorite books of all time.

I have the Vernon Touch book, it is a collection of his Genii columns, it is a surprisingly big book. He wrote a column a month from the 60's to the 90's!! Worst thing about it -- no index!! Thus, no easy way to find his comments about broken arms, or anything else he wrote. What a shame....

Well, this is embarassing, but my statement about no index was flat wrong! I just checked the book and it does have one. I must have been thinking about a different book. Anyway, the index is still lacking a lot of potential entries, it mainly lists names of people and effects. There were no entries for "arms", "amputation", "accident", "construction", "job", "hospital", etc. So, still couldn't find any comments on the broken arms story.

I did put an extra "i" in there, didn't I? I could just say it's one of Marlo's variants. He actually had 20 methods for it.

So, shall I notify Wikipedia, Google, and other online sources that they spelled "Wikapedia" wrong or shall ye?

It gets worse, I was going to change David Maliks name to David Mawl.

You can notify wikapedia or who ever they are, and tell them next time to pick a better name.

Malek.

Malik is the balloon guy out of Boston.....

*** them and their names!

It is clear that Dai Vernon really claimed to have injured his arms on a construction site. We can keep on searching on every written account we will just find the version that the Professor may have told his own wife and children.

The doubt that some magicians claim here makes sense however. This working on a construction site is not consistent at all with Dai Vernon's entire life style and tastes. Actually it's the sort of life he worked hard to escape from. Furthermore as reported on one of the posts here about Faucett Ross, he had no problem supplying tales to his wife when he wanted to satisfy strong desires that she would not agree with. Thus chances are that the version, true or false, will have naturally been transmitted to his children.

If someone asks Mr Derek Verner, he should present his question in a complete form and not just ask if he heard that version but also if he has ever doubted it on the account of this being inconsistent with his father's life. Derek Verner may be kindly requested to search around the medical aspects of the wounds: what were they exactly; what was the nature of the rest of the lighter wounds; could they have been made by beating, would a medical doctor confirm this... If the person asking is not raising sufficient interest with Mr Derek Verner into doing a search, we will just get the official version repeated (and it may be true: unexpected and inconsistent is not that surprising in a magician's life).

Even though I was one of Ben's credited sources for his biography with proven information that were unique and ignored, I have no way to confirm or contest any of the versions. I'd love to have the doubt waived one way or the other as none of the version alters the Professor's image: as I stated elsewhere in the café, I think that Dai Vernon has been as important to magic in the XXth century that Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin has been in the XIXth. Let's not be superficial about our search with such important people.

Who will take up the stick in the XXIst century is an even more interesting question: I'd love to meet with that person, a legend in the making, which we should detect and support with personal pride aside.

Should there have been? LOL.

Doug L.

The construction job story is the one Vernon told everyone, so it has become the "official" story. As far as I know, the "gamblers' revenge" story, while unquestionably a much more sensational and romantic story, is based only on rumor and speculation. Both stories seem plausible to me. I can picture Vernon being faced with an irate wife, fed up with his shenanigans, putting her foot down, and Vernon taking a "straight" job to get her off his back, almost certainly with an eye to quitting as soon as he got his wife calmed down. The gambler story is also a good fit with what we already know about Vernon.

I can't help but wonder why David Ben chose to tell the construction story in his definitive biography of Vernon. Did he have access to documents that persuaded him it was the genuine story, or was this simply a courtesy to Vernon's memory and his family?

I'd love to see any documentary evidence either way, as speculating here is just talk, and as we all know, talk is cheap.