Channing Pollock 1956
Please enjoy folks!
~Devious

Original Audio Version

Thanks for sharing, he is the master!

One of the best clips of Channing I have ever seen. I have several. So smooth it is unbelievable.

Thanks.
Richard

Thanks for the clip! It shows Channing at the heigh of his magic career. How polished and smooth he is. The practice and rehearsal really shows. Notice that he does not smile during the act until the end. It was sort of his "tag line".

I haven't seen that segment in years (maybe a decade!). It is one of the few that shows his entire cabaret act. Interesting fact is that he quit magic for acting within a year after that film was made. He gave his entire act to a friend (Frank Brooker), birds and everything.

I can sound like a hater, but I never liked how he shows both sides of his hands during his card manipulations. Maybe I am wrong and he does it as well as other moves but it was just something I was noticing every time I was watching him. Otherwise it is amazing how smooth he is,

Suren, whenever you witness a period piece you have to keep in mind it was 1956, thus you have to keep in mind the context of the material. Everything concerning manipulation was kept a total secret. To even learn that hand washing technique you had to go to the Chavez School of Magic in California. I don't even believe Lewis Ganson had published his little booklet on Card Productions yet. So this was the only method that was invented to date of showing both sides of the hands free of playing cards. Then in the movie Arabian Nights this move was performed in slow motion in the film as sort of an Challenge/Explanation feature of Channing Pollock's skill.

Then remember, Channing Pollock was the 1st to produce doves from scarves in the manner you see on the film. There was a Mexican magician who produced doves, but his methods were all together different and not as magical as Channing Pollock's.

Channing Pollock was/is the inspiration manipulator of 20th Century and still today no one else has ever achieved his fame in magic with a single act going world wide. He did not perform at Magic Conventions, but in Nite Clubs around the world. He was the most famous manipulator magician in the world.

So what you like and don't like about the act, is immaterial, you should be attempting to be as good as he was with the with his professionalism. Still today, not all his methods have been revealed in any form in magic literature.

@Hegblini The Great

Pollock was a skilled magician with the looks, charm, poise, and presence of a movie star. His dove steals have not been surpassed. I agree that hand washing is looked down upon by magicians of today but that was high tech then. The split fans moves had been published before by Marlo in Card Fan Productions as early as 1941 in mimeo form. Hand washing and fan production were described by Arthur Buckley in Card Control in 1946. Thurston and others revealed secrets of these card manipulations even earlier. Pollock combined the dove and card magic into an artistic piece that inspired many magicians and probably generated more copycats than any magician of his time.
It was a pleasure to watch him again.

Larry

Suren Vardanyan wrote: "I never liked how he [Channing Pollock] shows both sides of his hands during his card manipulations."

I've said before that we, as experienced card manipulators, know what to look for and consequently we see "tells" in many manipulation acts that lay audiences don't see. And it's not just lay audiences. I have watched well-known card manipulators perform and many flash the hidden cards during basic single card productions... however, many of my magician friends who do NOT do card manipulations fail for some reason to see those flashes. To me, the flashes are obvious.

I feel that the angle problem with the back-and-front palm acquitment is only slightly more angle-risky than the angle problem with split fan productions. I'll provide one small (but I feel significant) tip here. If you restrict the acquitment to only that time in your act when you are doing the silk pull through the fingers (see page 19 of the new edition of Ganson's _Expert Manipulation of Playing Cards_ if you don't know the move I'm talking about), you can do the back-and-front palm acquitment even in slow motion without flashing. I wouldn't do it in slow motion, but it is a perfect illusion when done at normal speed. Try it and you'll be surprised at how convincing the acquitment is with the silk providing extra cover.

I think Ganson in _Card Magic by Manipulation_ suggests that we should explore other ways to "prove" there are no cards palmed. Marlo himself in his book _Card Fan Productions_ writes that he was completely fooled when Bil Baird showed both sides of his hands empty and then still went on to produce cards. Marlo eventually realized what Baird had done, and went back to see the act again to confirm that Baird had fooled him with a move that was (pardon the cliche) as old as the hills. I don't think Marlo revealed the method, but I believe he did point the reader to a source that would explain it.

Probably showing the back of the hand is also what some magic writers have called "running when you're not being chased." I have had college-educated lay people come up to me after one of my performances (when I produce cards but never show the back of the hand) and they say, "The cards come out of your sleeve, don 't they?" Lay people can "guess" that one coin or one card can be hidden behind the hand, usually in something that is more like a back clip than a back palm. But their minds can't go the extra step to thinking how multiple cards can be hidden there and produced one at a time or in three separate fans.

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez

Exactly.

When I was younger and I was just starting out with card manipulations, first thing that I learned was just a single card backpalm production in a cardini style(maybe I am wrong I am talking about production where you produce the card in between first and second finger). After I learned Cardini multiple backpalm productions. I was surprised by the secret. However while practising it I could never figure out the split fans. I thought that magician can hide that many cards behind his hands but immideatly I ignored that theory, thinking that it is impossible.
Know I understand how audience thinks.

"Hind sight is always 20-20". I was not exposed to magic until 1955, at about 8 years old, the books quoted above were not on any book shelf for reference that I was exposed to at the time. My very 1st exposure was "The Modern Conjurer" published in 1937, and still at my local library. It told the methods with the back palm of 4 cards and the production. Note: that Channing Pollock and Lance Burton did a version of this during their card manipulation routines.

I did purchase the Marlo booklet when it was discovered by me in Ireland's book catalog. After reading it I thought, what do I do with that information? The booklet only tells very well the finger movements to accomplish the moves of the production. It is like you have these moves, but how do they fit into the whole of creating a visual production. How does one get into and out of these movements. It was a middle without any idea of how to use them.

Arthur Buckley's Trilogy was a wonderful reprint for me, and when they appeared, I wonder who was this old time man to publish 3 books on magic. Now mind you, I have never read a thing about this man or his books until the reprint of the books. His books were not in any library, and of the magician magazines I subscribed to, no one has mentioned his name. His works should be the "bible" on magic and yet, they are not. His "Cards to Coins Production" is a wonderful move for the transition from one tool to another. Availability would be the word here, these works were never available in my life time and many still never refer him for his labors.

Suren, "hit the nail on the head" and sort of says the same thing as I at the time of discovering only a method out of context of the whole. I have these finger moves, but how to they fit. In my case, not having seen what the whole should look like. I think my only inspiration was "Magicland of Alakazam" and "Ed Sullivan Show" but I had to work on Sunday nights as a teenager. I don't remember Mark Wilson ever performing the Cards From The Air performance.

I will have to again go back and say it was the Chavez Course that put all this information into context for a performance. How to look professional while doing all these moves was as important as the moves themselves.

It was the late Neil Foster who trained Channing Pollock at the Chavez School, he did an excellent job, don't you think?

@Anatole HEy! I just realised this. How do you know my second name???????

It is in your profile, no, he is not physic! LOL

The one thing I got from watching, and maybe this did not occur to anyone else, but the audience in the video has a clear backstage view of the magic! Yet they didn't react in anyway at the secret moves? Was this by design were they in on it? Maybe they just saw a lot of stuff that looked like skill but not magic because they could not understand from the back what the purpose of these manipulations were? Does anyone have any insight?

Thanks

Ben

@Anatole - reference the back and front showing of the hands empty, I only do it if 'required' by the routining. I tried to cut out all unnecessary moves that say 'my hands are empty', and build them in naturally into the routine. I took the view that that my hands are supposed to be empty (!!) and just get on with it, and in the process, the audience see that they are empty (hopefully).

I can see that in the 50's, it would have been a valid move to actually do the back and front to show the hand empty, though.

I'm also really pleased that these videos of Channing Pollock (and other names from the past) will be preserved for generations to come.

@hpcman - when I first began with manips, many years ago, I was told that the from the front it looked liked magic, and from behind it looked like juggling. Take that as you will, but I prefer no-one behind me! As for the film, I would think they were told not to react.

Happy New Year,

Dave

In regard to the statement above that "when I first began with manips, many years ago, I was told that the from the front it looked liked magic, and from behind it looked like juggling" I submit the following quote from my mentor Henry Hay (Barrows Mussey). He wrote in _The Amateur Magician's Handbook_: "Sleight of hand, I freely admit, is my own absorbing passion. I have nothing to say against the other branches of the art, but in which one can you come so close to the qualities of genuine magic?" Mussey goes on to say, "Incidentally, when the methods of a Cardini or a Nate Leipzig are explained, they seem more like magic than the tricks themselves. The sleight-of-hand man is the only performer who can never be made ridiculous, and may even grow in stature, by exposure.) (page 20 of the 1950 edition.)

The key words in the quote are "so close to the qualities of genuine magic." You can produce 52 cards from "a previously empty drawer box," but I'd have to think that a lay audience would be much more impressed and much more entertained if you produce the cards from thin air. The effect is basically the same--cards that at one time were not visible (or did not exist) have suddenly materialized. But the former is accomplished by virtue of the magician's knowledge of arcane personal skill and the latter by virtue of the magician's possession of a magic object, which one might compare to Aladdin and his magic lamp and magic ring. Aladdin did not do much of the magic. The genies of the lamp and the ring did the magic.

I don't think the average spectator--seeing the production of cards from behind--would call it "juggling." They don't even call exhibition card fans juggling. I've mention before (both on the Café and in old posts in the Electronic Grymoire) that when I performed once for a lay audience, I introduced my set as "an exhibition of juggling with cards." So I did my spring flourishes with a Bicylce deck and my Zinab deck routine--showing the cards blank, making the backs appear, making the faces appear, changing the design and color of the backs, and making a giant fan--and midway through my set I heard someone in the audience say, "When is he going to start juggling the cards?"

I remember as a child--before I learned any of the secrets of magic--seeing magicians do flourishes on TV. To me that looked like magic. I assumed that the cards were somehow strung together and that I would never be able to find one of those special "strung together decks." So I was very relieved when I read in the Hay book that I could do it with an ordinary Bicycle deck. I had no fanning powder back then, but in those days Johnson's baby powder had zinc stearate in it, so I was able to use that until I found the real stuff at Earl Edwards's Magic Shop in Norfolk.

So about the comment quoted above that "I was told that... from the front it looked liked magic, and from behind it looked like juggling"--I'm curious--was that comment made by a magician or by a lay person? I imagine it was made by a magician, since a lay person generally would not even be watching from behind.

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez

I noticed one of the audience members staring directly at the back of his hand during the card productions and then whispering to the woman seated beside him.

Jim

It seems many of the members of the Café believe that a movie as real is real life. How strange, those spectators behind Channing are called "extras" they are there to act like an audience in a Nite Club. Extras are actors, they are instructed to "ACT" like they are in a Nite Club watching a live performance. Thus they are "INSTRUCTED" to move, gesture, and make some lines that will not be picked up by the sound system to make it "LOOK" like they are actually talking. They are told when to "ACT" surprised and point and gesture.

Come, movie making is not real life. The DIRECTOR wanted to show the SCENE as a Nite Club setting. He could not shoot the back of the feature performer, so he put them in the background.

Let's get real Café Members. No lets get back to reality!!!

@Anatole - it was said by a magician, and most likely tongue in cheek. I, too, think manips is probably the nearest you can come to 'magic', but I am well biased! I also did say 'take that as you will', meaning I wasn't putting it forward as 'the truth'.

Have fun, y'all.

Dave