Guest Diary• BY:
Jill Krementz
Ricky Jay was known as a Magician’s Magician. I first saw him perform in his one man show, “Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants” at the Second Stage Theater in 1994.
Directed by his close friend David Mamet, the eight-week run sold out before it opened. For those who missed out on Ricky’s multiple-city stage performances, he can be seen in many of Mamet’s films including his part as a gambler in House of Games.
Stage and screen aside, Mr. Jay was a scholar — authoring books and journals. He was also a voracious collector of posters, pamphlets, rare books, and ephemera from the world of magic. We’re talking about a treasure trove of nearly ten thousand items.
Ricky Jay died in 2018 at the age of 72. Chrisann Verges, his widow, working with Selby Kiffer and his experts from Sotheby’s, spent months sorting through his incomparable collection selecting the nearly 2000 items bound for New York City.
Prior to the two-day auction of 634 lots on October 27th and 28th, Chrisann hosted a private party for their friends on the 4th floor of the auction house. Staring down from the walls were Harry Houdini, Max Malini, Charles Carter, Chung Ling Soo, Kosta, the Darley’s, Miss Baldwin and Matthias Buchinger.
It was, to be sure, a “now you see them but soon you won’t” evening as future bidders, worldwide, were ready to make all the items vanish and then, with a wave of their paddle, reappear in their own eccentric collections.
The final sales tally — a total of $3.8 million — surpassed its estimated value. The Jay/Verges house off Mulholland Drive is still packed to the gills with magical treasures.
Married in 2002, Chris and Ricky shuttled back and forth between their house in Los Angeles and an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
The large color lithograph of Charles Joseph Carter with the Devil is one of the most recognizable magic images of the Roaring Twenties.
The poster once hung on the wall of their dining room in Beverly Hills where Chrisann works as a producer.
According to Wild About Harry blogger John Cox, “When Houdini first performed in Paris in 1901, audiences were still unfamiliar with handcuffs (they were not yet used widely in France), so he received few challenges. It’s said his card work is what made him a hit in France.”
Only 29 inches tall and born without hands or lower legs, Buchinger was married four times, and fathered 14 children.
Despite his having small, finlike appendages for hands, Buchinger’s engravings were incredibly detailed. One such engraving, a self-portrait, was so detailed that a close examination of the curls of his hair revealed that they were in fact seven biblical psalms and the Lord’s Prayer, inscribed in miniature letters.
Ricky Jay’s extensive collection of Matthias Buchinger’s extraordinary microcalligraphy was on display at the Metropolitan Museum in 2016. He was also the subject of Ricky’s 11th book.
Ricky Jay was profiled by Patty’s colleague. Mark Singer in the New Yorker (April 5, 1993).
The multi-talented Mr. Jay also wrote for the magazine (Annals of Gaming: The Story of Dice — December 11, 2000).
David Blaine, the contemporary magician and endurance performer, saw the present poster in Ricky Jay’s collection and was inspired to learn Mac Norton’s technique. In a moving homage, Blaine reprised the regurgitation of a living frog at Jay’s memorial service.
If you look carefully you can see a vignette of the throngs attending the performance and on the verso, vignettes of Houdin’s most famous tricks.
Also depicted, an audience of boisterous imps prepare their questions for Miss Baldwin: “How long will the war last”; “Who will win the Derby”; “Will I ever be rich”; “Who killed Mabel”; “Who stole my ring”; “Where is my watch” “Who stole my bicycle; “Am I in love”; “How long shall I live”; “Is my sister living”; “Where is my papa”; “Where is my brother”; “When will I be married” — and that universal question that every man has asked himself, “Where are my pants.”
The wall plaque states fine condition, which might be a better description of the poster than that of Mr. Kosta’s neck.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, but raised in Detroit, Leipzig was a vaudeville magician, who was eventually elected president of the Society of American Magicians (previous presidents include Howard Thurston and Harry Houdini). He is particularly remembered for his sleight-of-hand innovations. Leipzig is credited with inventing the “Side Steal” (or, “Side Slip”), a method for secretly removing a playing card from the middle of a deck.
The United States Postal Service issued a stamp of this famous poster as one of eight 49-cent Forever stamps commemorating vintage circus posters in 2014. Long is shown performing two of his signature stunts: descending a staircase on his head, and, in a stop-motion-like view, roller skating down.
The automaton was designed to perform a silent routine with Ricky, in which a card would be torn, handed to various members of the audience, collected, and then restored by Neppy.
It sold for $201,600, a world auction record for a contemporary automaton.
I don’t know who else waxes poetic about the virtues of skeleton men, fasting imposters, and cannonball catchers. And to be honest, I don’t really care. I just think they are wonderful. — Ricky Jay to Mark Singer, April 5, 1993
