124: Dai Vernon's personal scrapbook and photo album

[Scrapbook] Dai Vernon's personal scrapbook and photo album. Assembled by Vernon himself, this album of photograph contains images dating back to 1915, when Vernon first moved to New York and began making a name for himself. It contains over 125 images and mementoes from his earliest, triumphant days as the man whose attention to detail and devotion to naturalism changed the course of magic in the 20th century. Among the remarkable and unpublished images included in this most personal of keepsakes are images signed and inscribed to Vernon by Al Baker, Emil Jarrow (here as a vaudeville strongman, not a magician), and Dr. E.G. Ervin of Kansas City. Vernon appears in many images, some of which show him performing onboard the cruise ships he worked on throughout the 1950s and 60s. Other images include the most famous sleight-of-hand artists of the 20th century, all of them close personal friends of The Professor. Among the notables pictured in the book are Houdini, Dunninger, Dr. Elliott, Charlie Miller (in sessions with Vernon), Nate Leipzig (and family, with whom Vernon sits in the Leipzig home), Cardini, Dr. Harlan Tarbell, T. Nelson Downs, Walter Scott ("The Phantom of the Card Table"), Eddie McGuire, Francis Carlyle, Larry Grey, Fred Keating, Dr. Jacob Daley, Max Malini (in an unpublished candid photograph), and others. Early images of Vernon's wife Jeanne and his son Ted are also among the collection. Many pages are tattered and worn or folded, several lack images. Howe Read more…