XV
OUT OF THE HAT
“I never saw as many shocking bad hats in my life.”
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellingon.
—upon seeing the first Reformed Parliament.
An analysis of cartoons which use magic “to point to a moral or adorn a tale,” culled from metropolitan newspapers during the past few years, shows that more than fifty per cent depict the production of something from a hat. There is no doubt that the mention of magic suggests to the mind of the layman, in the majority of cases, a picture of a man pulling a rabbit out of a hat; yet one can visit a hundred magical performances at the present time and not once see a hat-production trick. The fashion just now is the manipulation of cigarettes and the making of fans with playing cards. This will pass, and the performer in search of a novelty can hardly do better than work up a modernized version of the hat trick. One of the greatest authorities on magic has said that if he wished to judge the caliber of a magician he would have him work a hat-production trick. To do that successfully but little sleight of hand, in the strict sense of the word, is necessary; but the performer must be deft and a master of misdirection, and for this reason a study of the technique of hat loading is an absolute necessity for anyone aspiring to be a finished, all-round magician.
The passing of the silk hat, possibly, has had something to do with the neglect of the trick; but we still have the derby hat and the felt hat, both of which can be used with even greater effect than the silk hat as savoring less of possible preparation. The necessary room for large articles can be obtained by keeping the sweatband turned up throughout. It would serve no good purpose to describe a series of hat productions; every performer has to work up his own methods of so misdirecting the attention of the spectators at a given moment that he can slip his load into the hat imperceptibly. All that can be done is to give concrete examples of methods that have been found to be infallible; the student can then work out a series of “favorable moments” for himself.
1. THE STREET MAGICIAN
Here is one of the best possible examples of misdirection. Surrounded by curious spectators, the street magician produces a small rabbit or a guinea pig from a hat which everyone had seen to be empty a moment before. Obviously he must have put it in the hat. How? Simply by misdirection. He has the guinea pig in his right-hand coat pocket. After a trick in which he uses some small article—a lemon, for example—he puts the lemon on his little table, covers it with his hat, makes a feint of taking it away with his right hand and putting it in his pocket. When he asks the crowd, “Where is the lemon?” he is greeted with cries of “In your pocket.” Turning sharply to someone on his left, he asks, “Did you see me take the lemon away? No? How could you when it is still here?” and he snatches up the hat with his left hand. All eyes go to the table; but in the meantime he has seized the guinea pig in his right hand and with a backward swing of the body he brings his left hand back over the right hand and grips the hat by the brim with his right thumb, the fingers supporting the animal inside. Without pausing, he replaces the hat on the table and at the same time picks up the lemon with his left hand, thus keeping everyone’s attention on the lemon.
He pretends to take the lemon in his right hand but palms it in the left and “passes” it toward the hat. Showing the right hand empty, be lifts the hat, revealing the guinea pig; and the astonishment caused by this apparition gives him another favorable moment for dropping the lemon from his left hand into his pocket.
Website Content: © Copyright 2024 by Trickshop.com.