Public Auction Sale #007 Catalog of The Magic Collection herb Zarrow of and featuring rarities from the collections of Paul Fox Dai Vernon and Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 10:00 AM Exhibition October 18 - 22 Thank you for downloading the digital edition of this catalog. Hard copies can be purhased at our website, www.potterauctions.com. Potter & Potter Auctions, Inc. To view detailed, color images of3729 each N. lot Ravenswood and to place Ave. bids online for items in this catalog, -Suite 116- please visit our partnerChicago, website, IL 60613www.liveauctioneers.com. A Mild-Mannered CPA for a Great New Jersey Accounting Firm Herb Zarrow was the most deceptively powerful man since And, remember, that was just the day job. Clark Kent. The cardigans. The eyeglasses. The gentle shrugs In his vocation, the art of magic, once Herb got started, he and soft-spoken ways. But make no mistake – and if you made never stopped working out the advantages – new methods, that mistake with him, you were already many steps behind – at tricks, versions, improvements, subtleties. He didn’t stop his core was a man of steel. even after he created what many magicians – and quite a few His son, Harry, tells a great story to this effect. For many cardsharps – considered the ultimate advantage, the justly years, Herb ran a top-flight accounting firm that he founded in mythic Zarrow Shuffle. That made him an historic figure and an New Jersey called Zarrow, Zarrow and Klein (hey, an amateur unseen friend and mentor to cheaters. “I’m doing the Z all over magician does not support a family, maintain a comfortable the Mediterranean,” a boat-riding sharp once actually wrote to household, and finance trips to far-off countries through card him, a letter Herb took some delight in quoting. Herb was one of tricks alone, no matter how baffling and spectacular they are). the most powerful men in magic. As the name declared, it was a family business and it developed But what was the root of this power? Surely, it was partially a zippy reputation, thriving in a way perhaps belied by its the aura that came from having created the Zarrow Shuffle. And innocent suburban offices, which adjoined Herb’s home in Fair yet, while that quietly thundering sleight assured his place on Lawn. Naturally, given Herb’s true calling, the firm developed a Olympus, his own hash mark on the Great Developments in side specialty handling magicians’ tax affairs (Lou Tannen was Magic timeline, Herb was much more than his most famous an early client) and yet, despite that, it still managed to maintain move. He was a man who lived an extraordinary run in magic its success. for decade after decade (he was born in 1925 and died in 2008). At one point, a good 25 or 30 years back now, one of Herb’s He was an active player, a heavy hitter in his own right, during client companies was being bought, gobbled up in a merger one of the most glorious periods in the history of the art. by a much larger company, which in turn had brought in the Herb’s time as one of the most innovative of magicians spanned accounting giant Peat Marwick Mitchell to do the due diligence. an especially fruitful period – truly an epoch as we look back on Herb and his gang were going to sit down with some heavy it now – that started in the mid-Forties, when he first came under hitters from PMM, as it was then known, to pore over all the the sway, at a lecture at the Hotel McAlpin in Manhattan, of his financial nooks and crannies before the deal could become final. greatest mentor, Dai Vernon (“Uncle Dai” to his kids, with the Now, Herb’s firm wasn’t exactly tiny, but PMM was beyond “day” pronunciation that the name was given on the East Coast). huge. This was an absolute leviathan, the forerunner to today’s In magic, that night is roughly akin to the young Beethoven KPMG, one of the so-called Big Four accounting firms, by far the making his way to Vienna to study with Haydn. Herb’s tenure largest in the world, that handle billions upon billions. deepened and matured through what can loosely be called the Merger meetings can be touchy and tense, with some huffing Stars of Magic era, the New York-dominated period of the Fifties and puffing, and as the suits from the mammoth firm approached and Sixties, when many of the greatest developments in close-up Herb, the head guy held out his hand and presented himself sleight-of-hand magic were created and refined in the Saturday importantly. “Joe Schmo,” he announced, the name Harry gives melting pot of a Times Square cafeteria and in the seemingly him today. “PMM.” Herb took the guy’s hand in his, one of those endless late-night-early-morning sessions at the apartments and legendary Zarrow hands. “Herb Zarrow,” he answered matter- houses of the leading practitioners of the day. Herb continued of-factly. “ZZK.” straight on into the first decade of the 21st century, when he Advantage, Herb. Before they even got started. released a DVD on his famed shuffle, something he never could 2 • The Collection of Herb Zarrow have envisioned back in 1946 at that Vernon lecture. Herb’s name is – and has been for many, many years now – right up there in the pantheon. But for him, all those great names Collection is the quick, utilitarian word being used, but it does up there with him were not just Hall of Famers. They were his call for some annotation. Like most magicians, Herb didn’t friends, his contemporaries, his mentors, colleagues, protégés, consider himself a collector per se. Oh, serious magicians are and nemeses (yes, as loving and mild-seeming as he was, he always declaring that they’re not really collectors. But they’re certainly had those, too, one renowned one in particular). That not fooling anyone. How could they not be collectors? That is was another source of Herb’s quiet power. Vernon, Miller, to say, those who, like Herb, spend years at their art, always Slydini, Scarne, Carlyle, Balducci, Garcia, Krenzel, Schwarzman, reading, studying, meeting, sessioning, thinking … well, the Lorayne, Thompson, Diaconis, and on and on. Knowing them, magical stuff just accumulates. It collects. sessioning with them, teaching them and being taught, riffing off In Herb’s case, as you’ll see here, it was mostly books, many their tricks and his – it was all routine for the cardigan-wearing signed by his co-pantheonists mentioned above, as well as by accountant from ZZK in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. These giants many others. He lived during the Great Magic Book Explosion were the other guests at the great, rolling magical party that Herb and that’s what he knew about learning magic, that was the and Phyllis – and there simply is no Herb Zarrow story without bedrock – that and sessioning with his fellow greats. So these a loud mention of the incomparable Phyllis Roemer Zarrow – volumes comprised his working library, the at-the-elbow created of their long, impressive lives. Rubbing those shoulders resources of an innovative, supremely original artist. But there was, for them, part of what life was all about. If you sat down to are some outliers here, too, some surprises, like a rare dollhouse a Sabbath dinner at Phyllis and Herb’s, he might pull you aside illusion and that eerie, even unearthly Chinese mask created as you gathered at the table, pause a moment and point out a long ago by Uncle Dai’s wife, Jeanne. corner of the dining room. “This is where Dai and Tony used to To hunt down and acquire things, you have to believe in always stand, trying to get the Pendulum Knot,” he’d say softly, talismans. And most magicians, I think, are passionate believers. referring, of course, to Vernon and Slydini and one of his own You’ll definitely find some powerful talismans here. You won’t favorite tricks. Then he’d sit down to bless the wine. find Herb, alas. But maybe, if you root around and get lucky, like Well, now we don’t have Herb anymore. And we don’t have he often did, you’ll find a fair consolation prize, a true connection the equally legendary Phyllis, a cruel blow for those who found to his power – to his art, which was great, and his life, which was some solace with her after Herb died. But this is how it goes. Life, even greater. like a poker game into which one of the imperceptible versions -Karl Johnson of Herb’s shuffle has been introduced, is definitely unfair. That’s New York City the way it is. August 2010 But there is this collection, courtesy of the Zarrow family. Potter & Potter Auctions - October 23, 2010 • 3 2 1 4 7 10 12 4 • The Collection of Herb Zarrow AppArAtus many more items. Over one thousand dollars original cost. 1. Ball Vase. Japan, Mikame Craft, ca. 1985. Handsome turned Condition generally good. should be seen. hardwood vase from which a ball appears and disappears, or 300/400 which can be used to transform the ball into a silk handkerchief. Includes a separate matching silk to ball gimmick. Vase stands 6 7. Color Changing Candle. A&B Magic (Alexander the Great), ½” high. With original box. Fine condition. 1971. A red candle resting in a brass candlestick is lit by the 75/150 magician.