How's Tricks? Magic in the Golden

26 June 2021 to 16 January 2022 LIST OF WORKS Magic is one of the world’s oldest art forms. Magicians have baffled and amazed people for millennia, creating tricks and illusions which continue to confound onlookers today. Early magicians were innovative show business pioneers, inventing colourful personas and new promotional techniques. Two great conjurers emerged in the 19th century: French watchmaker Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin and Scotsman John Henry Anderson. Taking magic off the streets, these trailblazers turned a fairground pastime into dazzling entertainment. Houdin combined scientific processes and clockwork mechanics in his perfect illusions, performed in elegant evening wear. Anderson captivated audiences with expert showmanship, popularising the trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The magician’s craft reached its pinnacle during magic’s ‘golden age’ from 1880 to 1920. Enterprising magicians, already enjoying commercial success in vaudeville and music halls in Europe and America, looked to the antipodean entertainment market. Magic’s greatest conjurers and illusionists travelled to Australia, where fresh audiences were eager to see something different — the more extravagant and exciting, the better. Soon, Australia was producing its own magical celebrities who would achieve great fame and 1 Shakespeare Place Sydney Australia 2000 stellar international careers. sl.nsw.gov.au MAGICANA ANDERSON’S MAGIC ON TOUR & MYSTERY SHOW Many books have been European colonisers at Sydney Cove brought with them written about magic tricks. Professor John Anderson, an appetite for theatrical entertainment. The expansion of Some magicians kept known as the Great settler society through the 1800s saw the development of their secrets, while others Wizard of the North, a thriving market for popular amusements, with audiences shared them with the world, was the first magician to clamouring for the types of performances they had known inspiring imitation and tour internationally. An back home. innovation. audacious advertiser, his Sydney’s emergence as a ‘magic town’ came after the elaborate posters and Henry Dean’s Hocus Pocus discovery of gold. The resulting prosperity boom and playbills used preposterous was first published in 1722 population explosion — from 60,000 in 1850 to 350,000 language and a profusion and reprinted in 15 editions, in 1886 — saw rapid social and cultural change, with of superlatives to sell remaining a bestseller for a rising middle class made newly rich in leisure time his illusions and himself. over 150 years. Based on and money. As the city approached its centenary in Reports of a performance earlier magic manuals, 1888, a flourishing commercial theatre scene led to the for the British royal family in it described common development of entrepreneurial chains, with extensive 1850 secured his reputation tricks, some with woodcut touring circuits capable of presenting vaudeville and in the colony, and he was illustrations, revealing the music hall acts, including magicians, to packed houses. conjurer’s processes for the invited to Australia by local first time. theatre manager George With the arrival of a new century, live theatre continued to Coppin. remain a viable part of the entertainment industry despite Toy and game seller, the growing popularity of cinema. Many of the world’s An unprecedented WH Cremer operated a most prestigious magicians — for whom the success of campaign of show-business Conjuring Saloon in Regent a Southern Hemisphere season would secure their fame advertising launched St, London, in the 1860s. — performed to great fanfare, stimulating interest in the Anderson’s Australian tour. He produced some of art of magic and inspiring future generations of Australian His Magic and Mystery the earliest known magic magicians. supply catalogues and show opened in Melbourne edited a popular series of in March 1858 but the magic books, including business partnership WIZARDS, MAGICIENNES Hanky Panky (1872), which soon failed. In December PROFESSORS & Anderson booked Sydney’s As magic performances encouraged a magic MAGICIANS gained greater popularity, publishing boom. Lyceum Theatre for four weeks, spending £500 Wizards, professors and women began to earn their on transforming the magicians abounded livings as stage magicians — ‘dirty, desolate, dingy and in colonial Sydney and too, either with their Hocus Pocus or the Whole Art of husbands and families, or Legerdemain in Perfection deplorable Lyceum into quickly dominating the by H Dean, facsimile edition, 1880s a Fairy Palace of Magic’, local entertainment scene. by themselves. American Robbins/ 0546 in which to display his Conjurer and ventriloquist ‘magicienne’ Madame — ‘gorgeously elaborate Professor Jacobs’ arrival Cora de Lamond (aka Hanky Panky: A Book of Conjuring Tricks paraphernalia’. was heralded by huge Ursula Bush) was the first edited by WH Cremer jnr, 1870s placards and posters all woman to tour Australia Robbins/ 0658 over town. The ‘Wizard with her own magic show. — Opening at Sydney’s — Advertisement, Sydney Morning Herald, of Wizards’ promised to (background) Playbill, Anderson’s Magic 7 December 1858 Prince of Wales Theatre & Mystery show, Standard Theatre, ‘electrify the Sydneyites’, London, c1855 BN445 playing to packed houses in in 1871, her repertoire Robbins/ 0918A — 1855 at the Royal Victoria, included troublewit (folding Program on silk, Anderson’s Magic and the city’s first large theatre, paper into shapes) and — Mystery show, Lyceum Theatre, Sydney, (inset) Detail from Giant Surprise legerdemain (sleight of 7 January 1859 which seated 1,900 people. Catalogue of Professional Magic, hand). The high point of by Vick Lawston, 1961 SAFE/D 356/Collection 16/Item 18 Countless stage magicians her show was the Couch of Robbins/ 0735 — pursued careers around the world, some achieving more Angels illusion during which — her sister, Christina, lay (left) The ‘Magician’s Saloon’ fame than others. Little from the Catalogue of Apparatus is known about Professor suspended in mid-air with for the Performance of Experiments her elbow resting on a pole. in Natural and Recreative Philosophy Lorento, described as ‘the by WH Cremer, 1862 celebrated and renowned Robbins/0707 Australian wizard’ in his — — Wizard’s Guide, which was Photo cards published in New York city (from top) in 1878. Magician with spirit apparatus, by Nicholas & Co, Queensland, c1860 PXA 682/ p.16 — Engraving, ‘Royal Victoria Theatre’, Madame Cora, ‘Magicienne’, from Sydney in 1848 by Joseph Fowles by Bardwell’s Royal Studio, Q84/56 Ballarat, c1872 — P1/382 Professor Jacobs, ‘Wizard’ drawing by WF Gordon, c1855 Prof Bosco, P1/832 by A Tronier, Sydney, c1860 — P1/202 Booklet, Lorento’s Wizard’s Guide, or Magic Made Easy Hurst & Co. (right) Advertisement for Cora de New York, 1878 Lamond from the Hobart Mercury, 793.8/8 22 January 1872 — — THE HELLERS THE HASELMAYERS DAVENPORT PROFESSOR British-born musician Known as the Prince of BROTHERS ANDERSON JNR William Henry Palmer took Prestidigitators, Professor Ira and William Davenport’s Philip Prentis Hind was a the stage name Robert Louis Haselmayer made his hugely influential spirit son of the original Professor Heller, after seeing Robert- debut at Sydney’s Prince of cabinet routine was John Anderson and had Houdin perform in London Wales Opera House in 1872. presented as a genuine toured with his father’s in 1848. Combining magic Returning in early 1880, supernatural phenomenon, act during the 1860s. Hind with humour and music, he introduced Australian despite repeated exposure began using the stage Heller entranced audiences audiences to Psycho, a of its trickery. Touring name Professor Anderson in a six-year world tour, card-playing mechanical Australasia in 1876, during during his 1881 Australian travelling with a life-sized figure of a man, first shown their performance the tour, with his wife, Louise mechanical peacock by John Nevil Maskelyne brothers were tied up Anderson, a clairvoyant. which fanned its tail and at London’s Egyptian Hall inside a box with musical Their show at the School performed tricks, selecting in 1875. instruments. Once the of Arts in Sydney, on playing cards with its beak. Madame Haselmayer, the doors were closed, the 26 March 1881, was billed His sensational second- instruments could be as a ‘Cagliostromantheum sight act saw Miss Haidee magician’s wife, was ‘the chief agent in a curious heard by the audience. of Wonders and Wizardian Heller (billed as his half- When the doors were Prestidigitation’, prompting sister) describe items held illusion’. With her wrists fastened and padlocked opened, the brothers were local reporters to wonder up by the audience, while revealed still tied in their at the ‘fresh delusions blindfolded. Opening at the into miniature stocks, which were in turn fixed bonds. The Davenports’ promised’ to the audience School of Arts in Pitt Street popularity encouraged when ‘one of the words in late 1869, the Hellers to the floor of a locked and covered cabinet, after other magicians to add is so big as to be almost returned for a second spirit phenomena to their alarming’, and requiring ‘a Australian tour in 1870. 15 seconds she reappeared ‘free and smiling, having acts. Considered among large audience to study it’. escaped from her bonds the earliest escape artists — — by some clever trick’. employing special rope ties — (right) Heller with his automated for quick release — their (above) Professor Anderson, detail peacock from Conjuring by Robert methods were also

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