Tag: multiplying bottles

Visiting a Fair in Arkansas

While I was on the road in Oklahoma last week, I flew in a day early to drive a couple hours to visit a fair that some friends were performing at.

To my surprise, there was also a magic show at the fair.

pat davidson and tess

I don’t know Pat and Tess, but watched the show. It was interesting, it was a 20 minute show and about 6 minutes of that was a merch pitch. I don’t know how I feel about that. Sometimes what is seen as the audience lacks knowledge of whatever financial deal is happening behind the scene and the pitch being 1/4 of the is the deal that was made with the booker.

pat davidson and tess
pat davidson and tess
pat davidson and tess
pat davidson and tess

The show was a quick change act, then the multiplying bottles, the product pitch (activity book and Squirmel) and then juggling. In the show I saw Pat had a lot of drops. At the end of the show, I was going to go up and say hi and introduce myself, however he was onstage re-running the juggling stuff to work out why he was dropped. That’s the mark of a pro! He didn’t just accept the drops, the tried to fix them. That really impressed me!

-Louie

Max and Salli Hapner…

Last week I bought a vanishing birdcage on ebay (apparently I collect cages now?) from a seller that wasn’t a magician. I’ll talk a bit more about the cage in another post when I get a chance to do some research on it, but it’s a less common one. The seller included this Doug Henning autographed Playbill in the box that came with the cage:

I’m assuming the Max and Salli it’s signed to are Max and Salli Hapner. I’m not very familiar with their work, but remember seeing them on the cover of a couple of magic magazines, or mentioned in them. From my research this week, Max had a collection of Vanishing Birdcages, so it would make sense that the autograph coming with the cage would reinforce the idea that the autograph was to the Hapners.

It appears Max passed about 10 years ago, and I only found one video of him online, which is him doing The Multiplying Bottles for Stevens Magic Emporium:

One of the fun things about knowing some magic history is that I was immediately able to connect the name on the program to the magic act. One the cover of the Genii Magazine above they are doing their bubble appearance, which according some of the people I’ve talked to the last week was a really amazing trick!