Jay Marshall, 85, the Dean of Magic, Is Dead

Jay Marshall in 1992 with the persnickety Lefty, an Ed Sullivan regular.

Published: May 13, 2005


By DOUGLAS MARTIN (re-posted from The New York Times)

Jay Marshall, a magician whose accomplishments - from appearing 14 times on "The Ed Sullivan Show" to playing New York's Palace and London's Palladium - persuaded America's conjurers to elect him their dean, died Tuesday in Chicago. He was 85.

The cause was a heart attack, his son Alexander said.

In 1992, Mr. Marshall became dean of the Society of American Magicians. He will keep the title until his wand is broken at his gravesite in a magicians' ritual. He was only the eighth dean in the history of the organization, and his picture was on the commemorative coin issued upon its centennial three years ago.

He was an enduring hit from vaudeville to Broadway to Las Vegas, where he opened for Frank Sinatra in one of his early appearances there.

Todd Karr, a publisher of magic books, said the deanship meant Mr. Marshall was the elder of legerdemain, "sort of the griot of the global magic village."

Siegfried Fischbacher of Siegfried & Roy said: "Jay Marshall was a name synonymous with magic. He was one of magic's most beloved figures."

A writer, editor and collector of all things magic, as well as owner of one of the nation's leading stores in the business, Magic Inc. in Chicago, Mr. Marshall was valued by students for his immense knowledge going back to the glory years of vaudeville. In 1957, as part of the last variety bill to play vaudeville's legendary Palace Theater, he occupied the most prestigious place on the bill: the spot next to the closing act.

"He was the primary source on so many things," Teller of Penn & Teller said, calling Mr. Marshall "the British Library and the Library of Congress combined" in matters magical.

Mr. Marshall sawed Nanette Fabray in half in the Broadway show "Love Life" in 1949 and appeared with countless celebrities, including Paul Robeson, Sid Caesar and Walter Cronkite.

For five years in the 1950's, he edited New Phoenix, then the largest magic magazine. He sold his huge collection of magic posters to David Copperfield for his museum, and the store became one of the three biggest mail-order magic businesses in the country.

As a performer, Mr. Marshall could move from mismatched plaids to well-cut evening clothes. He was also a superb ventriloquist, and his persnickety hand puppet, Lefty, a rabbit, was an early regular on the Sullivan show. (Lefty is now in the Smithsonian Institution with Charlie McCarthy and Kermit the Frog.)

He was an indefatigable performer. When he appeared in "Love Life," the producer gave him permission to skip the closing bows to dart off by bicycle to play nightclubs, sometimes several in an evening.

In another Broadway show, he played the ghost of a bagpipe-playing British butler, having feverishly learned the instrument after lying that "of course" he knew how.

In 1973, he and his wife, Frances, wrote a three-volume book advising magicians on how to be successful; another of his books helped magicians master television. He originated a trick known as the Jaspernese Thumb Tie, which is still a staple of prestidigitators, and Teller calls Mr. Marshall's appearing to bounce a dinner roll off the floor a virtually perfect trick.

Out of modesty or canniness, Mr. Marshall always said he was "one of the better cheaper acts."

James Ward Marshall was born on Aug. 29, 1919, in Abington, Mass. At 7, he saw Houdini perform but fell asleep, according to a 1996 interview in Genii, a conjurers' magazine. But he watched other magicians, including Howard Thurston, an earlier dean, with increasing interest. He traded away his bicycle to buy a mail-order magic course.

He spent a year at Bluefield College in Virginia, but the siren of show business called. At a magic society convention in New York, he met Naomi Baker, whose father, Al, was a dean of magic. They were married and settled in New York, and Mr. Marshall began developing routines, partly through research at the New York Public Library.

He served in the Army in the South Pacific and developed his first puppet when he found it was impossible to take along a ventriloquist's dummy. He made the puppet from a sock and the ears from its mate.

His first marriage ended in divorce, and he married the former Frances Ireland, whose husband owned a Chicago magic store until he died in the 1950's. Frances, widely respected as a magic writer, merchant and performer, died in 2002, after 48 years of marriage.

In addition to Alexander, who lives in Manhattan, Mr. Marshall is survived by another son, James, of Port Townsend, Wash.; a sister, Marjorie Bamman, of Huntington, N.Y.; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Mr. Marshall won many awards in the United States, Britain and elsewhere. But in the Genii interview, he told the writer Max Maven how he came to be dean of magic.

"What do the dean do?" he remembered immediately demanding.

"As far as I know the dean don't do nothin'," the president of the magicians' society answered.

"That's the job for me!"