Bruce Cervon on The Magic Palace
By Art of Magic - Monday, March 16, 2020
Bruce Cervon was born in 1941 and raised in Akron, Ohio. He was very interested in magic, and Dai Vernon, The Professor, had just moved to Hollywood to be a part of the Magic Castle. Cervon knew visiting the Magic Castle would be the best way to learn from Vernon (many of The Professor’s now classic books had not yet been released), and his friend, Larry Jennings, had recently relocated to Los Angeles and told him how wonderful it was.
He made the journey, quickly becoming one of the Professor’s top students. Our community owes a lot to Cervon for taking copious notes about what he learned during decades of life at the Castle. His work was instrumental in giving us the wonderful Ultimate Secrets of Card Magic, The Vernon Chronicles, and most recently his notes have been released as Bruce Cervon’s Castle Notebooks. Additionally, Cervon had a fantastic mind for magic and performing, and the books of his own magic are present day classics which show great, devious thinking.
Here we see him performing a very deceptive handling of the Torn and Restored Cigarette Paper on Dale Harney's Canadian program, The Magic Palace. Those of you familiar with Leipzig’s handling will be stunned at how clean this version looks! It is rare to have an effect that can be done so slowly with everyone burning your hands. A perfect, intimate piece of conjuring.
Thanks to the efforts of many magicians who were able to provide Magicana with VHS copies of various episodes, they have been able to recover over 220 performance clips and are sharing them with you.
