American Masters

MAN

Cards are like living, breathing human beings. I suppose because they give you real pleasure. You sit in a room with them for 10 or 15 hours a day, and they become your friends. Particularly very lonely people.

Cards fluttering

MAN

If I could go back in history, and I can...

Audience laughs

MAN

the performer I would most like to see would be Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser, the famous Viennese card magician who called playing cards the poetry of magic. My favorite of his many experiments from the 19th century, an experiment called "Everywhere and Nowhere."

Applause

JAY

The question was to speak about the state of current magic in America. I know absolutely nothing about the 20th century.

Laughter

JAY

And I'm not just talking about magic.

Counting in secret language

MAN

Seven of diamonds. The seven of diamonds. From the six to the seven of diamonds. And the gentleman on the end? 10 of spades.

JAY

The 10 of spades.

Applause

JAY

There are probably more books written about magic than any other art form -- literally thousand and thousands of books. And I've collected thousands of books in my life about magic technique. But I believe that the real key to learning is personally. It's almost like the sensei-master relationship in the martial arts. That the way you want to learn is by someone that you respect showing you something. There's a level of... of transmission and a level of appreciation that's never completely attainable just through the written word. I've been really, really lucky to be around people and to feel very much part of this ongoing continuum of sleight of hand that can be traced back many, many years -- more than a century.

MAN

It's beginners, ladies and gentlemen. Beginners, please. Everybody to beginners, thank you. He's here! What do we do next? I'll see you on the other side. All right.

Applause

MAN

A man named Canada Bill Jones, by all accounts, was the greatest monte hustler who ever lived. Canada Bill was, of course, from England. In his day, the game was played with three identical cards -- in this case a queen of hearts. And they would take out a marking crayon and put a big "X" on one of the queens, and you had to find the marked card, the queen with the "X." Then a little later, they thought it was better to play with black cards. So, instead, they played with three black cards, and they took out a red pencil and made a big circle so you could see it. And then they thought, well, you know, if you want to contrast them, all you have to do is play with a black one and a pair of queens, then you don't need a pencil. Now they play with one queen and two black cards. So why don't you... We'll continue...

Applause

MAN

I remember going to a show of "Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants," and he said, "Boy, there were, like, three or four really big card cheats in the audience tonight." I said, "Wow. So, guys you know?" He said, "Oh, yeah." Big, you know, card hustlers. And I said, "So, these guys gonna come backstage?" "Probably not." And they didn't. You know, but he does inhabit a world that you imagine that he would inhabit. He knows characters.

JAY

I was around magic all the time. It's my earliest memory. It's my earliest family memory. It's my earliest social memory. It's my earliest artistic memory. You know, so it just was part of my being.

DICK CAVETT

Newark Sunday News, New Jersey, March 14, 1956. "Two of a Kind. Max Katz, past president of the Society of American Magicians, is about to be tricked by his seven-year-old grandson, Ricky Potash of Elizabeth -- magician in his own right. Ricky hasn't given much thought to what he wants to be when he grows up, but one thing he doesn't want to be is a professional magician, which he is now -- at the age of seven. He made his public appearance at the age of four at the New York Magicians picnic."

JAY

I remember doing this dreadful effect when I was three or four years old, producing cups from Lundy's, this seafood restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, which was terrible. Or producing rubber fruit from a pan, which was awful. You know, pretending to lick a rubber ice cream cone, which I had just produced from the pan, which was awful. So within a year of that time, I think I was actually doing shows where I dressed up in a full tail suit and did more bad magical effects. Here I have an empty canister. Keep your eye on it, because strange things are going to happen. Sir, will you please bring in my magic bunny?

MAN

Well, the bunny jumped out. Will this be good -- a little Peruvian guinea pig? -Aw! -Oh, put it right in. I want to see this. This is really something. May I put it in for you, Ricky?

JAY

No. There. It's in there now. Rockabye bunny Hmm, la la la Well, my bunny has slept long enough. Time to wake him up.

Pop! Pop!

JAY

Oh, well, isn't magic wonderful?! I was a very comfortable performer from the beginning, and my guess is it's because I started at such a young age. My grandfather, Max Katz, was an amateur magician on a pretty serious level. He came over from Austria-Hungary as a small boy. He lived in Brooklyn, as did we. He had a Wall Street firm. He was a CPA through an act of Congress. He never went to college. And my grandfather actually took formal lessons from a bunch of magicians who were sensational. And then these people became his friends. And then became my early mentors. Slydini, Francis Carlyle, Dai Vernon, Al Flosso -- these people I got to see who were sensational. So, I mean, this was part of the great gift from my grandfather. I remember as a five- or six-year-old, my grandfather would bring me over to Cardini's house, which was truly amazing, because Cardini was known not to associate with very many magicians, you know, and he was just an extraordinary act. I only went to Cardini's twice. He was largely schmoozing with my grandfather, but kind enough to show me something. I mean, I still remember vividly him showing me a reverse fan that he made -- you know, this enormous circle of space, you know, the way he made this fan in his hand. Cardini was probably the greatest act I ever saw in my life. As a treat, my grandfather brought me to a magic convention in Chicago when I was very young, and Cardini did the act. I think it was the last time he ever did his act. It just was this extraordinary combination of elements blending together. The characterizations of him as the tipsy Englishman, and the idea that these miracles just sort of happened to him. He didn't produce cards, cards appeared in his hand. He was desperate to get them out of his hand, and the second they got out of his hand, there were more cards in his hand. It just really transcended anyone else doing similar effects.

Applause

Music playing

Mandolin playing

Music continues

JAY

It's also something from an era that no longer exists -- the end of Vaudeville, in which you could make a living doing an act for a few minutes. You would just go from town to town, from, you know, house to house, and do your act. And it just was wonderful. It was breathtaking. There's a thing about holding cards in one's hand that's amazing. It becomes like a meditative tool, just sitting there and shuffling cards for hours, and thinking about them. It's almost infinite what one can do with them. My grandfather would have very specific commentaries on the performance of various magicians. For example, watching Slydini, he would say, "Look how wonderfully he misdirects attention. Watch his incredible ability to direct the attention of a spectator specifically where he wants to direct it." Have a look. I'm gonna take the ball, I'm gonna put it inside the hand this way, and I close the hand. Squeeze. When I open the hand, you see the ball completely disappear. Come here, now, close, watch, really slow. Come in, all right. I'll do it really slow, okay? All right, watch here. Really slow. Hmm? And there's nothing here. Nothing here. Is there anything in your pocket? -No. -No? Oh. You didn't see, right? You know why? I did it too fast. This time, I'll do it slow -- really slow. Look. You try to catch me, watch. Now, I tell you why you didn't see it. I'll explain it to you, see? Before I put the ball this way, you couldn't see the ball, right? -Right. -Why? You're hiding it. You're clever. You are clever. I hide it with the hand, right? But this time, I'm not gonna put it this way. I'm gonna put it this way. Come here, watch, really look. Now. Come here. Really see.

Audience laughing

JAY

Look, nothing here, nothing here.

MAN

I worked very closely with him many years, I directed two shows -- "52 Assistants" and "Ricky

Jay

On the Stem." I directed him, I think, seven or eight movies. Trip aces. Beat 'em, my friend. Club flush. You owe me $6,000, thank you very much. Next case. I would always tell him, you know, "Show me something." So years ago, he said, "Okay, I'll show you a beginning effect. Off you go. When you can come back and do this effect better than anyone's ever done it, I'll show you another." And I worked on it for a while, got bored -- it wasn't my thing, and I never did it again. I mean, I respect the fact that the essence of his profession is secrecy and unobtainability. We all want to know how the trick is done. The technical skills to master them take a lifetime. To tell them to the uninitiated would be a desecration, so I stopped asking.

JAY

My grandfather would say when he watched Francis Carlyle, "It's not only technique and presentation, but listen to the way that he explains an effect with such clarity that people go away knowing exactly what's happened." It was a wonderful piece of advice, because people are often confused in terms of what was even supposed to take place in a magic illusion. And Francis was great about letting you know what was supposed to happen and what did happen, and why you should be excited about it. Francis was a serious alcoholic, and he had stopped drinking for years, and he went out to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles and had a number of very good years out there, and eventually started drinking again. And I found him on the streets of L.A. shortly before he died, brought him home to stay with me for a few days in my apartment in Venice, and not long after that, he was found on the streets. I would go and visit Al Flosso. I would go to his shop on 34th Street, you know, fairly often and watch him. You'd walk up this long, narrow staircase and open up the door, and Al would be behind the counter. And he was a very small man. I mean, he was barely past five feet tall, with these giant, thick glasses. And this great -- usually wearing shirt sleeves and suspenders, and just surrounded by this clutter. He got me interested in the history of the art as well. The first posters I ever bought were from Flosso. And he really did create one of the great personas of anybody performing magic -- the Coney Island Fakir. He was just a great character, coming from the barker tradition, and he worked on the Sells Floto Circus. I think he worked at Al G. Barnes. He really was a side-show carnival magician out of Coney Island. So now from the circus lots, Professor Al Flosso. I remember him making Ed Sullivan truly laugh, which was almost unheard of. So come on up here, I'll show 'em how this is done. All you have to do is reach up in the air and get all you want. Grab one. In the can.

Clank

JAY

That's good. With the other hand, in the can.

Clank

JAY

That's better. Blow it in before you lose it. Give me your hand, my boy. Look at this! Grab one. Put it in your pocket. Keep that for coming up here. I don't care for money. Did you get it? -Yeah. -Let's see. Oh.

Clank

JAY

That's what I thought. Hold that there with both hands. Well, well, well! Thank you, my boy, thank you.

Applause

JAY

You literally cannot think about Al Flosso without smiling. I suppose the only kind memory I ever had of my parents was that when it was time for my bar mitzvah, they asked me what I would like at the party, and I said I wanted Al Flosso to perform. It was a pretty ballsy thing to ask for, in the sense that Flosso performed on the "Ed Sullivan Show" and often worked at Grossinger's and the Concord in the Catskills. And they inquired, and they came back to me and said that he was, in fact, working in the Catskills that weekend, and he sent his apologies, but was unable to do it. And they were conning me, and, in fact, had hired him, and he came. And so it was great to see Flosso perform for my friends. And they were as taken by him as I always had been. It was really nice. It's actually Flosso who performed that frightening ceremony at my grandfather's funeral of breaking the magic wand. They were -- they were really close friends, and also, I think, Masonic brothers.

CAVETT

"Broken Wand. Max Katz, 74, of Brooklyn, New York, died March 31, 1965, following a long illness. Survived by his widow, daughter, two sons, and six grandchildren, including Ricky Potash, magician."

JAY

I don't often talk about my family, but when my grandfather died, that was the end of my relationship with my family. I was 16 or 17. It's safe to say my parents just didn't get it and didn't get me, and we had no rapport. I guess it's also safe to say going from no rapport to wanting to get myself the hell out of their house happened pretty quickly, and I left home very early and, basically, never returned.

ANNOUNCER

This week on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert," the incredible Kansas... family funk from the Sylvers, the outrageousness of the Sex Pistols... some slick dealing from Ricky Jay.

JAY

Leaving with no money in my pocket and no job was scary on some level, but I ran away to Lake George, which was a big resort area, and wound up behind a bar doing magic and making drinks. And that's what sort of launched my professional career, those days out of Lake George.

BOB DYLAN

Gonna walk down that dirt road Till someone lets me ride... One of my first jobs... when I was about 17 or 18, I played the Electric Circus in New York, the first psychedelic night club in New York City, where I appeared in between Timothy Leary lecturing about acid and the music act of the day, which was Ike and Tina Turner. Occasionally, the Chambers Brothers were there, as well, but sandwiched in between Tim Leary and Ike and Tina Turner was pretty great. Hopin' maybe she'd come back And I been praying for salvation... Even though I tried to go to college, and I did go to quite a few of them, mostly to Cornell, I would leave at various times to go out and perform. But I remember performing on "The Tonight Show" when I was still at Cornell and living in Ithaca. I wound up becoming a fairly regular performer on a number of those early talk shows. The reason you're confused is you have a tendency to watch the black cards. Now, you should totally ignore the black cards. It's very important if you're ever gonna play this game for money to ignore the black cards and simply concentrate on the red card. I know this may sound hard to you if you're playing the game, but it's fine. All right, let me show you how this works. Now, here are two black cards and here's the red card. Let me do this again. Remember black, red, black. I'll do this once more, red. Where's the red card?

STEVE MARTIN

Want me to guess? Sure. Right here.

JAY

Well, I was doing this for Elizabeth. But...it just happened to -- yeah, it happened to be right. All right, let me do this once more.

MARTIN

Want to put some money on this one?

JAY

No, I don't... Put some money on it, what the heck? Well, let me, let me... All right.

MARTIN

I'll put 50 bucks on it.

JAY

All right. That's all? -$50. -50 bucks? Okay, 51. Okay. Okay, now you're talking. All right, I'll do this quickly then. I'm not gonna do it as slow as I did before. Remember, here's the red card.

MARTIN

Do it as fast as you want.

JAY

As fast as I want? All right, it's gonna be fast. -Where is it? -This one. Is this what you -- are you looking at this corner?

MARTIN

Yep. Yeah, that's what I figured, and that's a good way to get the $50 back.

ELIZABETH

Oh, wonderful!

Applause

JAY

After some years of drifting around, I moved to California in search of the two greatest sleight-of-hand artists in the world -- Dai Vernon and Charlie Miller. I found Vernon at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, where he had taken up residency. He was willing to divulge methods, although not always and not every time. This is part of why it was so exciting to be around him. There were other people who came out -- really wonderful magicians coming from different places. Steve Freeman coming from Oklahoma, and Earl Nelson from Salt Lake City, and John Carney coming from Des Moines, and earlier, Larry Jennings -- and David Roth in New York. There were quite a few people. The measure of this man was that he made us literally uproot our lives, without any -- at least, for me -- without any plan to do so. I mean, you know, I just -- it was extraordinary. He was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1894. He got into magic at a very young age. The incredibly important event for him in his young life was he got a copy of "Artifice, Ruse, and Subterfuge at the Card Table," by S.W. Erdnase. Here was a text on card-handling that most people thought was incomprehensible. They thought it was an engineering book. And at a very early age, using tiny cards, because he was just a young kid, he mastered this book, which is an extraordinary achievement. Later, when he came down to New York in the teens, as a young man, he managed to fool people rather profoundly using the techniques from this book. And it really established, initially, his reputation. And from that, he had entree to the great magicians of his day, and he learned from them. He was avaricious in soaking up everything that he could find. He particularly spent time with people like Nate Leipzig and Max Malini. But also at this point, he was beginning to develop his own material and to really start thinking about sleight of hand in a way that no one before him really had.

VERNON

I'm 84 years of age, and I've been studying magic for 78 years. I wasted the first six years of my life, but...

HOST

What do you mean you've been studying? Where do you study, with other famous magicians? No, you sit in a room, and you take a pack of cards, or you take some dice, or you take a handkerchief, and you try to create some kind of magical effect, and you work it out. Vernon loved to play his acolytes off against each other. He really was like a guru, a Japanese sensei. I mean, he used whatever techniques he thought were possible to get you to do your best stuff.

MAN

Ricky and I were both the hot kid magicians in New York. I was sort of an apprentice to Vernon. And I ran away from home and was on the road with Vernon when I was 14, for something like two years. And Vernon could be merciless at taunting you with some secret that you were dying to know. And, "Oh, I'm not gonna say it." One time, we were traveling, and he said, "Well, I've been thinking about magic all my life." I said, "Yes, Professor, I know that." And he said, "I think -- I think I figured out how to say the essence of pure sleight of hand in a single sentence." And, you know... And he said, "But I've decided I'm never gonna say that sentence out loud." So, you know, then I'd start working on him. What was the sentence? And, you know, but we'd argue and he'd, you know, "Well, maybe if you do this, I'll tell you something." Anyway, he would never tell you. So he would get people infuriated and fascinated.

JAY

Vernon and Charlie were different in that way. Charlie was much more direct. Charlie didn't like games in quite the way that Vernon did. Charlie didn't bluff, he just spoke openly and honestly -- if you could get him to talk at all. I mean, he was far less likely to open up to people than the Professor was. And he didn't open up to me right away. It took a while, and so it should. Charlie was born in 1909 in Indianapolis, and died 80 years later in Los Angeles. But he probably worked more professionally as a magician than Vernon did -- in a variety of venues, from club dates to cruise ships. Even though these were the two great old guys of magic, there was still a big difference in their age. So Charlie was always the kid to Vernon. When he was 78, he was still the kid. On the other hand, you know, I saw an inscription that Vernon once wrote to Charlie, saying, "To the finest exponent of pure sleight of hand I've ever seen in my life." So, ultimately, there was this remarkable respect and admiration, you know, for each of them. But, particularly, as they got older, they could be fairly cantankerous, you know, together. Charlie was inclined to work on the specifics of one particular move, and the finest points and finest subtleties of this particular move. I probably learned from Charlie Miller more about how to refine practice, the concept of, instead of just getting into the rote and the rhythm and this wonderful thing of how nice it feels when you hit a move, you know, when you're working on your chops, to actually consciously try to make the move better each time you do it. Being in a room with Charlie and discussing a move is one of the stranger kind of pleasures I've ever had in my life. Charlie would bring up a move and he would start to do it. And he would start to question it, and he would start looking at it from different angles. He would run to one corner of the room, and you'd have to do it, and then he'd run to another corner of the room. And it was this fine line between torture and absolute pleasure, because, for Charlie, a good evening could be asking you to do the same shuffle 16,000 times. You know, and he'd be very happy doing that, and you'd be happy for most of it. But he always managed to take you over the edge where you just didn't want to shuffle the cards any more. I mean, it was just endless, the variations and the craziness of it. And it was often, you know, as close to pure joy as anything that I can imagine. I really miss this enormously in my life. I was incredibly fortunate to actually have mentors with this direct link to people like Malini, that went back that far. The reason that I love Malini is that he performed in the heyday of the most famous magicians, of people like Kellar and Thurston and Houdini, but he performed entirely without props. He would literally walk into the houses of the rich and famous -- that's where he would perform -- and come in empty-handed and borrow a deck of cards, a handkerchief, a couple of coins, a piece of fruit, and somehow create miracles. I'm gonna show you a piece from right around the turn of the century, right around 1900. This was a piece developed by Max Malini. The idea here was that more than one person would take a card during the course of an effect. So I've had a number of cards selected. I'm going to shuffle the cards and try to find those cards again. Actually, I have to confess at this point during the show every evening, I wonder what it would be like if I didn't find those cards.

Laughter

JAY

Just a thought. So we'll find the next card by means of a simple cut. That is the ace of clubs, the card the woman on the aisle took. Your ace of clubs. Your card was... -You're shaking your head "no." -No. Ace of clubs? What was it? Four of diamonds. If you insist.

Laughter

JAY

I'm looking for a little sympathy, you give me nothing. Play to kill for me. Icy! No, I'm fine. You took one, I believe. Would you be so kind as to mention it for me?

MAN

Jack of diamonds. Jack of diamonds out of the deck, into my hand, as if propelled!

Applause

MAN

Jack of diamonds. I'm going to try to find yours in the South American or Carioca fashion, if you'd be so kind as to name it. Ace of hearts.

JAY

The ace of hearts. Let's see. You haven't forgotten yours, I trust. -What was that? -Nine of clubs. The nine of clubs, the last card. Yeah, you didn't take one, did you? Oh, oh, in the second row. What was yours, sir? -Six of diamonds. -Six of diamonds. Well, I'll have to find both of them. Nine of -- nine of clubs? Six of diamonds. Your nine of clubs, your six of diamonds.

Cheering

JAY

One day, I drove up to the Magic Castle and Vernon was sitting on the bench in front of the castle, as he was wont to do. And I said, "What are you doing, Professor?" And he said... "I'm watching people put on their sports jackets. No two people put on their jackets the same way." It was just fascinating. The two of us sat there for a very long time watching people put on coats. It was a wonderful lesson, a wonderful lesson in naturalness and how you begin to understand that much of sleight of hand is the duplication of natural action when you're doing something that may be surreptitious. In terms of legacy, Vernon really leaves a record behind him, and Charlie, in his reluctance to publish, or discuss, or even share his magic with as large a community, certainly leaves less. But I think he's no less important. I think he really is equally important and equally remarkable. Now it occurs to me that people who are really good at sleight of hand will never have seen Charlie or Vernon. It's just -- it's almost incomprehensible to me.

Applause

JAY

I will not waste your time this evening with kumquats, pears, or prunes -- no, no, no! Ladies and gentlemen, the most prodigious of household fruits, you guessed it! The watermelon.

Laughter

JAY

Out of season and dreadfully expensive. Watch as I try to penetrate the juicy, rich red interior of said melon with a perfectly placed shot from an ordinary playing card. Yotz! Yotz! Yotz! Yotz! Yotz! Yotz! Yotz! Why is he still doing this? Yotz! Ladies and gentlemen...

Applause

JAY

Please notice... that my last two shots penetrated exactly the same slit in the watermelon, a feat so impressive I am forced to mention it myself!

Laughter

JAY

But I know what you're saying. You're saying, "Sure, you're able to throw cards into the rich red interior of said melon. But can you penetrate the even thicker pachydermatous outer melon layer?

MAN

Yes!

Cheering

MAN

Of course not! Who could do that?

Laughter

MAN

But encouraged by your approbation, I will attempt to penetrate the even thicker pachydermatous outer melon layer. Watch! Yotz! This scares the melon.

Laughter

MAN

This wounds the melon. This ticks me off.

Laughter

MAN

This is my last card.

Applause

MAN

Ricky Jay was a student of mine in an Aikido school in Santa Monica. We had a banquet -- all the members of the school. Ricky asked two people to give him one-dollar bills. And holds out his hands, and he takes those two one-dollar bills, and he puts them together back-to-back. And he starts folding them like this. And I don't know how he was folding them, but they just kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller until finally his fingers were together. And then he went -- pfft! -- like that! And there was a two-dollar bill there, and the ones were gone. Anyway, and after that, it's like, "That's impossible." And I kept questioning him and questioning him. And I waited. And it was probably, I don't know, two, three months later. We had just finished working out.

JAY

Oddly enough, I was actually in the shower with the water running when a bunch of guys from the class came over and asked me to perform something. I walked up to him, and I handed him two one-dollar bills, and I said, "Do it now." Right? Just like that. And he looked at me, and he put those in his hand, and he goes, "Oh, Fred, I wish you wouldn't have done this." He goes, "I'm not prepared." And while he's talking to me, he folds the two one-dollar bills up and goes boom, and hands me a two-dollar bill. And I've kept this all these years, but that's the one right there. He handed me that two-dollar bill, and I was just... I was dumbfounded. He went ahead and got dressed, acted like I wasn't even there. He did the trick and handed me the $2 bill and just walked off. I first started examining earlier pieces literally looking for material that wasn't currently being done and thinking, was there some way that I could make a piece -- that might have been 50 years, 100 years, 300 years, 500 years old -- interesting? And as I began to read the stories of these people, they became more and more intriguing. And then at a certain point, I became a collector of this material. It's always difficult to talk about how you create a piece. And that's something that I really do think about for live performance. The excitement of a live performance is wonderful. But I think that magic, at its best, is even impossible in that situation, that for it truly to be magic, a magical moment, it has to be spontaneous. It has to be something that just happens, not in a stage show that's carefully plotted from beginning to end, but rather in a moment. Probably one of the most famous of those stories is about Malini. That's what made his reputation, doing impromptu pieces. He would sit down in a restaurant at a meal, and he would be at the table for a long time -- a number of hours. He never got up during the course of the meal, and, eventually, he would borrow a woman's hat, and then he would get a coin, and he would spin it. And he would say, "Lady or eagle?" He would never say, "Heads or tails?" He would spin it and cover it with the hat. And when he lifted the hat, if the woman said, "Lady," it would be the side that had the woman on it. If someone said, "Eagle," he'd spin the coin again, and when he lifted the hat a second time, there would be the picture of the eagle on the face of the coin. And then he would do this a third time and spin the coin, and when he lifted the hat, there was no coin at all, but, in fact, an enormous block of ice.

WOMAN

So it was 1995, and I'd come on an assignment from The Guardian. I'd heard that the BBC was making a film about this very extraordinary close-up magician. And I came to write an article about him. I came in after the BBC had already started, and, basically, it was very clear the minute I arrived that it was not going well. And, essentially, the problem was the director was on at Ricky to produce a particular effect. He wanted a centerpiece for his film. And the more he demanded it, the more Ricky resisted. The tension built and built and built to the point where... the BBC and Ricky were really barely talking. In the middle of all of this, I think as a break, we went out to the Huntington Library to try and take the tension out of it. He seemed to be altogether in a much better mood on this day, and we all noticed that. And Ricky said to me, "Come on," suddenly. He said, "Come on, let's go and have lunch," which was quite unexpected, because... he's quite canta-- you know, he can be quite cantankerous, Ricky. I mean, I think he'd admit it himself. He can be quite difficult. And so he said, "Get in the car, Suzie. We're going to Sunset Boulevard. We're going to have lunch together and do the interview." I got in the car. It was me and Ricky in the car. We'd started chatting, preparing, you know, the interview that we were gonna do. And we took the wrong turning off the freeway. And so then we had to find our way back on, and so a journey that maybe should have taken an hour or something from Pasadena -- I'm not sure how long it's supposed to take -- it took double. And it was fantastically hot on this day. So then we got to the restaurant, and it was the worst possible place for an interview. It was full at lunchtime. It had glass on two sides from floor to ceiling. First, there was a 20-minute wait for the table. And then we sat down at a table -- Ricky was opposite me. And he was chatting away, and he started to talk about the tension there'd been with the BBC, and saying, you know, I think that he regretted that this had happened and how he very much wanted to do this set piece that Paul had particularly asked for, that had been performed by a 19th-century magician, Max Malini, at a dinner party. And he started to tell me the story of Malini at the dinner party, the hat, the dollar, and so on. As he was telling me this story, I think I became aware at that moment that he had his menu open in front of him so he was partly concealed behind this rather tall menu. And as he was telling the story, he said, "And Malini lifts up the hat." At that moment, he lifted up his menu, and on the table in front of me -- I'll never forget it. I mean, on the table in front of me was this huge block of ice. I mean, it was about a foot square. Really, I can't exaggerate -- huge block of ice, that later, when I picked it up, you know, I held with two arms. I remember I burst into tears. And I think that shocked him a bit, actually, 'cause it was such a kind of... violent reaction, you know. I just sobbed. And... And he said -- and he can be very gentle, Ricky, in fact, for all he growls a lot. And I remember he said, "I deceived you. It's what I do for a living." But... you know, he also... I mean, it's a moment I'll never have again. You know, I'll never forget it. I mean, it was... a kind of supreme piece of artistry that I witnessed that was done for me. I mean, that's what it felt like at the time. He had produced this extraordinary effect for me. I think I realized in that moment that this was, you know, what we'd all been waiting for, in a sense. I remember looking under the table, you know. There was no water on the floor. The sun was pouring in through these huge windows on two sides. And the ice cube was melting in front of me. I mean, visibly melting so fast that I knew, you know, the ice cube could only have been on the table seconds before I saw it. It was the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen in my life.

JAY

Charlie Miller, one of my great heroes and mentor, said to me, "There's this guy you have to see." And I said, "Sure, anyone, Charlie." And he said, "Well, he's 15." And I said, "Well, maybe I'll hold off then." I thought that that didn't sound very promising, and Charlie said, "No, no, no. You should meet Michael." So there's... a classic and somewhat mythical... technique with cards that lots of people talk about but not so many people do where the notion is -- and you're gonna want to stop moving -- the notion is really that you can take any card from the middle of the pack -- say the eight of hearts -- and square up the deck. And then without doing anything, have that card on the top of the pack. And the question of, you know, is that possible and to have it look like you didn't do anything is the subject of much discussion. So I was 14 or 15 years old, and I did exactly what I just did there for Charlie, and the next time I saw Charlie, Ricky was there. So that was kind of how we met. What happens in magic that's so interesting is that Charlie introduces me to a 15-year-old boy, and we become friends. And, perhaps on some level, Michael's been very interested in the magic that I've done. Now I would say we've reached a point where, 30 years down the road, I'm really interested in learning from Michael. I really do learn from him. I'm incredibly blessed with having somebody that I married seven years ago -- and my wife, Chrisann, who's just remarkable -- a great friend, wonderful woman. And a very nice ending to something that I thought would probably never happen for me. This is a poem Shel Silverstein wrote for me. It's called "The Game in the Windowless Room." "Of all the games I've ever played, of all the hands I've dealt, of all the pots I've ever raked, from matchsticks to nickels to untold wealth, from the beckoning lights of the Vegas Strip to the Pittsburgh roadhouse gloom, the most dangerous game I played with the man in that locked-door, windowless room. His eyes were yellow as the golden crown on the king of diamond's head. His teeth were black as the mustached jack. And his mouth was bloody red as the crimson gown on the queen of hearts. And his hand was marked with the sign that's found on the hand of the diamond king. And he smiled as his eyes met mine. And he said, 'What a shame, I've been watching your game as you fleece these witless fools. How would you do at a hand or two -- my game, my stakes, my rules? A sealed room. No windows, no phone, an unbroken seal on the cards. No watches or rings or jaggedy things that can clip or chip or mark on a nonmetal, clear-glass tabletop. No mirrors. No overhead lights. With foot-thick walls and just one door that's locked... from the outside. For as long as it takes for one man to break, be it an hour or a day, would you dare take a seat when there's no way to cheat?' Well, what could I say? So in the silent tomb of that sealed room we both sat down to play. Well, he was no joker. He was an ace. And although I was the king of this pack, I knew the lady'd have to smile on me if I were to win all his jack. So we played for hours. Or was it a week? I lost all track of time. And he won a few, and he bluffed a few, but the final pot was mine. 'Well, I don't know quite how you did it?' he said, as I raked in his last buck. 'But shaves, or seconds, or a frigid deck, it had nothin' to do with luck. You're a hustler, a sharp, a mechanic,' he said. 'Now the real game's about to start.' Here he pulls out his knife, and me with just this deck of cards. 'Ain't it funny to learn how the odds can turn?' said he, as he thrusted and flicked and fanned. But I dodged his blade, and my eight of spades... knocked the knife right out of his hand. 'Hell, I'll beat you to death with my hands,' he laughed, and he raised a powerful fist. But my five of clubs left a bloody stub as it sliced his hand off at the wrist. 'Yeah,' he screamed, and he pulled a gun from his boot, 'Last hand and the dealer dies.' But my one last card, my ace of hearts, caught him right between the eyes. Well, that, I might say, was the game of my life. When the police did finally arrive, they found a windowless room, a corpse on the floor, the door still locked from the outside, and no one there but him and me, a classic locked-room mystery. But where is the murder weapon? They search, but they can't find it anywhere. 'Oh, where can it be?' Hey, don't look at me. I'm just playin' solitaire." To learn more about Ricky Jay, visit pbs.org/americanmasters, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Deceptive Practice -- The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay is available for $29.95 plus shipping. To order, call... Or write to the address on your screen.