Bill Malone – Entertainer

There was a recent article in the Chicago Tribune about Bill Malone and his newly released DVD set from L&L Publishing, Malone Meets Marlo. We’ll talk about the set a little later, but 1st I want to focus on Bill Malone.

Understand, I don’t know Bill Malone personally and he certainly doesn’t know me. I can only judge him by his public persona and magical output. One only has to view the video on the left to see he is a man of exceptional talent and showmanship.

There’s also a video available of him doing Sam the Bellhop. This is what a self working trick should look like, but SO SELDOM does.

Starting with the Henning Nelms book, magic critics and pundits have preached the entertainment angle of magic into a place it should never have been. Of course magic should be entertaining. That goes without saying. Entertainment is not weaving some inane story around a pedestrian trick while the magician wrangles a few embarrassing twitters from the audience. Wearing a humorous hat or putting one on the reluctant helper doesn’t help – trust me on this!!

I was fortunate enough to see David Williamson again recently and even though he is still magic’s best foole, when it comes time for the magic – he mystifies. More than any other time I’ve seen him, he emphasized the necessity of frying the spectator and ending clean. To, me, this has always been at the core of good/great magic. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to discuss his lecture in the near future.

Malone Meets Marlo – It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a set of DVDs as much as these. In recent years L&L seems to be stretching 2 DVDs worth of material on 4 to 6 DVDs. Frankly, there’s not a lot of good stuff left. Here we have 6 DVDs reasonably full of good material – some of it exceptional.

I never saw and Marlo in person. I have a hard time believing that he was a good entertainer, despite what people like Racherbaumer have written. He certainly was the most prolific author on card magic we have ever seen or probably will ever see. I know there are a lot of arguments regarding the originality of much of his material. I am not enough of a magic historian to make a proper comment on this. I do know, however, that some of you output is excellent magic.

What we can get out of the six DVDs, if nothing else, is Bill’s perspective on the best of Marlo’s work. Some of the tricks, when presented by Bill and least, are staggering. Any kind of a card man or a magician with an interest in cars will certainly find much of interest and some items to be added to the working repertoire.

Others, certainly more capable than me, will review the discs in depth. I’ll be interested in seeing their commentary.

This set of DVDs is much more subdued than the first two from L&L. I’ve heard it suggested that this is purposely done to preserve the deference Bill wished to express towards Marlo. I have no idea.

Although much of the usual crowd is there, the eye candy has certainly gone down hill, actually way down. They have gone from staggeringly good-looking women wearing the bare minimum to overly tattooed average lookers. To put it another way, Falanga has gone from tits to tats — not a good trade, Louis, not a good trade!

That minor criticism aside, you will certainly get your money’s worth from this collection.