![]() ![]() He became interested in hypnosis and also magic, and established himself as a professional hypnotist more than as a magician in the early days of his career. Jimmy Grippo was born in 1898 (we think) in a small town in Italy, likely Maschito, near Venosa, which was more often given as his birthplace. Precious little of Grippo’s signature work has been published, and while a book has supposedly long been in the works, a significant part of me hopes we will never see it, because it is unlikely to justice to this unique performer. Grippo was as secretive about his work as Del Ray was, if not more so. The same can also be said about this installment’s subject, the great Jimmy Grippo. A handful of sophisticated experts may have puzzled out some of the solutions, but they are not recorded in print, and I suspect they will long remain contained within the boundaries of whispered late night conversations between appreciative colleagues. Although a book has been written about his life and work, most of the methods of his signature close-up performances remain secret. In Take Two #29 I wrote about the legendary performer, Del Ray. Erdnase, the ever-elusive anonymous author of the most famous book ever written about sleight-of-hand with playing cards, The Expert at the Card Table, whose identity has confounded investigators since 1904.īut we needn’t hark that far back in order to find ourselves perplexed by other such mysterious men. ![]() While the work of the seminally influential mentalist, Chan Canasta, was eventually addressed at length in a feature book, some of the methods described therein must forever remain marked "speculative". And of course there is S.W. There are mysterious but highly influential performers of the 19 th and 20 th centuries that magicians still honor and speculate about today, from L’Homme Masque (The Man of the Mask) to Max Malini. There’s a secret or two of Harry Houdini’s that we will never know for certain. There are mysteries in the world of magic, and it’s a shame when magicians forget the fact, or fail to appreciate it. ![]()
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