676: Ed Alonzo - In The Library

While I was in Los Angeles to work on “Masters of Illusion” TV series, Ed Alonzo found time to sit in the library of the Magic Castle to chat about his career. As a former member of the Long Beach Mystics and the Magic Castle Junior group, Ed launched successful careers as both a magician and an actor having major roles in many television series including “Saved By The Bell.” He also went on to work with Britney Spears on her worldwide concert tour where he interacted with her on stage in his character as a magician.

In this week’s episode, Ed covers a lot of territory in a short hour podcast. He talks extensively about the Magic Castle and his love and dedication to the clubhouse. He also talks about his time as a youth as he was trying to “find his character” when he was a member of the Long Beach Mystics and the Magic Castle Juniors. He tells how he transitioned into acting but never lost his love for performing magic, which he still does to this day having just completed the taping of Season Nine of “Masters of Illusion.” By the way, he talked about running for office on the Academy of Magical Arts: he won the election and is now on the Board of Directors. Congratulations, Ed.

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Towards the end of the episode, Ed talks about being on “The American Life” podcast with Ira Glass and David Kestenbaum as they talked about “The Lady Vanishes” or, David Copperfield’s vanish of the Statue of Liberty. Ed was part of the team that worked with David on this illusion and this episode goes into detail about the effect. The podcast website for this episode is HERE. “The Lady Vanishes” is the second part of this episode entitled “The Magic Show” and Ed Alonzo’s part comes very near the end at around time stamp 00:53:00.

423: Neil McNally - The Doug Henning Project

Neil McNally is a passionate man. He is most passionate about Doug Henning and he hosts a weekday blog called "The Doug Henning Project". Who could imagine that there would be that much to reveal about this iconic figure. We recently "hit a nerve" with the podcast #415 with Chip Romero as that episode was one of our most downloaded podcast. So, it was a natural thing to chat with the webmaster of "The Doug Henning Project" so those who are interested in Doug Henning could learn even more. Neil is not a performing magician though he is taking lessons at The Magic Castle. But his passion is history and collecting of Doug Henning. He is also producing a documentary on Doug Henning and will soon be crowd funding his project.

If you have any photos or stories you would like to share on the website/blog or in the documentary, then please contact Neil McNally at doughenningproject@gmail.com

Neil has an Indigogo.com campaign going on from October 1-23, 2018 to raise money for a documentary film on Doug Henning. You can find out more at: https://bit.ly/2zqM9eY

Doug Henning's Magic on Broadway. 1982. From The MagicWeek Video Archive http://www.magicweek.co.uk

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373: John Cox is Wild About Houdini

John Cox is passionate about one prestidigitator...Harry Houdini. You could say he is "Wild About Harry". At least he says that. For nearly seven years, John has maintained a daily blog about Houdini. Who would have thought there is that much information to be found on a daily basis about Houdini? Well, there is new stuff being revealed more regularly than you could ever imagine.

I first met John Cox when I was the "Medium" for the "Official Houdini Seance" in 2012 when we enjoyed the hospitality of our host, Arthur Moses, noted Houdini collector. You can hear Part One of our chat by Clicking Here and Part Two Here. We became fast friends because of not only our mutual interest in Houdini, but also Sherlock Holmes and James Bond plus an avid film fanatic in general.

While in Hollywood performing at The Magic Castle in 2017, I stopped by the apartment of John Cox, noted Houdini collector and blogger. Be sure to visit his blog at http://WildAboutHoudini.com for daily updates on all things Houdini.