Marlo's crediting

Portion of David Solomon's interview (from Solomon's Mind)

E: I know you will agree that the figure of Ed Marlo looms are in the pages of your book and behind many of your effects. As I said in the Introduction, you really did have a privileged position for many, many years, being a close friend and confident of Marlo, and a member of his inner circle. I suppose some readers of this book would think I was remiss if I didn't bring up the perhaps touchy question of Marlo's crediting habits and ask you about it. So, let me do that now.

D: When I first met Ed, he was fifty years old, having invented card magic for thirty-five years of his life. When I met him, he was a walking, talking and performing encyclopaedia of card magic and card history

E: What about you at that time?

D: When I started to study card magic with him in earnest, in 1970, my background was Expert Card Technique, the Vernon Inner Secrets series, Stars of Magic and Harry Lorayne's Close up Card Magic. I was only familiar with a small part of Marlo's work and The Revolutionary Card Technique series. Basically, the Side Steal and the Faro Shuffle because of the influence of Harry Riser. I was spurred on by my meetings with Jon Racherbaumer and his new Hierophant, and then joining Marlo at "the table". I began reading all of Marlo's books, including his LInking Ring Parades and other esoteric publications. We used to wait breathlessly to see what would be published in The New Tops magazine so that we could see Marlo perform it.

E: And you became his confidant.

D: Yes, I became Ed's confidant and friend. But it was more than that. I helped edit and print the Unexpected Card Book in 1974. I hired my secretary to type the book from Ed's crude notes, 80 Column Tab Cards and correspondence. From that time on, I literally saw most of the material first hand that went into the Marlo Magazines, although I did not edit the Magazines. I did commission the John Kurtz color covers. In Fact, I have a number of the original paintings and drawings. I had all the Magazines printed for Ed, as well as his Thirty-Five Years Later, his first set of lecture notes in thirty-five years. Ed trusted me completely during that time, and I had blind faith in him - his knowledge of history, creativity and crediting procedures.

E: Let me be more specific. As I've been working with you on your book - and examining some of Marlo's writings - I notice that there are times when he takes a handling that you developed, adds a bit and then puts his name on the trick, giving you a mention for inspiration. How did you feel about that?

D: When I started inventing magic, i was thrilled that my name was included in the article, no matter how much I contributed, because no matter what I added to an effect it was a small contribution compared to all of the information he was disseminating to us. Whenever we met, he always showed me an assortment of card tricks and ideas. Sometimes he said that he felt like a salesman selling until someone bought an idea that they would try to learn and embellish. I bought into many of his ideas as you can see by my work and I was able to create my own style and taste in magic. 

E: And Marlo?

D: Marlo was obsessed with card magic and having his name credited to any ideas he created. As the people in the group surrounding him started to have their own personalities and inventions, in Marlo's eyes we became his competition. We all gave credit to Marlo in all of our publications. We never forgot where we came from. We all gave Ed an enormous amount of credit, maybe to a fault because we did not know the history. When Steve Draun began researching the history and challenging Ed, incredible fights occurred. Marlo received much credit by innuendo because he would fool us and not tip where the idea came from - and we assumed that it was his invention. As we became better informed, we found out that not all of the ideas we attributed to him really were his inventions.

E: How did you interpret this?

D: Because of his monomania for cards, I would say now that he wanted to show that he was the best thinker in card magic of all times, and he wanted credit for every good idea and sometimes not so good ideas. This is why he even published his discards. He would say that his discards were better than other people's ideas - and that you never know what other magicians will like. I certainly don't claim to be a psychologist, but Marlo was so driven to create card magic he would make many variations of an idea and then forget about them for months or, in some cases, even years - and then think about them and reinvent them. He really felt it was his idea. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but the same thing has happened to me. As Ed got older and lost some of his memory, as we all do, he was more apt not to have the credits just right. You have to understand how important card magic was to him and understand his genius.

E: Are you saying that it didn't bother you when he did variations of your ideas and published them as his own?

D: I'm saying that, at the beginning, I was pleased when he mentioned me as the inspirational source or creator of an effect. When I was meeting with him regularly and helping him with his Magazine, I was mentioned continuously because he trusted me and he was confident that I would not show tricks before he published them. I always felt that I was fortunate to be so close and learn so much and I was flattered to be mentioned.

E: But other people were not so flattered. Hence the many controveries.

D: Yes. Jon Racherbaumer has been one of the personalities who is most associated with Marlo since their meeting through dave Bendix in the late 1960s. Jon is one of the most charming and charismatic people that I have ever met. He is incredibly intelligent, good writer, a good performer with good card chops. He has also been in the middle of the Marlo controversy.

E: How is that?

D: Marlo was so driven and so prolific that he needed an outlet for all of his creative juices. He had so much material that he could have contributed a trick a month to every known magic magazine and still have been able to write major books every year. Jon was the perfect outlet, but the two of them in tandem fed off each other and caused a lot of turmoil in the card magic community. Because of Jon's writing style, the reader could not discern if Jon was talking or Marlo. I can tell you that in some cases Jon was writing under his name, but the words were Marlo's. In other cases, Jon did not even paraphrase Marlo's words - he wrote them has his own. I know this because I saw the written text that Ed wrote or heard his words during a Saturday session. I think Eddie and Jon tried to change card magic history by some of the written material they published. It changed the history somewhat for the few insiders, but it infuriated the others whose life works or inventions it touched. I won't take the time to describe in detail the controversies, but I must mention a few that were created. There was an on going fight between Marlo and Karl Fulves that was a natural problem because Marlo had been a prolific writer about the riffle shuffle. Fulves knew that, even though Marlo may have come up with the methods himself, there was much information that had never been published, that was underground, and that Fulves could dig up this information and claim that Marlo's shuffle inventions were derivative from people like Vernon, Charlie Miller, Dr. Daley and Scarne. Marlo was never allowed to be in this group because they knew secrets of the card hustlers and they guarded the secrets which Marlo craved. These secrets drove Marlo crazy and he strived to figure them out. If he got an inkling that there were secrets of this nature, he would try to find out what they secrets were.

E: And there was the controversy about the Zarrow Shuffle.

D: Yes, it's not a pleasant subject. Herb is a very clever, very competent and creative magician who was also one of the guys around Vernon when he was in New York. Herb's shuffle is well known and he performs it expertly. I think that through Racherbaumer, Marlo tried to change history by claiming that a portion of the shuffle, the idea of block transfers, was not Herb's. Jon and Ed put out the Shank Shuffle, which created incredible controversy and hard feelings that exist today. I've spoken with Herb Zarrow, who still can't figure out why Marlo turned on him after they had a good association over the years. The thing that Herb could not understand was the Marlo psyche to have invented all of card magic. And with Jon at the helm as the word crafter, Marlo's innermost thoughts were expressed, regardless of who got hurt. Marlo wanted to show that he, not Herb, had applied the block transfer to the Zarrow Shuffle. That is the entire controversy in a nut shell. After that, Herb could not make any variations of his own shuffle that had to do with a block transfer. What an incredibly presumptuous thought! I feel badly that they tried to discredit Herb but, as I told Herb recently, Marlo is gone now and people will understand his failings when it came to crediting some ideas and that in everyone's mind it was always be the Zarrow Shuffle. 

E: It's pretty sad stuff.

D: Yes it is. Recently I had a disagreement with Jon over his publication Full Tilt. After Ed died, Jon became the carrier of the torch. He republished books that were out of print and added new material to bring the books up to date. In most cases, the publications were infinitely better than the original small, crudely published booklets that they replaced. I became angry when Jon published Full Tilt. The Marlo manuscript, Tilt, had been out of print for many years. The new manuscript has twice the material of a small booklet, and Jon makes no attempt to maintain the integrity of the original material. Therefore, it is impossible for the educated reader to discern what was in the original manuscript without having a copy of it. This is what I mean about changing history.

E: Your final word on these controversies?

D: The sum total of what I am trying to say is that the history is clouded about Marlo because of these controversies. Let me mention one last thing. Larry Jennings was another figure with whom Marlo had problems. Maybe it was because Jennings, in lecture notes, had taught an Ace assembly which Marlo felt was his, with no credit. Marlo heard that Jennings also did a cutting the Aces effect that was very interesting because when the principal cards were turned over, they were number cards rather than the Aces. Then Jennings counted down in each packet and found the Aces - a nice effect. Well, Marlo heard about the effect and did not know Jenning's method, but he worked out several variations and submitted them to every magazine he could think of and published them under the Marlo name. All the magazines published the same effect because it was submitted by Marlo. What a bad joke! I still do not know what the original Jenning's method was, but you can be assured that the people who read the literature will think the plot was Marlo's. Not a pretty commentary about one of the greatest men in card history.

E: Eventually, you and Marlo grew apart.

D: Yes, in the later years, it was difficult because I had a family and could not get away as often. I drifted away from our day-to-day long conversations and the weekly sessions. I grew apart from the hero worship that I had for fifteens years of my life. Other things were more important. He could never understand that because, to his dying day, the cards were, if not the number one priority, a close second. I never felt the competition that he felt, although if I got ripped off, I worked very hard to make the trick better so that it was mine again. I was in card magic to further the art. In the last four years of Ed's life, my interest in card magic was on the rise, but we grew apart. i felt that in his later years, in poor health, he became more jealous and less able to sort out credits and remember the history. It bothered me then to be around him because of his constant complaining about credits.

E: Something also happened toward the end of his life that affected your relationship, didn't it?

D: Yes, I had an unfortunate incident that happened toward the end of Ed's life, which really did affect my relationship with him. I gave a lecture in South Chicago Suburban area. In the sandwich trick include in this book, I explained the slider card principle that I learned from Derek Dingle and finally learned later that it was Ricky Jay's technique. An unnamed magician was at the lecture and told Marlo that I gave credit to Dingle for the sleight. It so happened that I visited the session the next Saturday and Marlo took me to task, saying that it was his idea. I asked him for the credit so that I could look it up. He gave me several, although none of them seemed to be at the time to be correct credits. When I looked them up, they were not correct. I called Marlo and told him about it, but he would not give me the satisfaction that it was not his idea. Later, he even wrote it up in his lecture notes as his idea. I believed this unfortunate even was caused by his age and ill health.

E: What happened then?

D: I called the unnamed magician to tell him of my displeasure with his telling Marlo such sings, because I knew and he knew that Ed would go ballistic - and I said that Marlo was slipping.

E: What did he say?

D: He called Marlo and told him that I felt he was slipping! That put the frosting on the cake of my relationship with Ed.

E: Where you ever able to talk to Marlo again, as you had in the past?

D: Yes, In his last days I did speak to him and I was able to tell him my inner feelings about my friendship with him, and my highest regards for his ability and for everything that he had done for me in card magic. I will always be indebted to Marlo for his kindness, friendship and generosity in showing me card magic. No matter who the person was that met Ed - and no matter what they thought he did in his crediting of wrong sources or reinventing magic - every one of them knew that Marlo was a genius and had great skill and great knowledge of card magic. I will never forget where I came from. In this book, I have tried to credit my ideas, and the ideas of others, as well as I can. In some cases, I have tried to set the record straight, but for me the important part of this book is the magic and how I learned it. I hope the readers will enjoy it and add some of these effects to their repertories.

E: I have two more questions for you. The first is this: what do you think will be Ed Marlo's legacy?

D: It's too early to, but certainly it is a mixed review. Ed was the most prolific writer in card magic. It isn't clear how much material is original and how much is borrowed. His video tapes don't do justice to his great ability with cards because he was old at the time. He really could do the most difficult sleight-of-hand with ease. He practiced constantly and he remembered all of his effects and where they were written. He knew the history of card magic and he read card magic constantly - to try to invent new methods. I believe that he thought about card magic all his waking hours. He wanted to invent every method possible and he felt that he could out-think anyone - and perhaps he could. He was also a great card problems solver but I don't think he could differentiate which were his best solutions, so he published them all. And he was incredibly competitive: he once told me he could fool Vernon at will. When I asked him how, he told me it was because he knew secrets Vernon did not know. I honestly believe that Marlo could fool anyone. I know he fooled both Simon and me more than once with tricks that we knew! That may seem impossible but he did them so well that, even though I knew the move, it fooled me. I remember once he had a stacked deck and handled it in such a way that I just knew the deck was mixed. When he performed a trick with it, I had no explanation of the method. I believe there are few people as lucky as I was to have seen Marlo in action. But there are only a handful of us who experienced firsthand Eddie's genius and his madness.

E: My last question: What would you like your legacy to be?

D: A difficult question. I think I know what it will not be: I try only to put tricks in print that I feel contain something new. I want to add to the art. I have worked on some plots for over twenty-five years. I have discarded many methods during that time and only put forward what I feel are the best solutions. When it comes to the creative process, I don't force it. I can go for months without inventing anything, then all of a sudden I go through a creative period. As I've told you before, I am writing this book to share the best card methods that I have worked out. If, in the future, I cannot create clever card solutions, I will not write another book. My book with Simon, Sessions, was published in 1982. I can say that I have never submitted a trick to a magazine that I have not been proud to have associated with my name. I do not have the greatest chops in card work, although many things I have worked out I can perform with naturalness and that makes the effects look magical. I suppose my hope is that my legacy will be that magicians of the future will perform my tricks and feel that they are clever and deceptive.