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SHOWMANSHIP
For
MAGICIANS
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

There is a certain formula that establishes the shortest route to a career as a successful entertainer, just as there are formulas that point more direct ways to become successful in any other line of endeavor. To say this may seem presumptuous on my part. But successful entertainers have used it. And it has shortened the route to success in other lines.

You have a product to sell. This product is yourself as an entertainer. It is necessary for you to develop an entertainment product that is in great demand. You can learn much, as has been pointed out so often in this work, by studying the leading entertainers in the field you desire to enter. Again I must say, these leading entertainers are NOT magicians, regardless of the field. Today, NO MAGICIAN leads any field, whether it be the lecture field, night clubs, vaudeville, stage productions, casual dates as at smokers, clubs or banquets. The leading entertainers are invariably some other type.

Automobile manufacturers design their products by watching popular trends. It is no coincidence that practically all cars on the market today are in general quite similar. In investigating them you will find they differ only in minor details. Those cars that are radical departures from the general preferences of the buying public do not sell well. You can check this yourself by comparing the sales volumes of the "freak" cars with competing "conventional" products in the same class.

This also holds true of entertainers.

The successful product is consciously designed to meet the standards set up by the buying public. This absolutely holds true of entertainment as well as automobiles or furniture. Obviously, if you make it the way they want it, they'll buy it.

It was no accident that so many magicians were doing manipulative routines with cards and cigarettes not so long ago. That is the kind of presentation of magic the public had seen that they liked and wanted most. Yet they liked and wanted other kinds of entertainment MORE. The box, office and the salaries paid to entertainers proves this. Probably, if magic presentation resembled more the kind of entertainment they liked BEST, some other type of magic, more nearly resembling their preference in general entertainment, would have been more in demand.

This book is almost entirely devoted to an exhaustive study and discussion of general public entertainment preferences. But far more important than this book can be in instructing you on these points would be a personal study on your part of the actual acts themselves. But again and again I must insist, DON'T STUDY MAGIC ACTS. Study the biggest acts or shows, aside from your interest in magic.

See these acts often enough to be able to break them down into their elements:
  1. Type of act
  2. Length of act
  3. Type of material used
  4. Type of appeal
  5. Angle of presentation
  6. Dress
  7. Performer's angle or character as shown to audience
  8. Tempo of presentation
  9. Style of presentation
  10. Incidental support, like music score
  11. Silent or talking
  12. Just what intrigued the audience
  13. How it was built up.

You might take recently successful magical acts and see how they approach the more generally successful formula. You might try to find out what these acts have in common with the more successful stars. And what they lack.

Regardless of the type of show to which you aspire, you can discover the formula. This holds true of every field whether it be school show, lyceum, full evening show, mental work, private home exhibitions and so on. All you have to do is to discover the essential ingredients in the MOST SUCCESSFUL ENTERTAINERS in that particular field and you can find the formula.

The next step is to sell your booker or agent on you. You have to play up to these fellows. If you can get under their hides, and I mean hides, and become their friends, they will do more for you than if your contacts are purely impersonal. This is only common sense. In the commercial field it is fundamental. Why should it be any different in selling entertainment?

In the commercial field marketing a product is considerably less difficult if it is designed to please the buyers, in this case, until you are booked, the bookers or agents. No matter how good you are, if the bookers don't like you personally, or if they don't like your act, you can't get booked. If you don't get booked, you don't eat. If you don't eat,

Now all of this may seem sordidly commercial. It may strike you as the surest way of discouraging individuality and all of that sort of thing. But I said this is the shortest route to a successful professional career. It is not the only one.

Perhaps you have the spark of genius. Don't count on this too strongly, however. There are so few geniuses that the odds are decidedly against even you being one. Perhaps you have the insides to battle ahead in the face of rebuff and discouragement. In the long run you will probably make the grade, that is, if you are really exceptional. There always has to be a first to establish a new style or a new slant.

But the latter is the long, hard way.

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