News
Win a Tour of David Copperfield’s Museum
November 10, 2026Imagine spending more than two hours inside David Copperfield's private museum of magic, exploring one of the world's greatest collections of magic history with the legendary illusionist himself as your personal guide.
Houdini's Death Defying Mystery
June 22, 2026Recently, CBC Radio dedicated a full episode of their program Ideas to the life and career of Harry Houdini.
Double Talk
June 17, 2026Continuing to unearth material from the William McIlhany Collection, we have a wonderful treat: a rare performance from Sid Lorraine.
The Gay Magicians
June 10, 2026As countries around the world celebrate Pride, we wanted to find something appropriate from our archive. The majority of our film collection comes from the mid twentieth century, generally prior to about 1975.
The Screening Room
This footage was captured and edited by Sid Lorraine in 1931 in Lima, OH, courtesy of the David Ben Collection
Sid Lorraine wrote prolifically, contributing regularly to several magic periodicals over decades. But there is relatively little footage of Sid performing. Here at an IBM Convention in Buffalo he is demonstrating “Double Talk”, for which he is well known.
John Giordmaine (1898-1974) was a well known Canadian magician. He was particularly well known as a family entertainer and for his decades spent demonstrating magic in the toy department of Eaton’s in Toronto. This clip was recorded at the SAM Conference in Chicago in 1940.
Harold Alberto (Harold McAuliffe, 1882-1964) was an Australian performer who eventually immigrated to the US. He billed himself as The Gay Deceiver.
Bruno Nolo demonstrates fire eating, fire breathing and shows off his muscles for good measure. The program is most likely In Melbourne Tonight hosted by Graham Kennedy which ran in Australia from 1957-1970.
Kuda Bux (Kuda Bukhsh, 1905-1981) performs on You Asked For It, hosted by Art Baker.