989: Jack Hart - Designing the Invisible

Jack Hart is an artist in the truest sense of the word. He has designed illusions to make them more deceptive and toured with Blackstone, Jr. for nearly five years. He worked with Copperfield, Henning, Kalin, and so many more. For many years, Jack worked designing games for the television show, “The Price is Right” plus he currently does missionary work around the world.

We start this week’s chat by going into a bit of detail about Jack’s Christian Missionary work. We then delve into his multi-faceted career as he tells us about working with Harry Blackstone, Jr. and later traveling with the show. He not only designed some of the artwork on the outside of boxes, but also many of the beautiful tapestries and backdrops in Harry’s show. For long while Jack worked in Old Chicago along with Buddy Farnan (who was featured in Episode #770) then back to California where he worked for many years on “The Price is Right” with Bob Barker as he helped design some of the games that are played each week. One of the games became popular around the world, even as a “take home” game, called Plinko which is a version of Pachinko. Jack worked in a lot of different arenas and left an invisible stamp on all of his work.

Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. You can download or listen to the podcast through Pandora and SiriusXM (formerly Stitcher) by Clicking Here or through FeedPress by Clicking Here or through Tunein.com by Clicking Here or through iHeart Radio by Clicking Here. If you have a Spotify account, then you can also hear us through that app, too. You can also listen through your Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices. Remember, you can download it through the iTunes store, too. See the preview page by Clicking Here.

988: Christopher Hart - Give Him a Hand

Christopher Hart has had, and continues to have, an amazing career, or should I say “careers”. Many people, not just magicians, would be satisfied with success in any one of the areas where Chris has exceeded expectations. Many listeners of The Magic Word Podcast know that it was his hand as “Thing” in “The Addams Family” movies. And yet there is a whole generation who have never seen nor heard of “The Addams Family”, the New Yorker comic strip, the TV series let alone the movies. The recent Netflix series “Wednesday” has introduced many to this genre, but Chris wasn’t in that, and I digress.

But he has performed in dinner theater with “Triple Espresso” and also singing on network TV, Plus of course he has presented his award winning act around the world with the torn and restored sheet music and the disembodied hand. You may think you know Christopher Hart, but there is so much to know about Christopher that you will be surprised what you learn in this episode.

This week’s episode was recorded in Appleton, Wisconsin, while we were at the SAM National convention. Christopher not only performed but also lectured. He had so much material to share, that he never got around to explaining some of the items on his agenda during his lecture. He resolves that by chatting on this week’s episode as he talks about his touches on the torn and restored newspaper and the zombie gimmick. But we start, of course, by chatting about his film career, then his time with dinner theater, overcoming his fear of singing in public, working and touring with David Copperfield, plus serving as President of the Board of Trustees on the Academy of Magical Arts. He shares some great “behind the scenes” stories about all of this which makes this one of my favorite episodes, and I hope yours, too.

987: Dean Gunnarson - Escaping Reality

Multi international award winning escapist, Dean Gunnarson, joins us this week to talk about his dangerous career. He has been called by the media “The World’s Most Daring Escape Artist” and the title fits. Traveling from his home in Canada to lands across China, Dean has conquered it all and accepted challenges much like Harry Houdini, from rope and chain escapes to the Water Torture and Milk Can Escapes, not to mention straitjacket escapes while being suspended hundreds of feet in the air,

Dean shares with us this week about how James “The Amazing” Randi got him started with an early television special that led to Dean becoming his successor having passed the “Mantle of Escapes” on to Dean. He also shares with us some horror stories when he broke bones, lost a finger, and more. This is an unusual profession and few in the world specialize solely in this art. He does not consider himself a magician, nor does he perform magic at his appearances.