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John Mulholland (1898-1970)

John Muhlholland was born in 1898 in Chicago, and was first inspired to become a magician by seeing a performance of Harry Kellar's. He moved to Manhattan as a young man with his mother. An accomplished performer by his teenage years, Mulholland went on to an impressive career as a professional magician and authority on the subject. In the 1930s, he assumed editorship of The Sphinx, at that time the world's largest and most respected magic magazine. Mulholland had an uparalleled collection of magic memorabilia and apparatus that is now largely owned by David Copperfield. Inventor of the Mulholland Box. A one-time consultant to the article on conjuring in the Encyclopedia Britannica, he is credited with helping to make magic intellectually respectable, and wrote numerous books on the subject.

Among his written works are Quicker than the Eye (1932), Story of Magic (1935), The Art of Illusion (1944), and Book of Magic (1963).

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John Mulholland

Born: June 9, 1898
Chicago, Illinois
Died: February 25, 1970 (age 71)
New York City, New York
Nationality American

John Mulholland (b.1898-d.1970) was born in Chicago, but moved to New York City when young with his mother. He started performing as a teenager, and went on to become a widely respected authority on magic.

Contents
1 Career in Magic
2 Career with U.S. Intelligence
3 Death
4 Books by
5 References
Career in Magic
Mulholland was taught by John William Sargent. During his career, he performed in forty-two countries, authored ten books on magic, and performed at the White house eight times. His 90-minute stage show was carried in two suitcases. He also served as a consultant on conjuring for the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. He was, at one time, the only magician listed in "Who's Who in America".

He also invented the "Mulholland Box" (a type of Okito coin box).

In the 1930s, he took over The Sphinx, the largest magic magazine at it's time, after the death of A. M. Wilson, and continued as the editor for 23 years. Mulholland stopped the Sphinx to become a consultant to the newly created CIA in 1953, although he told subscribers it was due to health reasons.

Mulholland's 1944 book The Art of Illusion: Magic for Men To Do was selected by the Council on Books in Wartime to be reprinted as an Armed Services Edition (a small paperback version distributed to U.S. military personnel). It is estimated that almost 100,000 copies of the Armed Services Edition were printed (in November 1944), making it probably the most popular magic book of World War Two, by quantity produced.

Career with U.S. Intelligence
Mulholland was recruited by Sidney Gottleib in 1953, for the top secret CIA project known as "MK-ULTRA". His assignments included working with billionaires and inventors, cracking codes and delving into the world of ESP research, experiments with the use of LSD, and writing a manual on deception for use in the Cold War.

He also wrote classified manuscripts for the CIA. Two that have since been de-classified are: "Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception", and "Recognition Signals" in 1954. Mulholland continued to work for the CIA at least until 1958.

Death
Mulholland died in New York City on February 25, 1970 at age 71.

At the time of his death, Mulholland had one of the largest collections of magic memorabilia and apparatus (including almost all of Houdini's paper archival estate that had not been given to the Library of Congress) and a library of over 4,000 books. Following his death, illusionist David Copperfield purchased most of Mulholland's archival magic estate and library (including the entire Houdini archival collection and library owned by Mulholland) all of which is now housed in Copperfield's International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts in Las Vegas.

Books by
Conjurer and Pedagogue (with Milton M. Smith 1924)
Magic in the Making (with Milton M. Smith 1925)
Behind the Magician's Curtain (1928)
Quicker than the Eye (1932)
The Magic and Magicians of the World (1932)
Mulholland's Story of Magic (1935)
Modern Magician: A Pocket Manual of Tricks (1937)
Beware Familiar Spirits (1938)
The Girl in the Cage (a novel with Cortland Fitzsimmons, 1939)
Christmas Conjurer (ca. 1940)
Magic in the Library (1943)
The Art of Illusion: Magic for Men To Do (1944)
Magic for Entertaining, The Early Magic Shows ( Reprint of "Art of Illusions" 1945)
Practical Puppetry (1961)
John Mulholland's Book of Magic (1963)
Magic of the World (1965)
The Magical Mind - Key to Successful Communications (with George Gordon 1967)
References
Wikipedia-logo.png This page incorporated content from John Mulholland (magician),
a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

Cover Genii 1937 October
Cover Genii 1964 July
Cover Genii 1965 November
Broken Wand MUM May 1970
Article Genii 2001 April: THE SPHINX AND THE SPY The Clandestine World of John Mulholland By Michael Edwards
Article Genii 2003 August: Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception
The MagiCIAn: John Mulholland's Secret Life by Ben Robinson (2008)
http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Articles/Mulholland.html
The Official C.I.A. Manual of Trickery and Deception by Melton and Wallace (2009)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Gottlieb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA
http://www.miraclefactory.net/mulhollandcontents.htm

***

At the time, John Mulholland was one of America’s most highly regarded magicians. An outstanding stage as well as close-up performer, he had become a noted author, lecturer, historian, collector, editor, and world traveler. In many ways, he had helped make magic intellectually respectable.

Mulholland was born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 9, 1898. As a five-year old, he sat enthralled by a performance of Harry Kellar’s. It would begin a lifelong love of conjuring. His family moved to New York when he was quite young and it was there that he began to learn the techniques of the craft. At age 13 Mulholland began taking magic lessons from John William Sargent at $5 an hour. Known as “The Merry Wizard,” the gray-haired, goatee’d Sargent had been President of the Society of American Magicians in 1905-6 and would later serve as Harry Houdini’s secretary from 1918 until 1920. He was a true mentor to young Mulholland and instilled in him not only an appreciation of the art of magic but of its theory, history, and literature.

Mulholland learned his lessons well. He made his debut as a performer when he was 15. While he would be later regarded as one of magic’s great scholars, his academic achievements were somewhat limited. He took a number of courses at both Columbia University and at New York’s City College, but did not attain a degree. From 1918 to 1924, he taught industrial arts at the Horace Mann School in New York. He sold books for a while and then taught at Columbia University before embarking on a career as a full time professional magician.

Over the years, Mulholland developed an enormous range of presentations. He was equally at home performing close-up magic, entertaining a society dinner, or working the mammoth stage at Radio City Music Hall. In 1927 Mulholland gave a lecture in Boston about the magicians of the world, illustrating each vignette with a trick from that nation. It added a new genre for him and for the profession: the magician as lecturer.

After the death of Dr. A. M. Wilson in April of 1930, he took over editorship of The Sphinx. For the next 23 years he would oversee magic’s most influential periodical. He was a prolific writer. Aside from the vast number of articles he penned, he authored such books as Magic in the Making (with Milton M. Smith in 1925), Quicker than the Eye (1932), The Magic and Magicians of the World (1932), The Story of Magic (1935), Beware Familiar Spirits (1938), The Art of Illusion, (1944) reprinted as Magic for Entertaining, The Early Magic Shows (1945), John Mulholland’s Book of Magic (1963), Magic of the World (1965) and The Magical Mind -- Key to Successful Communication (with George Gordon in 1967). He had also co-wrote a 1939 magic-detective novel, The Girl in the Cage, with Cortland Fitzsimmons.

Over the years, he amassed one of the world’s finest collections of magic books and memorabilia. His library housed some 4,000 volumes related to conjuring.

His knowledge of tricks seemed inexhaustible, as was his familiarity with the performance, theory, psychology, history, and literature of magic. He served as the consultant on conjuring to the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Merriam-Webster dictionary and at one time was the only magician listed in Who’s Who in America.