Kimmo

Don't let yourself get beat up over this.

While everyone else is hot under the collar, it just may be that where ever he is at, Edwin is having a rollicking good chuckle over it all

What strikes me as remarkable is this:

While the "have nots" are being called vultures by the "haves," the haves no doubt at some point have availed themselves of the secrets behind Houdini's Water Torture Cell or other of his effects. Secrets of course that Houdni did not want released to the public either.

Sound familiar?

It also strikes me as plausible that Mr Edwin initially wanted to only release 12 of this effect with it's corresponding clauses, but then in later years had a change of heart and showed it to others from time to time without any clause.

So, today, here in the Café, we have the old-days folks arguing with the new-days folks

Somewhere in law (a good rule for human affairs) I recall reading the ones later comments, if true, bear more prevelance over ones earlier comments.

And if that's true, foilks are making a big whoop-de-doo hoorah over something Edwin no longer believed or followed himself.

P.S. I'm sure there is already action underway to lock this topic so that Silken Saga can never be disucssed again in the anals of magic

So maybe someone can answer this for me...

I asked a magician about this trick (Silken Saga) that usually is willing to discuss things with me, and me with him. We only had a few minutes to talk as he had to leave.

He chuckled, and made "rabbit ears" above his own head, and walked off laughing to himself.

He told me nothing except "nice try".
It's cool that he didn't want to tell me but...
What is up with the rabbit ears???

I spent much of the day making calls around about this to some old veterans.
And I found it. Had the entire script faxed with a follow up call to make sure I got it ok, and ended up having side notes dictated to me for over an hour.
All I can say is....watch out, I'm armed with an incredible routine! I will hone it to my character, and be updating some of the lines and switch a few others because of obvious dialectual differences...other than that, I literally had what I need laying right on my magic shelves at home.
Call me a happy man!

Whoever gave it away will be getting a visit from the "Magic Mafia." Watch out for exploding cigars and books that suddenly burst into flames.

I have a copy of this book, from the creator of the much lauded "Silken Saga," for sale in the "Books & lecture notes for sale or trade..." forum here on the Café.

So it looks like it's possible to track down for anyone tenacious enough! Well done Chris!
Incidentally, If it hasn't occurred to you already, this is a great routine to perform with a puppet as it can be done one-handed. (Edwin used to call it a 'sleight of leg' routine!) I have the 'KG' sewn into my performing trousers so there is absolutely no set-up time.

Good luck with it - and let us know how your first performance goes.

I'd love to find out how many people are actually using this routine. I bet it's considerably more than 12!

Chris and I have exchanged PMs and it is clear that Chris has not been given the manuscript details of Silken Saga as his generous contact had been himself a victim of a scam twenty five years ago.

English magicians around then may well have reason to recall Denny St. John. Like a number of old English names it is not pronounces as it appears. Visitors may recall becoming tripped up with Beecham (spelt Beauchamp) Fits - Beaver (spelt Fitz - Belvoir) and others, some as difficult to spell as they are impossible to pronounce. I have a friend called Fe-French and spelt ffrench and no, I haven't forgotten the capital F. there isn't one. It is ffrench - Not Ffrench.

Denny St. John is pronounced not as Saint John but Sin-Jan and he was a small time magical crook who duped many out of money, many, many times.

In this case, around the time Edwin was selling Supreme Denny St. John was quietly selling manuscripts with minimal props, some of Ken Brooke's work and this of Edwin's. As a consequence of similar stunts pulled previously he was never accepted as a member of the Magic Circle - he was quietly warned off.

I know about him because my old encyclopedia of all matters magical and theatrical - Billy McComb gave me chapter and verse on him.denny was a saga himself and carried on conning long after the sad Peter Wareing incident.

What Denny St. John sold as Silken Saga was nothing of the sort. Denny didn't even know what Silken Saga was. This was a cobbled together manuscript of bits and pieces he thought were sufficient to convince those (who didn't know the truth but had heard the rumours) and wanted what Edwin had sold privately as Silken Saga. Enough to con some money and be on his way. Though he always hung around long enough to get caught.

Because Edwin in his preamble referred to The Adventures of a Silk Handkerchief and wrongly suggested this was the basis of Silken Saga, Denny St. John produced his manuscript on what he could find about The Adventures of a Silk Handkerchief.

We had better get this out of the way. Wilf Tyler NEVER suggested Silken Saga was a development of or even based on The Adventures of a Silk Handkerchief. That was an old and well known After Dinner Novelty - not magic as such at all. Silken Saga would be impossible to do at the dinner table.

In any case - and Spellbinder may be able to help here, he knows the history of effects - as I understand it several different effects using silk handkerchiefs were ascribed the title The Adventures of a Silk Handkerchief. Certainly this name was around at the turn of the century (1900) when, if you think about it silk handkerchiefs were everyday objects which magicians merely used. That went for so many props at that time. Like their tables they didn't look weird and strange as magical props do today - they looked like everyday furniture and household objects and so raised few doubts regarding their genuineness.

You didn't have to convince audience's then that these things were ordinary - they looked it.

What Wilf Tyler did in the early days was a version of The Adventures of a Silk Handkerchief and then went right away from the original dinner table novelty concept and developed his children's routine over many years, changing many times until what resulted we now call Silken Saga. Considering what it is, it's a misnomer. It has a lot more to do with something else that delights children and convulses adults but it's not the silk handkerchief, I can assure you.

As Chris will testify, what he now has is funny and in todays lifestyle, unusual though rather dated and he may make it entertaining but it would never either 'delight' nor 'convulse' but of course that was Denny St. John trading on magician's ignorance.

But there's a twist to this I have hesitated revealing. Denny St. John wasn't his name. According to Billy McComb he worked for years as Dennis Michaels.

Now let's make it absolutely clear - we are not talking about Dennis Michaels the World Famous American Children's Magician here at the Magic Café.

We're talking about the English Dennis Michaels who was a crook and changed his name to Denny St. John. Billy said he had also called himself Den Michaels for a time after another escapade.

He was extraordinarily good looking in a girlish sort of way and earlier still he worked as Denise Michaels, as a transvestite on the German night club circuit. You get some interesting and unusual acts in those clubs. The fellows often tend to look a bit like a caricature of an outrageous pantomime dame and I remember one where the bar manageress was a real wow till she turned round and she was sporting a beard! Bizarre! And those clubs are.

If you visit one just don't get too carried away when some of the real stunners come up to you. Some of the girls there are a man's dream come true - till you slide your hand up their thigh and come to an extra bit you're not expecting!

According to Billy, Dennis Michaels's real name was Dennis Michaelson. He'd been in Germany with the forces after the war, went to prison for something illegal (story of his life), worked various acts as a woman and kept the clothes on in private life in Germany but of course couldn't in the UK and life here wasn't so easy. Billy said he was a charmer but a compulsive con man and couldn't stop conning people. He had a portfolio of bar stunts guaranteed to con a free drink out of a punter.

In the end he was basically a club comedy magic act in the winter and worked one of the smaller independent holiday camps in the summer where he was everything - the children's entertainer, ran the daytime games and competitions, did cabarets and stage shows and competitions for adults, helped with visitors at reception and showing them to their chalets, the whole bit of what is known in the UK as a RED or BLUE or other Colour Coat. They wore a coloured jacket to identify themselves. A job many aspiring entertainers started out doing and in Dennis's case, where he ended up.

Just to tie it off, last time Billy and I talked about him I seem to remember Denny St. John had had another name change after another spell in prison and ended up calling himself Michael Dennis. Then he quietly stepped off the world in the late 80s and hasn't surfaced since. Many might say Thank Goodness.

And, by the way, Billy himself did not take up Edwin's offer of Silken Saga - at the time he rarely did children's magic - but he did suggest to Edwin that I would make good use of it and to offer it to me. He did and I have.

Thanks for the history lesson Tony - you sure know a lot about magic and magicians,and I appreciate you sharing your knowledge here at the Café. I heard that they bought Supreme for a million pounds, and that 600,000 of those pounds were provided through a government loan. Also, they were too stupid to get Edwin to sign a non-competition agreement, so after Edwin sold Supreme and collected his money he started Edwin's Magic Arts. He was one smart cookie.

Not quite as smart as you may think.

What people thought and what he ended up getting were two rather different things. The original purchasers got out quite quickly. This is not the place for those sort of details.

He ended up setting in place Edwin's Magic Arts through sheer economic necessity.

The result was very far from what people may think and terribly sad.

I am much relieved, Tony! I was wondering why the heck Chris was going on about the silk handkerchief when the real comedy comes from that "other" bit you refer to and hasn't really been mentioned here except by an accidental vaque reference from Kimmo. It just goes to show you that you should check with someone who KNOWS before spending your money on ANYTHING sold on e-Bay, and in the case of this particular effect (TSS), if someone offers to sell you one, be VERY suspicious! It's the kind of thing you might GIVE or BEQUEATH in your will to someone who has the ability to make use of it, but probably would not even think of selling to a stranger for mere money. You just give the "rabbit ears" sign and walk away!

Thanks for the history lesson Tony, absolutely fascinating! That is why I love the Café, you just don't get that kind of information on other boards.

I would have to agree I was impressed by the fraudulent manuscript, although dated, was a novel idea even for these times.
As I stated I would have to add many of my own "bits of business" to bring it up to par with what I do onstage.
It is unfortunate that such "frauds" are out there making money off of those who simply hope for some type of trust within the political arena of an art form. Rather sad, actually.

So do I take it that you didn't get instructions for the fabrication of the KG? I was quite surprosed to read in your post that you 'had everything Laying right on your shelves at home.' I actually have a couple of spares of the KG and was considering selling them, although it sounds like I might end up being on some Magic Mafia hit-list if I did! If there is anyone who already has T.S.S. and is looking for a replacement gimmick then I could probably help you out. Drop me an Email Chris - I'd be really interested in what routine you did actually get!

Kimmo: I don't know if you would consider selling me a knee gimmick for TSS because I have my own version and my claim to the trick is tenuous at best, but I would like to get one just to put it in my museum of stuff that I will be leaving to my heirs. If you can't sell me one for ethical reasons I will understand.

I have been doing "Silken Saga" for years. I do it even now at virtually every show. I am quite surprised to see it discussed here. I have never seen anyone apart from myself ever do it.

Thanks for the PMs guys. I think I've gotten it all straightened out now. I have just one problem; when the R starts running around inside your trousers, how do you keep from injuring yourself, if you know what I mean?

Also, thanks to Marvello for selling me his copy of "Playing With Magic" by Wilfred Tyler. It arrived in the mail today and as soon as I started reading it, I noticed several veiled references to the TSS, which shows that he was either in the planning stages with it, or that he had worked it all out by the time he wrote the book. The book is dated 1953. Does anyone know when TSS was first released or performed?

For those who have purchased Tyler's Silken Saga and can prove it, there is a special discussion board set up on The Magic Nook Forum where you can talk about it all you want among yourselves. Just PM me for the secret password to gain entrance.

Goodness me, I'd forgotten about this thread. I had never realised this routine was such a closely guarded secret! It all sounds very cloak and dagger the way Tony tells it. I knew it was pretty rare. I first heard about it from an old Scottish fellow at a convention, he was boasting that he was the only person doing the routine north of the border. I couldn't find it online but came across it on ebay about a year later. From what I remember, I think whoever sold it was getting out of the magic business one way or another and also had a lot of old supreme items for sale.
I've no idea if mine is the knock off version. Was the fraudulent version an unauthorised copy of the instructions or a different trick by the same name? If it helps my version looks type written and has ink diagrams. There's also a small mistake in the manuscript as it says you need 4 silks in the set-up but you really have to have 5 if you count the one that never leaves your breast pocket.

George

No George - it wasn't a copy. It was a scam and made up. Bore no relationship to the real thing.

One has only to ask a key question to establish immediately that the manuscript is the scam.

It's one of those flexible routines open to individual interpretation of core elements where things are seldom what they seem.

Thank you for your PM George.

I can confirm you have the 1980 (or thereabouts) scam version.

As others have found, what you have may be a modestly amusing routine. But it has nothing but the title in common with the original.