One of my favorites, James Reneaux was on the the ranch as well... You can learn a lot from those shows...
James

I wrote the segment two pieces above this one after I had just gotten back from a grueling road trip.

I left out the most important point.

At the time that the Magic Ranch was done, a person could travel his whole lifetime on 20 minutes of material. If you had a stage show and worked large venues, you could do an 11 minute turn and that would suffice. So these old vaudevillians would do the same act for years. It would become refined and polished. It would be solidified. They could do it in their sleep, because each town or nightclub was a new audience.

Television killed that.

The saving grace was that The Magic Ranch, even though it was syndicated to a certain degree, was not subjected to the same kind of re-run abuse as, say, the Masked Magician episodes on Fox.

OK at the risk of revealing myself as being old a comment. It seems to me in general that TV, Movies and actually all of culture suffers from success. Look at the old "Twilight Zone" episodes and compare them to X-Files. The latter has the advantage of the increased technology in regards to production but it seems to come at the expense of content (specifically writing).

Magic Ranch lacks all the technology of modern production but the material is solid. As I said I am maybe just too old but I don't "get" Chris Angel or even David Blaine.

Gil Scott

Blaine and Angel are a subject of today’s rush rush society. Do you see the way they present info to us on T.V.? They don’t know what a set up is. They throw images at us and don’t even make sure you know what it is you are supposed see before they give you the pay off. Its punch lines with no set up.

That’s the way the new generation is presenting magic. And as Darwin Ortiz has said, if you come right in the middle of a magic trick either at the end or the beginning, it doesn’t look very magical. So, let’s slow down. Keep the pace moving, but slow down and make sure you set up the trick properly, then go for the kill. I guess I’m just preaching to the choir.

I am too old and I do not get either one either, especially Criss Angel, who I would not walk across the street to see, And I really mean that..
Rennie

Well, you guys inspired me to spend the $$ and order a copy of Magic Ranch DVD as a special treat and flash from the past. I am looking forward to seeing my old heroes and mentors....

When I was at the Jr Magicians' Club on Saturdays at Magic Inc (4 decades ago!), Jay would show us a program after our meetings using his 16mm movie projector. I even remember seeing the show on TV!

Since I used to watch it at Magic Inc, I called them up and ordered it from them...Pedro is very friendly and helpful....

marc

I saw episodes of the Magic Ranch at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. I don't remember the magic being unpolished or with a lot of "ums." Well, maybe with the kid magicians that were featured on every show, but remember they were just kids.

I do remember that some of the performers (including Jay Marshall) used the old "canned gags" style of patter without a lot of laughs (they didn't use laugh tracks on that show). But where else these days can you see performances by Senator Clark Crandall, Neil Foster, Richard Himber, Karrell Fox, et al.?

Also, remember that the nice thing about the Ranch is that the performers there were working under THE SAME CONDITIONS as most of us amateur and semi-professional magicians. That is, NO fancy lighting. NO tricky camera angles. NO ritzy stage. NO 21-piece orchestras. No bevy of beautiful dancing assistants. And yes, no canned laughter or applause.

How many of us magicians have the benefit of fog effects and laser light shows when we perform? On the Ranch you get to see performers working on the same level as their audience, just as most of us are called upon to do today. You get to see raw, unadorned magic. What a valuable learning experience it is to see magicians performing under such real world conditions!

So do not mistake this lack of glitz for a lack of “polish.” It’s the magicians who should add the polish anyway , not the fog effects.

It is possible if there was any laughter, more than likely you could not have heard it anyway as the sound was not very good in those days. Laughter definitely would have been drowned out. It’s still nice to have these performances available.

The Magic Ranch set is one of the most entertaining compilations I own. LOVE to watch the master work and handle people.

Steve