Max Malini’s calling card!
A recent guest at my Waldorf show introduced himself as a relative of the great old-time magician, Max Malini. According to the gentleman, his great aunt’s second husband was Malini. A few weeks later, he sent me a piece of memorabilia from their family scrapbook – Malini’s calling card.
This image was drawn by the world-famous tenor, Enrico Caruso.
To my knowledge, this is one of two in existence.
It’s now a prized part of my Malini collection, along with two hand-signed Malini photos and a vivid poster reproduction released by Norm Nielsen. There are a few other original items I’m looking for, since Malini is one of my all-time heroes. (He also performed at the old Waldorf-Astoria hotel when it was located on Fifth Avenue and 34th St!)
Malini’s relative told me that he never saw the master perform magic, but at one family party, Malini came into the house, took out a hand drill and drilled a hole into the wall. It was quite noisy, and left shavings on the floor.
He then took a metal hook from his jacket pocket, and used the hook to hang his coat on the wall for the evening. At the end of the evening, he proposed one small trick for the group. He removed his coat from the wall hook, and showed that the hook was gone — and (!) there was in fact no hole in the wall whatsoever…
Max Malini, Conjurer of the Century & Royal Entertainer
What a great story this is! I saw a video of Paul Daniels performing Malini’s tricks in a tribute show to him and the tricks were amazing. (Paul’s own Chimpanzee trick is one of my favorites–) Anyone know if there’s a movie about Malini’s life?
That calling card is very nice. In the Vernon book on Malini, doesn’t he mention that the Waldorf used to display the brick that Malini made appear under his hat? (I’m not sure if it was a brick… my copy of the book is packed away right now.) This would have been at the old Waldorf location, I assume. That would be a nice piece of memorabilia if it could be found.
Congrats on the new blog!
Bob, yes, I investigated this with the Waldorf’s resident historian. According to him, that brick was in the old Waldorf=Astoria hotel on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue (the current site of the Empire State Building), and it was lost when the hotel was demolished. There is another story about Malini performing “card on wall” for several U.S. senators in the Waldorf. I haven’t been able to track down any further information about this performance.
Thanks for your comment!
-SC
