Boston After Dark

By George Holland

IT WAS A COLD NIGHT IN FLANDERS in 1915 and Private Richard Pritchford of king's Shropebire Light Infantry was amazing himself doing simple tricks with a deck of cards...Because the night was cold, he kept his gloves on.

FOR HALF AN HOUR OR SO, this lonesome Welshman, who had never learned much English in his native Swansea, passed the cards from one gloved hand to the other ... An officer stopped to ask him what he was doing ... "Very clever Pritchford, I've never seen card tricks done with gloves before."

PRIVATE PRITCHFORD BECAME "CARDINI" - or "The Great Cardini" as he once was billed - many months after in Australia... He had been sent to "Blighty in Southhampton after being gassed and wounded .. And because he wanted to be a magician and so told a rehabilitation officer. Private Pritchford had been treated for eighteen months as a mental case.

IN THE HOSPITAL HE PERFECTED his now famous "routines" of shuffling cards while wearing gloves... but his first attempt to qualify as a professional magician failed ... He got a tryout in a provincial theatre and was too nervous to perform the tricks he had been practicing for two full years

THE INVALIDED SOLDIER FINALLY entered an amateur contest in a London theatre and because his monocle and slightly inebriated manner made a hit... (he made five pounds)...The government gave Private Pitchford $500 and he went to Australia ... And a son of Sur Ben Fuller head of the famous Tivoli circuit in the "down under country." gave him a 20 week contract at twenty pounds a week.

"HOW WILL WE BILL YOU!" he was asked..."Well I'd like to use the name of Raymond!" ... "It won't do he was told ... " A mind reader by the same name is wanted by the police here." ... "Well replied Private Pritchford, "I'll use another name-Cardini"... Cardini came to America after three successful years in Australia...After many disappointments, he made a sensational success in the midwest, and eventually was booked into the famous Palace Theater, the actor's notion of playing heaven.

CARDINI SINCE HAS since played every great show place in the world.. He has given a command performance before the king and Queen of England... He has seen the only magician to appear at Radio City music hall as many as four time ... Currently, at the Latin Quarter, Cardini is collaborating with a female bird, named Tony, in one of the greatest feats of magic ever conceived.

THE NOVELTY ACT TOOK three years to perfect, and involved several thousand dollars to produce...(Those who saw Cardini's show last night, and watched the bird, Tony, flit from Cardini's shoulder to disappear against the back wall of the Latin Quarter, can Understand why the magician was nervous until the bird was retrieved.)

IT REALLY IS A MARVELOUS ACT...The bird pecks at a deck of cards and picks out four of a kind with her bill... The bird, incidentally is not a canary....Canaries were tried, but the bird was not strong enough to lift the cards from the box...Cardini's bird is a hybrid bred by the magician when he crossed an English bird with a South American and an Australian bird....Really, it's marvelous-that act.