The Billet Article - Librarians Page

This article is taken from The Billet Issue - 416 - Oct 2006, Authored by Peter Wright

Librarians Page

One of the longest books we have in the library has just come into my possession. It is 1,059 pages long yet will fit in my pocket. It’s the Original Tarbell Course in magic and it is on a CD. You will need a computer and the Adobe Acrobat reader program, (if you haven’t got it on your computer its available free to download at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html), to be able to read the text. A little out of the ordinary but well worth it. But just who was this guy Tarbell? I did a little investigation on the Internet and this is what I came up with.

Harlan Eugene Tarbell (1890-1960) was a noted American stage magician and illustrator in the early 20th century, and authored the well-known "Tarbell Course in Magic." His only foray into cinema was an early 1930s film short entitled "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century”. He directed the production and starred as Doctor Huer.

Tarbell was born on February 23, 1890 in the Illinois town of Delavan, but spent his childhood in Groveland. Tarbell created cartoons for a newspaper in Morton when he was 12 years old. It was at this time that Tarbell received one of his earliest introductions to professional magic, when he hiked five miles along the railroad tracks to watch magician Harry August Jansen, aka Dante, perform at the Morton Town Hall.

In 1911, Tarbell moved to Chicago in order to pursue a professional career in illustration. His efforts attracted the attention of the magic company Read and Covert, which hired Tarbell to work on their Illustrated Catalogue of Superior Magical Apparatus. Tarbell continued to produce illustrations for Read and Covert until 1941.

During the First World War, Tarbell served with the 24th Air Company in France, working with the medical department. He found time during his service to illustrate a military atlas and study with French impression Claude Monet.

Publishers T. Grant Cooke and Walter A. Jordan developed an interest in producing a correspondence course in magic in the mid-1920s. Cook and Jordan hired Tarbell and Walter Baker, another Chicago-area magician, to work on the project, but Baker dropped out of the project in its early stages to concentrate on his performances. A few months before his death, Harry Houdini was approached to author the course, but Houdini declined, recommending that Tarbell author it instead. The publishers agreed, allotting Tarbell $50,000 for the course. Tarbell finished the course in 1928, producing 60 correspondence lessons with at least 3,100 illustrations.

Tarbell later discussed the philosophy behind his course: "There is a big difference between a magician and a man who does tricks...Fundamentally, the making of a magician is no different than the making of other professional people. One must be trained in the mechanics, the alternate methods and be skilled in the presentation in order to meet any conditions which may arise." Unlike other magic courses which placed a greater emphasis on self-working illusions, Tarbell began with fundamental drills and practice sessions involving body position, movement, and sleight-of-hand techniques which were to be incorporated into actual tricks in future lessons.

After selling 10,000 complete courses, Cooke and Jordan discontinued marketing the Tarbell Course in Magic in 1931, blaming the Great Depression for slumping sales. In 1941, however, magician Louis Tannen arranged to purchase the rights to the course, working with Tarbell and Ralph W. Read (of Read and Covert) to convert the correspondence lessons into book form.

Dr. Tarbell resided in Elmhurst for the last 34 years of his life. He suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on June 16, 1960, dying at the age of 70. Although written in 1928, the techniques mentioned in the course are just as relevent in todays magic.

So now, thanks to ‘http://en.wikipedia.org’ you know as much as me about this amazing piece of work. Obviously with a text of over 1,000 pages I have not had chance to read it all, but glancing through the articles and illustrations it looks very interesting indeed. If you wanted to produce a hard copy of any of the tricks or articles mentioned in the course you can print them off on your printer.

Well that’s about it for this month. I cannot make the October meeting so see you all in November.

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