Who was Dai Vernon? The Professor who fooled Houdini

Dai Vernon (1894 to 1992) was a Canadian-born sleight-of-hand artist whom magicians simply called “The Professor.” He became famous as the man who fooled Harry Houdini with a card trick, refined close-up magic for decades, and spent the rest of his life, almost thirty years, as the resident mentor at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Much of modern card and close-up magic passes through his hands.

Who was Dai Vernon?

He was born David Frederick Wingfield Verner in Ottawa on 11 June 1894. He took his first steps in magic as a boy, and the first real magic book he owned was an early edition of The Expert at the Card Table by S. W. Erdnase. By about age 13, he had committed it to memory.

He moved to New York around the time of the First World War, where he won the respect of the city’s top magicians, Nate Leipzig among them. Magic didn’t pay most of his bills, though. For years he earned his living cutting silhouette portraits, starting at Coney Island. The work was portable, so he could travel, and he used that freedom to seek out gamblers and card cheats who knew moves that weren’t in any book.

He died on 21 August 1992, aged 98.

Why was he called “The Professor”?

The nickname came from his knowledge of, and skill at, sleight of hand. It wasn’t an academic title. It was what other magicians called the person they went to when they wanted to know how something should really be done.

How did Dai Vernon fool Houdini?

Early in his career, Houdini billed himself as the king of cards and liked to boast that he could work out any card trick if he saw it three times. Vernon took up the challenge with a version of what magicians call the Ambitious Card: a signed card is pushed into the middle of the deck and keeps turning up on top.

Houdini asked to see it again, and again. He never worked it out. Afterwards, Vernon used the line “The Man Who Fooled Houdini” in his advertising for years.

The details vary depending on who tells the story, so here’s what the sources agree on and where they don’t:

Detail	What the sources say
When and where	Commonly dated to 6 February 1922, at a Society of American Magicians banquet held in Houdini’s honour at the Great Northern Hotel in Chicago
The trick	A version of the Ambitious Card. The plot itself is older than Vernon; what fooled Houdini was his handling
How many times	Seven in most accounts; some versions say five, others eight
How it ended	Some accounts have Houdini’s wife and Vernon’s friends telling him he’d been fooled; another has a spectator urging him to admit it while he walked away

If you want to see why the plot still works on audiences today, start with the double lift, the sleight most beginners meet first when they learn it.

What did Vernon change about close-up and card magic?

He invented or improved a long list of close-up effects with cards, coins and other small objects, and many of his handlings became the versions other magicians learned first.

A few of the pieces most tied to his name:

• Triumph. Cards are shuffled face up into face down, and in a moment the whole deck has righted itself except the spectator’s card. Vernon’s version, published in the 1940s, is the one that gave the plot its name.
• Twisting the Aces. Four aces turn face up one at a time. It first appeared in print in 1960 and helped make a now-standard false count famous.
• The cups and balls. His routine is widely treated as the standard one. Our post on the history of the cups and balls covers the trick’s long story before him.

He also shaped books he didn’t sign. He’s widely described as under-credited for much of the material in Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue’s Expert Card Technique, and a later edition acknowledged his contributions.

What was his connection to Erdnase?

A deep one. He read The Expert at the Card Table as a boy and kept returning to it all his life. His devotion to it is often credited with helping the book earn its reputation among professional magicians. If the mystery of its author interests you, our post who was S. W. Erdnase? goes through the main theories.

You can read the same book Vernon memorized: The Expert at the Card Table is a free 230-page PDF covering shifts, blind shuffles, palms, bottom deals and the conjuring tricks built on them. Fair warning, it’s dense and written in the style of 1902.

What were the Magic Castle years?

In 1963 Vernon moved to Los Angeles and the Magic Castle, the Hollywood club for magicians. He stayed for the rest of his life, nearly three decades, as its magician in residence and star attraction. Younger magicians came to sit with him, and the list of people he mentored there includes Ricky Jay, Persi Diaconis, Doug Henning, Larry Jennings, Bruce Cervon, Michael Ammar and John Carney.

In 1968 the Academy of Magical Arts gave him its Masters Fellowship.

Which books are associated with Dai Vernon?

Much of his work reached print through other writers, especially the British author Lewis Ganson. Here are some of the best-known titles:

Year	Title	Notes
1957	Dai Vernon’s Book of Magic	By Lewis Ganson
1959 to 1967	The Inner Secrets of Card Magic series	Four books by Lewis Ganson
1963	Dai Vernon’s Tribute to Nate Leipzig	By Lewis Ganson
1984	Revelations	Vernon’s own commentary
1987 to 1989	The Vernon Chronicles, volumes 1 to 3	By Stephen Minch
2006	Dai Vernon: A Biography	By David Ben

Where should I start reading about him?

• Dai Vernon: A Biography by David Ben: the first in-depth look at his life, tracing the first half of his journey through Ottawa, Coney Island, Chicago, Manhattan and beyond, with encounters including Houdini. A 370-page hardcover with over 40 rare photographs.
• The Vernon Chronicles He Fooled Houdini, Volume 4: an anecdotal biography following Vernon from his birth to his arrival at the Magic Castle in 1963, with his thoughts on practice, secrets and classics. A 308-page hardcover with 67 historical photographs.
• Dai Vernon’s Tribute to Nate Leipzig: over 200 pages on one of Vernon’s heroes, with Leipzig’s magic described by Lewis Ganson as passed on by Vernon.

None of these is a beginner’s first trick book. They’re for when you want to understand where modern close-up magic came from. You’ll find more in our card magic collection.

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