Del Ray: America's Foremost - John Moehring (with DVD)

Part One traces Del Ray's career in magic beginning with his adolescent years in an orphanage where he performed his first paid show for $3, to his meteoric rise to fame in the 1950s as America's most successful nightclub magician ever, to Del Ray's development of a stunningly modern approach to close-up magic that enabled him to demand fees as high as $10,000 a week. This remarkable story is illustrated with 116 vintage photographs. Told with exacting detail and a reverence for the master's secrets, the biography section of Del Ray: America's Foremost is a celebration of the personality, the achievements, and the genius that made the magical world of Del Ray unique.

Part Two focuses on a selection of eight of Del Ray's favorite close-up routines. Gary Plants has written detailed descriptions for seven of these effects: Half-dollar Through Ring, The Bet, Blackjack Deal, the Computer Deck, Gymnastic Aces Without Aces, Final Aces, and Del Ray's Card Stab. Eighty original photos of Gary's hands executing the sleight-of-hand maneuvers accompany his explanations. The Royal Assembly, a Del Ray effect originally written up by Ed Marlo in 1954, is illustrated by Jay Marshall. This section also includes the eight-page audiovisual script for the Companion Video that accompanies the book, two pages of acknowledgements, and a comprehensive Index.

LIKE NEW, HC w/dj, 448 pages, with DVD
Also has Brodart archival protector on book