The Appearing Bird Cage

The Appearing Bird Cage
by David Ginn
WHEN I WAS 14 years old and three years
into magic, I earned my Eagle Scout award, probably one of the ten greatest achievements of my
life. What I learned in Boy Scouting became a
part of me and has never gone away. The scout law
still helps me live my life — a scout is trustworthy,
loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent — and
I still try to Be Prepared (Scout Motto) and Do a
Good Turn Daily (Scout Oath).
The following summer of 1961, my friend Bill
McMullen and I attended a two-week junior leaders’ training camp at Schiff Scout Reservation in Bernardsville, New Jersey. After the
scout camp, my parents were to arrive by car with my sister and cousin in tow, pick us
up and continue on a two week tour of New York, Boston, Bar Harbour Maine, then
across by ferry into Halifax, Nova Scotia, on land through Canada to Toronto, and
finally a thousand mile drive south back to Atlanta. What a trip!
1960: Age 14, receiving the Eagle Scout
Award surrounded by family.
At the top of my list of things to do and see were Louis Tannen Magic in NYC
and Holden’s Magic Shop in Boston. We also managed to see Julie Andrews, Robert
Goulet, and Richard Burton in “Camelot” and Mary Martin with Theodore Bikel in
“The Sound of Music” on Broadway. Years later it would be Julie Andrews whose career was made with “The Sound of Music” as a movie, not Mary Martin (Peter Pan in
the TV musical of 1960). However, we did get Mary Martin’s autograph and saw her
leave the theatre at the stage door!
Anticipating the magical parts of this month-long odyssey, I had purposely taken
the Louis Tannen Catalog of Magic #3 with me to scout camp. I planned to study it
and mark everything I wanted to see at Tannen’s and possibly purchase. Yes, I had
saved my money up! Little did I know how valuable that catalog would become!
Why? Read on:
About a week into the scout camp, in warm July weather, I came down sick. I don’t
remember what it was, but it was enough for them to put me in the local hospital. I
lay in bed for 48 hours, took medicine and ate hospital food. Plus one other thing:
I read the Louis Tannen Catalog #3, all 450 pages of it, cover to cover TWICE!
That reading and the subsequent visit a week later to Tannens and meeting Lou
himself (yes, he had red hair) are memories I will always cherish.
So now — over 50 years after those events — I’d like to share with you how what I
read and saw affected my later life as a professional magician and author of magical
writings. I’ll be flipping pages through the Tannen catalog, showing you some 50 year
old scans, and making comments about everything along the way.
I hope you enjoy the ride. I sure have!
Figure 1
Maybe I saw it first on the “Magic Land of Allakazam” or “International Showtime” in my early teens — that Owens Production Bird Cage first introduced to the
magic market in 1950. I don’t remember. But I remember that I ALWAYS wanted to
own one.
Figure 1: No. 745 Production Bird Cage. Check out that scan. It came in three
sizes: Small 8 ½-inch, Medium 12-inch, and the Giant Size of 15 inches in diameter.
The entire thing collapsed into a long tube-shape. Even the Giant one became about
21 inches long and three inches in diameter. Yet with just a shake or snap of the hand
holding the top, the cage opens instantly. Steal it into a load of silks from a chair back,
walk forward to the footlights, then give it that SNAP and WHAM! A bird cage appears from nowhere with a genuine life-like yellow canary bird inside!
In 1961 those prices you see in the catalog scan were too high for a 15-year-old magician. I could not imagine ever paying $75 for a trick, much less $37.50! (Minimum
wage was still $1.25 per hour!) But I could dream, and dream I did year after year.
Three years later things were different. That summer of 1964, after high school
graduation, my parents allowed me to fly alone to New York City again for the combined IBM/SAM Convention. From doing magic shows in Georgia, I had saved up
$200 cash, and I was ready to spend it on some professional magic props!
There I saw magicians like Mark Wilson, Chenkai, Flip and more perform, and I
saw great stuff in the huge dealer room, including a genuine Owens Production Bird
Cage at one of the booths.
The dealer who had it was a nice man. I always
liked him. He talked to young magicians and gave
us advice. He recommended good books for us to
read. So I asked about the bird cage, which was sitting in plain sight. It looked like Figure 2, which is
the Giant size I owned briefly in 2010.
“How much?” I asked.
“$50.00,” he told me. I think it was the 8 ½-inch
size, but that was a start.
“Could I see it?” I asked.
Figure 2
He took it off his back shelf and held it in his hand across the table from me. It
looked good from four feet away, shiny steel curved bands with a rubber canary inside.
“How does it work?” I asked, but I already knew. I just wanted a demonstration.
So he collapsed it into the tube shape, turning the bird sideways. Then he gave it
that SNAP that I so wanted to do myself. Wham! The cage popped open.
“Can I try it?” I asked, really meaning, “May I try it in my own two hands?”
That’s when the man said, “Well, these things are very delicate, not something to
play with.” I took that to indicate that he would not allow me to touch cage or try it
out.
Waiting, I said nothing, not knowing how to respond. I didn’t think I should tell
him that I had $200 cash in my pocket, and I could easily buy the cage with only a
fourth of my money. I had waited three years since scout camp, since the reading of
the Tannen Catalog #3 cover to cover twice, to buy that bird cage.
The man said nothing else right away, just smiled at me. Then, in the silence, he
turned slightly and put the cage back on the shelf. The moment was over.
“You think about it,” he said.
What? I had already THOUGHT about it for three years — I had the money in
my pocket — and I was 18 years old doing 20-30 shows every year at home. But I
wanted to hold it in my hands and try it JUST ONCE before I laid down the cash.
That’s what I wanted, but in a subtle way and with a smile on his face, the magic
dealer denied me. Frankly, it hurt my feelings. You could say I was 18 years old and
“green around the gills,” but that didn’t change how I felt. I felt that he didn’t trust me
to hold the bird cage. Maybe he thought I’d bend the wires or break the mechanism.
Maybe he thought I didn’t have the money. Maybe a lot of maybes.
I nodded my head and said, “Thanks,” exhibiting my southern politeness, and walked
on to the next booth and the next.
Day by day I spent money on magic, magic that I would use in hundreds of shows.
Frank Garcia personally taught me “the easy way” to do Wild Card, his trick that
had just come onto the market. Recil Bordner, owner of Abbott’s Magic, climbed 12
feet up onto the back of his display to get the one 36-inch silk I wanted and used for
25 years after that. Unknown to me at the time, a 17-year-old clean-haircut Doug
Henning wearing glasses was walking around checking dealer’s booths in the same
room, and we never met until a year later in Chattanooga.
I saw great shows and lectures and truly learned a lot at that convention. I spent
all my money and came home with lots of magical treasures that I used in show after
show. But I did not buy the production bird cage I wanted so badly.
* * *
About 15-20 years later, now in my mid-30s, having written about 20 books on
magic and now lecturing, I was invited to a one-day event in a large northern city.
That magic day was hosted by the same dealer from the 1964 New York convention.
He invited me to say with him and his wife at their house. What did I do? I accepted.
I flew into his city the day before the event. He picked me up at the airport and
drove me home to meet his wife. While waiting for her to arrive, we walked into his
office and talked. I looked at his shelves full of magic books, but I didn’t mention the
1964 incident. Then I noticed a long box about 3 x 3 x 15 inches on a table. The word
OWENS was on it somewhere.
“What’s this?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
He picked it up and opened the box. “It’s the Owens appearing cage.” He took it
out, gave it a snap, and it popped open. Then he handed it to me.
Wow! I couldn’t believe it. I finally had it in my hands. Then I realized that he didn’t
remember the 1964 incident in New York City.
“How does it work?” I asked. He took it back and showed me how to collapse it,
then handed it back to me. “Just give it a sharp snap. Try it.” So I did and it popped
right open.
“Wow! That’s great. I always wanted one of these things,” I told him. “I just never
got around to buying one,”
“I’ve had this one for about 20 years,” he said, “and I still use it sometimes.” He collapsed it and put in back in the box.
Suddenly I felt a sense of relief, like something had come full circle. Maybe I had
matured over 15 years, and I could finally understand why he was afraid to let a young
magician handle an expensive cage that he might not purchase. That was when I decided to do something very important inside of me, but unknown to him.
I forgave him.
* * *
Twenty years later I bought a newer version of the appearing
bird cage, and I have used it in over 500 live shows. It had no
rubber bird, so I told the kids it was the cage for Harry Potter’s owl Hedweg. “But Hedweg is not in there right now. He
must be out delivering the mail! I hope he brings a check to
my house!”
You can see two views of that
newer cage in Figures 3 and 4.
One shows the cage collapsed,
one shows it open. I have it
hanging on the back of a covered
table/suitcase and steal it into a
load of silks, then pop it open “at
the footlights” just like I always
planned.
Figure 4
David Ginn, at home in Loganville, Georgia USA
Figure 3