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[[File: HoudiniTMWWTW.png|right|thumb|200px|[[ Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls]]]]
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[[File: MervTaylor1.png|right|thumb|200px|[[ Merv Taylor]]]]
 
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'''Merv Taylor''' (b.1904-d.1974) was a magic inventor and manufacturer.
'''William Lindsay Gresham''' (b.1909-d.1962) was an American novelist and non-fiction author particularly regarded among readers of noir. His best-known work is Nightmare Alley (1946) and a biography of [[Houdini]], Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls (1959)
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== Biography ==
 
== Biography ==
  
Gresham was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but moved to New York with his family as a child, where he became fascinated by the [[sideshow]] at [[Coney Island]]. Upon graduating from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1926, Gresham drifted from job to job.  In 1937, Gresham served as a volunteer medic for the Loyalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. There, he befriended a former sideshow employee, Joseph Daniel "Doc" Halliday, and their long conversations inspired much of his work, particularly Gresham's two books about the American carnival, the nonfiction Monster Midway and the fictional Nightmare Alley.
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Born in Dennison, Illinois, but lived most his life in California, Taylor started out teaching art, metalcraft, electrical shop and mechanical drawing.  He also did some work for the government, but in 1940 a magician performing at the school took one of his broken props to Merv to fix, which sparked an interest in magic.
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By 1945, Taylor, who found the magic business more fun than teaching, moved to the San Fernando Valley and went into fixing and creating magic props exclusively. With three of his brothers and a few friends, he built a shop with a retail store in 1948 called [Merv Taylor Magic]]. He employed [[Alan Wakeling]] for a time and many people wanted his pieces including [[Richard Himber]] and [[Orson Welles]].
 
   
 
   
Gresham developed a deep interest in [[Spiritualism]], having already exposed many of the fraudulent techniques of popular spiritualists in his two sideshow-themed books and having authored a book about Houdini with the assistance of noted skeptic [[James Randi]].
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[[Merv Taylor|Read more about Merv Taylor…]]
 
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[[William Lindsay Gresham|Read more about William Lindsay Gresham…]]
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Latest revision as of 19:53, 23 June 2024

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Merv Taylor (b.1904-d.1974) was a magic inventor and manufacturer.

Biography

Born in Dennison, Illinois, but lived most his life in California, Taylor started out teaching art, metalcraft, electrical shop and mechanical drawing. He also did some work for the government, but in 1940 a magician performing at the school took one of his broken props to Merv to fix, which sparked an interest in magic.

By 1945, Taylor, who found the magic business more fun than teaching, moved to the San Fernando Valley and went into fixing and creating magic props exclusively. With three of his brothers and a few friends, he built a shop with a retail store in 1948 called [Merv Taylor Magic]]. He employed Alan Wakeling for a time and many people wanted his pieces including Richard Himber and Orson Welles.

Read more about Merv Taylor…