Dell O'Dell

Dell O'Dell
Cover of Genii (1943)
Born	Nell Odella Newton October 2, 1897 Lemonweir, Juneau, Wisconsin
Died	February 5, 1962 (age 64) Santa Monica, California
Resting place	Donated body to science
Nationality	American
Categories	Books by Dell O'Dell

Dell O'Dell (b.1897-d.1962), born Nell Odella Newton, was an American magician regarded in her profession as a pioneer who provided a role model for modern female performers and noted for being one of the first magicians to appear on television.

Biography

At the height of her career she was billed as "The World's Leading Lady Magician" and "The Queen of Magic."

Nell Newton's father worked in carnivals and she began learning magic from him when she was young. She developed a style that featured snappy patter and cute rhymes, which became something of a trademark. Dell was known to hire writers for her special rhyming patter, with some being printed in Genii magazine.

She married Charles Carrer, a famous juggler, who managed her show and constructed props for her. She and Charles established homes in New York, Florida and California.

Early on O'Dell bought the rights to the comedy magic act of Frank Van Hoven (1886-1929) and was successful with her own version.

Cover of Genii (1962)

She became a pioneer of television magic when The Dell O'Dell Show began transmission on a local station in the Los Angeles area in California on 14 September 1951. She thus pre-dated several other noted pioneers of television magic, such as Mark Wilson, whose first television show began in 1955, and Richiardi Jr who made the first of his record run of appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956.

O'Dell wrote extensively on the subject of magic. She contributed a column titled "Dell-lightfully" for the magicians' magazine The Linking Ring. Her Stamp Album presentation was published in volume 4 of the Tarbell Course in Magic.

Although she claimed to be born Oct. 20, 1902, in Kansas, research at DellODell.com and the Houdini Museum into the file of the Wisconsin Births and Christenings, 1826-1926 for Newton found otherwise.

Nell Newton changed her name legally to Dell O'Dell and continued to perform until her death from multiple myoloma cancer at the age of 59 in Santa Monica, California. She donated her body to UCLA Medical School.

Books

• Presenting Magical Moments (1939)
• Everybody's Fun (1943)
• A Book of Entertainment by Dell O'Dell World's Leading Lady Magician 77370-0-77370 There's Magic in these Numbers (1944)
• On Both Sides of the Footlights (1946)

References

This page incorporated content from Dell O'Dell, a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• Cover, Genii Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 7, March 1943, Our Cover Girl, Dell O’Dell, page 233
• Cover, The Linking Ring, Vol. 24, No. 7, September 1944, Dell O’Dell --- Cover Girl, page 35
• Cover, Genii Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 4, December 1952, CITIZEN-NEWS, Hollywood, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 1952 - Woman Magician Expert on Stage Or in the Kitchen, by Zuma Palmer, page 163
• Cover, Genii Magazine, Vol. 26, No. 7, March 1962, Obituary, Dell O'Dell, by George L. Boston, page 260
• The Linking Ring, Vol. 42, No. 3, March 1962, International Secretary Reports, Obituary, DELL O'DELL, page 88
• The New Tops, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 1962, Final Curtain, Dell O'Dell "Queen of Magic", by Monk Watson, page 40
• M-U-M, Vol. 97, No. 3, August 2007, DELL O'DELL: A Dell-ightful Magician by Julie Sobanski, page 68
• All About Magicians/Dell O'Dell
• http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=drYhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OJ0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3820,5364064&dq=dell-o-dell&hl=en
• http://itricks.com/news/2013/07/dell-odell-magic-and-rhyme/