Frank Csuri

Frank Csuri
Born	Ferencz Istran Csuri October 03, 1911 Salank, Hungary
Died	July 22, 1994 (age 82) Hemet, California
Resting place	Riverside National Cemetery, California
Categories	Books by Frank Csuri

Frank Csuri (1911-1994), born Ferencz Istran Csuri in Hungary, was one of the earliest members of the Magic Castle and compiled letters from Dai Vernon, Charlie Miller, Faucett Ross and Paul Fox.

Biography

His family immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio when he was nine. After graduating from high school he joined the "Jarvis the Wizard" show, doing one-night stands from coast to coast.

After a few years, Frank started performing on his own in burlesque houses billing himself as "Frank Fay". By 1937, Frank was performing full-time under contract with the Music Corporation of America, touring vaudeville houses and night clubs.

Frank served in the Army during WWII, as a Lieutenant in Intelligence. After getting out in 1945, he went back into magic full-time. In 1946, Frank went to college on the GI Bill and got an engineering degree from Ohio State in four years while still performing at night clubs. Frank met and married Eve Agdan-Zal, a violinist, dancer, singer, and comedienne with the Ross Lewis-Grimes Sisters. (Eve passed away in 1981.)

By 1951, Frank moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to take a job as an engineer with Westinghouse Electric.

In the mid-1950's Frank moved to Kansas City, where became friends with Faucett Ross, Dai Vernon, Charlie Miller and Connie Bush. During this time, Csuri spent over two years decoding Dr. Jacob Daley's almost indecipherable handwriting in his notebooks. These where later published by Karl Fulves as Jacob Daley's Notebooks (1974).

In 1960, Frank moved to California participating in the design of Saturn and Apollo rocket engines for NASA for the Rocketdyne division of Rockwell. This allowed him to become one of the earliest members of the Magic Castle. While there he compiled letters from Vernon, Miller, Ross and Paul Fox known as the Csuri Notes. Some of this material was eventually converted by Lewis Ganson as the Magic with Faucett Ross. The Miller correspondences were compiled into what is known as the Csuri Files.

He was member of IBM (Order of Merlin).

Bibliography

• Sliding Card Frame
• "Ghost Coins," a method for the Interlocked Production of Coins
• Thesis on developing patter, published in two installments in The Linking Ring, Vol. 30, no. 4 & 5, June & July 1950
• Several card effects were published in Neal Elias' At The Table (1946)
• A coin routine appeared in Principles and Deceptions by Arthur Buckley (1948).