Help us get to over 8,745 articles in 2024.

If you know of a magician not listed in MagicPedia, start a New Biography for them. Contact us at magicpediahelp@gmail.com

Winston Freer

From Magicpedia, the free online encyclopedia for magicians by magicians.
Jump to: navigation, search
Winston Freer
BornWinston Henry Freer
August 21, 1910
Vermont, USA
DiedApril 29, 1981 (age 70)
Veterans Hospital in Buffalo, New York

Winston Freer (1910-1981) was born and raised in Vermont where he attended the University of Vermont, but eventually moved to Chicago and became a full time magician.

Biography

In the 1930's he worked at Abbott's Magic in Colon, Michigan and performed under the name Alladin and later Doc Maxam.

He was known for freezing ice in his bare hand and a no-key Linking Rings routine. He also developed a one-man method for levitating a spectator that caused quite a stir in the magic community, which was captured on the cover of The Linking Ring, August 1941.

Freer continued T. Page Wright’s and S.H. Sharpe’s theoretical work on the Principles of Magic. In 1941 he published his occurrence classification of magic in The Linking Ring and in Genii which classifies effects from the audiences' point of view. [1] [2] A list of 19 Fundamental Magical Effects was finally published in 1944 by Dariel Fitzkee.[3]

Freer also fancied himself a mathematician. One of his creations was his Tile Puzzle in which the pieces nor the frame change shape or size in any way, but when pieces are removed the board remains full just like at the start.[4]

Freer had been hospitalized for some 21 years for a variety of ailments including several heart operations. He died in 1981 in the Veterans Hospital in Buffalo, New York.

Books

  • 25 Rice Bowl Methods (1954)
  • The Magic of Doc Maxam (1954)
  • Adventures of Winston Freer CD (2008)
  • FREER IN THE NEWS (n.d.), 21 pages

Marketed tricks

Contributions

  • Winston Freer Geometrical Vanish
  • Half-Wit Deck.

References

  1. The Linking Ring, Vol. 21, No. 11, January 1942, HOCUS POCUS PARADE, Winston Freer, page 38, The List, page 41
  2. Genii, Vol. 6, No. 3, November 1941, How to Make the Most of Your Magic by WINSTON H. FREER, page 91
  3. The Trick Brain by Dariel Fitzkee (1944, 1989), page 25
  4. Video of Winston Freer's Tile Puzzle
Wikipedia-logo.png This page incorporated content from Winston Freer,

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

  • The Linking Ring, Vol. XXI, No. 6, August 1941, THE MOST TALKED OF MAN IN MAGIC, page 7
  • The Linking Ring, Vol. 61, No. 6, June 1981, Broken Wand, WINSTON H. FREER, page 109