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• Archive: Del Ray was considered the most innovative magician of the 20th century.
• Secretly intermingling technologies with traditional trickery, he performed miracles of magic that were unlike those of any other magician.
• Throughout his life, he passionately guarded the secrets of both his professional and personal affairs.
• Because Del Ray remained steadfast in his refusals to ever discuss or share his magic, his magician friends and fans feared that a book on his life would never see print.Now, seven years after Del Ray's death in 2003, through the gracious efforts of the publishing partnership of Bob Escher (who was bequeathed the Del Ray collection), David Baldwin, and Bill Spooner, the book has become a reality and a welcome addition to magic history's literature.
• Having complete access to the Del Ray archive, which included his personal scrapbooks and memorabilia as well the ingenious magic that Del Ray created over the years, author John Moehring has crafted a volume that is both insightful and revelatory.Part One traces Del Ray's career in magic beginning with his adolescent years in an orphanage where he performed his first paid show for $3, to his meteoric rise to fame in the 1950s as America's most successful nightclub magician ever, to Del Ray's development of a stunningly modern approach to close-up magic that enabled him to demand fees as high as $10,000 a week.