We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
288
June, 1931
actual seances, explaining and demon' strating to their converts how the mediums achieve their spectral hood' winking.
On a recent trip to Detroit, for ex' ample, Joan uncovered a medium who made ingenious use of an odd-looking, talking statue. The spirits, according to the medium, talked through the statue. For an extra fee, in fact, the spirits would suggest a lucky number to be played in the numbers racket. Joan discovered his method, and now uses a replica of the statue to demon' strate one more aspect of the fake medium's trickery.
Another trick, used by a medium in Texas, was almost as ingenious. A bright light shining in a glass vial convinced his followers that a spirit was present. Joan performs the same trick for audiences, claiming no super' natural powers whatsoever.
Convinced that such mediums are merely second-rate magicians, Joan has a standing offer of $10,000 to any medium who can produce psychic phenomena legitimately. Like the similar offer made by the great Houdini, it has never been successfully challenged. Every medium who has been tested by a magician has proved to be a fraud.
A PETITE blonde, whose looks could win her a showgirl's job in any Broadway musical, Joan Brandon could get by very well without exposing the fake mediums who infest the country. Miss Brandon, however, has magic in her blood. Her father was the Great Brandoni, a famous magician who spent many years as a ghost breaker himself. Joan, who was born in New Orleans, spent most of her
early life touring the country with him. As a child, she was part of her father's act, and he would produce her out of an empty box on the stage. By the time she was five, she could take rabbits out of hats and accomplish other feats of legerdemain. At the age of fourteen, she was a vaudeville headliner. At fifteen, she was booked into the Hotel Savoy in London. This was the start of an international career which took her to France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and other European countries. At one time or another, she also has performed in Australia, Hawaii, Mexico, Cuba, and Canada, as well as all the 48 states. She has been called "America's First Lady of Magic" and the "World's Greatest Lady Magi' cian" for her aptitude at sleight'of' hand.
Her other accomplishments are equally amazing. Besides being the first girl magician to appear on tele vision in London, Paris, and New York, Joan also has led her own dance orchestra, played the drums and saxo' phone, is an amateur flyer, and at present is writing a book to be called "Frankly Spooking." Her magic act, featuring such stunts as pouring 100 different drinks from a cocktail shaker — anything from a Scotch-and-soda to a Bromo Seltzer — as rapidly as an audience requests them; raising a table easily just with the palms of her hands; making a cane dance apparently unsupported in mid-air; and others stamp her the equal of famous masculine performers.
All these achievements, however, are of secondary importance to the remarkable Miss Brandon. Debunk