Word: cardini
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tricks, only "effects"; a disappearing object was a "vanish"; a suddenly appearing object was a "production"; a nimble-handed move was a "sleight." The masters of all these effects and sleights had vanished. Houdini, who could get out of a steel coffin, could not escape from his wooden one; Cardini, who commanded the attention of a jammed theater with nothing but a deck of cards and a pack of cigarettes; Thurston, Dunninger, Blackstone, Dante: all, all were gone or retired. People wanted facts, not illusions; it was the age of the scientist, not the alchemist...
Life in Tijuana has moved in cycles. During the Prohibition era, the Baja California town glittered as a south-of-the-border oasis for thirsty Hollywood movie stars and horseplayers at Agua Caliente Racetrack; Alex and Caesar Cardini invented Caesar salad one evening to feed the throngs at their beleaguered restaurant. But by World War II, U.S. servicemen in California came to know Tijuana as a bawdy border appendage of San Diego where sidewalk hustlers peddled a startling variety of sexual activities and mainstreet bars offered grinding nudes within tactile distance of the audience. The town's foul...