travsd

Frank Garcia: The Man With the Million Dollar Hands

I’m fairly certain that I first learned about Frank Garcia (1927-1993) from either Torkova or Richard Cohn during our recent conversations about old time NYC magic shops for my Chelsea Community News article.

Garcia was one of those legends of the magic community who represented that continuum that includes close-up illusion (card tricks, cups and balls, making small items appear and disappear), as well as gambling, cheating at gambling, and exposing the cheating techniques of gamblers. He lectured, wrote nearly two dozen books, advised law enforcement agents, and performed on TV talk and variety shows like those of Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, and David Suskind. He was billed as “The Man With the Million Dollar Hands” and “The Gambling Investigator”. Originally from New York City, Garcia was inspired to take up magic when he was young after seeing a performance by Fu Manchu (David Bamberg).

For more on show business history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.