A Celestial Celebration
BEVERLY SUZÀN
“The Magic of Perseverance”
In 1997, Beverly Suzàn did a two-hour stage, illusion, and escape show for an enthusiastic audience in Tranquility, New Jersey. While that may seem like no big deal, Beverly was especially proud of this particular day. After a car collision in 1995, she suffered head injuries, broken ankles and legs and a broken knee. Doctors warned her that she might never walk again. But what could easily have ended a career of performing and teaching magic was instead an inspiration to keep going. “The determination I received by this disabling accident turned my life around,” she said. “To overcome the challenges it presented became a quest.” After her first show back on stage, she couldn’t walk for four days. Yet for her, the show was worth it.
Beverly has been a survivor all her life. At birth (in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 15, 1953), she had retinal damage and severe eczema on her entire body. Children born with such fragile skin seldom survived beyond twelve, and doctors told her mother there was little they could do. But through the power of her mother’s care and faith, Beverly’s skin healed. Having overcome vision problems and now battling Lyme disease and arthritis, Beverly is still in love with the art she first discovered as a child.
When she was young, Beverly’s father thrilled her with a few sleight-of-hand and card tricks, and she was also exposed to magicians on television and visited Mark Wilson’s Magic Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. But it wasn’t until fifteen years later that the magic bug bit when a man randomly walked up to her at a dance club and produced a bouquet of roses from fire. “At that moment, I knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she confesses. This man offered to teach her a few tricks, but his limited repertoire was quickly exhausted. Beverly soon realized “he only knew enough to use magic as a pick-up line,” so she sought out more information from her local library.
Through the Mecca Magic Shop in Bloomfield, New Jersey, she soon made contact with Ted Collins (1919-1993), a magician who had opened the business back in 1945. He mentored Beverly in sleight-of-hand. “Ted is the person most responsible for keeping me in magic as long as I have been,” she told MUM in 2012. “Whenever I would go into his shop, he would not only show me what I went in to see, he would show me something that was a little more difficult, in an effort to make me work harder.”
Beverly started booking shows in 1981 under the title “Starburst Entertainment,” a company that she operated for 40 years. She honed her skills on the club circuit, learning to work under any conditions, including when she had mirrors on the walls behind her. She worked with bands like St. Vitus, and Tears for Fears, and even performed at the NY Giants Superbowl party in 1986.
Along with a partner named James Fagan, Beverly performed escapes and illusions including Metamorphosis, Cutting a Lady in Sixes, and the Guillotine, as well as classics like the linking rings, zombie, and fire eating. They featured many birds in their act, and Beverly published a monograph in 1984 titled Domestic Dove Care. The team worked everything from Club Z in the Virgin Islands to trade shows in Boston. After they split up in 1988, Beverly studied hypnosis, being certified in 1989. She kept working school shows, churches, clubs, TV spots, and even cruise ships. After a stint on the cruise liner Egyptian Nile in 1990, she spent 73 days riding on the back of a motorcycle doing magic at various stops on a 15,000-mile tour of the United States and British Columbia.
Also in 1990, Beverly got some pointers in misdirection from the legendary Slydini, who passed away just a few months later. A performance at Montclair State University in 1994 led to an opportunity to offer magic classes in its Youth Program for children aged 5 to 16. In the spring of 1995, she had six classes of 25 children each. In 1996 she also started teaching magic classes at the New Jersey Westfield Summer Program for the Arts, a class that her mentor Ted Collins once taught. After her accident, she resumed teaching in a wheelchair.
Encouraged by Montclair to produce her own course materials, in 2002 Beverly published her book Magi-Call: A Study of the Magician’s Art. The book is a detailed introduction to the basics of magic, including presentation, sleight-of-hand, and history. She issued a new edition in 2005, and expanded it again in 2009 as Completely Magi-Call. Her extensive listing of magicians past and present includes over 91 short biographies of female performers and lists another 100 plus names of female magicians working today. Ms. Suzàn has also given private magic lessons to college students at Montclair State. She has had many dedicated students, and the mother of one of her students once showed her appreciation by sculpting Beverly’s image in clay.
Over time, Beverly has had to scale back her performing, and for a while worked only with what she could set up alone and carry in her Ford Explorer. Some of her corporate clients have included McDonald’s, Dannon Yogurt, Jamesway, Kay Jewelers, Sterling, Inc., and Forbes Magazine. For years, she taught every spring, summer and fall for Montclair State and for the New Jersey Workshop for the Arts and did a family magic show two to four times per week as long as she could. A member of the IBM, SAM, and MAES, she puts her own spin on many classic magic effects and published her version of a newspaper prediction in the August 2012 issue of MUM. A health setback in 2013 involving two broken ankles forced Beverly into some down time, and more tragedy followed when she and her husband lost their son in 2019. During the pandemic, Beverly rediscovered her guitar, which she had not played since her accident in 1995. As of this writing, magic teaching is on hold for now as she cares for ailing parents, but she still performs for family when she can. In everything, she is proving once more that she is a survivor who lets nothing get in the way of living her dream.
A version of this article originally appeared in the December 2007 The Linking Ring and appears here with permission. Thanks to Beverly Suzàn for updates.
Stargazing
As you might expect, the “S” list is pretty full of names, so I’ll have to give only a selection, with dates when I know them. From England, there is Kerry Scorah (star of TV’s Undercover Magic), Lalla Selbini (1878-1942, who took over the show of the Great Lafayette in 1911), Audrey Shaw of the Wychwoods, Dolly Spence (niece of Will Goldston, who assisted Hardeen in the ‘40s), Stelfane, Elizabeth Stodare (1841-1930), Nellie Sutherland, Valerie Swadling, and Aimee Swaine. Beginning in 2021, Megan Swann has had the honor of being the first female president of The Magic Circle in England.
International women in magic, past and present, include Mademoiselle Sari (Italy), Wilhelmine Schmidt (1865-1944, Finland), Selika (d. 1956, Spain), Madame Selwyn (Australia), Slyvia Schuyer (Holland), mentalist Suhani Shah (India), Sidmaleika (Switzerland), Ray Silver (b. 1932, Scotland), Sittah (the Netherlands), Maneka Sorcar (India), Marion Spadoni (1905-1998, Germany), and Galina Strutinskaya (Ukraine). In Japan, the name Shyokyokusai has been passed down to several performers. There is also Anja Steyn from South Africa, a young magician making a name for herself winning competitions in the youth category. Another young magician is Issy Simpson from the United Kingdom, who made her magic television debut at age 8! She comes from a magic family: her grandfather is UK magician Russ Stevens. Suhani Shah packs stadiums in her native India with her 3 and ½ hour mentalism show.
The United States has produced many successful women in magic: Mrs. A. L. Salvail (1889-1938, mindreader and partner of Adolph L. Salvail), Lola Santos (b. 1935), Mona Santow (a photographer of magicians), Lucille Saxon (d. 1948, who managed Max Holden’s Philadelphia magic shop in the 1940s), early IBM member Ada Schorsch (1874-1940), Maria Schweiter, radio mentalist Signa Serene (1887-1974), Barbara Ann Sheehy, Carroll Shelley (aka Shelly Carroll, now a successful talent agent), Sandra Shields, Luna Shimada, Deanne Shimada (1943-2017, wife of Shimada) and Farrah Siegel.
A Canadian, now living in the U.S., is sideshow stunt performer, magician, and biohacker Anastasia Synn. This extreme magic maker often startles her audiences with her avant garde magic. Anastasia was also married to The Amazing Johnathan, until his passing in 2022. Others from the U.S. include African-American magician Adele Simmons, Lucy Smalley (a student of Suzy Wandas), Dolly Snow (manager of Baker Magic and Novelty Co. in Washington, DC), Sondra, Cindy Spencer, the late and much beloved magician, director, and choreographer Joanie Spina (1953-2014), Abbi Spinner (wife and partner of Jeff McBride), actress Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990), magic video producer Amy Jo Stevens, illusion-designer Marjorie Stuart (1926-2005), and Suzanne, the first woman to win “Close-up Magician of the Year” from the Academy of Magical Arts.
Two American escape artists from the vaudeville era are Sirronje (Mrs. E. J. Norris, 1879-1947) and Mlle Ruth St. Claire (1893-1976).
Finally, four women are fellow collectors and historians of magic: Angela Sanchez, Belinda Sinclair, Julie Sobanski, and Margaret Steele.