A Celestial Celebration
MARIAN DAY
“The Midwest’s Leading Lady Magician”
A tiny handful of Chicago magicians who go back seventy-five years still remember Marian Day, who had a brief but successful career during the 1940s, billing herself as “The Midwest’s Leading Lady Magician.” Although her day job during the War years involved inspecting airplane parts and sometimes involved her being gone from home up to twelve hours per day, this busy woman also managed to raise a daughter and perform hundreds of shows for schools, PTAs, churches, and fraternal organizations in the Chicago area and in surrounding states.
Marian Day was born Hazel Marian Hartman on October 13, 1910. Her parents were farmers, and Hazel was one of five children growing up in DeKalb, Illinois. She received her education at the University of Michigan, Radcliffe, and the University of Chicago. Her schooling was far more extensive than that of her husband, Richard Vail, whom she married in 1937. He only finished the 8th grade and worked various jobs as a salesman and taxi driver. Hazel’s interest in magic began five years after her marriage, when she learned some effects from Mike Zens (1877-1952), who recommended that she join the Chicago Magigals.
That was 1942, and her career continued for several years. She performed a two-hour show in top hat and tails, doing illusions, card magic, rope tricks, and escapes. Her signature effect was the production of a huge rabbit named Johnnie, which often afforded her great publicity pictures for the local newspaper. She was an excellent marketer. Her show was called “Magic with Laughs,” and Marian’s motto was “We Need Laughs to Live.”
In 1944 she opened Marian Day’s Magic Studio on the second floor of a building in downtown Evanston. She told Robert K. Miller, who was a young Chicago magician at the time, that she opened the shop to increase her credibility in being booked as a professional magician. Dell O’Dell would do the same thing a decade later in Hollywood. Marian promoted her shop by running ads in the magic magazines and in Popular Mechanics. Bill Hawley, another teen magician, remembers the thrill of knowing that a magician would be opening a shop “closer than an El ride to Chicago’s Loop.” He loved hanging out there after school and on weekends with similarly inclined friends. In fact, Hawley stayed at the shop so much that Marian let him handle customers on occasion, “including a couple of times when she left the store with me in charge.”
Robert Miller also recalls her as a huge booster of the IBM, giving membership applications endorsed by herself and her husband Dick to young magician customers. She signed Robert’s application when he was in high school in 1946, and since then he has had continuous membership for seven decades. Marian made close friendships with her young customers, so much so that she once asked Robert to teacher her daughter how to ride a bicycle.
Marian Day was profiled in the May 1944 issue of Genii on Geraldine Larsen’s “Magigals Page.” She was also an active member of the Wisconsin Houdini Club and performed at its Annual Conclave at Eagle River in 1944. In 1946 she did a needle act at the St. Louis IBM Convention and published a card trick in Walter Gibson’s New Conjurors’ Magazine the same year. Marian’s husband became her manager, and the list of her clients was lengthy, including many, many repeat dates.
Poor health forced her to retire from the stage, but she always retained her interest in magic. Even at age 52, she could still do Houdini’s needle trick (using 25 needles) for Ring 43 meetings in Chicago. After her husband passed away, Marian Day moved to Sarasota, Florida, in 1979, where she lived until her death on July 10, 1983, at the age of 72. She was survived by her daughter Frances.
I’d like to dedicate this article to the late Amy Dawes (1929-2014), a pioneer in researching women in magic, especially in the UK. A version of this article originally appeared in the September 2006 The Linking Ring. I appreciate Robert K. Miller and William Hawley for sharing their memories of Marian for this update.
Stargazing
In this series I am trying to provide a variety of profiles of current and past, famous and not-so-famous women in magic. The list of names I could have featured in this installment is quite long. Dates are given when known. From the distant past, it would include Madame De Lonno (1851-1897), “Queen of Wizards,” who was the wife and partner of Leotard Bosco in the nineteenth century. Mademoiselle Aimee Desiree wielded a wand in the 1890s; she was the wife of English magician G.W. Hunter. Also, Madame Dante (1873-1946) toured from 1900 to 1903 after her husband Oscar Eliason died tragically in New Zealand. Madame Cora De LaMond (d. 1902) had a lengthy international career touring from the 1870s to the 1890s.
A woman named Miss Dexteria was performing a cabinet illusion in London in 1905, and Mademoiselle Dicka from France was working at the turn of the century with beautiful full-color lithographs. Violetta De Land presented a packing case escape in England in 1906, and Mae Delkano (1874-?) was an American handcuff queen of the same era. A ventriloquist from Hertsfordshire, Wynne DeLyle (1903-1953) performed in the Thirties. Also in that decade, Gene Dennis (1904-1948) read minds as “The Wonder Girl.” Gloria Dea (1922-2023) entertained West Coast audiences in the US as a teenager and holds the distinction of being the first magician to perform in a Las Vegas casino. Not just the first female magician—the first magician, period. Her 100th birthday was attended by David Copperfield, Teller, and other Vegas celebrities in 2022.
The Forties were a great time for magicians, and that includes female conjurers. Ruth Dore (1926-2015, daughter of Theo Dore) performed magic during that decade, as did Jerry Dawn (wife of the deaf magician Steve Miaco), Rita de Lara (1896-1969) and Rita Del Gardia (1899-1966). Donna Delbert (1913-1991) was one of the more unusual feminine magicians of the Forties, as she was actually Delbert Hill in drag. The actress Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) learned magic from Orson Welles and served as one of his assistants on the 1943 Mercury Wonder Show. Harriet Dreilinger (1918-2018) did magic in New York in the Forties and Fifties. Dunninger’s wife Chrystal (1898-1982) learned sleight-of-hand from her husband and from Slydini. Bill Dodson’s wife Betty (1912-1993) conjured on her own in the Fifties, and so did Paula Dolan, “the Dancing Illusionist.”
In England later in the century, Dolores Johnson was popular in the Sixties with an act titled “Dell and Her Doves.” There have been a number of female magicians in recent years in the UK (Dallas, Hayley Anna Dancy, Danielle, and Mandy Davis). The youngest is Leah Mae Devine, the first female to win The Magic Circle’s Young Magician of the Year title (2015). One also recalls the Davenport women: Julia (1882-1909), Wynne (1891-1981), and Betty (b. 1934). Among the French, one of the most skilled women in magic is Alexandra Duvivier, who appeared on the cover of Genii in June 2013. She is the daughter of Dominique Duvivier. A magician in her own right, Marge Dean is the wife and partner of the late Canadian performer Dicky Dean.
More recent American magicians include the first female President of the SAM, Margaret Dailey (1919-2003). Mark Kornhauser’s former wife has performed magic on cruise ships as Deja, the “Diva of Deception.” Dove is an essential part of the duo Goldfinger and Dove, who are also the 2022 Allan Slaight Lifetime Achievement recipients. One of the most successful lady magicians and escape artists is Dorothy Dietrich, whose daredevil stunts have amazed television and live audiences from the ‘70s to the present. She was the first woman to escape from a straitjacket suspended 150 feet in the air from a burning rope, and she is one of few women to perform the bullet-catch. She and her husband operate a Houdini museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Joan DuKore appeared with Ariann Black and Luna Shimada in the Ladies of Illusion Show in Las Vegas in 2007 and has made a name for herself in magic ever since. Kayla Drescher performs “Magic in Heels” in LA. Lucy Darling is the alter-ego and stage name of Canadian performer Carisa Hendrix. Dania Diaz is from Venezuela and has flourished on Spain’s Got Talent, America’s Got Talent, and Penn and Teller’s Fool Us. Anna DeGuzman has made a name for herself performing magic on social media and making to the finals in the 2023 version of America’s Got Talent. Finally, Lyn Dillies has a lively and colorful illusion show. Her 2013 book titled Your Vote is Magic, tells the story behind one of her most famous illusions, producing a live elephant and donkey at a voting rally in Bedford, Massachusetts, before the 2008 Presidential election.