Women in Magic

Mary Ann has to be one of the busiest women in magic. As a performer, she is, of course, a model for female magicians; but it is her creative use of magic as a financial teaching tool that can be an inspiration for any performer.

While it is true that printing up business cards and investing in a set of linking rings does not make one a magician, there are certainly worse things in life than having a brief fling as a conjurer. So meet Marietta Poole, who can represent all her sisters who never achieved great success in magic.

One of the first female members of The Magic Circle, Paula Baird was a skilled manipulator, and consistently impressed both lay audiences and her peers with her flawless magic. Meet this two-time FISM award winner and find out how she charmed the crowd with card manipulation, despite following Cardini.

She was a resilient, pioneering magician who had a family with strong magic ties. She also grew up performing on stage. When her father died in 1939, she took over his show and as a young, Black woman, she toured successfully through the segregated South.

Women have done quite a bit of fortune-telling, crystal-gazing, and mind-reading, especially during the vaudeville era. Many were flash-in-the-pan acts, but one who lasted for over fifteen years—often as a headliner—was Leona LaMar, “The Girl with 1,000 Eyes.”

Okay, I admit, "X" was a tough letter, so I blended what I had on magicians filed under "X" for this series, and blended it with my entry for "Y." So consider this a two for one! Here, you will learn a few X magicians and also about an English magician, The Wizardette, who was also called England's leading magician in 1936.

Madam Zomah's real name was Adelaide Ellen Giddings, and she and her husband, Alfred James Giddings, performed a telepathy act as “The Marriotts” until 1910, when they changed the name to the Zomahs.

She married into magic early in life, at the age of nineteen. With no theatrical training in her formative years, Emma Reno was a quick and agile student of magic, and soon had her own magic act allowing her and her husband to maintain not one but two successful acts in the early 1900s.

Learn more about Dell O’Dell, the glamorous, comedy magicienne and television pioneer, and discover how she became to be known as “The World’s Leading Lady Magician.”