Top magician of his day. 1875-1942.
http://www.themagicdetective.com/2011/05/just-max.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/04/05/secrets-of-the-magus
Ricky Jay. In “Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women” Jay devotes a chapter to “Max Malini: The Last of the Mountebanks.” Malini, who was born in 1873, stood five feet two, had short arms and unusually small hands, dressed like a dandy, spoke English with a comically heavy Eastern European accent, and was celebrated as the most astonishing sleight-of-hand artist of his day. He performed all over the world, for Presidents, prime ministers, robber barons, emperors, kings, and Al Capone. Jay quotes Nate Leipzig, “a master exponent of pure magic technique” and a contemporary of Malini’s: “I would give up everything I know in magic just to get the reaction Malini does from vanishing a single coin.” At a dinner party where Dai Vernon was present, Malini borrowed a female guest’s hat, spun a half-dollar on the table, and covered it with the hat, which he then lifted to reveal not the coin but a block of ice. Though Vernon knew ahead of time that this effect would be performed, he later reported that Malini, who had remained at the table throughout the meal, “fooled the hell out of me.” Jay recounts this and other Malini anecdotes with a mixture of delight and wistfulness. In a just universe, he seems to imply, he himself would have been in Leipzig’s and Vernon’s shoes, playing to the same discerning audiences that witnessed Malini’s exemplary talents. He writes, “Malini was rarely featured on music hall or theatre stages, even though he performed in the heyday of the great illusionists. Yet far more than Malini’s contemporaries, the famous conjurers Herrmann, Kellar, Thurston, and Houdini, Malini was the embodiment of what a magician should be—not a performer who requires a fully equipped stage, elaborate apparatus, elephants, or handcuffs to accomplish his mysteries, but one who can stand a few inches from you and with a borrowed coin, a lemon, a knife, a tumbler, or a pack of cards convince you he performs miracles.”
https://www.chambermagic.com/blog/max-malini-booklet/
https://www.chambermagic.com/blog/max-malinis-calling-card/
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