Carl March
(Brooklyn, NY: 16th March 1920 – Santa Monica, CA: 17th March 2010)
Pseudonym of Sidney Albert Fleischman. Writer. Inspired at age 9 seeing Harry Snyder, a carnival sleight-of-hand artist. Amateur sleight-of-hand as "Sid Fleischman" and "Carl March" (Carl from Carl Stenquist, and March from his birth month). Pet effects: Cards to Pocket, 3-Shell Game, Linking Rings. Invented Card from the Fly (1938), Million Dollar Gimmick (by 1944), The Lady Disrobes (by 1944), and Floating Room Only (1947 with Bob Gunther).
Wrote Between Cocktails--With a Packet of Matches (1940, 32pp; repr 1962), Mr. Mysterious' Secrets of Magic (1975), and The Charlatan's Handbook (1993, 228pp). Also 5 booklets (all with Bob Gunther): Ready, Aim—Magic!, Call the Witness (1943, 30pp), Top Secrets (1947), The Blue Bug (1947, 19pp), and Call the Next Witness [1940s]. Tricks in Jinx (including as "Albert Sidney"), Genii, Hugard's Magic Monthly, and Magick.
Also wrote 1987 Newbery Award-winning children's fiction book about a family of magicians in the Old West, Mr. Mysterious and Company (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1962, 151pp; translated into 14 languages). It also won the 1969 Mark Twain Award and Lewis Carroll Award. Autobio is The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer's Life (1996, 198pp), which won the 1996 American Library Association's non-fiction book-of-the-year award.
