Hugh R. Johnston

(USA: 22nd September 1893 - 3rd December 1957)

Pro vaudeville cardman since 1904 or 1905. Nominally co-author (actually entirely written by F.B. Sterling a.ka. M.S. Mahendra) of Modern Card Miracles: A Complete Card-Act with Patter (1919). Trick in Felsman's (Oct 1919).

His daughter B. Jean Johnston writes:

My father, Hugh R. Johnston was a child prodigy, who performed a one man show at the age of eight years old at the Lewis Theater in Chicago according to my Grandmother, Anna J. Johnston. The first photo I have of him performing is as a teen. He and Manuel were the two magicians put up for the famous $5,000 "Challenge" by the Chicago Conjurer's Club in 1919. He also founded the first School of Magic in the U.S. in 1919 in the Baltimore Building in Chicago. By the following month, fully one third of the Chicago Conjurer's Club members had enrolled in his school. He was only 26 at the time. He was also an inventor of magic, including "The Johnston Shuffle."

Everyone wanted to take credit for this timeless magic book. In 1937, eighteen years after it was published, the famous magic historian H. Adrian Smith exposed Julian J. Proskauer's plagiarizing of it in with his almost word for word copy called "How Ja Do That?" in Tops, causing a huge scandal as Proskauer had held offices up to President in many magical societies.