A compilation of the very best methods of producing lighted cigarettes. Covers all the various sleights and moves for this production. 36 illustrations. The last chapter takes up the pipe production, which is always a popular finish with cigarette manipulators.
This is the third printing of a booklet which made its first appearance in 1936. The format is somewhat different from that of the second printing, with a slight reduction in the size of page and type, but the contents remain the same. In its latest form, Producing Lighted Cigarettes is a 24-page pamphlet, with three pages of advertising and 18 of actual text, illustrated with 36 helpful line drawings. It is bound in soft boards.
Producing Lighted Cigarettes is described in a prefatory statement as "a collection of ideas and methods used by the foremost manipulators of lighted cigarettes," and this description appears to be accurate enough. The author gives instructions for making "fake cigarettes" from discarded playing cards; tells how to perform the Super Pantomime Cigarette Trick, in which the performer "rolls a cigarette" without the use of tobacco or paper, lights it with an imaginary match, and is immediately seen to be smoking a real, not a phantom cigarette; and explains a pipe production with which to bring a cigarette act to a striking finish. For the most part, however, the pamphlet deals with sleights for "catching" lighted cigarettes in the air. There are a dozen such sleights, all of which appear to be practicable.
We have never included cigarette tricks in our program, but if we should ever undertake to do so we would, at the outset, give heed to the advice of a very expert cigarette manipulator who tells us that all the information a cigarette "worker" needs can be found in Enochs' Producing Lighted Cigarettes and Clark's Celebrated Cigarettes. As Mr. Enochs himself states, the "ideas" contained in his booklet "are not built into a definite routine." The outstanding merit of Mr. Clark's pamphlet, on the other hand, is its clear, detailed explanation of every step in an established "cigarette act." It will be apparent that each of these treatises supplements the other, for Mr. Enochs provides the sleights and Mr. Clark the routine. The combination is an excellent one, and we recommend it highly to magicians who wish to become cigarette manipulators.