Select Secrets: Rare & Important Magicana

Freer, Winston. “Gwynne’s Authentic Hindu Levitation” Manuscript. Three-page typescript embellished with several elaborate drawings, and dated March 28, 1939. Freer outlines the presentation of a levitation illusion performed surrounded on a nightclub floor, in effect “pitching” it to Gwynne and offering to build the illusion. The lady is first suspended on the tips of three swords, which are removed – through her body – leaving her suspended in space. Three 4to pages with old folds and chips, signed three times by Freer. Gwynne performed several suspensions and levitations over the course of his storied career, but this Freer-designed prop was, as far as current research would suggest, never constructed. While Freer goes to great pains to explain the presentation of the effect and its selling points in this manuscript, he does not describe the method. He does allude to the penetration of the swords being tipped to him by Horace Marshall (the manuscript was written in Akron, Ohio, Marshall’s hometown), and he also alludes to the method of “invisibility” he has devised to accomplish the feat. The biggest clue as to the method may be in the diagrams drawn by Freer which show not only some of the stage direction, but also the position of the apparatus in a ring of light outlined by a series of floor-standing spotlights. Freer is perhaps best remembered today as a troubled genius who devised dozens if not hundreds of unusual magic tricks and illusions with uncommon methods. His one-man suspension is the most highly regarded of these, a feat he devised and performed with an audience volunteer and, apparently, no visible apparatus.