When he was 7, Marshall went to a magic performance by Harry Houdini. He admits he fell asleep during the show, but it set him on his path: he went to many magic shows, then sold his bicycle to buy a magic course through the mail — and a magician was born.
He starred from vaudeville to Vegas to the South Pacific during World War II, where he entertained fellow troops with ventriloquist acts, using a sock puppet since he couldn’t take a ventriloquist’s dummy. He also appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show 14 times, but Marshall didn’t just perform magic, he researched and wrote about it, culminating in a three-volume manual for magicians co-authored with his wife.
“He was the primary source on so many things,” says Teller of Penn & Teller. When it came to magic, he says, Marshall was “the British Library and the Library of Congress combined.” Marshall has been the Dean of the Society of American Magicians since 1992 — and will hold that title until his magic wand is broken at his grave site. He died May 10 from a heart attack. He was 85.