News

In today’s Wizard Wednesday we’re delighted to celebrate an old friend of Tannen’s, Frank Brents. After his youth in 1930’s Louisville, he toured the world round with an act producing ducks and doves to the gasping astonishment of children and royalty alike. He later co-founded Monday Night Magic, New York...

To celebrate Black History Month, our Wizard Wednesday series for February will highlight Black magicians of magic’s past. Isaac Willis (1878-1933) was working as a messenger at the White House when the legendary Alexander Herrmann hired the small, spunky seventeen-year-old to play his onstage assistant, Boomsky.  Over Herrmann’s long career,...

Derek DelGaudio’s In & Of Itself is now on Hulu and is enthralling audiences around the world. To celebrate the critically acclaimed show’s release we offer authentic posters from the live show in New York City. It can be difficult to find any official merchandise or memorabilia from In &...

It’s Wednesday, and our wizard today is Harry Anderson. Harry lovingly embraced magic’s cheekier side in theatrical con games, cheating, hustling, bamboozling, and scamming his way to a laugh. Harry the Hat could throw monte with the best and pull the Fast & Loose chain faster and looser than the...

In today’s Wizard Wednesday, we find ourselves face to face with J.B. Bobo. Bobo was a pioneer of school shows beginning in the 1930s. He’d travel with his wife from his home in Texarkana, Texas performing magic shows for children in schools with elegance and humor. Bobo was so successful...

Wizard Wednesday has arrived once more. With the greatest flair and overwhelming panache, Siegfried and Roy spread enchantment throughout the world. Together as undeniable superstars, they established precedents for what a grand theatrical magic show could be. This original photograph of the duo circa 1968 tells a story of the...

It’s Wizard Wednesday, in which we feature a photograph of a performer hanging in the entrance to our shop. This week is an early photograph of Jeff McBride, who remembers his early days at Tannen’s. “1540 Broadway was 'my Tannen's'. My first visit was in 1970. It changed my life...

Charles Carter toured internationally with a show of supreme scale in the Golden Era of magic puzzling and perplexing your not so distant ancestors. His appearances were accompanied not only by a full cast of assistants but also trains full of illusions and a famed lion. This dynamic lithograph was...

In our second Wizard Wednesday, our new series where we show photographs from the walls of our store, we bring you Doug Henning seen visiting the shop in 1976. This photo, which has been marked for cropping by its editor, accompanied a New York Times piece about Doug's favorite places...

Welcome to Wizard Wednesday! In this new weekly series, we will pick a photo from the wall that greets you at our entrance and take an in-depth look at the performer pictured. Since we're in the heart of New York City, we decided to start with a fellow New Yorker:...

Born Claude Conlin, Alexander performed as a mind reader during the height of the vaudeville era. His life of crooked deals, many marriages, murders, and celebrity status is the stuff of lore in the world of magic. He made millions as droves of people lined up to see him affix...

To the untrained eye, this may appear to be an ordinary vintage bathtub. At the turn of the 20th century, however, this bathtub belonged to Harry Houdini.