Ricky Jay
Born Richard Jay Potash
June 26, 1946
Brooklyn, New York, New York, U.S.
Died November 24, 2018 (aged 72)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation Magician, actor, author
Richard Jay Potash (June 26, 1946[1] – November 24, 2018), known professionally as Ricky Jay, was an American stage magician, actor, bibliophile, and writer.[2] In a profile for the New Yorker, Mark Singer called Jay “perhaps the most gifted sleight of hand artist alive”. In addition to sleight of hand, Jay was known for his card tricks, card throwing, memory feats, and stage patter. He also wrote extensively on magic and its history. His acting credits included the films The Prestige, The Spanish Prisoner, Mystery Men, Heist, Boogie Nights, Tomorrow Never Dies, House of Games, and Magnolia, and the HBO series Deadwood. In 2015 he was the subject of an episode of PBS’s American Masters, making him the first (and to this date only) magician to have ever been profiled in that series.
Jay preferred not to discuss the details of his childhood. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on an unspecified date, probably in 1946, to Samuel Potash and Shirley Katz A member of a middle-class Jewish family, he grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He never spoke publicly about his parents, with the exception of a single anecdote: “My father oiled his hair with Brylcreem and brushed his teeth with Colgate,” Jay recalled. “He kept his toothpaste in the medicine cabinet and the Brylcreem in a closet about a foot away. Once, when I was ten, I switched the tubes. All you need to know about my father is that after he brushed his teeth with Brylcreem he put the toothpaste in his hair.”[3] His grandfather, Max Katz, was a certified public accountant and amateur magician who introduced Jay to magic.
Jay first performed in public at the age of seven, in 1953, when he appeared on the television program Time For Pets[12]. He is most likely the youngest magician to perform a full magic act on TV, the first magician to ever play comedy clubs, and probably the first magician to open for a rock and roll band. At New York’s Electric Circus in the 1960s, he performed on a bill between Ike and Tina Turner and Timothy Leary, who lectured about LSD.
He quickly developed a “cult” following among magic aficionados, and a reputation for sleight-of-hand feats that baffled even his colleagues. In his 1993 New Yorker profile of Jay, Mark Singer related the following story from playwright David Mamet and theater director Gregory Mosher:
Some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, [Jay] was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher’s named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card. “Three of clubs,” Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card. He turned over the three of clubs. Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, “Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card.” After an interval of silence, Jay said, “That’s interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time.” Mosher persisted: “Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card.” Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, “This is a distinct change of procedure.” A longer pause. “All right—what was the card?” “Two of spades.” Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card. The deuce of spades. A small riot ensued.
Three of Jay’s one-man shows, Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, Ricky Jay: On the Stem, and Ricky Jay: A Rogue’s Gallery, were directed by Mamet, who also cast Jay in a number of his films. Jay played Gupta, a henchman to villain Elliot Carver, in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and appeared in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Magnolia, as well as Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige.
A collector and historian of note, he was a student and friend of Dai Vernon, whom he called “the greatest living contributor to the magical art.” He was an avid collector of rare books and manuscripts, art, and other artifacts connected to the history of magic, gambling, unusual entertainments, and frauds and confidence games. Jay opposed any public revelations of the techniques of magic.
Jay joined the cast of the HBO western drama Deadwood as a recurring character and writer for the first season in 2004, playing card sharp Eddie Sawyer. He wrote the episode “Jewel’s Boot Is Made for Walking”[13] and left the series at the end of the first season.
Until recently, Jay was listed in the Guinness Book of Records for throwing a playing card 190 ft at 90 miles per hour (140 km/h) (the current record is 216 feet (66 m) by Rick Smith, Jr.). He could throw a playing card into a watermelon rind (which he referred to as the “thick, pachydermatous outer melon layer” of “the most prodigious of household fruits”) from ten paces. In addition, he was able to throw a card into the air like a boomerang and cut it cleanly in half with a pair of “giant scissors” upon its return. In his shows, he often attacked plastic animals with thrown cards in “self defense.”
As an expert on magic, gambling, con games and unusual entertainment, Jay had long been a go-to consultant on Hollywood projects, beginning with his work on Francis Ford Coppola’s production of Caleb Deschanel’s The Escape Artist. Other early work included teaching Robert Redford how to manipulate coins for The Natural and working with Douglas Trumbull on his groundbreaking Showscan project New Magic (1983).
In the early 1990s, Jay and Michael Weber created a firm, Deceptive Practices, providing “Arcane Knowledge on a Need-to-Know Basis” to film, television and stage productions. By offering both vast historical expertise and creative invention, they were able to provide surprising practical solutions to real production challenges. Among many accomplishments, they designed the wheelchair that “magically” hid Gary Sinise’s legs in Forrest Gump; the glass that “drinks itself” used by the gorilla in Congo; and an illusion “in which a man climbs to the top of a ladder of light and vanishes in midair” for the Broadway production of Angels in America: Perestroika.
Other projects they worked on included The Prestige,[16] The Illusionist, Sneakers, Leap of Faith, Wolf, The Parent Trap, I Love Trouble, The Great Buck Howard, Heartbreakers, and Ocean’s Thirteen.
Additionally, he worked with libraries and museums on their collections, including the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts and the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California.
Jay died on November 24, 2018, aged 72. His attorney Stan Coleman confirmed his death; further details were not immediately released.
Television
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (October 26, 1970)
Saturday Night Live (1977)
The Ricky Jay Magic Show – BBC special (1978)
Dinah! (July 11, 1979)
The John Davidson Show (November 28, 1980)
Simon & Simon – Bird (1983)
The Paul Daniels Magic Show (1985)
Arsenio (1988)
Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women – 1 hour special for American TV (1989)
The Secret Cabaret (two series made by Open Media for Channel 4, UK)
D.L. Hughley Breaks the News (January 10, 1990)
Civil Wars – Lenny NiCastro (November 11, 1991)
Late Show with David Letterman (1994, 2013)
The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky – Hawkes (1995)
Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants – 1 hour version of his Off-Broadway show, taped for HBO (1996)
Hustlers, Hoaxsters, Pranksters, Jokesters and Ricky Jay (1996)
American Masters – “Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light” (1996)
Late Night with Conan O’Brian (1998, 2002)
The X-Files – The Amazing Maleeni / Herman Pinchbeck / Albert Pinchbeck in “The Amazing Maleeni” (2000)
MythBusters – Episode 20, “Exploding Jawbreaker, Static Cannon, Deadly Playing Cards.” Jay demonstrated card throwing, and the speed of his throws was clocked. (2003)
Deadwood – Eddie Sawyer (2004), Season 1
Kidnapped – Roger Prince (2006–07)
The Unit – Agent Kern (2007–09)
Lie to Me – Mason Brock (2009)
FlashForward – Man in Warehouse / Ted Flosso (2009–10)
60 Minutes – Interviewed by Morley Safer for segment, “Pigeon Fever”[27] (2010)
The Simpsons – plays himself in episode “The Great Simpsina” (2011)
Teen Titans Go! – plays voice in Robin’s head in episode “The Date” (2013)
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (March 31, 2014)
Getting On – Thoracic Surgeon (2014)
Film
House of Games (1987) – George / Vegas Man
Things Change (1988) – Mr. Silver
Homicide (1991) – Aaron
Leap of Faith (1992) – Cons and Frauds Consultant
The Spanish Prisoner (1997) – George Lang
Boogie Nights (1997) – Kurt Longjohn
Hacks (1997) – The Hat
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) – Henry Gupta
Mystery Men (1999) – Vic Weems
Magnolia (1999) – Burt Ramsey / Narrator
State and Main (2000) – Jack
Heartbreakers (2001) – Dawson’s Auctioneer
Heist (2001) – Don “Pinky” Pincus
Incident at Loch Ness (2004) – Party Guest #5
Last Days (2005) – Detective
The Prestige (2006) – Milton
The Great Buck Howard (2008) – Gil Bellamy
Redbelt (2008) – Marty Brown
The Brothers Bloom (2008) – Narrator (voice)
The Automatic Hate (2015) – Uncle Josh
Intense (2009) – John
The Automatic Hate (2015) – Uncle Josh (final film role)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia