A Celestial Celebration
PAULA BAIRD
Queen of Magic, Queen of Hearts
2015 was an important year for female magicians in The Magic Circle. Leah Mae Devine was the first female in the club’s 110-year history to be named Young Magician of the Year, and Megan Knowles-Bacon became the first woman elected to office. Now as Megan Swann, she was chosen as The Magic Circle’s first female president in 2021, thirty years after women became eligible for membership in the prestigious British organization. The person to break that barrier in 1991 was Paula Baird. A skilled manipulator, she consistently impressed both lay audiences and her peers with her flawless card, billiard ball, and silk magic. She had an elegant stage manner, performing in a sleeveless gown and removing her props from a hand bag instead of a table. Paula Baird flourished in cabaret and concert venues, though she also had experience with children’s shows, television, wartime troop performances, and magic conventions.
Paula Baird was born in Hastings on May 27, 1918; her father was a second cousin to Logie Baird, the television pioneer. She first caught the magic bug at age twelve after receiving a magic set intended as a Christmas gift for her brother. During the next year she took lessons from Leo Martin and developed sufficient skills to win a young magician competition at St. George’s Hall in 1932. The prize was a box of apparatus from Hamley’s. One newspaper headline read, “Hastings Girl the Best in England—Brother ‘Fed Up.’” She performed a number of paid shows as a teen, billing herself as “The Schoolgirl Magician.” During that period she also took up flying, receiving a pilot’s license at age 17.
During 1938-1939 she received tuition from Stanley Collins, worked as a magic demonstrator at Gamages, and ran a children’s show at the Hastings Pier. After the beginning of the war she joined the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) and made tours of the British Isles and North Africa from 1940 to 1944. The troupe was given the same rations as the soldiers and often had to perform under bad conditions—heat, blowing sand, etc. Dealing with sand inside her thumb tip and between her cards was especially frustrating. During her time in the service, Paula Baird met a medical student named S.E. Slade. The two were married in 1944.
Her professional career flourished in the ‘40s and ‘50s with a manipulative act that changed very little during those decades. As she worked her magic with cards, cigarettes, billiard balls and silks, reviewers consistently praised her “flawless technique,” “beautiful speaking voice,” and her combination of “confidence, polish, and grace” (Abra). “Stately and regal” were the words used in The New Tops, and peers were especially impressed with her skilled handling of Edward Victor’s “Eleven Card Trick,” which she learned from its inventor. She used promotional phrases such as “Magic with Charm” and “Sophisticated Sleeveless Sorcery,” and during the ‘50s she had a TV series called Magic for Mothers.
Paula practiced for several hours each day and reaped the rewards. She won two FISM awards in 1948 and 1949 and was part of the British contingent at the combined IBM/SAM convention in Chicago in 1950, where she wowed the audience despite having to follow Cardini. That same year she received a Silver Wand from the all-male Magic Circle. When women were first admitted as members in 1991, Paula Baird was granted Honorary Membership in recognition of her contributions to the art. She was featured on the cover of The Magic Circular in April of the following year.
Paula Baird experienced some sorrow in her life. She lost a brother in World War II, and her son John, a successful Norwich barrister, died tragically at age 39. She drifted away from magic during the ‘60s, as agents increasingly wanted less skill and more revealing costumes. She became a travel courier in Norwich but continued to make appearances at magic functions. Her card work was described as “still immaculate” in 1965. She was a special guest at the Magic Circle Collectors’ Day in 1992, where she was interviewed by her friend Harry Carson. Paula Franklin Baird Slade, once called the “most accomplished lady sleightster in the world,” died in a Norwich nursing home on November 16, 1998, at the age of 80.
For more information on Paula Baird, see Frances Marshall’s Those Beautiful Dames, Edwin A. Dawes’s Circle without End and Stanley Collins. The April 1992 issue of The Magic Circular contains a feature on her life in magic. An earlier version of this article first appeared in the July 2006 The Linking Ring.
Stargazing
Of course, for the “B” installment of this series, I could have profiled any number of women, past and present. Dates are given when known. The first female magician to perform professionally in the US may have been a Mrs. John Brenon in 1787. Nineteenth-century female illusionists include Victoria Berland of France, Caroline Bernhard of Germany, Madame Bosco (1827-1959) of England and the US, and Kitty Baldwin (1853-1934), who was the “Famous Rosicrucian Somnomist,” opposite her husband Samri. Rosa Bartl (1884-1968) partnered with her husband Janos in his magic shop in Hamburg, Germany, keeping the business going after his death (she was also the sister of magicienne Melanie Leichtmann).
During the First World War, the escapist Madge Belmont (1877-1931) got out of cuffs and other restraints. Daphne Lucille Barnett (1923-1968) was a contemporary of Paula Baird who had much success as a young magician in the Thirties. Also, as “The Deceitful Blonde,” Lucille Burnette (1912-1987) appeared in Dariel Fitzkee’s famous International Magicians in Action show in 1939-40. Hollywood actresses wanted to get into the magic scene, too: Carroll Baker (b. 1931) once had a jewelry-themed act created by Burling Hull, the Oscar-winner Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) enjoyed magic as a hobby, and so did Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968).
Joan Brandon (1914-1979) performed a bar act in the Thirites and Forties and went on to be a successful stage hypnotist. The German Miss Blanche (1910-1989) flourished in the Thirties and later survived Auschwitz. Lillian Bobo (1911-1989) was a crucial part of her husband J.B.’s success for several decades mid-century. During the Sixties, Patricia Bayne (b. 1941) made news with her act as “Miss Hocus Pocus,” and the daughter of Jack Hughes worked in London as Berenice during the same era. Maggie Bonner read minds in Britain in the Eighties.
More recent performers include the “Duchess of Deception” Joycee Beck and trade-show favorite Karen Beriss. Two Vegas performers, Ariann Black and Connie Boyd, have become prominent researchers of and advocates for women in magic, with Ariann writing a series “Conjuring Women” for MUM and Connie receiving a Special Fellowship from the AMA in 2022. There are two gifted magicians from Texas, Becky Blaney and Trixie Bond. Lin Bin of China wowed audiences at FISM in 2003. Megumi Biddle of Japan is a magician and silhoutte cutter. I should also mention Houdini’s niece Marie Blood (1917-2004), who made frequent appearances at magic conventions. And who could leave out the Blackstone women: Inez, Billie, Betsy, Gay, and Bellamie?