Booth, John Nicholls (1912-2009) and Edith Kriger (1907-1982)

Booth, John Nicholls (1912-2009) and Edith Kriger (1907-1982) John was a Minister, Author, Magician, Lecturer and Cinematographer. Rev. Booth's magic career began before his ministry and continued throughout those years and beyond. He was a mentor and wrote several classical books on magic. Sec 7; Row 33; # 5

JOHN BOOTH PHOTO GALLERY
John was a pioneer of performing on television, appearing on such a program as early as 1931 and later with his own show.

Maybe you'd like to know something about the chap on the cover - Magician, minister, lecturer, traveler, writer. John Booth has fame in all fields.

Born August 7, 1912 in Meadville, Pa., where his father was studying for the ministry, he was a resident of Canada for most of his early life.

The lure of distant horizons got into his blood as the result of a trip to England with his parents before he was ten years old. In 1931, he covered much of New England by foot and the next year vagabonded by road and box-car to the Olympic Games as a representative of the Canadian Press, on the way climbing peaks in Colorado, and experiencing other adventures. The next year he treked across Mexico with a pack on his back, scaled 18,000 foot Popocatepetl, was snow blind for several days, and was caught in a hurricane aboard a Mexican schooner. In 1939, he covered the South American continent, giving shows - Magic of course - in almost every country there and married a girl he met in Panama.

In Magic, John has pursued the art since 1927, when Karl Germaine and W. J. Lee took an interest in him. He played society dates to pay his way through McMaster University, and in 1934-36 had his own lyceum type of show playing schools in New York and the Mid-West. Summers he did an escape act in leading amusement parks of Canada and the United States, using a Houdini Milk Can. In 1936, he turned to vaudeville and night club work and after eight months was signed by the William Morris office as one of its three under-contract Magicians - the others were Cardini and Tommy Martin.

In the past three years John has maintained his magical contacts by lecturing on mental telepathy and Magic, being booked on courses with such personalities as Burton Holmes, H. V. Kaltenborn, Madame Wellington Koo, Alfred Noyes, and other top lecturers. He also is one of the pioneer performers in television, appearing on such a program as early as 1931. His work in the past two years has been in the field of mind reading and telepathy, and Magicians will remember some of his outstanding stunts at the IBM convention in St. Louis - one of them the prediction of the outcome of the Louis-Conn fight, which John hit "right on the button."

Besides performing Magic, John has become articulate in print and his several books on magical subjects have been reprinted and are still selling big. His "Forging Ahead in Magic" and "Marvels of Mystery" are among the best in magical literature. Among his other books are Super Magical Miracles and Magical Mentalism. In 1940, John retired from Magic as a profession to pursue a career in another field to which he felt an irresistable urge; some define it as "a call". He entered the University of Chicago and in three years emerged with a B.D. degree. At present he is minister of the Church of All Souls (Unitarian) located near the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, 111., an historic little church in whose congregation one out of every seventeen is registered in Who's Who of America. John's in that book too - as one of three or four Magicians.

As the Rev. John Nicholls Booth, he is the author of two books, "The Quest for Preaching Power" and "Introducing Unitarianism". He has a program over Television Station WBKB, Chicago, entitled "Looking at Life", the only regularly televised program by a minister in the United States. In June the Billboard, reviewed the program, saying in part: "Booth, we believe, is a video find, with an easy-going informal manner of speaking of the best tele commentators. His entire talk concerned important findings in the field of psychology and psychiatry, and despite the difficult subject matter, he never referred to notes, nor did he ever become ponderous." With all this in his background, and an important church in his charge, John is still actively interested in Magic and the lecturing field, and makes flying trips to various and widespread parts of the country to fulfill such engagements.

With Magicians, he's still respected and admired for his ideas and performances, and on his part he is still avidly interested in all activities of the magical fraternity.

John Booth (1912 - 2009) was born John Nicholls Booth and became a successful nightclub magician before leaving magic in 1940 to pursue a career as a Unitarian minister.

A prolific author, he penned hundreds of articles on magic for Linking Ring, Sphinx, Genii and Magicol, as well as publishing Canada's magic magazine, Canadian Magician's Digest in 1929. In 1931, he organized Canada's first magic convention. In 1938 he also worked as "Jancini".

Booth eventually incorporated magic into his lectures and conducted the funeral service for Eugene Laurant. He was a world traveler and had climbed the Himalayas.

Booth was the author of the longest running column in Linking Ring Magazine of magic history called "Memoirs of a Magician's Ghost" which started in May 1963 and didn't conclude until January 2000 (435 monthly installments). The first 25 years of these writings were indexed by Ben Robinson and Amy Janiello and published as a book under the same title "Memoirs of a Magician's Ghost" (1988)

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