Joseph Dunninger
Dunninger had a remarkable career spanning over 70 years and was one of the foremost mind readers in American show business history.
Early life
The amazing Dunninger was born Joseph Dunninger in Brooklyn, New York City on 28th April, 1892.
He was the youngest son of Nickolas and Carolene Dunninger, he had two elder brothers Louie and Max.
His father was a successful textile manufacturer and as a child Dunninger would spend time at his father’s shop, during one visit he met Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull and was fascinated with their tales of the Old West.
Dunninger maintained an interest in this area throughout his life.
His interest in magic started at the age of five years old after he saw some street performers. He soon taught himself magic, beginning with card tricks and performed his first paid show when he was seven at a Masonic hall in New York. He was billed as Master Joseph Dunninger Child Magician.
After seeing a performance by the great Harry Kellar, Dunninger knew that he wanted to be a magical performer. By the time he was a teenager, he’d developed an impressive reputation and was invited to perform at the homes of Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison.
Sometime around 1913 he appeared at the famous Eden Musee in Manhattan, New York. In the early days he was billed as The Mysterious Dunninger, his performances included escapology, magic and illusions.
In the 1920’s he became a part of the Keith Orpheum’s Vaudeville circuit, during this tour Dunninger was inspired by a two-person mind reading act. Dunninger soon developed his own mind reading act which became a hit. He headlined the circuit and was in high demand for private performances.
Mind reader
Dunninger’s ability to read minds, soon got the attention of Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston, being inspired by Houdini, he took part in the crusade against fraudulent mediums and wrote a book exposing the tricks of mediumship called: Inside the Medium’s Cabinet.
He claimed to replicate spiritualist phenomena using trickery and also explained how the Indian rope trick could be performed with camera trickery. He was a collector of both historical magic props and books, his personal library once held over 30,000 books.
TV and Radio
Dunninger’s rise to fame coincided with the arrival of radio.
He was the first paid entertainer to go live on air, he performed a demonstration of hypnosis by radio. In 1943, Dunninger’s first broadcast as Dunninger the Master Mind was produced, it was a huge success with fan mail flooding broadcasting offices and tickets to the show were the most demanded of all shows.
Dunninger was also there when television started to become a popular form of entertainment, he adapted his act for television and he soon got his own TV series. He made regular guest appearances on other shows and he appeared on TV frequently in the 1950s and 60s.
Each TV show had a weekly Brain buster which was an impossible test of Dunninger’s inexplicable powers. Some of the tests were quite bizarre, he would divine objects sealed in cans that were frozen in blocks of ice or concrete and Dunninger never failed. Whilst performing on radio and TV, he still performed live shows and was paid extremely well.
Not only was Dunninger a brilliant performer, he was also a marketing genius, he could sell himself to any audience. To keep himself in the public eye, he wrote articles for both magicians and lay people.
He also wrote a number of books and he coined the phrase:
To those who believe, no explanation is necessary.
For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.
Later life and death
To the public Dunninger was different from other magicians and his type of magic seemed real to them. He was so popular that on the 12th March 1944, Life magazine dedicated 8 pages to his radio show.
Although Dunninger wasn’t without his critics, his show Dunninger The Master Mentalist came under fire from magicians, academics and journalists for claiming to be the real thing; A genuine mind reader.
He was quoted as saying:
My work is 60 percent mind reading, 10 percent psychology, 10 percent hypnosis, 15 percent self hypnosis and 5 percent magic. All of which adds up to 100 percent entertainment.
Audiences soon became bored with Dunninger’s stunts, there was no longer an air of dramatic tension as he would never fail.
Ratings dropped and Dunninger was eventually cancelled. His final series of programs for TV were recorded in 1971 but never broadcast.
By this time, he’d retired from performing and was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he became reclusive and rarely left his home.
On the 9th March, 1975, at the age of 82 Joseph Dunninger died at his home in New Jersey. He will always be remembered as a pioneer of magic on radio and television.
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