Alexander The Man Who Knows
Alexander was born Claude Alexander Conlin in Hanson, Dakota on 30 June 1880. His parents were Irish immigrants and they had two children; Claude and his brother Clarence. As a boy, Claude spent a lot of his time hunting and fishing, but was always fascinated by the travelling shows whenever they visited town. This sparked a curiosity in the young boy which led to him making regular trips to the magic section of his local library.
After leaving school at 17, he decided to travel and found work at the famous spiritualist resort of Lily Dale in New York and this is where his real education started. During his time at Lily Dale he discovered the ways of fraudulent mediums, he learnt about slate writing, billet switching, rope ties and all the other spiritualist tricks of the trade but arguably the most valuable lesson that Alexander learnt at Lily Dale was the psychology of psychics, which allowed them to make their simple tricks seem like miracles.
After leaving Lily Dale, Alexander joined the Alaskan gold rush and it was during this time that he was suspected of shooting a gangster by the name of Soapy Smith. Although many have said the whole story was made up to add to the mystery of Alexander.
After working a few other jobs here and there, he started working as a psychic, telling prospectors where they could find gold.
He gave his first stage performance in 1898 but he didn’t consider magic as a career until he returned to Seattle in 1902. He started performing as Alexander The Great on the Vaudeville circuit as an illusionist.
Fate seemed to play a big part in Alexander’s life, one morning after a phone call asking him to leave his hotel in San Francisco, he was crossing the street when the hotel collapsed following an earthquake.
Fate turned up again after a blizzard stopped trains from transporting the props for his show, one of his assistants suggested he perform his mind reading set as the main act. Alexander was reluctant but had no other choice and after the success of his mind reading act he never looked back.
Alexander took inspiration from other mentalists at that time, he returned to San Francisco and began his psychic act. To add a sense of mysticism he began wearing a turban and performed with a crystal ball as Alexander The Man Who Knows.
He promoted his act as a form of mind reading, he also performed as a psychic and earned more money as a psychic than he did as a stage performer. During his show, audience members would give Alexander questions in sealed envelopes which he would answer with amazing accuracy. The show was a huge success and toured theatres across the United States and Canada. He made millions from ticket sales and probably even more from selling books, crystals and other merchandise through his mail order business. Alexander went on to travel the world and had many powerful friends in show business.
One of his biggest strengths was his ability to understand marketing. He was involved with every aspect of his business, right down to the poster designs for his stage show. He was also an innovative performer and was amongst the first to use electronic transmitting devices in the 1920’s, he would use his turban to hide earpieces and perform extraordinary feats of mind reading, never seen before.
In his 40’s, Alexander wrote books under the name C. Alexander. He also owned The C. Alexander publishing company in Los Angeles.
He is said to have earned around four million dollars during his career, he retired from stage in 1924 at the age of 43 and was known as the richest man in Vaudeville. He spent most of his retirement, fishing and taking photographs of beautiful ladies!
Claude Alexander Conlin died in 1954 at the age of 74.
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