Did the above a few times, but on just about every personal appearance, he would meet all the people in the audience, then he would open his show by asking all the people he met to please stand. Lorayne also made news by memorizing and recalling information from phone books with no errors. He always remembered the names of every member of the audience. He promised that he would pay any questioner whose name he could not remember a thousand dollars. After an hour and a half, Lorayne would speak about memory for about 20 minutes and then ask if anyone had a question. The number of members of a club could reach up to 1,500. ‘To demonstrate his memory, Harry Lorayne would stand beside the president of the club he was visiting and be introduced to each member.
He was also a regular performer (23 times) on The Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson.
In 1950 / 51 (age 25) Harry appeared on his own television show, ‘Professor Magic’ he then had to wait over ten years for his next TV appearance and in the meantime would release, How to Develop a Super Power Memory (1958), Harry Lorayne's Secrets of Mind Power (1961) and Close-Up Card Magic – 1962.įrom 1963 to date Harry performed on many more live TV shows including, I've Got a Secret, where he demonstrated his ability to remember every audience member’s name, The Ed Sullivan Show, Jack Paar, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, The Regis Philbin Show, Good Morning America, The Today Show, That's Incredible, David Susskind. At 18, he was asked to perform as a table magician at Billy Reed's Little Club at 70 E. Harry has written some best selling memory training books and some absolutely fantastic card magic books.īorn in 1926, Harry grew up on the streets of Lower East side New York, he gained an interest in magic at the early age of 8, by the time he was 12 he had learnt many tricks, sleights, moves and was already performing for money.
His card magic, especially his innovations in card sleights, is widely emulated by amateur and professional magicians all over the world. Harry Lorayne is an American card magician, author and memory training expert, he is renowned for his mnemonic demonstrations, has appeared on many (American) television shows. Harry is a great teacher of memory training.Was quite surprised not to see an entry in the Hall of Fame for Harry His system revolved around seeing what you want to recall as an image and imagining it attached to something that is familiar to you. He was a legend and Time Magazine referred to him as the Yoda of Memory Training. Harry first got in to magic as a young teenager and it was his love for magic that lead him to memory training because he wan’t to do memory tricks as magic tricks. It was a demonstration that stuck in my mind and a decade later I was making my living imitating it. The memory demonstrations that I have done for decades now I learned by watching Harry Lorayne on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I was honored to recently interview Harry Lorayne and here is that interview: He was a celebrity in his day but also a great teacher of memory training. Harry appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson a remarkable 24 times. His book, ‘The Memory Book’ with Jerry Lucas became a New York Times best seller. He traveled the country doing his memory demonstrations and amazing audiences for decades.
He had charisma, memory demonstrations, stage presence and understood memory and how it works. On the other hand, Harry Lorayne embodied everything that set him apart from any other memory expert of the time.
A lot of them but not always in the most ethical ways. His goal was simply to sell memory training courses. Kevin Trudeau made a push in the 1980s and 1990s but Keven never tried to be a true memory expert. In reality there is no one that is even close. It isn’t too hard to argue that Harry Lorayne is the greatest memory expert of the 20th century. Harry Lorayne The Yoda of Memory Training