Warren Hamilton: Father of JoAnne the Duck
By Tim Arango

One morning when I was thirteen I woke up with a plan. It was 1944, and after several years of thinking about it I finally got up the courage. I hopped on my bike and rode the short distance from my house to Warren Hamilton’s workshop and home. At last I was going to meet the great Warren the Wizard.

However, when I got to his place, I chickened out and couldn’t make my self stop and go in. After the third time around the block – each time sneaking side glances into the open shop – a small, smiling man came running out and said, “Hey kid, quit riding around the block and come in and visit.” And my world hasn’t been the same since. (Read more)

After he settled in Tampa, Florida, Warren performed every year at my grammar school, and I never missed a show. After all I had received a Mysto Magic set when I was eleven and knew a thing or two about magic myself. Or so I thought. My education was just beginning.

Who was this Warren the Wizard guy? Just one of the all-time-great builders of magic. Warren Robert Hamilton was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on February 7, 1906. He enjoyed a normal mid-western childhood until the magic bug bit him. Even as a boy, he was a wonderful artist and craftsman, and he constructed and decorated his own apparatus to entertain his family, friends, schoolmates, and others around town.

After graduating from high school he joined a traveling tent show where he lived in a trailer he designed and built himself. As a jack-of-all-trades, Warren kept the equipment in working order while acting in the shows and performing magic during intermissions.

While on tour he became an accomplished performer. After a full day of work and travel he would practice card sleights by performing each one 500 times – that’s 500 times perfectly. If he goofed on the 499th attempt, he started over and continued until he could do it flawlessly 500 times. Needless to say, he became very good. And by performing for a different audience every day he also honed his showmanship.

After tiring of traveling around the country, Warren entered the U. S. Army Air Corps prior to World War II, ending up at Drew Field, an Army Air Corps base in Tampa, Florida. Shortly after arriving he left the Army with a service-connected disability and settled in Tampa for good.

Warren lived upstairs in a bungalette in a nice section of the city. Downstairs was a two-car garage he converted into his workshop. A small adjacent room served as an office and magic shop. This is where he started building his beautiful magic for dealers around the world.

It was in that little garage workshop that JoAnne Young, a neighborhood girl, helped design his signature piece. He named it JoAnne the Card Duck, after her. Miss Young had no interest in magic but like all the neighborhood kids enjoyed hanging around Warren’s workshop. JoAnne later became a professor at the University of South Florida – the young lady, not the duck.

An admirer of Floyd Thayer, his favorite magic builder, Warren also designed, built, decorated, and put his extraordinary paint job and finish on the finest and most sought-after magic in the world.

He was an artist, a master magic maker.

Not only did he carefully design and hand cut the multi-layered stencils, but he also spent hours making each item of his magic an individual piece of art. He was such a perfectionist that once after completing two dozen ducks, he noticed a flaw not visible to any human eye but his. He threw the whole batch in the pot-bellied stove he used to burn scraps.

Years after he arrived in Tampa, Warren moved his shop and home to the light commercial civilian area where Drew Field had been located. The facilities were much larger with a bigger office, shop, workshop, parking area for visitors, and living quarters.

Warren’s social life was mostly tied up in magic events. Although he never married (after all he loved JoAnne – the duck, not the young lady), he was seen out and about town with a series of lovely ladies on his arm.

Hamilton’s favorite magician was Willard the Wizard. He admired Willard’s showmanship and presentation and incorporated many of those ideas into his own act. Warren the Wizard appeared annually at Gorrie, a grammar school in his neighborhood. To create interest, a week before the performance he would give a preview of the upcoming show by doing several tricks that would be part of the big show. Then he would award prizes to the kids who made the best drawings of a trick.

(I always held it against Warren that I never won a prize, and to make it worse, my next-door-neighbor did win one. And he didn’t even care about magic!)

Warren’s big show was packed with apparatus, all of it Hamilton-built. He used a lovely young lady assistant and a hobo clown for comic relief. The magic never stopped. Illusions included the Doll House, Vanishing Boy, Square Circle, Color Changing Soda Pop, productions, vanishes, humor, and more. The kids ate it up, clapping and yelling all the way through it.

But Hamilton’s talent wasn’t restricted to a big stage show. He worked regularly at children’s parties, business functions, and was an outstanding close-up performer.

You could stop by his shop anytime and ask about a card sleight. His hands covered with lacquer and Band-Aids, he would flawlessly execute anything from the pass to back palming to color changes. His hands were small; his fingers were barely as long as a playing card. Practicing a sleight 500 times until he could do it perfectly apparently paid off.

In addition to performing magic Hamilton seemed to know every trick in the world, how it was done, how it was built, who invented it, who made it, and who made it famous. And how to make it better.

Magicians from all over visited him whenever they were anywhere near Tampa. Of course they wanted to meet Warren, look over his extensive collection of magic and memorabilia, and while there try to talk him into making a special effect for them.

Jay Marshall was a regular visitor along with Mars the Magician, Anverdi, Blackstone, Birch, Eddie Fields, Rajah Raboid, The Great Lester, Carl Rosini, Ken Klosterman – too many to list, but you’ve heard of them all. Plus every amateur who could find the place. Warren made a short film of a young Harry Lorayne doing the trick where a cigarette mysteriously moves around on a table top. Harry looked like a young Frank Sinatra in those days. Unfortunately, the film was lost in the shuffle.

Like Mark Twain, Warren never met a magician he didn’t like and eventually was asked by the International Brotherhood of Magicians to start a Ring in Tampa. It was chartered in 1964 and is still active today. The installation banquet was spectacular with magicians from all over the state in attendance. Lucky door prize winners walked off with a brand new piece of Hamilton-made magic. (No, I didn’t win one of those either.)

Hamilton was not just a figurehead in Ring 175; he was active as president, host, performer, teacher, and guru to the rest of the group. Originally the members wanted to name the Ring after him, but he wouldn’t allow it. Some years after he died the name was changed to the Warren Hamilton Ring in his memory.

Many performers also made their own magic equipment, but Hamilton’s was special. Hamilton used only marine plywood for his apparatus because of its strength and ability to withstand muggy Florida summers without warping. His Dancing Cane was made only of Alaskan Cedar for the same reasons. He would never compromise and wouldn’t make the apparatus if the cedar or plywood were not available. He would jump into his Volkswagen bug and drive all over town to find just the right material.

To make JoAnne, he would hand-wind all of the springs, using piano wire and a special jig he devised. Warren always felt that too much magic apparatus had hinges that were disproportionately large, so he spent hours looking for the smallest piano hinges you could imagine. If they weren’t available he made his own.

In his final sanding technique he used emery paper so fine it felt like expensive stationery. He also developed a method of spray painting that, by mixing extra air with the lacquer, put the paint on practically dry. Warren hated seeing where some makers let the paint run, leaving a line of dried paint with a blob at the end of it.

Hamilton did his own metal work. He made the tubes in the Square Circle from flat metal that he rolled on a special piece of equipment that made a tight crimp in the joint of the tube so it was more stable and maintained its shape.

Many pieces of apparatus on the market in those days had only a two-color stencil used for the decoration. Warren used up to six colors making his equipment. Hamilton didn’t make just any piece of magic. However, he did make a number of prototypes of apparatus to experiment with how long it took, how much it cost to manufacture, and how much it could be sold for. And, being a one-man operation, he just didn’t have time to make special orders.

Magic made regularly by Warren included JoAnne the Card Duck, JoAnne’s Country Cousin (a plaid version of the duck), Dancing Cane, Color Changing Fan, three sizes of the Square Circle, Westgate Bowl Production, the Silk Cabby (Caddy), and Yogi Bear (a Forgetful Freddie type of trick).

In addition to the incredible finish Hamilton applied to his magic, he also added a little extra quality to the Square Circle, for instance, by bracing the inside corners of the box portion. He didn’t just put a small square rod in there; he rounded the reinforcement until it was almost invisible. On the Westgate Bowl Production, the center piece that drops down to hide the bowl was cut from a separate piece of wood so it would fit perfectly into the main tray. Most were cut out of the main tray and didn’t fit as closely because of the loss of wood caused by the saw blade.

Because so many people tried to copy his magic, in his later years Warren stamped his tricks with a “Hamilton” die to identify his product and discourage imitators.

Warren always said if he had to charge what it cost him in time and trouble to make a JoAnne, it would have sold for $100 when it was retailing at the time for only $12.50. He did it for the love of magic and fortunately had some rental property and a pension that enabled him to keep it up.

Hamilton was always ready to help a fellow magician if he needed money, or wanted to learn a sleight, or needed help routining an act. His extra little tips were invaluable and made many average performers into good ones.

Warren the Wizard died September 23, 1971, at Bay Pines Veteran’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, from service-connected disabilities. His only family, a brother, had predeceased him.

In keeping with his generous spirit, Warren Hamilton’s property, shop, magic collection, books, and posters were sold and converted to cash, and the money was distributed to needy friends.

Warren Hamilton was a true master maker of magic. His magic today is highly collectible, but it was his kindness and generosity that stayed with me over the years. Warren is gone, but to one nervous kid on a bike whom he befriended, he will never be forgotten.

Tim Arango has been a member of I.B.M. since 1964 and is Dean of Warren Hamilton Ring 175 in Tampa, Florida. He performs what he describes as “a mildly humorous stand-up act.” You may contact him at arangot@aol.com.

This article is reprinted from The Linking Ring, the monthly publication of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. For information on joining the I.B.M., click here.