At age 18, he began to perform as a table magician at Billy Reed's Little Club at 70 E. He practiced sleight of hand at the Hamilton Fish Park in the 1930s. He worked at it and figured out eight ways to perform the trick. He stole empty milk bottles from in front of apartments in the tenement in which he lived so that he could collect the $.02 deposit on them and be able to afford a deck of cards. Lorayne saw his first card trick when he was six or seven years old, and immediately knew he had to figure out how to do it himself. Using elementary versions of the techniques he would later employ professionally, he began earning perfect marks. Most were beyond him, but he fought his way through. At the library, he found a shelf of dusty books on memory training, some dating to the 18th century. If only he could learn to memorize, he realized, his problems would end. The New York Times wrote in its obituary that Lorayne's father: Īs a violent man, and whenever young Harry brought home failing grades on an exam – and because of his dyslexia, he often did – his father beat him. His father, who was a garment cutter, died by suicide when Lorayne was 12. Lorayne was born as Harry Ratzer and grew up poor on New York's Lower East Side. His card magic, especially his innovations in card sleights, is widely emulated by amateur and professional magicians. His book The Memory Book was a New York Times bestseller. He was well known for his incredible memory demonstrations and appeared on numerous television shows including 24 times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Harry Lorayne (born Harry Ratzer May 4, 1926 – April 7, 2023) was an American mnemonist, magician, and author who was called "The Yoda of Memory Training" and "The World's Foremost Memory-Training Specialist" by Time magazine.
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