You may recall that Michael Close and the Evasons consulted for the film Nightmare Alley.
From the January 11th article "Reel Beach: Born in the Beach, The Amazing Randi was a top magician and crusader against fraudsters" by Bernie Fletcher in the Beach Metro:
In Nightmare Alley Bradley Cooper plays a carnival huckster who learns the art of deceit and becomes a nightclub mind reader. The clothes are fancier, but he uses the same old tricks.
The film is based on the dark 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham (1909-1962), an amateur magician who was fascinated by the carny underworld. Like Harry Houdini before him, Gresham exposed many of the techniques used by phony spiritualists and psychics.
In 1959 Gresham wrote a biography of Houdini and dedicated his book to “the greatest living escape artist, The Amazing Randi” magician James Randi who helped him with the illusions.
Randi began life in 1928 as Randall James Zwinge (rhymes with “Swingy”) in the newly-built Victoria Park Apartments on Queen Street East near Willow Avenue, which was just down the street from the Prince of Wales Theatre (now the Fox).
A century ago streetcars came all the way out to the new Neville Park Loop and spurred a building boom along the eastern end of Queen Street.
...
Life comes full circle. Nightmare Alley was filmed at the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant (originally the Victoria Park Filtration Plant) just down the street from Randi’s first home. In 1928 the waterworks were still a dream in the eyes of Neville Park Boulevard resident R. C. Harris; a vision of clean, safe water for Toronto.
Read more.
From the January 12th Facebook post by The Society of American Magicians:
