2010-02 Book Review “Beating a Dead Horse, The Life and Times of Jay Marshall” by Sandy Marshall

Jay Marshall told his son Sandy to write the story of Jay’s life “after I croak”. What Sandy ended up writing was several stories. It is about Jay’s life but it is also about Sandy’s life and his interaction and non-interaction with Jay’s life. It is also a story about Jay’s friends, many of whom were magicians and it is a story about the history of entertainment in the twentieth century and how it changed with the advent of television. It is also a love story. Jay and Frances were married for almost 48 years and her death in 2002 took a toll on Jay and he became very despondent.

One of Jay’s friends and his roommate in New York City was Lee Noble (ne Edwin Burchell). He is mentioned 8 times in the book. Lee was a member our Ring for many years and died in 2003 in a car accident. I saw him MC an evening magic show at a magic convention once where he was very polished and smooth and I saw him usher at the Bob Carr Theatre many times (I guess theater was in his blood). In all those years I never knew of his background in New York or that he was a friend of so many great magicians. That is why the tributes to the great magicians that Dan Stapleton has done are so important.

I saw Jay at several magic conventions over the years where I saw him do his act with Lefty and he always got a great response from the audience. You think that you know someone by watching them perform or talking to them for a few minutes but as this book shows I really did not know Jay Marshall at all. Jay billed himself as one of the better cheaper acts. He was on Ed Sullivan 14 times and opened for Frank Sinatra in September 1951 when Frank first went to Las Vegas. He married Al Baker’s daughter, a love child of Al and a nice Jewish lady named Miss G. Graft, who lived in Canada. The story of how Al presented his daughter Naomi as a talented young woman who was a great cook to Jay (when she was neither) is a lesson in great misdirection. They had two boys and were officially married 13 years but the relationship ended after nine years when Jay moved into an apartment with Lee Noble in Manhattan.

Jay was in two Broadway plays and played all of the big venues in New York in the late 1940’s and 1950’s. Jay was on television from the beginning starting in 1940 and was on all of the major shows; Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Garry Moore, Sid Caesar, Kate Smith, Jackie Gleason, and even the Morning Show hosted by Walter Cronkite, before Cronkite went to the news side of television. Jay even wrote a book, “TV-Magic and You” which he labeled the poor man’s Encyclopedia of Television Technique.

Jay’s youngest son, Sandy, found himself with an abusive step father when his mother Naomi remarried. Sandy rebelled and Naomi sent him to his father, who had married Frances Ireland, nine years older than Jay. Frances did not like the intrusion than Sandy made in her life with Jay. Needless to say there was much conflict with the new family of Jay, Frances and Sandy. Sandy spent much of his life trying to prove to his dad that he was more than just, Jay’s kid. Sandy went on to win two Emmy’s.

Late in Jay’s life he became the good family man that he never was in the first seventy years of his life. Besides stage and television Jay loved to do Punch and Judy shows. He also was one of the first trade show magicians working for Chevy. Jay was a consummate collector and had over a million books in his collection when he died on May 10, 2005 at age 85. It is a great book for any magician interested in Jay Marshall or in what the entertainment industry was like in the last half of the twentieth century. After reading the book I feel that I know Jay Marshall a little better.

Gary Adams