Joseph Dunninger

Making an act of reading minds work on radio, where nothing can be seen, is a strange proposition when you think about it. Joseph Dunninger did it.

Key achievements

1. Regarded as one of the foremost mentalists of the twentieth century.
2. One of the pioneers of magic on radio and television.
3. A debunker of fraudulent mediums, he claimed to be able to reproduce any spiritualist phenomenon by ordinary means.

The Amazing Dunninger

Dunninger was born on 28 April 1892 and died on 9 March 1975. Billed as The Amazing Dunninger, he is regarded as one of the foremost mentalists of the twentieth century.

Mentalism covers the reading of minds, the divining of thoughts, the prediction of events. No cards, no coins, no doves. The materials are language and the audience themselves.

The problem of radio

What sets Dunninger apart is that he was a pioneer of magic on radio and television.

Performing magic on radio looks, on its face, unworkable. Sleight of hand cannot be seen. Producing a dove conveys nothing. A card changing does not register. How do you sustain a visual art in a medium with no pictures?

This is where mentalism pays. Mind-reading was never something you look at. The performer names it, and the person named is astonished. That exchange travels perfectly in sound alone.

He used the constraint of radio as a condition that suited his material, and moved early into television when it arrived. At around the moment Dell O’Dell had her Los Angeles programme in 1951, he too had hold of the new medium.

Exposing fraudulent mediums

There is a second side to Dunninger.

He pursued the exposure of fraudulent mediums, claiming that any phenomenon presented as spiritualist could be reproduced by ordinary means.

The position is inseparable from his act. A performer who reads minds declares that it is a performance, and then demonstrates that no spirit is doing the reading. He was the mid-twentieth-century holder of the tradition in which magicians confront supernatural claims.

Maskelyne exposed the Davenport Brothers on stage in 1865; Houdini confronted Margery in the 1920s; Dunninger carried it into the age of radio and television; Penn & Teller carry it now. More than 150 years without a break.

His place here

Dunninger occupies an unusual position in this archive.

He did not fill great theatres or cross America with eight railway cars. What he used was the airwaves — a performer who delivered the impossible by voice alone, without being seen.

In the history of magic surviving by changing medium, he covered the stretch called radio.

Notable works

• His mentalism broadcasts on radio
• His investigations of fraudulent mediums

Chronology

Only years that could be verified are listed.

1. 1892 Born on 28 April
2. 1975 Dies on 9 March