Introduction
The name came up in passing, the way local legends often do. Scott Martell was talking with his mentor, David Oliver, about New England magic history, the rich lineage of performers who had worked the region, when Oliver mentioned Irv Weiner, known on the college circuit as Mr. Fingers. Scott had never heard of him. That gap in his knowledge would eventually consume twenty-five years, a flat tire, a bout of COVID, an extra life insurance policy, and a 338-page book published by Penguin Magic in January of this year.
Scott Martell is a magician, magic historian, and author based in Massachusetts, a part-time professional performer for more than thirty years, and a longtime officer of the New England Magic Collectors Association. His book, “Mr. Fingers: The Magic of Irv Weiner” is both an affectionate biography and a comprehensive record of one of the twentieth century's finest sleight-of-hand performers, a man who could hold a college audience of a thousand for two hours with nothing but a briefcase. This conversation is the story of how a curator, not an author, as Scott would come to think of himself, assembled a life from scattered manuscripts, family photographs, and the recollections of everyone who ever watched Irv make the impossible feel ordinary.
A Rabbit Hole Called Magic History
Scott's path to Irv began where most of his passions did, in books. As a boy he devoured the classics, Henry Hay, George Schindler, Frank Garcia, and a Scholastic-bookmobile find called “Backyard Magic” by Todd Karr that opened onto something larger: footnotes, bibliographies, mentions of magicians who came before, each reference pointing to the next.
"And from that point on, I was hooked. I had to learn more about magic and from that I think it improved my ability to perform."
That scavenger hunt eventually led him to the New England Magic Collectors Association and Ray Goulet's Magic Art Studio, where he found himself surrounded by people who loved the history as much as he did. It was the turning point that would, years later, put Irv Weiner in his path.
The Man Nobody Had Written About
When Scott went looking for a book on Irv Weiner, the answer was maddeningly vague. There was one in the works, supposedly. Phil Willmarth had been laboring on it for years, but nobody knew its status, or whether it still existed at all. So Scott began gathering what he could himself, combing through periodicals, digging into the Conjuring Arts Research Center's Ask Alexander database, and turning up Manu-Secrets tucked away in magic shops. What started as curiosity soon hardened into something more.
"And so from that process, the research became an obsession, quite honestly."
A Curator, Not an Author
Writing an intimate portrait of a man he never met was, by Scott's own description, an uphill battle. But proximity gave him an advantage that Phil Willmarth, working from Chicago, never had. Scott could walk into Ray Goulet's studio on a Saturday and talk to the people who had known Irv firsthand. Reading through Willmarth's surviving notes, acquired from his widow, Robbie, Scott recognized the same struggle Phil had wrestled with: how to get Irv's personality, not just his techniques, onto the page. Rather than speak over his subject, a gifted and distinctive writer, Scott made the decision to step back and let Irv's own voice carry the book.
Earning the Family's Trust
The turning point, the moment the research truly became a book, was his introduction to Irv's family, his children Cheryl and Alan. That first meeting carried an understandable wariness. The book had been promised and delayed for decades, and here was a relative stranger asking about their father. What won them over was common ground, the shared names and history of the magic community, and a decision they made together early on: to tell the whole story, hardships included, even though Irv himself had once insisted the focus stay on the magic. The result speaks to how fully they came to trust him.
"So I don't think they regret asking me to pilot the project."
The Boy Who Stretched Himself Taller
Irv grew up in Boston, the son of deaf parents, and that fact runs straight to the heart of who he became, and to the name Mr. Fingers itself. Communicating in sign language from childhood gave him an early fluency with his hands and body that later became a distinct asset on stage. His mother showed him his first trick, done with a piece of string, and magic became the constant that carried him through the Great Depression and wartime service in the Navy. When the military first turned him away for being too short, he refused to accept it.
"So he says he went home and he grabbed the bed rungs and stretched until he met the minimum requirement. And he joined the Navy. And he ended up, you know, making his own history and legacy."
Aboard ship he kept a bound volume of The Jinx under his bed, inventing effects and testing them on shipmates who were themselves sharp with a deck. By the war's end, magic was no longer a hobby but a direction.
California, the GI Bill, and a Magical Education
After the war, Irv put the GI Bill to one of its more unusual uses: formal training at the Chavez Studio of Magic in California. He thrived there, forming a lifelong friendship with Neil Foster and eventually teaching some of the classes himself. To support the study, he worked as a page at the Biltmore Hotel, a gathering spot for the Hollywood elite, where performing for celebrity guests built both his confidence and a local reputation. Homesickness eventually drew him back east, but he returned changed by the experience.
"But he definitely brought a lot of experience from California with him. And the time in the military also shaped his character. And he came back sort of a better adult, if you will."
The Creator and His Manu-Secrets
Back in Boston, Irv opened his own shop and began self-publishing the “Manu-Secret” series, single effects that traveled surprisingly far. His Red Tape Thumb Tie became a genuine hit, so widely copied that credit to its creator was nearly lost to time. The shop itself, sitting in direct competition with Max Holden's operation upstairs in the same building, did not survive. Irv, by Scott's account, lacked the businessman's acumen.
"So he wanted to run his own shop, but it was clear that he just didn't have the acumen for it. But after he closed the shop, he still managed to sell many of his 'Manu-Secrets' successfully through Holden's Magic Shop."
That the work outlived the storefront says something about Irv the creator: the effects were guided by a preference for simplicity that freed the performer to focus on presentation, and they kept selling long after his own venture had folded.
Smaller and More Personal
The engine of Irv's reputation was the college circuit, and it is a performing world that has almost entirely vanished. That a middle-aged man could command a thousand students for two hours with only a briefcase is precisely what first drew Scott in, and what he still finds instructive. Comparing it to the exposure of stand-up comedy, where there is nowhere to hide, he sees in Irv a lesson for magicians tempted to lean on apparatus and elaborate props.
"But, you know, in an era of bigger and louder, Irv proved that smaller and more personal is what sticks with people."
You Are the Magic
"You are the magic, you are the entertainment. They came to see you, not your cards. They came to see what you can do with the cards and how you can make them feel in that moment."
That, in a sentence, is how Scott distills Irv's performing philosophy. The method has to be sound, but the method is never the point. Irv used magic to reach people and share a personality that was entirely his own, and that, more than any single effect, is what audiences carried home with them.
A Chorus of Admirers
As the research deepened, so did the roll call of magicians who credited Irv as an influence. Scott first encountered Michael Ammar's testimonial in the back of an early Ammar manuscript, and from there the tributes kept coming, freely offered by close-up workers, mentalists, stage performers, and kids-show entertainers alike. When Penguin released the promotional video for the book, even Scott was caught off guard by some of the names.
"I was not expecting Mac King to put out some wonderful words about Irv. Jamy Ian Swiss, he was not expected, and I admired Jamy's work from an early age."
Handing You the Briefcase
"I wanted it to feel like Irv handed you his briefcase and said, 'Here, this is everything.'"
That was Scott's intention for the book as a physical object, a large-format volume, richly illustrated, with scans of Irv's own manuscripts. He wanted it to read less like a reference work than like a personal bequest, a full scope of the life alongside the magic and the creativity. Opening with the biography was a deliberate choice, giving readers the context to understand why Irv performed the way he did before they turned to a single trick.
The Curse of the Twenty-Five-Year Book
The road to publication had a dark thread running through it, one Scott only half-jokingly calls a curse. Ray Goulet, Irv's closest friend and the natural first choice, declined the project because of his workload. It passed to Phil Willmarth, who signed on enthusiastically but faced mounting hurdles, and the crushing loss of the entire draft in a computer crash around 2004. Irv died in 1999 without seeing a finished book, and Phil died in 2014, still without one. When Scott inherited the project, the bad luck seemed to follow: a flat tire delayed his first meeting with the family, a laptop crash cost him work, and a severe case of COVID put him in the hospital for five days.
"Ultimately, I decided during this process, I seriously did, I took out extra life insurance because I have a family and this book seemed to have some negative connotations to it, but I am just happy I live to see it released."
Friends who had championed the book, Ray and Ann Goulet among them, passed before they could see it finished. That so many never got to hold the thing they had waited for is, more than the flat tire or the hospital stay, the loss that stays with him.
A Book on Love
Perhaps the least-known chapter of Irv's story concerns a book he actually wanted to write, and it was not about magic at all. Late in life he was working on something aimed squarely at the public, a motivational work that used magic as a metaphor for living well. Irv, who found sobriety through AA and became known for helping others do the same, was sometimes called the Leo Buscaglia of magic. He poured the hard lessons of his own life into the idea. All that survives of it is a single voice recording, made in the small hours of the morning to his friend Alan Wassilak.
"He called Alan Wassilak, I think at 2 AM and left this voice recording for him. And that's the only recording we have of this book project."
What He Most Wants You to Take Away
For all the tricks the book teaches, Scott hopes readers come away with something about the man himself, someone whose warmth and generosity left a mark on nearly everyone he met.
"Irv wasn't just about his tricks, he was about giving himself away."
That quality surfaced again and again in the research, in the eagerness with which people offered their stories. Irv was, in Scott's telling, a kind of motivational speaker in the guise of a magician, and the lesson he most wants to endure is the plainest one: live your best life, and be kind.
The Desert-Island Trilogy
Every guest on this podcast faces the same closing question, and Scott's answer ranged happily across his working library, from David Bamberg's “The Illusion Show” to Dr. Robert Albo's volumes on the Bambergs to the output of The Miracle Factory. But pressed to choose just one, he reached for three: Eric C. Lewis's “Miracles” trilogy, published by Mike Caveney in the 1980s, which he prizes for its blend of history, technique, and first-hand illustration, and for the way Lewis withheld just enough to make the reader work.
"Those three books, I could get rid of the rest of my library and still be content for the rest of my life reading those as my only resource on magic."
A Legend Among Legends
A quarter century after a chance mention over talk of New England magic history, the book that so many people waited for, and that several never lived to see, finally exists. Irv Weiner got the memorial his family wanted and his admirers insisted he deserved, a record of the tricks, yes, but more than that a portrait of the man who made them matter. What began as one magician's private scavenger hunt became the definitive account of another's life, assembled not by someone who knew Irv, but by someone who came to understand him through everyone who did.
That may be the quiet lesson of “Mr. Fingers.” The history of magic is never quite finished, and the people who close its gaps are rarely the obvious ones. Scott Martell set out only to answer a simple question, where could he read about this local legend, and finding no answer, spent twenty-five years writing one himself. The briefcase is open now. Everything is inside.
Books and Publications Mentioned
By Scott Martell:
“Mr. Fingers: The Magic of Irv Weiner,” by Scott Martell, published by Penguin Magic (2026)
Works about, or created by, Irv Weiner:
The “Manu-Secret” series, self-published single effects by Irv Weiner, including the Red Tape Thumb Tie
Irv Weiner's contributions to Hugard's Magic Monthly
Foundational and reference works Scott cited:
“The Amateur Magician's Handbook” by Henry Hay (Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1950)
“Magic with Cards” by George Schindler and Frank Garcia (David McKay Co., 1975)
“Magic with Everyday Objects” by George Schindler (Stein & Day, 1976)
“Backyard Magic” by Todd Karr (Scholastic / Cartwheel Books, 1996)
“Maximum Entertainment” by Ken Weber (Ken Weber Productions; first edition 2003, second 2019)
“The Five Points in Magic” by Juan Tamariz (Editorial Frakson, first English translation 1988; later Hermetic Press edition 2007)
“The Books of Wonder” by Tommy Wonder (Hermetic Press, 1996)
“Twelve Have Died” by Ben Robinson and Larry White (Ray Goulet's Magic Art Book Co., 1986)
“The Jinx” by Theodore Annemann, the periodical Irv kept with him during his Navy service (self-published, 1934 to 1941)
Scott's cherished books:
“The Illusion Show: A Life in Magic” by David Bamberg (David Meyer Magic Books, 1988)
“The Oriental Magic of the Bambergs” by Dr. Robert Albo (San Francisco Book Company, 1973)
“Roy Benson by Starlight” by Levent and Todd Karr (The Miracle Factory, 2006)
“The Secret Ways of Al Baker” edited by Todd Karr (The Miracle Factory, 2003)
“House of Mystery: The Magic Science of David P. Abbott” by Teller and Todd Karr (The Miracle Factory, 2005)
"The “Miracles” trilogy by Eric C. Lewis, published by Mike Caveney's Magical Publications: “A Choice of Miracles” (1980), “A Continuation of Miracles” (1981), and “The Crowning Miracles” (1983)
Also referenced:
The Conjuring Arts Research Center's Ask Alexander database (Bill Kalush)
The Hermetic Press lineage of books, and the work of Stephen Minch
Resources
To purchase the standard edition of “Mr. Fingers: The Magic of Irv Weiner” visit Penguin Magic.
For signed copies and the remaining numbered deluxe editions, visit Scott's website: MartellMagic.com
To contact Scott directly: scott@MartellMagic.com
The 2026 Yankee Gathering takes place in November 5th through 7th in Nashua, New Hampshire, with Stephen Minch as guest of honor.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to The Magic Book Podcast
01:58 Guest introduction: Scott Martell and Mr. Fingers
01:58 A first introduction to magic at age seven
03:37 From performing for fun to getting paid
05:47 Down the rabbit hole of magic history and NEMCA
08:13 First hearing Irv Weiner's name, and the search for a book
11:32 Writing an intimate portrait of a man he never met
15:10 Earning the trust of Irv's family, Cheryl and Alan
17:47 A Boston boyhood, deaf parents, and the name Mr. Fingers
21:20 California, the GI Bill, and the Chavez Studio of Magic
23:18 Irv the creator and self-publisher: the Manu-Secrets
27:09 Holding a college audience with nothing but a briefcase
29:17 Irv's performing philosophy: you are the magic
31:04 A chorus of admirers and the testimonials
33:38 Designing the book: handing you Irv's briefcase
36:04 The twenty-five-year "curse" and its real losses
41:13 The response since publication, and getting it right
43:34 Making the deluxe edition by hand
47:23 What a second edition might add
49:09 Irv's unwritten book on love, and a 2 AM recording
52:25 The one thing the reviews haven't captured
54:17 Scott's most cherished magic books
57:40 Where to find Mr. Fingers
58:26 What's next for Scott
59:50 The Yankee Gathering
01:00:58 Closing