He was cremated, and after the box with his ashes was brought to the Magic Castle, it was placed for display on a ledge at the top of a wall filled with photos and other memorabilia from his long life in magic.

Expert Card Technique: Close-Up Table Magic (1st Ed. ^ Hugard, Jean Braue, Frederick (1974).The Expert at the Card Table: The Classic Treatise on Card Manipulation (1st Ed. 21 at the home of a son, Edward Wingfield Verner, in Ramona, Calif., where he had lived for the last two years. Dai Vernon, a sleight of hand artist who was a mentor to many of the most accomplished magicians of the last half-century, died Aug. 'Dai Vernon, 98 An Expert Magician Who Taught Others'. Washington, DC: The Genii Corporation, 2006. The Vernon Touch: The Writings of Dai Vernon in Genii, The Conjurors' Magazine from 1968 to 1990. ^ When asked which way to pronounce his first name, Vernon would say 'either, or either,' (i.e, EE-ther or EYE-ther) Vernon, Dai.The character of 'The Professor' (played by Hal Holbrook) from the movie Shade was based on Dai Vernon, and the character Vernon (Stuart Townsend) was named after him. In fact, a huge portion of the sleight-of-hand had been discovered by Vernon over years of searching. He was famously under-credited for much of the work published in Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue's Expert Card Technique, though a later edition included an extra chapter which acknowledges Vernon's contributions. Vernon spent most of his early life traveling all over the United States of America looking for card cheats, and anyone who might know anything about sleight-of-hand with cards. A few hours a week cutting silhouettes was generally enough to support his family and finance his sleight of hand hobby (compare his silhouette fee with the first US minimum wage of 25 cents per hour in 1938). However, Vernon's main source of income was cutting custom silhouette portraits, a talent that paid 25 to 50 cents per silhouette for about two minutes work during the 1920s and '30s.

His engineering degree was put to use as a sometime blueprint reader. He occasionally performed magic at nightclubs or on cruise ships to South America and back, and also toured the Philippines as an entertainer during WW2 with the United Service Organizations. Before the Magic Castle, Vernon never held a steady full-time job for more than a few months. Though respected by professional magicians nationwide due in part to publicity via the magazine The Sphinx, Vernon was essentially a gifted amateur until his 40s.

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