Greatest Memory Expert of 20th Century, Harry Lorayne (interview)

Hello, Mr. Lorraine. Uh, hey, how you doing?

Oh, hello, sir. Say that again.

I said you're right on the button. I think uh, it's just two o'clock. Where are you located?

I live in Fort Worth, Texas. What's your time there?

It's one o'clock.

All right, so it's an hour, and I was different. It's okay. It is. And you're in Massachusetts now? Is that is that where you were born?

No, no, no. I was I was born on the lower east side of Manhattan. I have an original dead-end kid, born right off the East River. It was a ghetto, run of course. I didn't know that. We didn't have television in those days, so I thought the whole world was like that, you know.

Well, I read in your book, uh, before I forget, that uh, you said your family was professional poor people; that they were that whole area was very poor. Like like I say, like I said, I thought the whole world was that way, but my parents were really professional poor people. We were poorer than anybody else there, you know.

As we get started here, if you if you if you let me, I'd like to do about a 60-second introduction uh, to you, uh, saying some of your credentials and stuff like that. I really want to build you up.

Okay. So what are you doing? Are you taping this?

I am. I'm recording this.

Okay. Go whenever you're ready.

I, you know, I'll I'll play along with you. All right.

Well, well, uh, thank you very much, uh, guys. I am so excited. I cannot tell you how excited I am to be talking to Harry Lorraine, uh, and I might get emotional when I say this because he does not know this, and and he doesn't know me, but no person has probably made a bigger impact on my life than Harry Lorraine. Uh, in 1988, I saw him on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson memorizing the names of the audience, and it so mesmerized me that I had to learn memory training, and I went on to learn memory training and ended up holding some memory records and and uh, for the fastest to memorize some some things. But without seeing Harry Lorraine, I never would have done those things. Uh, he is he's authored so many books: The Super Power Memory, uh, The Super Student, Ageless Memory, The Memory Book. Harry can't see this right now, but on my desk I have his books stacked up, uh, and they're not something I bought because I was gonna be talking to him today. I have owned these. Uh, he wrote a book called Miracle Math. Over 50 books. His books have been on the New York Times bestseller for 50 weeks. He was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson 24 times, the Ed Sullivan Show, the Jack Parr Show, the Dick Cavett Show. This man is a legend, but more than a legend, uh, he is a good person. I I've read his book, Remember, uh, Before I Forget, his memoir. And Harry, I just want to say welcome, and and you don't have an any idea how much of an impact you've had on me, and I know I'm not the only one in the world that you have an impact on, but it is an emotional uh, interview for me.

Well, thank you so much. That's a very nice introduction. Thank you, Ron. I'm glad I've been of help. Now you got to send me 10 percent. [Laughter] Now really, thank you for that very nice introduction. You know, I I I mean it, uh, uh, and you know, I'm looking at the date right here, April 3rd. If I'm correct, you are going to have a birthday in about a month, and I don't believe how old that you said you're going to turn. Would you mind sharing that a little bit?

Yeah, it's almost exactly a month. It's May 4th, uh, and I'm gonna be, you know, I find this difficult to say. I can't believe it myself. I'm gonna be 94 on that birthday, you know. So some I I got one question before I get started. You know what is what's the secret? I feel like I'm talking I'm I'm 47 years old. You don't sound anything again.

Oh, God. 47. No, I'm going to be 95. I don't believe it myself. What what is the the you sound so sharp and mentally quick. What is the secret to? I I think you even have a book on this about aging in the brain.

No, not really. I, you know, I'm not in that area at all. I'm not a doctor. Come on. I have one year of high school, so I'm not going to talk about anything uh, medically inclined. Uh, I don't know. I guess I'm just uh, what yeah, you know, look, I gotta be honest with you. I have to I have pains in places I didn't know I had places, uh, Ron, and uh, etc., physically. It's not good that my mind, thank God, seems to still be working. I don't think it's on the eight plus cylinders that it used to be, but I think I get by okay. Mentally, physically, so so and so so one of my clichés is, it's growing old sucks. [Laughter] But you know, every time I say that to anybody, the response I always get is, well, think of the alternative.

That's right. Well, and and what I meant by you just sound so sharp, I got I got to think all the the memory stuff you did throughout your your life helped exercise your brain. And I'm not a doctor either, so I don't know the answer to that. But you know, you just told me you said uh, you got one year of high school. I think you were on the Tonight Show or some show once, and you gave that answer that you've been one year of high school, and it it caused quite a stir with the audience. Is that right?

No. What happened is uh, it was on the Johnny Carson show, and in those days, you know, it's a long time ago, there was no email yet, stuff like that. So uh, Freddie de Cordova, he was the uh, producer of the tele tonight show, called me and called me about two weeks after this visit that I was on with Johnny. See, Johnny knew my background. We became friends. Uh, we used to see each other personally, even when I was every time I was in California, even when I wasn't doing his show, but I was there to do an appearance or whatever, we would get together and have dinner and so forth. So he knew my background, and he thought it was very interesting. So that's when he asked me that question. Over, I think the way he worded it was something like, Harry, how does a deez dems and dose kid from the lower east side of Manhattan and New York City become the world's leading, you know, foremost memory training specialist, etc., etc. So anyway, uh, when he had said he who has one year of high school, and we went out from there, and it was fine. The audience, the studio audience, audience was fine, but two weeks later, Freddie, the quarterback, called me, and he said, Harry, we've got about four or five thousand pieces of mail about your last appearance on the show, and it's all negative. I said, what what the heck did I do, you know? He said, when we talked about having one year of high school, he said all the people, the main gist of all the mail that they got was something like, we have enough trouble keeping our kids at school. We don't want to hear some successful guy say that he only has one year of high school. So you know, you lived and learned, Ron, and I realized that that was the wrong thing to let go, to have Johnny say it without interrupting or when I'm asked what education I have, and I have been asked that a lot on television or radio appearances, and I always said one year of high school, which is true, but you know, let's face it, wrong. When I talk to you, you know, I'm not a PhD. Come on, you know. So but you live and learn. Now when I'm asked, I'm not going to lie. So somebody says what a what's your education? Well, I think the way Johnny Carson started it, he started to laugh, and he said, how many degrees do you have, you know, something like that. So anyway, now when I'm asked that question, I say, well, I only have one year of high school, but and I say this without taking a breath, I say, but if I had it to do over again, of course I would get my diploma. Then it's okay, right?

That's a good answer, and it it keeps the kids uh, motivated.

I I got kicked out of college. My grades were so bad, and that's that's a story I I don't often tell either, just because I don't want to discourage students. But I like the way you set it up. You know, one thing that a question that Johnny Carson asked you, and I believe he asked you this uh, that I find uh, think everybody wants to know is, I think Johnny Carson asked you how you got involved in memory training, and you said the story had to do something with stomach cramps.

He turned white under his makeup way when I said that, because he said again, how did somebody like you become the world's memory training span or whatever, and I said stomach cramps. Well, he kind of turned white under his makeup before he thought I went nuts or something, and I said I'll I'll explain it after the break, Johnny. Yeah. What what the story is? It's a true story, incidentally. I think I wrote some of these things you're asking me right. I wrote in my book Before I Forget, so it may sound repetitive uh, to some people, but you asked me the question. I got to answer it, right?

Yes. Okay. I what happened that I I'll try to shorten it. It's kind of a long story. What I was about I don't know. I must have been 10 and a half, 11 years old. There was a teacher by the name of Mrs. Goldfisher in my school, and she would give us a test every day, 10 questions on a yellow rectangular piece of paper. I mean, I've never forgotten this, and I'll never forget her, you know. And anyway, the point was that we had to bring these uh, tests, after she graded them, we had to bring him home for one parent to sign, uh, and I was gay. I was getting grades like much less than passing grades. I was getting 40s and 50s. To go off on a tangent, Ron, I found out in those early years that I I'm dyslexic now, you know. You forgive me, Ron. I go off on tangents because all these things start to fit together. Some decades ago, I wrote an article titled How Bad Things Become Good, and one of the items in it was about dyslexia being dyslexic is not a good thing, but it was dyslexia that forced me into the memory uh, area, the memory business. It gave me the reputation and the uh, you know, the background, the the books I wrote, and all that started because I was dyslexic. Okay. In those days, incidentally, nobody ever mentioned the word dyslexia to me. I don't think the teachers knew the word. I have no idea, you know. I once wrote about this also, you know. They give you the name, you play the game. They stamped me, so I thought I was a that's it, you know, because we had no other answer to it. Anyway, the point is that my father, who died when I was 12, so that you see how far back I'm going, he was the signee. He had a sign or he was the one that signed the these tests that I brought home, and this was another thing where the Carson show got a million negative letters. Of course, I said that my father would punch me. I found out you can't say that, at least not in those days, Ron. Now I don't think it matters, but those days there were so many negative letters saying, oh, you can't say your father punched you. Now when I tell the story, I say my father punished me. That's okay. All right. Uh, I I think even nowadays you could say your father punched you. I don't think what people would care that much, but in those days that's the way it was. Just a long time ago, uh, Ron. So anyway, what happened was when I said stomach cramps, what I meant was is that I really was getting stomach cramps in the morning because and I realized this afterwards, it was only Monday to Friday school days. I did not get the stomach cramps Saturdays and Sundays. And what it was, I was afraid. I got the stomach cramps because I was afraid of my father hitting me. Yeah. So what happened one day, and this is, you know, talk about pivot points or life-changing moments. I remember it so clearly. I'm walking to school. I got this darn stomach cramp. I know Mrs. Goldfish has got to test us again with the 10 questions, and they were always questions that either she were on pages that she told us to read in our books or she mentioned in the classroom. Okay. I'm walking to school with this darned stomach cramp, and suddenly a little bit of a light bulb goes off of my brain, and I said, how in the world can I stop my father from hitting me? And the answer, of course, was obvious: get better grades on these dog tests so he doesn't punch you or punish you, whatever you want to call it. Well, of course, the next thing in my mind was, well, how the heck do I do that? How how do I stop him from punishment? Well, obvious answer: get passing grades. Darn it. Okay, honey, I just said that. So how do you get passing grades? Here comes the you like changing moment. Remember the answers to the questions that Mrs. Goldfisher asks. That changed my life. I went the next day to the library. I asked the lady. I could picture her so clearly. I'm going back 80 something years ago, for God's sakes, and I I could picture, of course, this was so important to me, and I told her, gee, I am I have to learn how to remember things, etcetera. Is there a book that can help me? Long story short, she walked me to a corner of the library. I think the doorway was covered with cobwebs. I don't think anybody had been in there for decades. She took me inside, and in the corner of that room was a little group of books on memory training. I mentioned this at one of my sites on the internet, Ron. It's uh, where I talk about uh, all old systems of memory because there were books there dating back to the 17th, 18th, 16th century. Some of those are in my library now, uh, and I have this, as long as I mentioned that, it's called memoryimprovement.org o-r-g, and I talk about the, you know, the history going back like three thousand years about memory training. Anyway, she left me in that room. I started to go through the books. Now again, you got to remember, I'm 10 and a half, 11 years old. Most of the stuff I read, she kept coming, get the check to see if I was all right, Ron. Courts, I was in there for hours. I got so involved in it. So most of the stuff I read went in one ear and out the other. I I didn't understand it, but the tiny little bit that I did understand changed my life, and what I did, and I didn't realize I was doing it. I started to change, though. That tiny little bit changed it so that it would fit my specific problem, which was, how do I remember the darn answers to the questions Mrs. Goldfisher asks? Obviously, if those when you're 10 and a half, 11 years old, the questions that you get, you can't intellectually intellectualize. You either know the answers or you don't. Like one of the questions that I use, I use this as an example. I did for years when I told this story at personal seminars that I did all over the world where uh uh, I would say something like uh, I'm trying to figure out how to say it in in a short way because you know, again, I'm going off on a tangent. Somebody wrote many years ago, Ron, they said it's very difficult to start Harry Lorraine, but it's much harder to stop him. So so yeah, you have to forgive me when I when I go on and on. Anyway, one of the questions that I remember was on one of these tests was, what's the capital of Maryland? Because a lot of people to this day, they'll say Baltimore, but obviously it's not. More than once, Annapolis is the capital of Maryland, and I just twisted these little things that I learned from all these books from centuries ago, how to help me remember those things. And that's that's what started it. That's how stomach cramps started the whole thing to answer your question, Ron, because I wanted to avoid stomach cramps. That was the reason. That was the point at that time of my life of the whole thing. Incidentally, I started to get hundreds on the tests, and one day, this is I'll never forget this. Eye that's kind of interesting. I'm walking into the classroom, and Mrs. Goldfish is sitting at her desk, and as I walk in, she says, Harry, I want to ask you something. What's happening? You're getting hundreds on your tests now, which I always thought you should, but you didn't, but now you are. What's happening? I said, well, I learned how to how to remember the questions you're asking. She says, well, what do you mean? Well, I gave her this example about the capital of Maryland, and I said to her, well, for example, when I want to remember that the capital of Maryland is Annapolis, ice, there was a girl named Mary in the classroom. I pointed to her and I said to Mrs. Goldfisher, I visualized an apple landing on Mary's head, and apple is that's Annapolis landing on Mary's head, Mary land. I'm tying the two together, but the reason I'm telling you this story as I'm talking to Mrs. Gold Fisher and I'm telling you this, I see her eyes glaze over, and she interrupts me, and she said, all right, Harry, take your seat. She thought I was she thought it was crazy. Saw a dad point at that point at that age. I didn't want to tell anybody about this. I don't want people to think I'm crazy. All I cared about it was stopping my father from hitting me. I was bringing home hundreds on my test, so he didn't didn't have to punch me or anything. Okay. But you know, I was interested, Ron, when I sat down and when the the boys and girls in my classroom started to talk to me. See, they said, Harry, what are you talking about? Blah blah blah. The kids were interested, and a lot of the kids started to apply it also to memory problems.

Wow. You know, and I did read that that story about the stomach cramps in your book, uh, Before I Forget.

Before I Forget, uh, and it is a great book, and everyone should get the book Before I Forget and go to the website he just mentioned, memoryimprovement.org. Um, you know, I had one thought, Harry. You said you said that your your teacher got this reaction, uh, you know, maybe a little bit uh, astonished. I remember reading in your book, uh, Before I Forget, that there was a college student at the College of Law at Chicago's DePaul University, and he was almost expelled for cheating. His professor didn't think that anybody could remember as good as he did because he was huge in your system.

Absolutely. Uh, this guy, he called me. He was in tears. He said, I'm gonna be thrown out of the school. How do I avoid it? I remember telling him, there's only one way to avoid that. Tell your teacher who uh, don't tell him, I said. So he's got to be an idiot to accuse you of that, but if you want to prove that you can really remember things, tell them to take any book that has facts in it and to read it to you personally as you're standing there in the classroom and just apply my systems and then let them test you on it and show them that you remember it. That's what he did, you know. That solved the problem.

Yeah. You know, uh, and that's amazing that uh, that that people don't even believe how good the human brain can be if you use a system. You know, one thing you just said, you know, you said you were you were 10, 11, somewhere around there when you had these stomach cramps. If I'm right, it was only eight or nine years later that you were on the Jack Parr show. Is that right? You were 19 years old.

I don't you know, I don't you know, it's all blending in my mind, Ron. I think I was older than that. Yeah, I must have been. I'll tell you why. When I was about 19 years old, you know, I thought my I I think I mentioned this in the in Before I Forget also. Incidentally, my closest friend, Mel Brooks, I think I told you this, and I think it says so on the cover. He told me to call it a Remember, which fits, you know, who I am. Anyway, uh, when I was about 19 years old, as I say, it's all blending in my mind. I think I was about 19. My first love was card magic. That started also when I was 11, 12 years old, and that changed my life also because I was the shyest kid in the world, Ron. I mean, shy to the point of sickness. Uh, I never made eye contact with anybody. I've ever spoke to anybody unless they spoke to me first. And what happened, incidentally, Ron, if I'm talking too much, stop me, and I'll go off on a double.

Oh, no, no. You're great. Keep going.

Okay. I was the shyest kid in the world. Okay. Every day, almost every day after school, I would go to the Pitt Street Park. It was really cool to handle Hamilton Street Park, but it was on Pitt Street in downtown New York City, where there was a counselor or a teacher, a middle-aged man who was teaching the kids uh, the table of table tennis, uh, shuffleboard, things like that, and I used to go there almost every day. One day it was pouring rain or it started the poor rain while we were there, and he shuffled us all into a room so that we would be drowned, and he didn't know what to do with us. Ordinarily, he's thinking about some paddle dentists or whatever, and he did a card trick, and that was another pivot point for me. That was another life-changing moment because I said to myself, oh my God, if I could only do that, you know, if I could only do that. What happened? Oh, God, I remember these things so clearly because, like I say, they were life-changing moments. I lived in a tenement in a five-story tenement at the lower east side. No elevators in those days. You walked up five flights, and in those days there were always milk bottles or empty milk bottles outside most of the doors because people used to when they finished a bottle of milk, they put it outside, and in those days the milkman would come. He would take the empty bottles and put down full bottles. Those were the days where the milk bottles are always glass in those days, and near the top there was the cream. That's what you had to do before you opened the bottle. You had to shake it so the cream would throw out the milk, and what a lot of the kids used to do, they would open it without shaking it so they could drink or sip some of the cream. Okay, so there's another great memory, right, Ron, drinking cream. Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is, I stole a bunch of empty milk bottles because the deposit, I'm not sure again, this is, you know, many decades ago, it was either two pennies or three pennies a bottle when you took them to the grocery store. So I did that. I I, if I remember correctly, and I usually do, I think a deck of cards at that point, the cheapest deck of cards was 18 cents. So I stole enough milk bottles to buy a deck of cards, you know, to get the deposit to buy a deck of cards, and I started, and I sat down trying to figure out this trick. What happened? And again, another pivot point, life-changing moment, because I don't know if you're aware of this. I've written over 20 books on card magic because, as I said, that became my first love, and I'm known all over the world to magicians. Okay. So anyway, I figured out about four or five different ways to do the trick this counselor had showed us. Oh, I was so excited. I figured out that trick, but his now it became like a tree falls in the forest. That if nobody is there, does it make a sound? I figured out all these tricks. What good is adobe if I'm not doing it for another person, you know? Then there again is a life-changing moment because I had to say at least three words to somebody if I wanted to show this trick. I had to say, pick a card, right? Otherwise, I couldn't do the trick. So that started a new uh, I can't even think of a word. It started a life for me, and what started to happen, a lot of my friends there on the lower east side who had who for whom I had done this this trick would say, hey, magish. They called me magician, magician. Hey, magish, can you show us another trick? Well, I didn't know another trick. Again, I I went to the library and started to look at the section where there were magic books, and in those years, again, I'm going back to the late 1930s or something like that or early 19 uh, yeah, the late 1930s, I guess it was. The books on magic were not the kind of things I was interested in. There were tricks with magnets and nails, and I was interested in card magic, and if I found a book that had a couple of things about card magic, oh my God, Ron, I would smell the pages, you know, they smelled so good to me, and I'd clutch into my chest and run home with it to read about the trick. Okay. Now why am I telling you this whole story? When you asked me before about being 19 years old, I think when I was 19 years old, around that area, I I thought card magic or just magic generally was going to be my life because it was going to be my career. I got work at a place called Billy Reed's Little Club in New York City in Manhattan was a in the 50s between Park and Lexington are very compared to where I came from, a very high-class area. Anyway, I worked there from 11 o'clock at night till about four in the morning doing what they call table magic for anybody that asked. There was a card on everybody's table that said Lorraine, the uh, the master of ten fingers, something like that, talking about my magic ability, and people would ask for me, and I'd come over and do tricks, and I worked for tips. Okay. That's what I was doing there. I thought, as they say, matching was gonna be my life, but I was still interested in memory work, and in those days I was applying it mostly to cards. And anyway, what changed my life there was an actor, but I think I wrote this in the Before I Forget also, so it's going to be very repetitive, Ron, for you if you read the book, which I wish you told me you did. There was an actor by the name of Victor Jory, who was very well known at that time. He played Helen Keller, the blind girl. He played her father in the movie Miracle Worker, in which Annie Bancroft, who became my best friend, she married to Mel Brooks, of course. She and Mel Brooks and Bancroft played Helen Keller's teacher, and she won the Academy Award for that part. That was 1962. Okay. So anyway, Victor Jory was in that movie, and he was in, as I say, at that time, very well known. He was kind of interested in magic. He was in New York because he had written a play that he was starring in that he was a detective that was also interested in magic. It was not a new idea. Austin Wells, who I also met occasionally, was the first one that I know of that had a play in with the same plot where he was a detective, chief of detectives or something like that, but was also interested in magic. Okay. Victor Jory came in one day with a friend, and they asked for me to come over, and I would at each table do a standard

Kind of act, you know. I had a different uh, things in a little uh, briefcase I carried, etc. And I would do these tricks. And I always, of course, what happened, Victor Jory came in about four or five days later, was a different friend, and he wanted me to do what he did, you know, to stand the thing that I was doing at each table, which I did. But my kind of ego in those days, I wanted to do at least one other trick that Victor Jory hadn't seen yet. So I would, after I finished my regular basic little act at the table, I would do a trick Victor Jory. Long story short, he must have come in 12 or 13 times, each time with a different friend because he said he wanted a friend to see what I was doing. And each time I wanted to show Victor Jory a different trick. The problem was, I started to run out of tricks to show him, you know. You know, a lot of the people that know me, I've written, like I said, 28 or 30 books on the subject. You had me a deck of cards, I can go on forever because I make it up as I go along. But that's as time went by, not when I was that young. In other words, it was, you know, up to a point I was, I, I knew so many tricks, and that was it.

So what, again, here comes a plot point, came to the, to an area where he, I knew he was going to come back. What the heck do I show Victor? We came out of what do you call a first-name basis, and I said, "What can I show Victor that I haven't shown him yet?" And the only thing that came to mind was to do a memory thing with the cards. For him to be, to be rotted was like scratching the bottom of the barrel, you know. All my magician friends, I had shown my memory stuff to, I did it for them, I did it for close friends. I didn't think it was a thing for the public. Okay. Well, that changed my life when he brought another friend in. I did my standard little thing for the friend, and then Victor said, "Okay, Harry, you're going to show me a different trick." I said, "Yeah," and I did him everything with cards. And that changed my life. He stood up when I finished the trick, he stood up, started to applaud, and he started to rave. He said, "Harry, the things you've done for the last 14 or 15 weeks, your sleight of hand is the best sleight of hand I've ever seen. But what you just did," and he started to rave about the memory thing. That changed my life, obviously. The light bulb went off. I said, "Oh my god, I didn't think that it was that good or that it would, you know, I didn't think it would impress people that much." So that again was a life-changing uh, thing that Victor Jory got so excited over, the memory card stunt, which was a very strong thing. I was very good at it, but as I said, I had not, not done it for the public at all, really. And he just, he couldn't stop raving about it.

Well, it's amazing that, you know, we can have such life, that you had such life-changing moments with that counselor uh, you know, at that, that day in the rain with the stomach cramps, with, with Victor Jory. And you know, as I think about your life and this, and I've known about your life, but I love the Before I Forget, and in the Before I Forget, I got to find a little bit about your personal life and, and your beautiful wife, Renee. You and Renee toured for 20 years with an act where you actually used cards on stage, and she helped you do a memory trick with cards. Is that right? Yeah. No, what, you know what they used to do, you know, I used to carry two blackboards uh, while we did the act. I, I started to feel like that's at the salesman, you know, carrying these two big blackboards. And anyway, one of the boards had slots on it and unexplained it like ribbons uh, and it was numbered from 1 to 26, and it was able to take giant cards. And I'll, I'll explain the memory stunt I used to do uh, run. What Renee did, she, she didn't do any memory work, right? She would, she would write on the blackboard when I did a stunt called Objects in Hiding Places, where I'd have the audience, the blackboard was numbered from one to in squares or little rectangular boxes numbered from 1 to 15, and I told the audience to call any object at any hiding place and to make it as ridiculous as possible. They didn't know that the more ridiculous it was, the easier it was for me to remember it, you know. But I thought, and, and another point here, you know, when I was very young, Ron, I wanted to be like Danny Kaye. I don't know if you know who Danny Kaye was. Now if the young people nowadays know Daddy Kaye, he was a great performer, singer, dancer, actor, joke teller. He, he was an amazing guy, and I wanted to be like Danny Kaye. But I found out that I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't tell jokes. So, you know, so I couldn't do that. But fortunately, Ron, I'm a pretty good ad-lib guy. And one of the reasons for these, for this Objects and Hiding Place, aside from showing the memory, because I told the audience to call the numbers from one to fifteen haphazardly and shout out any object, any hiding place, I would get one or two or maybe five laughs as the people call these like, for example, somebody called number 12, Elizabeth Taylor hidden under my bed. And as Renee was writing it, I would say, "That's not ridiculous, that's wishful thinking." Again, we've got a big one, you know, things like that. So ad-lib, I'm pretty good. Okay, so that's what Renee did. She would write on the blackboard. And when it came to the cards, she, all right, let me explain the card demonstration that I did, these two that I'm telling you I stopped doing after 20 years where Renee and I traveled all over the world doing the uh, the act. When she finally said to me one day, she said, "Hon, I don't want to ever say, 'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen' again," because that's what she used to do. She was always introduced first, and she said, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," and she'd introduce me. So she said, "I don't want to ever say that again." She thought it was time for us to have a child, you know. I was in my very early 40s, she was in her late 30s. She said, "It's time," and that's what happened afterwards when she quit, we had a child. But that's another story. Okay, that's my son Robert, who lives, who I can't believe is 52 years old now, and he lives about a block away from me here in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and I go there two, three times a week for dinner. And I don't know what I would do without them, he and his wife and my adorable little granddaughter who's going to be eight years old. I can't believe my son is 52. Anyway, what happened? What was I telling you? God, I was telling you about the Don Carter, which was very strong and very good. I had a giant deck of cards uh, I would call up, don't forget I already knew the names of everybody in the audience. I said, "Is there somebody here who knows a little bit about cards, can help me?" So a lot of hands went up, and I'd say, "Okay, Mr. Smith, would you come up, please?" I gave him the deck of cards. I said, "While I'm talking, can you please shuffle those the best you can?" And then I said, "I need four other people." Again, long story short, I got four people, I called them by name, I had him stand behind me. Then I said to Mr. Smith, who was shuffling the cards, I said, "Would you square them and let me cut them about in half?" And with a giant deck of cards, I'm pretty good with cards anyway, but I was able to cut it exactly in half. And I said to him, "Would you take one half and give it to Mr. Goldberg here behind me on my left," which he did. I said, "Mr. Goldberg, would you take out all the clubs and then give the rest of the cards to Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson, you take all the hearts." So again, long story short, I had the four people behind me, each take a different suit, clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds. Then I said to Mr. Smith, "You've shuffled these cards, right? Okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to call them off to me at this speed," and I had a snapper, and I would snap it very quickly because I, I don't like silence on stage. So he called them off pretty quickly, and I said, "As you call each card, hand it to Renee," and Renee would put him on this blackboard. I think there may be a picture of that board in Before I Forget, I'm not sure. But anyway, okay. So those cards were put on the blackboard. Now the point was, I said, "Mr. Smith, thank you. Let's give him a round of applause." He sat down. Now I said, "Here's what I'd like to try to do. I would like to try the gentleman behind me, which cards they are holding. Mister whatever, would you come over here to my left, spread the cards up front that you're holding in front of you, don't let me see them." And I said, "As I call them, please hand it to me." So, "You've got the ace of clubs," he'd hand me that. "You've got the two of clubs. You don't have the three of clubs because that's the 17th card on the blackboard," and that would get, that would get the gasp, obviously. And I would do that with all the clubs, and he would sit down. Then I'd do the same thing with the hearts, and then I do with the spades, with the diamonds. You know, I'm a pretty good showman. I would never, you know, you need an ending for these things. So with the diamond guy, the last guy, I would call off the uh, "You, you have the ace, you don't have the two diamonds, that's the 18th card," and blah, blah, blah. In the middle, I would kind of uh, I'm a pretty good actor though, I would hesitate as if I'm really letting this sweat drop down my forehead, you know, until, "Wait a minute, all right, I'll get to that in a minute. You've got the nine of diamonds. You don't have the jack of diamonds, that's the fourth card," blah, blah, blah. In other words, I ended with him holding one card that I passed by as if I couldn't think of it, one of the cards from the middle of the spread, like the six or seven or eight of diamonds. And that was my ending because after I called, and he's standing there holding one card, and I had my hand to my forehead, acting, and I'd say, "Okay, give me a second, I think I've got it. You're holding this seven of diamonds." He would turn to the audience, and that, that got its standing ovation. So that was my condo card stuff that I stopped doing when they left because I needed someone, you know, to put, oh, also what was important, I needed about 30 seconds after all the cards were called and I had Mr. Smith sit down, wherever they would say that, "What Mr. Lorraine will attempt to do is to tell the four gentlemen or the four people behind them which cards they're holding." I needed that heart to talk for, like I say, 20 or 30 seconds to lock all the cards in my mind. So when she left, I cut out those two uh, demonstrations. And you know, Rod, I've written about this also. I've been very lucky in my life. I'm, I'm knocking good mentally. What happened, all of a sudden I didn't have to carry these two blackboards anymore because I watched those demonstrations. All of a sudden I'm going toward a seminar that I'm doing or an appearance that I'm doing, just carrying a blackboard. What uh, what I used to do when I, I started to do the uh, a magic square as one of my closing things, then I would tell the people who booked me to have a blackboard available. So I never carried anything, I just carried a uh, what do you call it, a briefcase. I had a current issue of a magazine that I had memorized in there. I had sheets of paper where I had memorized the Academy Awards and the populations of all the states and things like that, but all that I could carry in a briefcase. Well, what started to happen, Ron, instead of being called an act, I started to be called a speaker. And you know what, my price went up, right?

Well, you know what, as, as I read your book and I've, you know, I've been a fan of yours and followed you and watched your videos, I've always known what a showman you are. I mean, well, that's what, that's basically, you know, what happened, Ron, and I, I'm going to take you out of that picture. I don't know if you, if you don't like what I'm about to tell you, you can delete it. Okay. Over the years, since my first book, which was How to Develop a Superpower Memory, and that came out in 1956. I always get around say I was four years old, you know what I mean? 1956, and it's still out there for God's sakes. And anyway, the reason I'm mentioning it, as time went by, and that book, all of a sudden I got a, I got a 500-dollar advance uh, Ron, and I was very young, of course, uh, at the time, and I was afraid that if the book didn't sell, I would have to give that 500 back to the publisher, you know, that's what I thought, really. Well, it ended up, the publisher got some guy, his name was Eugene Schwartz, I'll never forget him. He wrote a 3,000-word uh, ad for that book that ran in just about every magazine with over 5,000 publication. It ran all over the world. He wrote all the 3,000 words. I, I wrote uh, just a heading, you know, How to Develop a Photographic Memory or something like that, and the book sold millions of copies. Incidentally, I'm saying that like the great eager to say I haven't sold millions of copies. I, you ready for this? I was getting a penny a book. And then when I, as the book started to sell and I spoke to people, I said, "This is ridiculous, getting a penny a book." I yelled at my publisher, whose name was Frederick Fell. You know what? We doubled it. I ended up getting two cents at some point, but anyway, that was my first book. Now why did I start to tell you this, Ron? What started to happen is so many people started to try to copy me, started to do my act. I used to see people in my audiences with a yellow, you know, a legal pad, taking notes while I spoke. Some of them were doing my act word for word. And here's the point of this because you said something before about what a showman I am. That's the point. You know, the cod magic, which I am considered, again, you know, I don't want to sound egotistical, but you know, I'm 94 years old, I don't, I don't give a dog, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna say it like it is. I'm considered one of the top living convent sleight of hand artists with a deck of cards in the world today. Okay. So that and memory, what I always said and wrote were my two medias of entertainment, basically. I'm an entertainer. So I don't care what you do. I don't care if you flap your arms and fly around the room. If you don't entertain your audience, you're gonna bore the heck out of them. And that's what a lot of the people over the decades who stole my act did, they bored the hell out of you. You know, Ron, what could be more boring than standing on stage remembering things? They can steal your act, but they can't steal your personality and your showmanship. And that's why ever, that's why Time magazine called you uh, the Yoda of, of memory. They called me the Yoda. Very true, yes, that was very nice uh, but yeah, that's it. I'm basically an entertainer. That was, that, that's really the point here. And obviously, what I call the media that, the card magic I do with the memory, I still wanted to be the best I could at it. But if you don't entertain with those things, that's the point. If you don't entertain, nobody's going to care. You know, there are things, look, you live and learn. One of the things that comes to my mind when I started to do this and I started to become known, I started to remember the names of everybody in my audience, Ron. Yeah, I'm talking about up to a thousand people. But you know, I have peripheral vision when I'm working with my eyesight, by eyesight I also have a peripheral thing in my mind that can read people's minds. You know what started to happen? I'm calling off, I used to, you know, my managers and agents in the early years, they always said, "You know, Harry, what you do, remembering everybody's name, that's an 11 o'clock number, that's something you should go, you should close your act with, you should close your appearances." And these are professional people, and I said, "No, wrong. If I don't get them at the beginning by remembering all their names, I ain't going to get them at all, right? Not only that, I want to use their names throughout my act. I want to call everybody by name. When somebody raises his hand, I want to say, 'Yeah, Mr. Goldberg, what's your question?' I want to use the name. So I couldn't do that if I didn't do, if I didn't open with that thing. So they were wrong, I was right. I did that for a hundred years, remembering all the names. But what I'm trying to tell you, I started to read people's minds. I'm calling off a thousand names, and when I got to about the 300th or the 400th name, I started to read their minds. They're all saying, "Okay, we believe you. What else do you do?" Okay, do you see what I mean, Ron? And you know something, I was right up to a point. Okay, that's very strong. You remember three, four hundred names, great. Go into your next, you know, the next thing you gotta do. What I started to do, like a lot of my appearances were either in a studio audience like with rows of seats, or it was after dinner with a lot of tables. I started to, me, let's say there were a thousand people in the audience, I'd meet only three or four hundred, but I'd separate them around the room in a way when I said, when all the people I met, please stand up, it looked like I met the whole audience, you know. In, it's amazing what you do. And, and, and, and Harry, I have been uh, Mr. Lorraine, I have been copying that demonstration for 29 years, and when I do copy it, I tell people I saw Harry Lorayne do this on the Johnny Carson show. So what I'm about to say, I, I hope that you're, you're good with me giving you the credit because you deserve it. But I also want to say, as a guy who has done that demonstration, I know something about it that the people listening might not know. And here's a distinction which makes what Mr. Lorayne did much more impressive than the way I do it. The way I do it, I say, "Tom, you can sit down. Lisa, you can sit down. Brian, you can sit down. Steve, you can sit down." Mr. Lorayne says it, "Mr. Bloomberg, you can sit down. Mr. Fleming," he's doing last names. Last names are, first names are easy to prepare for, there's only going to be so many Toms and Bills and Steves and Toms and Lisas and Karens. You am I correct in saying that you did it by last names? That is amazing. Always, the only time, one time, it's funny, the things that come to mind, they all happened decades ago. There was a, an audience, a regular audience, a lot of different names, but there was one large Smith family, about 18 people named Smith. So what I did there, yeah, I got all their first names because they keep small, calling Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Miss Smith, etc., to me would have been a ball. So I said, "Oh, there's about 18 Smiths, so let's do it this way. Mr. Robinson, sit down. Sarah Smith, Sylvia Smith," etc. That's what I use, first names ordinarily. No, I don't, unless it's a very odd name or something like that. I once did a thing in England, I may have written about this also, when it was called the show was called Just Amazing. It was a copy of a show, I don't know if many people remember it though. There was a pretty popular show here in America called That's Incredible. Yeah, and, yeah, and I did that show a number of times. And in England, they did the same show, but instead of calling it Just Incredible, they called it Just Amazing. And at one point uh, I was doing the show, and they said, "Mr. Lorayne, do you mind if we stack the audience the way we want?" I didn't know what they were talking about. I don't care, you know, people are people. It was a big studio audience with three sections, 100 seats in each one. And what they did in the center section, that was the, the most difficult for me, in the center section. Now remember this is many years ago where uh, Princess Diana was still alive. They had found, they told me afterwards, they scoured the country to find young girls that liked, that looked like Princess Diana, and they dressed them the way Princess Diana used to dress. Oh, man. Yeah. And they all had different last names. So their point was to see if I could remember all their names when they all looked alike. Wow. Yeah. And then in another section, there were twins. Now you reminded me about that because of first names with twins, you have to call the first name. So I'd say that, you know, there's the Smith family, there's, there's Selma and Sylvia, whatever. So there, I did do the first names. And the third section, I don't even know how to explain this, were people with crazy names. One guy's name was Laurie Tyres. Laurie is the English word for a trunk or whatever, right? That's what I use for Lori. Oh my gosh. That's so amazing. Yes, keep going. That's it. So the hell are all crazy names that I can't think of now. And you know, I did that uh, remembered all those 300 names, the place went crazy when I was finished. You know, sometimes the things that people are trying to trick you with, trying to upset you with, become very strong for you. I'll give you one last uh, example. You know, when I wrote a book, the very books, not the magic books, the publisher would send me on a book promotion tour, which they would book, and I mean I would do like 18 cities in two weeks for God's sakes, doing every television show, every radio show, national, national shows, local shows, whatever. So one time I'm doing the show, and there were two hosts, a man and his wife, I guess. Anyway, a man and a woman with a host of the show, and the audience was seated on benches, elevated benches, like I don't know, 200 people. And I was being interviewed, I was sitting between this man and woman and being interviewed, it was very nice. And now we can't, and I had, they knew I had remembered everybody's name, they wanted me to, you know, to do the names and faces thing. We come to a break, and I'm sitting there, and the man and the woman get up, and they walk to the audience which was sitting opposite us, and I couldn't hear what they were saying, but while they're talking to them, I see a lot of people getting up and changing seats, the whole audience changing seats, and I'm saying, "What the heck are these people doing?" You know what I did? I picked up my briefcase, my wife used to call it my extra arm, I always carry the briefcase, and I started to walk out. I made sure they see it, saw me walking out, and they ran over, "Oh, Harry, Mr. Lorayne, where are you going?" I said, "What are you doing there? One, changing people's seats?" "Oh, we wanted to," I said, "Don't you think you should have asked me first? Don't you think that maybe I would say no, I don't want you to do that, so I don't look like an idiot, well I didn't, can't remember other people's names because you made them change seats." They said, "Oh, oh, we have another minute left for the uh, to break, let's tell them all to go back." I said, "No, no, no, don't tell them to go back, let me handle it." I went back at the end of that story is when I asked everybody to stand uh, that's the point of telling why sometimes when people try to upset you, you come across much stronger than you would ordinarily. I started to tell all the people where, which seat to go back to. In other words, I'd say uh, "Mr. Smith, would you leave Mr. Jones alone and go back to your husband, Mr. Smith, who's making time with Mrs. Sullivan, for God's sake," you know, things like that. So I put, I finished the thing by having everybody go back to original, original seats, which, which got me three times the applause I would have gotten ordinarily, you know. So you know, those things happen, you have to be able to take advantage of it. Now you know, you, and you do so well at it. What would happen, like I think in your book, Before I Forget, you said you had a gag or two you might say as a joke if you, if you couldn't remember a name. Did I mean, did you have like, I might always say, "Oh, you know why I forgot your name? You're just a pretty lady, and I got nervous," and everybody laughs, and forget, and they forget. What did you have any things like that that you would say if you couldn't come up with the answer? Not really. The only thing I had, and I don't know how you end it, right, when you do the names, but like I told you a while ago, you know, these things need an ending, a definite ending. So the only thing I can tell you, apropos what you're asking, I didn't have any particular gags about it, but um, like I say, I'm a good actor, and I would always pick somebody that the whole audience could see. In other words, where the man overland was sitting, who had a very complicated sounding name, okay? And like I said, I'm a good actor, I come to that person, I'd say, "Oh, I'll get to you in a minute," and I'd start to call off other names, and I kept doing that every once in a while, look back at every state, should God, it'll come to me, and I would do that until he was the only one remaining standing. And I looked at him, and I said, "You know something, I think I got it. I hope I pronounced it correctly, you are Mr. Pentavania," and of course he'd shake his head and sit down, shake his head and sit down, and the audience went nuts. It was an ending, that's the whole point. So that's the only answer I have to your question. I'm a pretty good ad-lib guy, but there were no particular jokes there. I used to do, you know, things for laughs. Another thing comes to my silly thing comes to mind, when we first started to do the act, I used to buy miniature bottles of champagne. I used to buy cases of them, and I had a promotion picture of Renee and myself, I think that's in Before I Forget also, and I made little labels of that, and I would paste it over the lingo on the champagne bottle. In other words, it looked like I was manufacturing the champagne, and I would carry one bottle to every show I did. And why, at the end, toward the end of the show, when I would have everybody test me, like I, I'm a fast talker, which I think you saw what you see now when I'm talking to you and I'm 94 years old now, so I talked much faster 20 years ago. Anyway, they were testing me on every, I would have people test me on everything, Objects in Hiding Places, the cards, the populations, the Academy Awards.

Winners' names, everything. And I was machine-gun answering him, okay? Toward when I was doing that before I started, I said, "And if I forget anything," and then I would show the bottle of champagne. "If I get any, forget anything, you'll get a gift of this special little bottle of champagne," okay? What I did just to get a laugh and a little extra applause. And again, my timing is pretty good. I was doing this whole thing, and then one person, uh, would say, "What's my name?" And then again, here comes the acting. I'd say, "Oh gee, oh oh God, I'm sorry, sir," and I held, uh, uh, hold up the bottle of champagne. "Would you come and get this?" And he'd come here, take the bottle of champagne. And as he's walking back to his seat, I'd say, "Mr. Goldberg, enjoy it." That got the big laughs. You see? Now, now the question is, why did I stop doing that? I stopped doing it because, you know, sometimes you don't think right. I'm doing a show at a school, at a high school, for high school students. Long story short, I do my act the way I always did it, and I give a young guy a bottle of champagne. Okay, big laugh, big, big applause. At the end of the show, the principal comes to me and says, "Mr. Lorraine, you are marvelous, but do you think it's a good idea to give a young person a bottle of champagne?" So I said, "You know something, I swear to you, I never thought of that," and I never did the champagne again after that for any audience.

Well, you had, you had so many uh, good things there, you know, in it. Speaking of uh, alcohol, in, in the book, before I forget, I remember a story of you went to an event with Renee. You went in and memorized 145, 49 names. There was a famous person in the room; I don't know who it was, can't remember at the moment. But then the audi, you went and had a drink at the, at the bar with Renee. Then the audience left, and you didn't know they were going to leave. A new audience came in.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I remember that pretty well. How the heck do you get out of something like that, right? But you know, I sometimes amaze myself. I got out of it. I simply, I called out the names of a previous audience because, again, I, I've been very lucky in my life. This new audience that came in didn't all know each other necessarily. So when I had them stand up and I called names, each person thought that I made a mistake only with his or her name. So they just sat down; they didn't want to say anything. And I got the same kind of applause when I was finished. I made up every name. [Laughter] You know what? I had no choice. People say to me, why, when I tell that story, "Why did you do that?" I said, "What choice did I have?" That's my opening, you know? And I kept calling these people by those names through the entire show. Nobody said anything because, like I said, they all thought that I only mis, that I only forgot their particular name. And you know that it was, it's a hilarious story. It's a funny story. It, it talks about the power of suggestion and all that. But I mean, it, it, you know, that's a lot of what it was. But um, you, uh, you had a drink in between afterwards.

If I have a drink the day I, I give a speech, it just wrecks me. But clearly it didn't affect, doesn't affect you. Is that something you would do?

Oh yeah, you know, up to a point. I once, I, I may have written this in the book also. We were at a show; I was sitting at the bar, Renee and I, waiting to go on. And I said to the bartender, I said, "Bring us a couple of drinks." He said no. He said he was told not to service any drinks. And I got very annoyed, and uh, I went into the room that I started to take apart my blackboards, the blackboards. And I made sure that the, the head man there saw me doing it. They came over. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm leaving." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because my wife and I would like to drink, and the bartender told us that he was told he can't service a drink. If he can't service a drink, I can't perform. Bye." He said, "No, no, no, no, no, no." He took me, he really told the bartender he can give us a drink. In that strange Rhonda things, you remember what silly thing, why the bartender was told not to service a drink before that? I don't know. Maybe they thought if I had a drink I couldn't perform. I don't know.

Yeah, well, you know, uh, and, and I, I'm, and I, I want to be respectful of your time, but I'd love to ask you a few, a couple more stories here. And one of the stories that is so funny is the story about when you spoke for the little people.

Oh Jesus. Well, I'll tell that story. Uh, I had been very busy, uh, I was doing two, three shows a day, you know. Some places, some hotels would have two shows because they had so many people there, their room couldn't accommodate them all. So they would have a show at eight o'clock and then another one at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock, whatever. Anyway, I had to do a lot of shows; I was very busy. And we were flying to Washington, D.C. I'll never forget this. I was appearing at the Sheraton Hotel, where I had appeared a number of times. That was a hotel that used to have a lot of business meetings and affairs and things like that. So I used to work at that hotel quite often. Anyway, while we're flying there, I'm saying to Renee, "God, I hope it's a small audience because the smaller the audience, the less I had to work, not only mentally, run, but a lot of places where people are sitting at a dinner, I had a walk all over the room," you know. As time went by and as I got older, I was getting tired physically, you know, walking around the room, uh, so I kept saying, "I hope it's just a small audience." And the way we used to work it, when we got to a hotel or any uh, place that we were working, I, we would check into the hotel. I would go to the room to get some rest, grab a nap, whatever. And Renee would go to the room where we were appearing. This was part of her job. Well, we did the act together. She would check the rule; she would make sure the places that the rule is situated the way I like it. For example, a lot of these places they would have a big dance floor in front of the stage and the tables around that because they were the people would get up and dance usually. Well, I didn't like that. I don't want a big empty space in front of me when I'm working. I like to get, excuse me, I like to get close to people. So Renee would see that, and she would talk to whoever was responsible in setting up the room. "No," she said, "put all the tables, fill up that dance floor. My uh, Mr. Lorraine likes the tables close to him." And she would check the sound system, things like that. So anyway, we come to this place. I go up to the room; she does what I just told you. She comes upstairs and she says, "Hun, don't worry about it; it's a small audience." That's what gave me to laugh afterwards because she said, "That's a small audience." Okay, we get dressed, etc., after I rest for a while. We go down, and we go to the room where I'm appearing, and there's a big sign in front that says, "The Little People of America." So that's what it was. It was an audience, uh, or a little midgets, you know. I thought, what, I don't remember; they had to be a certain, they had to be below a certain height in order to belong to this organization. So I don't remember if it was three feet or three and a half feet, but it was something like that. And that's what it was called, uh, the, the Little People of America. And the president at that time, I knew from before this, he was an actor; his name was Billy something. He was a guard smoker. I remember I used to laugh; I said, "A cigar is as long as you're tall, for God's sakes," you know. So anyway, uh, and I think whenever they, I think whenever they stood up, because of the height of the table, something unique happened, right? Well, what they had done, that's, that's the point, which I'll never forget this. What they had done there is there were like three hundred, three or four hundred, and what they did, they took out all the regular chairs and got stools. Because if these people were sitting in regular chairs, they'd have to pick their hands up, up to above their head in order, in order to cut their steaks, you know, because they were below table level. So they got stools that brought them up above table level so they could eat normally, in other words, reach down to cut their meat. You know what I mean? So what happened? I met them all; we had a lot of laughs, you know. They kept calling me the giant, you know. I'm five six, or I was five six, Ron, and we, we laughed a lot because it's the first time I felt tall, you know, with all these little people. And anyway, the point of the story is, Renee introduces me; I start to talk, and I say, after my introduction with the few people I met, I always said with the few because that's what got the gasps, Ron. I said, "With the few people I met, stand up," and then, of course, hundreds of people stood up. In this case, the entire audience. I said, "With the few people I met, stand up." They all got up and all went on the table level; they all disappeared. All of a sudden, they all went on the table level. My wife and I, I mean, there was a, a stunned moment of silence, and then a couple of eyes came up above tabletops, and people started to laugh. And somebody yelled out, "That's the best trick we ever saw; you made 400 people disappear." So they all moved around to the front of their tables where they could see him, and we went into the rest of the act. But that's what happened; 400 people disappeared.

Oh gosh, amazing. It's hilarious. It's funny. And, and you have, you know, you've been on the Johnny Carson show 24 times, the Ed Sullivan show, the Jack Paar show, Dick Cavett. Mel Brooks was your friend. It's, it's an amazing, amazing, amazing life. You know, there was one thing, and it's not about memory, it's about visualization, though. You started smoking at the age of eight, and you stop smoking because of visualization. I would, I think that story could help a lot of people.

Well, yeah, you know, I, what happened was, oh God, I started smoking, like you said, when I was eight years old. I used to follow an old event, somebody with gray hair like I have now, who was smoking. If I saw one, and I'd follow him until he threw the butt away, and then I would pick it up and smoke that. I started that when I was eight years old, and I was a heavy smoker. I used to, as I grew older, I was smoking four or five packs a day. I, I used to tell time by cigarette. Somebody would say, "Harry, how long would it take you to do that?" I'd say, "Oh, maybe three cigarettes," you know. I think that was very important in my life, uh, I said, we used to take cruises to St. Thomas, to the islands, because there was a store there where I used to buy cartons of Marlboro cigarettes for a dollar fifty. That's a dollar fifty a carton, and I used to buy 10, 20 cartons. After a while, they used to ship them to me because they got to know me, who I was, etc., and they knew I was going to pay him. I was that kind of smoker, okay? Long story short, I don't know how to word this nicely, I started to urinate blood.

Oh my God. Yeah, that's it. Oh God, it's a difficult story for me to tell you. I started to urinate blood, and I, we lived on Jane Street in those days in Greenwich Village in New York, and I, I was having a tough floor. Renee was on the bottom floor, and I picked up the phone; we had an intercom, and I said, "Hun," and I told her about that, and she said, "Oh God, honey, you are too precious to me, Phil. It's not to go to a doctor immediately," which is what we did. And uh, anyway, long story short, I ended up in a hospital, uh, I'll never forget the catheters, the yellow God, and what I went through there, okay? The fortunate part about this story is it was not uh, it was a tuba on my bladder, and it was not uh, I don't know what the word is, it was not serious. They were able to cure it or take out whatever they had to. Anyway, end of the story, you were getting dressed; we're leaving the hospital; I was okay. I started to urinate normally, thank God. And uh, the doctor said, again, we had gotten kind of friendly, he said, "You know, Harry, I understand that you're a heavy smoker. I gotta tell you that the odds of 50-50 that this could come back," and he said that what could make it come back is the smoking. So I said, "Well, I cut down the odds if I stop smoking." He said, "Absolutely." I haven't had a puff since. Now what you said is the point. What started to happen, oh God, my hand, my right hand would go to my shirt pocket on the left side, reaching for where I used to keep my cigarettes and the cigarette lighter. And you know what? I'd go, of course I couldn't help it, to go, the urge was unbelievable after the kind of smoker I was. And that's where that story, what you mentioned, came in because you know what helped me, what kind of saved my life, to take away that urgency, that that almost stuck my heart when I reached to the pocket. I would visualize a catheter, that that took away the urge, you know. And, and it's uh, it's such a powerful story, and I think it can help so many people. My struggle is, is I tend to overeat when I get stressed, and I'm going to use that visualization in my own way, get to get something. I don't have to tell you about visualization, Ron. Get something in your mind that is a bad thing that has to do with eating too much.

Yeah, that is, that is uh, that's so true. And that's what I'll do. One more story. I, you know, I joined the military after September 11th. I was in the Navy. I was in Afghanistan in 2007. When I got back from Afghanistan, to pay tribute to the men who died, I memorized them all; there's 2,400 of them, and I write their names on a wall. You were in uh, the Army during World War II, uh, and in 1943, right before Guadalcanal, the Bataan Death March, you were going to be sent there, and a fluke maybe saved your life. That was part of my, that was the original story in the article I wrote so many decades ago, where good things, I'm sorry, where bad things become good. And there are a lot of stories of some of the things I've told you during this session, Ron. Having dyslexia, which was part of that story, is, is not a good thing, but it gave me a career. I quit school when I was 16 because that's the only time you were allowed to quit school, to school in those days, because I felt I had to go out to earn money because my father had passed away about, he died when I was 12. And here I was 16, and I quit school. That's a bad thing, but you know something, if I had stayed in school, I would, I was studying accounting; I would have become an accountant. That's okay; I got nothing against accountants; I love accountants. But what I became, to me in my mind, is much better than being an accountant. So there's another bad thing that became good. I mean, the, the most important was in the Army when I did a stupid, I would, Ron, I was 17 and a half. I had enlisted in the Army because I knew I was going to be drafted anyway. At least I thought I was; ended up it could have been I was. And I weighed 109 pounds. So I was told when I got into the Army, somebody told me that if you weighed 108, they wouldn't take it. I weighed 109; all I had to do was run around the block a few times, you know. So anyway, I enlisted because I thought you'd get a better deal. And yes, as I wrote years ago, if they took me, we were losing the war, let's face it. And it's as you said, it was at the Guadalcanal, the Bataan Death March, really. It, we were losing the war, Ron. And anyway, I get into the Army, and they, in those days, I don't know if they do it now, you took an intelligence test. And again, I thought that the better your mark, the better you show what a great intelligence you have, the better job you're gonna get. Again, I was entirely wrong because I got a very high intelligence uh, grade. And what happened? They put me in an outfit called the IRTC, which stands for Infantry Replacement Training Center. The point is that you had to be intelligent in order to learn all the things that an infantryman had to know and learn, right? And it was, it was a death, it was a suicide squad because what happened when we were going to go overseas? What happened is, as soon as an infantryman was either wounded or killed alphabetically, one of us had to take his place in this place where he had just been shot and be able to do what he was doing, to be a Browning Automatic Rifle or the handgun or whatever the heck he was doing as an infantryman. You had to be able to do that. That's where the intelligence came in. And then I got lucky, if that's the question you're asking, Ron. I got lucky by doing a stupid thing. We used to do 20-mile marches, 20-mile hikes, and they would test our canteens of water. The point being, you're supposed to be able, we were supposed to be able to do this couple of hours long hike without drinking because maybe we were going to be shipped to a hot weather area or whatever. Anyway, one day we're doing one of these hikes, and I'd see a little pool of water, and I said, "This great Lower East Side brain says to myself," I, I don't have to load because they used to examine our canteens after the march. I say, so now I can touch the water of my canteen; I could drink water from that little uh, pool. Well, long story short, it was a, it was stagnant water that I drank, and that evening I had a 106 temperature. I, I ended up with typhoid fever. And the reason this was the major story, ah God, is a little difficult for me to talk about this. I was in the hospital, and while I was in the hospital, my entire company went overseas, and none of them, none of them came back.

Wow. So talk about a bad thing. You have my typewriter feature. It's not a good thing, talking about a bad thing like typhoid fever becoming good. It saved my life.

Well, you know, and, and that fever that saved your life, uh, allowed you to have the career that you have, which has changed so many lives, uh, including mine. You know, you, you, you had the, the fever; it was a bad thing, and it ended up being a great thing.

Exactly. Yeah. No, I've been very lucky in my life, and that's, you know, that's uh, part of it. And I've got to, my God, you know, I moved a few times over the last decade; I lost a lot of things. I had cartons because you just mentioned about helping people; I had cartons of mail, regular mail, of people telling me I saved their lives. I used to have a letter framed all I wall from some man who said I was going to commit suicide until I read your book, things like that. So those things, you know, were very important to me, that I had that effect on people, that I helped so many people. That was important to me.

Well, I know you did.

Yeah. And you know, you're an icon; you're, you're a legend; you're the Yoda of memory training. You've, like, you know, and you've lived uh, just such an amazing, interesting life. You've, and you've been so humble about it. You know, I watched you tell Johnny Carson, you know, that anybody could learn. And, and part of it is you're a businessman, so you're telling everybody can learn it because you know you're a businessman; you want them to be your customers. But also it's true, and you are humble about it, that anybody can do what you do. And I think that's just one of the things that's so remarkable about you.

Well, you know, that's true. One of the things I used to say is I would mention my humble background, the little bit of education I have, and I would say, "Look, if I could do it, so can anybody. All you got to do is know how." And I just, you know what, the point, you want the opening of my act used to be, I used to say, "You know, people always complain about their uh, bad memories. You know what? You all have great memories; it's just that you don't have done it; you don't know how to use it right." That's it. We all, we're all born with great memories; that's part of life, that that you've got automatically. Now learn how to use it, Donna.

That's true. And that is, that is how uh, you spent your life. And uh, you know, I, I, you know, I could, I, I could go on for another 24 hours just asking you questions and talking to you, uh, but I also want to be respectful of your time. But this is a day that I will remember for a long time, and uh, I will be telling people about, and I'm going to be telling people to go to memoryimprovement.org.

Listen, Ron, I, I sure did appreciate talking to you, and I still thank you for your original introduction.

Well, Harry, thank you. This has been an absolute 100 honor. Thank you so much.

Thank you, sir. Good to talk to you. Bye-bye.