The dead joyce5/29/2023 ![]() One catalyst was Lance Rich, a magician and magic historian, who, while doing research for “Neon Dreams: Vegas Greats, Dates and Firsts,” a talk he gave at the Magic Collectors Expo in August 2021, determined that Ms. Dea (pronounced day) might well have died in obscurity if not for a serendipitous confluence of recent events. Dea died on March 18 at an assisted living center in Las Vegas, her caregivers told local news outlets. ![]() In between those two splashes of publicity, Gloria Metzner adopted the stage name Gloria Dea, made history in Las Vegas, had a few tabloid-ish moments in a brief film career, faded into obscurity for a half-century or so, and then, in her final years, was rediscovered and celebrated by her fellow magicians. “Anything with sleight-of-hand and billiard balls I liked,” she said almost a century later, in a 2022 interview with KVVU-TV of Las Vegas on the occasion of her 100th birthday. ![]() ![]() ![]() An accompanying photograph showed Gloria holding three balls between the fingers of her right hand, a moment from a trick in which she would make the balls appear and disappear like, well, magic. “Seven-year-old Gloria Metzner, 3607 Park Boulevard, is the youngest working magician in the world,” The Oakland Tribune of California declared in a November 1929 article about her. ![]()
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