New projects up his sleeve

When secrets are your stock in trade, it pays to keep them secret.

Hence, the first rule in the Society of American Magicians’ code of ethics: “Oppose the willful exposure to the public of any principles of the Art of Magic, or the methods employed in any magic effect or illusion.”

For working magicians, it’s a battle that has been going on since the first rabbit was pulled from a hat. Leading that battle these days is Richard Dooley (the Amazing Doolini), the society’s recently elected president. Founded in 1902 with Houdini as its first president, the Society of American Magicians is the world’s oldest magicians organization. And with about 7,000 members, it’s the second largest (the International Brotherhood of Magicians has about 15,000 members).

It’s a job that pays in prestige, but little else. Dooley gets no salary or stipend for his one-year term.

“This is my way of giving back to magic,” he says, sitting in a small conference room in the Mutual Life building here. It’s in this rather unmagical setting where the 44-year-old Dooley works his day job as an assistant vice president for the insurance company. He lives in Tolland, Conn., with his wife and three children.

Although magic has never been his full-time job, Dooley has been performing since he was a teenager and has been a member of the society since 1989. With a traditional approach to magic, he performs mainly at schools, company events and parties. His signature trick is the “Newspaper Tear” -- he shreds the paper and magically puts it back together. It’s a simple idea, he says, but the execution is tricky. It’s the trick that earned him his first audience gasp, back when he performed for audiences at his high school.

“When a trick really works, the audience gasps and then there’s the applause,” he says. “The first time I heard that gasp, I knew I wanted to do this.”

As society president, much of Dooley’s job involves being a sort of ambassador of magic to the world (he was in London a few weeks ago to present a bust of Houdini to another magicians group).

And there is the presiding over the society’s meetings, where members meet to hash out whatever issues are most pressing in the magic world. Among these, of course, is the matter of secrets. There are few things worse for a magician than a heckler who blurts out how a trick is performed.

Magicians can be their own worst enemy in this sense, Dooley says. Overeager to perform a trick they have just learned, an unprepared magician tries it on stage. Not only does a botched illusion ruin a show, Dooley says, it can ruin the trick for other magicians. Teaching the importance of preparedness was part of his campaign for the position.

While the deliberate exposure of secrets is always a concern, Dooley says there haven’t been any major problems recently. Or at least nothing like the uproar of 1998, when Fox ran a series of TV shows hosted by “the Masked Magician.” The point of the show was to demystify classic illusions.

“By doing that, what he did was hurt working stiffs like me,” he says.

There wasn’t a whole lot the society could do, because the Masked Magician wasn’t a member of the organization. Initially, magicians called for boycotts and picketed the television studio. Ultimately, Dooley says, the society decided to let it run its course and give no more publicity to the show. Although it’s still a sore point among magicians, Dooley says it hasn’t had lasting effects.

A few Internet sites revealing the mysteries behind magic tricks have popped up in recent years, but Dooley says none poses any threat to the profession.

Which leaves Dooley time to concentrate on another goal: opening up the world of magic to more people. It’s a matter that has been weighing on society members’ minds for a while.

“We want membership growth and to bring more young people into it -- the old magicians are dying away,” says George Schindler, the society’s dean of American magicians. “Richard Dooley is a young fella himself, so he’s got a fresh approach.”

And it’s not just young people that Dooley wants to bring into the fold. The world of magic has long been very white and male. Dooley would like to see some new faces. Granted, diversity is a buzzword in almost every field, but female and minority magicians are particularly scarce.

One of Dooley’s first orders of business was issuing a challenge to society members to form some kind of a relationship with “someone different from yourself.”

“That’s progressive thinking for our organization,” he says.

Although the challenge was generally well-received, Dooley isn’t sure how it went over with some of the stodgier pockets. “There are parts of the country that are very set in their ways, and our organization is not immune to that,” he explains.

Instead of preaching about the importance of diversity, the organization has been trying to get the message across subtly. For instance, the organization will be making educational videos featuring women, minorities and people with disabilities.

“We hope that people will see that and say, ‘Hey, that’s for me,’ ” he says.