Over the following months, the code act became a finely tuned instrument. Irving [Eddie Fields] and Freddie grew so accomplished in their roles, even those who suspected a code were left wondering if one was possible.

One of Eddie Fields' most remarkable achievements is the Master Code he worked out, first with his partner Freddie Teschner, and later with George Martz. Freddie had the initial idea that they do a code act to attract a crowd for their horoscope pitch. Sensing the promise in such an idea, Eddie set to work, starting with the old Zancig code and later studying more advanced systems. He eventually synthesized a code unique to his needs: an act that would gather crowds in dime stores and department stores. The act also stood alone, and Eddie and his partners performed it separately in night clubs, hotels, and movie theaters.

Eddie further changed the entire nature of the two-man code act by choosing to become invisible. He wanted Freddie, and later George, to be able to "receive" names and serial numbers and questions directly from the subjects in the audience, without any apparent help from his partner roaming in the crowd.

I spoke with Jay Marshall recently and asked him if he had any anecdotes about Eddie. He mentioned stopping in to watch Eddie and George perform the act and the pitch in a dime store in Cleveland. According to the story, Eddie had the ability to "send" information for several people ahead, and George had the ability to remember all this information. In this way, Eddie could transmit what he needed to George, and then he was free to chat for a while with Jay. When he sensed George was "winding down," he'd pass along the data on the next set of spectators, and then resume his conversation with Jay. [Jon Racherbaumer tells a similar story, in which Eddie boasted the ability for he and George to work seven people ahead.]

Eddie and George at the height of their powers.

Jay then added that Eddie taught the code to Danny and Jan Orleans. One of the problems, he said, is that Eddie and George worked the dime store environment, where language such as "ain't" and "He don't" were acceptable. Danny and Jan work for the upper ranks of corporate America, and so they had to significantly upgrade some of the key words.

The next stop on my search for Eddie Fields anecdotes would seem, obviously, to be Danny Orleans. To my delight, and I hope yours, this conversation turned into a full-blown interview on the nature of Eddie Fields' wonderful code.

On Learning the Code

I ask Danny how he and Jan went about learning this allegedly difficult code.

Jan and he met with Eddie every week for a year to learn the code. "I thought it would all be written down, in a notebook, or something," Danny said. Then he could take it home and they could begin learning it in steps. Not so. Nothing was written. "It's all up here," Eddie said.

"We had to extract it from Eddie, piece by piece." There are so many situations. For example, in the forties people kept coins longer than they do now. Occasionally Eddie would receive a coin with the date rubbed off, or a bent coin. They had a way to code these anomalies, which made the routine all the more impressive.

The most difficult part of learning the code is to learn what not to say, Danny emphasized. "If I add the word please, a set of keys becomes a pencil. Once I put in too long a pause, and a quarter became a piece of dental apparatus."

One also needs multiple ways of coding the same thing, which adds to the code's complexity. For example, suppose you are coding a serial number, and you get a string of all 4s. If you use the same code word for each one . . .

On Updating to the Nineties

I raise the Jay Marshall comment about some of the words in the original code being less than grammatically correct.

It's not so much that as it was simply dated, Danny says. There were code words such as kindly and if you please. And the word 'splain. It would be jarringly out of place to use these phrases today. Danny estimates they have changed over 50 percent of the original words.

There are also many more words needed today, especially in regard to coding objects. There are now such things as pagers and cell phones. Danny and Jan maintain an entire drawer full of flash cards. The tradeoff is to have enough words to transmit anything that comes along, but to keep that list of words to a minimum, to reduce the chance of inserting an extraneous word and changing the meaning of what you're transmitting.

The forties gave Eddie and George certain advantages. When they were learning the code, and George would occasionally have trouble receiving, Eddie would just mumble the word in Yiddish. Yiddish was close enough to George's German that he could usually pick up the meaning.

The dime store environment also gave them the freedom to deal with troublemakers. Occasionally, for example, someone would hide an object in his hand, so that Eddie couldn't see it. They had a way to code this situation, which still impressed the audience, but George then had no reservations about embarrassing the fellow in order to get rid of him. He and Eddie were there to sell horoscopes, and they had no use for difficult customers.

On Invisibility

In most code acts I've seen or read about, both performers are the stars. One is in the audience, and he addresses his partner on stage: "Can you tell me what I'm holding, please?" The Minch biography revealed for the first time Eddie's ground breaking twist on this arrangement, that the fellow in the audience should disappear: "To create the best illusion of mind reading, Irving's [Eddie's] role must be unperceived by the audience, or should seem so insignificant that he was barely noticed. He must become inconspicuous. This realization demanded a break with all his training in magic and pitchwork. Where he had previously learned to command an audience's attention and hold it, he must now blend in with the crowd. It required an entirely different psychology and a sublimation of his ego as a performer." Although I read these words repeatedly, I had absolutely no idea what they meant. How can one of the performers become invisible?

"Eddie kept telling me to become invisible," Danny said, "and I didn't understand either. Then one day he transmitted to Jan for about five minutes, and I got it!"

The key to the invisibility is that Eddie didn't talk to George, he talked to the audience. "Just step up, he'll help you." By passing instructions to the audience in an off-handed way, Eddie could convey the necessary information.

Attitude and demeanor were also important to the invisibility. Eddie blended in so well that he was perceived, at most, as the guy who collected the money for the horoscopes, and many just assumed he was one of the dime store employees.

Similarly, Danny doesn't address Jan when they perform. In some cases, Danny can code the data on a third person while instructing a second, and so he has to say nothing when it is time for Jan to service the third spectator.

On the Nature of Code Acts, and Deceptiveness

I ask if it is a basic contract with the audience that they know a code is being used, so that they can appreciate the performers' skill over less demanding methods, such as radio transmitters.

No! For magicians, yes. Magicians are fascinated that Danny can code eight numbers in a single sentence. But a lay audience, once they tumble to the fact that a code is being used, they dismiss the whole thing as "just a code." It's like card magic. You want the audience to be amazed at the climax of the trick, not to admire your work on the diagonal palm shift.

Of course audiences are aware of codes, through movies [the recent Steve Martin movie, Leap of Faith, is a prime example] and television. Jackie Gleason and Art Carney did a spoof on code acts, and Johnny Carson has. Therefore you have to divert them from thinking about codes.

As an aside, I ask Danny if he ever had the opportunity to watch Bill and Irene Larsen perform their hilarious spoof on code acts.

Yes -- it was at an S.A.M. convention. At first Danny didn't realize what was going on. He looked up, and Bill looked so handsome in his tux, and Irene looked just like a queen. For the first item or two, he didn't realize it was a spoof, and then of course it became laughingly obvious. [Bill at one point promised to publish this routine in Genii -- I hope Erika some day fulfills that promise!]

Back to deceptiveness:

Partly, Danny and Jan divert the audience by invoking the humor of their husband-wife relationship. If your wife can read your mind, what must your home life be like?

Adding an additional layer of deceptiveness also takes the heat off a code. For example, Danny and Jan will sometimes combine their code work with a book test or psychometry. If there is no way for Danny to know what is being transmitted, how can it be a code?

Another key to deceptiveness, which they learned from Eddie, is to transmit on the offbeat. For example, you palm a card when the audience is laughing or applauding, not when they are burning your hands. This is also a major key to the concept of invisibility.

On Kids and Questions

I know that Danny sometimes does school shows. I ask if he has ever considered doing the code act for kids?

He hasn't, and I think finds the question strange. [I did all sorts of mentalism for kids for a sequence of ten years of Halloween shows, so it seemed a reasonable question to me.] Danny feels the kids, if old enough to appreciate the entertainment, would take it as a game, and be less than cooperative.

I knew that Danny just finished a week of trade shows in Chicago. I ask if he did the code work during the show.

No -- he does a standard magic act for that situation. He and Jan primarily perform the code act for corporate banquets, or for other occasions where a female element is desired.

I wonder if he and Jan ever do full questions in the code act. I mention having once done questions for children (ages 8-10), and that they played very well. I was shocked however by a child's first question: When will I die?

Eddie and George did the questions, though Danny and Jan don't choose to. The When will I die? question is extremely common, and Eddie and George had a one-word cue for it. George had pat answers for most such questions, given that he didn't know the condition of the questioner. Perhaps the spectator was ill. So he would impart some uplifting message, such as it's not the length of life that matters but the quality, etc.

On the Place of Eddie's Code in History

It's wonderful that Danny and Jan spent a year extracting this code from Eddie, and many more years honing it. I hope they eventually document it for posterity. I ask how good they consider this code to be, and mention Jay Marshall's comments on it.

There are other codes in play today. A couple from Canada do the Tucker act. Glenn Falkenstein and Frances Willard do the Mordini code. Vic and Mary Kirk, from San Francisco, do a card code that is excellent. There is also a couple in Germany, and another in Spain. So where does Eddie's fit in? Danny feels it's the best code ever in terms of deceptiveness. As Eddie and George originally performed it, it was to sell horoscopes in dime stores, so it may not have had the showmanship elements of, say, the Zancigs' act. But definitely the most deceptive. [I won't pressure Danny to say this, but most magicians I know now consider Eddie's code, in his and Jan's hands (or minds!), to also be the most entertaining.]

Although this is a telephone interview, I can sense Danny's eyebrows raise when I mention the Jay Marshall and Jon Racherbaumer stories about Eddie getting five to seven spectators ahead. "If Jay said it . . ." Danny says, but I sense he feels this part of the code's reputation to be apocryphal.

A book? Danny has read most of the codes in print. He feels the Tucker code is very good, that it allows you to code long Polish names. Difficult to learn, but it can be done. The hard part in writing up a code is to teach how to use it. There is far more to it than a list of words and associations. You have to learn what to do in real situations. If Danny ever documents the code, that will be the real challenge.