"I can't do any better"

Old-school, close-up magic, performed by a master, with the simplest of props: cigarettes, silver dollars, short lengths of rope, pages of folded newspaper.

Via Dick Cavett's blog at the New York Times, two posts (and one half-hour video segment) celebrating The Great Slydini:

Conjuring Slydini, Part 1 (with 30 minute video)
Conjuring Slydini, Part 2

Tony was a bit bowled over by the reaction on the street the day after the first show aired. At his tobacco/newspaper shop, where he said he’d been anonymous for decades, he was now lionized. “Dick, you make so I can’t-a go anywhere,” he mock-complained. And then he did complain: “But, Dick, I’m-a look-a so old.” As a young man, he’d been a handsome dog.

A week after that show aired he went to France, Spain, Italy and Japan. Home-recording of television was not all that common back then but, he said, “Everywhere I’m-a go they go to a machine, push a button and up comes Dick Cavett and Slydini. How they get I don’t know.” (Magicians cassetted that show all over the world to one another.)