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By the time Mel-Roy the magician issued the accompanying poster, he was already a household name across America and Mexico. It was not for his magic though, but rather for his pioneer- ing mentalist, question-and-answer work that he performed on radio beginning in 1928, then at KGKO in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1929, and later over XER in Del Rio, Texas, the world’s largest radio station.

Mel-Roy was born Wilbert W. Holley in 1888 and first became interested in magic at the age of fourteen, when he was called upon the stage to assist a magician. After serving in World War I, he returned to California and, beginning in 1927, put together an act of magic and mentalism. Similar to other mindreading magicians of the era, he was resplendent in turban and all the trappings of a mystic.

He started out working vaudeville, in smaller towns and theaters, and in 1928 toured throughout the South. In 1929 he began his radio work, in which he would answer questions from listeners that had been mailed to the station. He gave advice on love, marriage, business, finding lost items and relatives, and similar requests. Listeners were invited to send in a dollar for Mel-Roy’s dream or astrology booklet and they would get their question answered free of extra charge.

At the height of his success, it was rumored that he employed a staff of eighty-four typists and secretaries to respond to the questions, had a weekly payroll of about $7,000, and took in over $5,000 in one day; there were many days like this. An average day’s mail was 17,000 letters, the results from four, fifteen-minute broadcasts. Another unsubstantiated rumor was that Mel-Roy cleared $200,000 in eight months broadcasting his question- and-answer act. This could not be confirmed, even by surviving family members.

The beginning of the end of Mel-Roy’s radio mentalism came in the early 1930s as the government’s Federal Radio Commission (later the Federal Communications Commission) began getting complaints about radio mentalists. Most did not involve Mel-Roy, but rather other fortune-tellers such as Rose Dawn, Koran, and “Dr.” Ralph Richards, a man who left a long trail of complaints and inter-state flight warrants for his arrest.

With fears that so-called fortune-telling programs might result in the cancellation of radio station licenses, Mel-Roy saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to do something he’d always wanted to do: take out a large illusion show on the order of Black- stone, Thurston, and Willard the Wizard.

He did just that in 1933, and he appeared both in theaters and under canvas. One account described his tent as seating 3,500 and

the show consisting of two express cars of illusions, mostly from the workshop of Floyd Thayer.

He did good business, too. The Sphinx for November 1933 reported: “While playing the Tabor Grand in Denver, he staged his Steel Tank Escape and received five-column wide, fourteen- inch deep coverage in the Denver Post. He broke all house records at Cheyenne, Wyoming, and at the Orpheum in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. He carries twenty tons of equipment and has added a dance team.”

For the 1933 season he played 294 dates, covered 10,854 miles with 709 fifty-minute performances and nineteen outside free demonstrations, and received 11,500 inches of newspaper space in seventeen different states. Mel-Roy offered audiences such illusions as Canary in Light Bulb, Cutting a Girl in Fourths, The Gallows (or Hangman) Illusion, a Spook Séance Cabinet, and other effects. The second part of his show was his question-and- answer act. He advertised, “You have heard him over principal radio stations in the United States and Mexico. Now you can hear and see him in person.”

At times he arranged to have other magicians take over the show and appear as Mel-Roy. A magician named Floyd Brown of Denver took over the show for part of 1933, but the most famous of these was Tommy Willard, son of Jim Willard, the original Willard the Wizard, who took over the show in 1935. Eventually, changing tastes in audiences, the economic impact of the Depres- sion, and Mel-Roy’s health brought an end to his illusion show.

For a while Mel-Roy took out a “spook show” that featured theater blackouts in which ghostly figures and ghouls floated through the audience. The shows also featured magic and illusions and were usually performed beginning at midnight. He worked this for two or three years and by 1938 was out of magic. During the 1940s and ‘50s he worked as a driver for the Tanner Transpor- tation Company in southern California.

He still kept involved in the local magic scene, was very good friends with performers Virgil and Julie, and eventually passed away in 1966. He is buried at Valhalla Memorial Park, near Los Angeles, in a section devoted to World War I veterans.

Mel-Roy’s wife and assistant Treva passed away in October 2004 at the age of ninety-five; she is survived by a brother, a sister, a daughter, a son, and a grandson. 

—Tom Ewing (Background for this article comes from a February 2002

MAGIC magazine article by noted magic historian Diego

Domingo, from David’s Price’s Magic, A Pictorial History, from magic publications in the author’s collection, and from the Conjuring Arts Research Center database.)

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