Early Life
Nixon attended the Westcliff High School in Essex. His father was a lawyer whose hobby was magic and who took Nixon to watch performers such as Nevil Maskelyne and David Devant. One magician who made an early impression on the young boy was Stanley Collins, who had a gentlemanly image which influenced Nixon's later performing style. Nixon started performing magic himself after an aunt bought him an Ernest Sewell Magic Box for Christmas. On leaving school he gained a job with the Henley Telegraph, the in-house magazine of the W. T. Henley Telegraph company, a publication which had been founded by Alfred Hitchcock. In 1938 he joined the Magic Circle. He also became an accomplished double bass player and performed with a local band.
Read more about this topic: David Nixon (magician)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)