Life
Whit Haydn was born to minister (Disciples of Christ) William James Hadden, Jr. and Margaret Shumate, an elementary school librarian. At a summer camp at the age of 10, Haydn witnessed a magic show by a Methodist minister who was an amateur magician, and Haydn reportedly stayed up all night trying to figure out what he had seen.
Three local North Carolina magicians—Dick Snavely of Raleigh, Bill Tadlock of Rocky Mount, and Wallace Lee of Durham—became mentors for the young magician. At fourteen, he borrowed money for a bus ticket to one of the major American magic conventions, Abbott's Get Together in Colon, Michigan, having convinced his parents to let him take the long bus ride alone.
He graduated from Rose High School in Greenville, North Carolina, and attended college at East Carolina University in the 1960s, where he also became heavily involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements. He left college in 1969 to challenge the draft, and became one of Pitt County's first conscientious objectors. He did some alternative service at New York University Hospital, but after being released from C.O. status, and the job, when he flunked the physical (due to poor eyesight), he started doing street magic in the West Village.
In 1970, he went back to school at Lynchburg College in Virginia, receiving a degree in philosophy in 1972, after which he attended Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia to become an Episcopalian priest, though he continued performing magic to help support himself at the school.
Dr. Reginald H. Fuller, a New Testament scholar, saw one of Haydn's performances at a faculty party, and suggested that Haydn's passion might lie not in the ministry, but in magic. A few weeks later, Haydn dropped out of the seminary and turned to magic full-time. Working as an actor/juggler/magician with a touring political theater under the direction of Bob Leonard, The Road Company, Haydn continued to develop his magic performances.
In the mid-1970s he performed at the prestigious Magic Castle, where the Master of Ceremonies, Billy McComb, stumbled over the name "Hadden", so he, Dai Vernon, Kuda Bux and some other well-known magicians encouraged Hadden to change his name to something easier to pronounce. They settled on "Haydn"—pronounced as "Hāden." McComb became a mentor and major influence on Haydn's career.
Haydn is the co-founder (with Chef Anton) of the "School for Scoundrels". Since 1996, this program has held a four-week course once a year at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, to teach magicians, gambling experts and law enforcement officers the history, psychology and methods of street scams such as Three-Card Monte, Fast and Loose, and the Shell Game.
Haydn currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Nancy. They work together on The Pop Haydn Post-Modern Medicine Show--a live theatrical variety show—and Pop Haydn's Radio-Medicine Show--a weekly, for-broadcast, syndicated radio show distributed by Jagger Peyton Entertainment Group.
Whit is named for his grandfather, Whitney Shumate, and is the grandson of the noted artist, Jessamine Shumate. He has one grown daughter, Jessamine, and two grandchildren.
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—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
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