Whit “Pop” Haydn is a full-time professional magician in Los Angeles, California,  the winner of six “Magician of the Year” performing awards from the Magic Castle, the Hollywood clubhouse of the Academy of Magical Arts. In February 2006, he also became Vice-President of that organization, and served for four years in that capacity.

He has opened for Jerry Seinfeld, the Smothers Brothers, Loretta Lynn and others, and performed on cruise ships of many different lines, including Cunard Line‘s Queen Elizabeth 2, and the Diamond Princess. Haydn has worked hotels and casinos including Caesars Tahoe, and was one of the first acts chosen in 1996 to open Caesar’s Magical Empire in Las Vegas.

He was the chief magic consultant on Norman Jewison’s major film Bogus starring Whoopi Goldberg, Gerard Depardieu and Haley Joel Osment, and worked as well as a consultant on multiple television documentaries including the Discovery Channel’s “Houdini, People Came to See Him Die” and David Copperfield’s television special, “Orient Express.”

Haydn studied acting with Robert Leonard and also with Allan Rich. He worked for two years in the mid-Seventies with the touring improvisational company the Road Co and has appeared in several plays in the Los Angeles area in the past few years.

He is a published poet, with a selection of his poems appearing in the books Tar Rive Poets and Trio in Gold from the East Carolina University Poetry Forum Press.

Whit Haydn, with his business partner, Chef Anton, started a company called School for Scoundrels in 1996. The School for Scoundrels teaches a course every year at the Magic Castle on street scams like the Shell Game, Three Card Monte and Fast and Loose. The School for Scoundrels also markets numerous books, DVDs, and props for these ancient scams and hustles.

Haydn is dedicated to revitalizing live variety entertainment, and his Post-Modern Medicine Show is his vision of a 19th Century Medicine Show revamped and reinvented for the 21st Century.

A more complete biography can be found on Wikipedia.

A resume of Pop’s acting and consulting for film and television is available at IMDB.

His website can be found at www.pophaydn.com