I found Fitzkee’s list on a Wednesday night in a hotel room in Salzburg. I was doing what I always do when I cannot sleep — reading magic theory on my laptop, trying to make up for the decades of performance training I never had by cramming as much knowledge as possible into the hours between midnight and two in the morning.
When I read Dariel Fitzkee’s “Showmanship for Magicians,” I expected a dated artifact. The book was published in 1943. I assumed it would be full of advice about tuxedos and top hats, about vaudeville stages and radio timing, about a world of entertainment so different from ours that the lessons would be historical curiosities at best.
I was spectacularly wrong.
What I found instead was a list. Thirty-nine items. Each one a distinct appeal — a specific quality that captures audience attention and holds it. Fitzkee had reverse-engineered what made the most successful entertainers of his era successful, drawing not just from magic but from film, vaudeville, nightclub acts, radio, musicals, and every other form of popular entertainment he could study. He distilled his findings into a comprehensive checklist that he argued every performer should measure their act against.
I read the list three times that night. By the third reading, I was making notes in the margins. Not because the list was surprising, but because it was so obviously, undeniably correct — and because I was failing at most of it.
The Complete List
Here are Fitzkee’s thirty-nine audience appeals, exactly as he cataloged them: Music. Rhythm. Movement. Youth. Sex Appeal. Personality. Color. Comedy. Harmony. Romance. Sentiment. Nostalgia. Pointing. Timing. Surprise. Situation. Character. Conflict. Proper Costuming. Careful Grooming. Physical Action. Group Coordination. Precise Attack. Short Turns and Scenes. Efficient Pacing. Punch. Careful Routining. Tireless Rehearsal. Special Material. Grace. Effortless Skill. Surefire Material. Spectacle. Thrill. Emotion. Common Problems. Escape from the Humdrum. Unity. Up-to-dateness.
Read that list slowly. Think about the last performance you saw — any performance, not just magic. How many of those appeals were present? Now think about the last performance you gave. How many were present in yours?
The principle behind the list is simple and devastating: every additional audience appeal you add to your act is another reason for people to enjoy your performance. No single performer can hit all thirty-nine. But the more you incorporate, the stronger you become. And the performers who dominate their fields — in any era, in any medium — tend to score high on a large number of these appeals simultaneously.
Why the List Still Works in 2026
The reason Fitzkee’s eighty-three-year-old framework still works is that it is not about entertainment trends. It is about human psychology. And human psychology has not changed since 1943. It has not changed since 1843. It has not changed since the ancient Egyptians watched performers at Beni Hassan four thousand years ago.
People still respond to music. Still respond to rhythm. Still respond to movement. Still respond to personality. Still respond to surprise, conflict, emotion, and spectacle. The delivery mechanisms have changed — we watch on screens now more than on stages, we consume entertainment in three-minute clips rather than two-hour shows — but the underlying psychological appeals are identical.
This is what makes Fitzkee’s list so valuable. It is not a set of tips for performing in 1943. It is a map of human attention. A periodic table of what makes people lean forward, engage, and respond. And like the periodic table of elements, it does not go out of date because it describes fundamental properties rather than surface fashions.
I test this regularly against modern entertainment. Take any enormously successful contemporary performer — in any field — and run them through Fitzkee’s checklist. They score high. Consistently high. Across genres, across cultures, across decades. The performers who dominate their eras are the ones who, consciously or unconsciously, stack audience appeals.
The Strategy Consultant’s View
Here is where my professional background became unexpectedly useful. In strategy consulting, we use frameworks all the time. A good framework does not tell you what to do. It tells you what to think about. It ensures you do not forget important variables. It prevents blind spots.
Fitzkee’s thirty-nine appeals function exactly like a strategy framework. They do not tell you how to perform. They tell you what to consider. When I sit down to design a new keynote performance, I now pull out the list and score my planned set against it. Not to hit all thirty-nine — that is impossible and the attempt would be absurd. But to ensure I am not accidentally scoring zero on appeals that I could easily incorporate.
Before I found this framework, I was designing performances almost entirely around two variables: the quality of the effects and the quality of the scripting. Those are important variables. But they represent maybe five of the thirty-nine appeals. I was leaving thirty-four potential strengths on the table without even realizing they existed.
My Audit
The first time I scored one of my own sets against Fitzkee’s list, the results were humbling. Here is what I found.
Music: absent. I was performing without any musical accompaniment. Rhythm: weak. My pacing was functional but not rhythmic. Movement: minimal. I was mostly standing in one spot. Personality: present but underdeveloped. I was being myself, but I was not actively selling my personality. Color: absent. My props were whatever colors they came in from the manufacturer. Comedy: occasional. I had a few laughs but no systematic approach to humor. Timing: moderate. I had some sense of when to pause but no deliberate timing strategy. Surprise: strong. This was my one consistent strength.
I scored maybe eight of the thirty-nine. A performing act that had taken me months to develop was hitting roughly twenty percent of the available appeals.
For context: Fitzkee argued that the top entertainers of his era — the ones filling theaters and commanding the highest fees — were scoring twenty to twenty-five of the thirty-nine consistently. I was at eight.
This was not a pleasant realization. But it was one of the most useful realizations of my performing life. Because it gave me a roadmap. Not a vague sense that I needed to “get better” — a specific, itemized list of dimensions along which I could improve.
The Low-Hanging Fruit
Some of the thirty-nine appeals require years of development. Grace, for example, is not something you develop overnight. Effortless skill requires… effortless skill. Character work demands deep self-knowledge and theatrical training.
But other appeals are low-hanging fruit. They can be added to your act with relatively modest effort and immediate impact.
Proper Costuming and Careful Grooming are two that I improved within a week. I invested in better stage clothing — not a costume, but professional attire that was intentionally chosen rather than whatever happened to be clean. I started paying attention to details that I had previously ignored: the condition of my shoes, the fit of my jacket, whether my appearance communicated professionalism or indifference.
Music was another quick win. I added a walk-on track and background music for certain effects. The impact was immediate and disproportionate to the effort involved. Music creates emotional context before you say a single word. It fills dead time. It adds rhythm and movement to moments that would otherwise be static.
Color was surprisingly easy to address. I started choosing props and materials with color coordination in mind. Instead of using whatever cards, envelopes, and markers happened to be available, I selected items that created a visually cohesive palette. The audience never consciously notices this, but they unconsciously perceive a higher level of professionalism and intentionality.
Up-to-dateness was another quick improvement. I updated my references, my language, and my examples to be current. Fitzkee was passionate about this point — he believed that dated references and outdated presentation styles were among the biggest sins a performer could commit. And he was right. An audience in 2026 does not relate to the same cultural touchpoints as an audience in 2016. Keeping your material current is a form of respect for your audience’s intelligence and experience.
The Deeper Gains
Beyond the low-hanging fruit, Fitzkee’s list revealed areas where sustained investment would pay enormous dividends.
Comedy was the biggest gap. I had humor in my performances, but it was incidental — happy accidents and natural moments rather than deliberate comedy. After scoring myself against the list, I began studying comedy more systematically, which led me to Ralphie May’s masterclass and Greg Dean’s joke construction framework. The improvement in my performances was dramatic. Not because I became a comedian, but because I added comedy as a reliable, repeatable appeal rather than leaving it to chance.
Conflict and Situation were two appeals I had never consciously considered. Fitzkee defines situation as a predicament from which the performer must extricate themselves. He argues that audiences are instinctively drawn to watching someone navigate difficulty because they project themselves into the same predicament. Once I understood this, I started building moments of apparent difficulty into my performances. Not real difficulty — staged, scripted moments where something seems to go wrong and I have to recover. These moments generate disproportionate audience engagement because they activate the conflict and situation appeals simultaneously.
Emotion was perhaps the most significant gap. I was performing effects that were impressive but emotionally neutral. They demonstrated impossibility without creating emotional resonance. Fitzkee’s list forced me to ask: where is the emotion in this effect? What is the audience supposed to FEEL, beyond “that was cool”? Once I started designing for specific emotional outcomes — not just intellectual surprise but genuine emotional movement — my performances changed fundamentally.
The Framework as Diagnostic Tool
The most practical application of Fitzkee’s list is as a diagnostic tool for underperforming material. When an effect is not getting the response you want, instead of immediately assuming the method needs work or the scripting needs revision, run it through the thirty-nine appeals.
Usually, the problem is not that the effect is bad. The problem is that the effect is hitting only two or three appeals when it could be hitting eight or ten. The fix is not to change the effect but to layer additional appeals onto the existing structure.
A card revelation that scores only on Surprise and Effortless Skill can be enhanced by adding Music (a musical sting at the moment of revelation), Comedy (a self-deprecating line before the climax), Emotion (a personal story that gives the revelation meaning), and Timing (a deliberate pause that builds anticipation). The effect itself does not change. The number of appeals layered onto it does. And the audience response increases proportionally.
The Permanent Checklist
I have Fitzkee’s list taped to the inside cover of my performance notebook. Every time I design a new piece, I score it. Every time I revise existing material, I check the score. Every time I watch another performer and try to understand why they are succeeding or failing, I use the list as a diagnostic.
Eighty-three years after Fitzkee published it, his framework remains the single most comprehensive and practical tool I have found for understanding why some performances succeed and others fail. Not because it is brilliant in its insights — many of the individual appeals are obvious once stated. But because it is exhaustive in its scope. It catches the things you forget. It illuminates the dimensions you never considered. It prevents the blind spots that turn a good performance into a merely adequate one.
Human psychology has not changed. What captures attention in 2026 is what captured attention in 1943, which is what captured attention in ancient Rome. Fitzkee mapped it. The map still works. And any performer who ignores it is navigating without one.