When It Was Magic Time in New Jersey was originally published in the September 15, 1962 issue ofVogue.
Assuring us that “the others” (Wellesley girls?
(He was, in fact, the quizmaster.)
Next in was the pretty little girl who wanted to know if we were ready for Magic Time.
“You know,” she prompted.
It was soon clear that nothing did, Mary-Ann-wise.
“), I could offer no such gimmick.
When we denied this canard, she abandoned her clipboard in perceptible disgust.
It was about this time when I first asked Mary Ann how to play the game.
(So far were we from having the answers that we did not even have the rules.)
“It couldn’t be simpler,” she said suspiciously.
“There’s nothing to it.”
Mary Ann glanced furtively at her watch and began edging toward the set.
“You arrived late, you know.”
“The game,” I repeated.
“What is it.”
I decided that it had perhaps been an affability contest.
Nonetheless, the half-hour ended in a dead heat.
The New York Timesonce called WNTA-TV a “three-ring circus.”
I don’t know about that, but this was a three-ring dinner.
He had recently completed, he told me, anovella.
“I mean a short novel,” he explained.
“A fictional work.”
There was about the entire program, as far as that went, something hauntingly suggestive ofTonight We Improvise.
Double Crossdid gain me the interest and concern of all my friends, if not of the Internal Revenue.
Press tie) who said they didn’t have any television sets at NTA.
“We hooked you,” he crooned.
“When you start talkin' back to the set, sweetheart,we got you hooked.”
But what of Mr. Edwards?
What of Mary Ann?
Whither the magic that was in Newark?
