Bill in lemon

The bill in lemon is an effect in which a magician requests a currency note from a spectator and makes the note vanish, then proceeding to slice a lemon open to show the note inside. Variations include the coin in orange, and more generally "something in fruit".

Effect

The magician asks an audience member for a dollar bill, and then has them mark it in some way - signing it, tearing a corner off, memorizing the serial number, or similar. The magician then destroys the bill, ripping it up or causing it to burst into flame. The magician then introduces a lemon and proceeds to cut it in half. The two halves of the lemon are pulled apart and the original bill is found inside. The audience can then verify that it is indeed their bill by comparing it to whatever they recorded earlier.

Method

The bill in lemon is simply a well disguised version of the magician's force or palming. All versions of the trick rely on the object in the lemon being different than the one provided by the audience member.

Prior to performing the trick, the magician prepares the lemon by cutting a long slot into it by forcing a knife or pencil into the fruit from the end. The flesh of the fruit will close up when the knife is removed, becoming very difficult to see. It can be made more difficult if one end has a stem, which can be removed and then glued into place to help cover the hole. A bill or card is then folded up and inserted into the hole. Any method can be used to cut open the lemon to remove it at the end of the performance.

The trick is entirely in how the magician gets the audience member to memorize or select the object. In examples with cards, any magician's force can be used to ensure they pick the card inside the lemon. If a corner is to be torn off, the magician simply has the original corner palmed, and either tears the card themselves or has the audience member do it and hand them the pieces, and then hands back the palmed corner. If the serial number is recorded, the serial for the bill in the lemon is simply written on the other side of the paper, and it is surreptitiously turned over. There are many variations and methods.

Famous performers

The coin in orange version of the trick dates to at least the mid-1800s, and appears in Modern Magic in 1876. This was a relatively complex version that uses two oranges and considerable stagecraft to complete.

The bill in lemon version is credited to Emil Jarrow (1875-1959), who made it a feature of his vaudeville act during the first half of the twentieth century. Jarrow would borrow as many as three different bills from members of the audience, causing them to later reappear inside of the lemon. Other famous performers of the effect included T. Nelson Downs, Max Malini, Bob Haskell and Billy McComb among many others.

Several modern magicians have presented their own versions of the effect, including Bill Malone, Doc Eason, and Michael Ammar.

References

Charvet, David. The Bill In Lemon Book - Featuring The Life and Times of Emil Jarrow. 1990.