The Amazing Kreskin, Mentalist and 1970s TV Star, Dies at 89

The Amazing Kreskin, an entertainer who used mentalist tricks to dazzle audiences as he rose to fame on late-night television in the 1970s, died on Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Wayne, N.J. He was 89.

Meir Yedid, a close friend, said the cause was complications of dementia.

Kreskin’s feats included divining details of strangers’ personal lives and guessing at playing cards chosen randomly from a deck. And he had a classic trick at live shows: entrusting audience members to hide his paycheck in the auditorium, and then relying on his instincts to find it — or else going without payment for a night.

Born George Joseph Kresge Jr. in Montclair, N.J., on Jan. 12, 1935, and known professionally as either the Amazing Kreskin or just Kreskin, he said he was drawn as a child to both magic and psychology. He was performing mentalist tricks for audiences by the time he was a teenager.

His star rose in the 1970s and early 1980s when he was a regular guest on the talk show circuit. He made dozens of appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” — 88 according to some sources — and was also seen on “The Mike Douglas Show” and “Late Night with David Letterman,” among other shows. (In the 21st century, he appeared on “The Tonight Show” when Jimmy Fallon was the host.) With other famous guests, he played psychological tricks that looked like magic: asking people to put their fingers on objects that would seem to move, for example, or guessing what card had been pulled from a deck.

In 1966, Milton Bradley introduced “Kreskin’s ESP,” a board game that claimed to show players how to develop extrasensory perception, which he defined as “the ability to send or receive thoughts, using only your mind to do so.” It was said to have sold more than a million copies.

He also gave live performances around the world, using audience members as his props. He promised that he had no secret assistants or electronic devices that enabled him to find hidden objects or guess a stranger’s thoughts.