Gloria C. (Metzner) Dea (1922 - 2023)

Born 25 Aug 1922 in Alameda, California, United States

Ancestors

Died 18 Mar 2023 at age 100 in Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada, United States

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Biography

Gloria (Metzner) Dea is Notable.

Gloria (Metzner) Dea was a centenarian, living to age 100.

Gloria Dea died of coronary artery disease at the age of 100. She was the first magician to perform on what would be the Las Vegas Strip. David Copperfield, famous magician befriended Dea in her later years and described her in this way: “Gloria was amazing: charming, funny and engaging." As a young magician, she started it all in Las Vegas. Copperfield added, "It was an honor to know her.”

An only child with no immediate family at the time of her death, she was under the care of Beth Bowes, who had been her caregiver for years and spent more time with her than anyone in her latter years. Bowes commented “Gloria was an amazing woman who accomplished an amazing amount of stuff. She deserved all the accolades she got. Her personality was the catalyst to achieve it. ”She performed May 14, 1941, in the Roundup Room at El Rancho Vegas, the first casino on the Strip. That was the first recorded appearance by a magician ever in Las Vegas. Dea performed magic that night and more. She was quoted as follows: “I also danced, I did the rumba, because it was difficult to keep setting up all my magic stuff.” She specialized in a billiard-balls routine and also a floating-card trick, routines her father taught her by her. A Review-Journal story reported, “Miss Dea completely mystified the audience with her legerdemain. Her concluding trick, when a card jumps from a handkerchief to a quartered orange, was the hit of the show.”

Dea appeared in Las Vegas in the late-40s and into the 1950s, when she turned to acting in movies in California. She appeared in such feature films as the 1945 “Mexicana,” the story of a “Mexican Frank Sinatra” and later sold insurance and new and used cars for a Chevrolet dealership in the San Fernando Valley, a rare female who became a top sales rep. In 1980 she returned to Las Vegas. On her 100th birthday, Dea talked about how much she loved being with fellow magicians in Las Vegas, and added "Vegas makes me happy. I don’t care to live anywhere else.”

Sources

• https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G86M-BL1
• https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/gloria-dea-the-strips-first-magician-dies-at-100-2746632/

See Also:

• Wikipedia contributors, "Gloria Dea," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gloria_Dea&oldid=1187491910 (accessed April 6, 2024).