Chan Canasta

Chan Canasta was born as Chananel Mifelew to a Jewish family in Poland in 1920. Mifelew's father was an emigré from Russia. Mifelew began studying philosophy and natural sciences at Krakow University in 1937 at age 17 before emigrating to Mandatory Palestine a year later, where he studied psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, and he enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1940. He participated in Allied campaigns in North Africa, Greece and Italy. After being discharged from the RAF, he began to study the occult, extra-sensory perception, and magic tricks. He emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1947 and eventually became a British citizen. He was twice married and died in London at the age of 79.

Canasta started his career as a card magician who took his stage surname from the popular card game of canasta. He became a well-known stage magician performing feats of memory and book tests during the late 1940s. Over the course of his career, Canasta performed at the London Palladium, the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, and at the Playboy Club circuit. Canasta didn't refer to himself as a magician or a mentalist; he often used his own term "psycho-magician" but was most commonly billed as "A Remarkable Man".

In 1951 Canasta recorded his first television show for the BBC - a sparse affair with only a few props that concentrated on mental effects. He became TV's first celebrity magician in the 1950s and broadcast his last show in March 1960. Throughout his career, he made more than 350 television appearances, including on the Ed Sullivan, Arlene Francis and Jack Paar shows. His final BBC TV appearance was in 1971, on Parkinson, for he had left television performing behind several years earlier, although he did reappear on Israeli TV on 11 November 1983.

Canasta retired from the stage at the height of his fame to pursue a dream to become a painter. In his later years he established a second career as an artist, signing his work not as Canasta, but as Mifelew, managing to command high prices for his illustrations of colourful landscapes. He had successful gallery shows in London and New York City.