Born April 11, 1911 in Washington state, Mandrake was very young when his mother brought him to New Westminster, British Columbia on the West Coast of Canada to live with his aunt Mildred.
As a child, he watched magicians at the local Edison Theatre and attended circus shows at the Pacific National Exhibition.
He soon learned to perform magic acts from some of the greats of that time, such as Howard Thurston, Alexander (The Man Who Knows), Chefalo, Doc Verge, Ralph Richards (The Wizard) and Bannister.
In fact, Leon Mandrake had been performing well over ten years before creator Lee Falk introduced the comic strip character, and today, most people[weasel words] acknowledge the striking physical resemblance between them.
[citation needed] Phil Davis, the strip's artist, did meet Leon Mandrake and they became good friends and corresponded for years.
In December 1946, Leon Mandrake's manager, Bernard Abrams, paired him with Louise Salerno, who was an actress, line-dancer and former assistant to well-known magician Blackstone.
Having grown up on the road with her parents, Vaudeville musicians Betty and Frank Salerno, this was a lifestyle familiar to Leon's new 20-year-old assistant.
With his original ideas and devotion to his craft, Mandrake invented new magic acts and innovative ways to perform illusions for nightclubs.
He was known for driving a car while blindfolded, hypnotizing people to fall asleep in department store windows, making great escapes from boxes and doing mind reading on city streets.
When television rose in popularity in the 1950s, it became increasingly difficult to keep the live performances going as most people were inclined to stay home and watch TV.
Between road shows in the 1970s, he gave lectures on the occult, mysticism and Eastern philosophy at different universities in British Columbia, Canada.
On August 28, 2016, Mandrake's home until his death, located at the corner of Grosvenor Road and Kindersley Drive in Surrey, British Columbia, was engulfed in flame and destroyed, displacing several homeless persons.