239798483 Extending Magic Beyond Credibility

E XTENDING M AGIC B EYOND C REDIBILITY

JOHN BOOTH

The Royal Canadian Magician 1936

E XTENDING M AGIC B EYOND C REDIBILITY John Booth Introduction by Silvan of Rome Design & Composition by Andrew J. Pinard

Ars est celare artem (True art is to conceal art) Motto of the Sheffield Circle of Magicians

L & L Publishing

P.O. Box 100 Tahoma, CA 96142 USA llpub.com

OTHER CONJURING BOOKS BY JOHN BOOTH Super Magical Miracles Magical Mentalism Forging Ahead in Magic Marvels of Mystery The John Booth Classics Psychic Paradoxes Wonders of Magic Dramatic Magic Creative World of Conjuring Conjurians’ Discoveries The Fine Art of Hocus Pocus Key’s to Magic’s Inner World Copyright © 2001 by L & L Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system now known or to be invented, without the permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in the United States of America. FIRST EDITION Design and Composition by Andrew J. Pinard.

To

DOUG HENNING AND DEBBIE We graduated from McMaster University in Canada 36 years apart but magic created a bond only his death could break. Very few magicians have influenced the course of our art’s history as did he in his brief life span of 52 years.

Acknowledgments

FOR PERMISSION TO REPRINT PAST WRITINGS OF MINE FROM THE FOLLOWING magazines, The Linking Ring, official monthly journal of the International Brotherhood of Magicians (Executive Editor, Phil Willmarth), MAGIC: The Independent Magazine for Magicians (Stan Allen, founder and Executive Editor), and GENII: The Conjurors’ Magazine (Richard Kaufman, new owner/ editor), I am grateful. Copyrighted text for the Malini chapter reprinted from The Yankee Magic Collector #5 and The Linking Ring, as indicated in the footnotes, was granted by co-editors Ed Hill & Bob Schoof and Phil Willmarth, respectively. For assistance in diverse ways to make the contents of this book more complete and accurate, including those who generously supplied photographs and sketches, and are acknowledged beneath them, I must express my deep gratitude. They are named in no particular order: M. Earle Stephen, Oziar Malini, Lance Burton, Aldo Savoldello, Ellen Kwan Lewis, Robert K. Weill, Kenneth Klosterman, Mark Mitton, Norm Nielsen, Robert A. Olson, Robert E. Olson, John Fedko, Joe Stevens, Ed Hill, Jack Kodell, Carol and Marvyn Roy, Jim Sisti. Richard Buffum, William McIlhany, Al Sharpe, Robert Hamill, Ray Goulet, Shari Lewis, Joseph Fox, Debbie and Doug Henning, Carl Williams, Jane Thurston Shepard, Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, Percy Press II, Richard Zimmerman, John Gaughan, John Salisse, Kevin James, Todd Robbins, Sylvester the Jester, Jason Byrne, Jacques Voignier, Edgar Bergen, Max Terhune, P. C. Sorcar (Sr), John Zweers/S.A.M. Hall of Fame, Abe Hurwitz, Barbara Booth Christie, Max Maven. Shell Slatom Amegah. vii

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A special thank you to Rose Ripley, whose meticulous attention to details and typing the manuscript against trying deadlines, I appreciate so very much. I am also indebted to Andrew J. Pinard for his thoughtful and graceful design in making this book camera-ready, and Louis Falanga, my publisher, for matching the publication schedule to other vital events at this time.

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Contents

Foreword by Silvan of Rome ......................................................................... xi Preface .............................................................................................................. xiii Wake-up Magic! 1 2 3 4

Magic that Jolts Audiences: Richiardi, Jr. ..................................................... 5 Kevin James: Master of Shock Magic .......................................................... 13 Todd Robbins: The Sideshow World ........................................................... 21 Sylvester the Jester: The Self-Mayhem Principle ........................................... 29 Harry Houdini and Max Malini

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Revelations About “Houdini’s Hollywood Estate” ..................................... 39 Malini and His Violin ............................................................................... 47 Four Brief Pieces to Ponder or Enjoy

7 Aloha: Final Tribute to Dai Vernon ......................................................... 61 8 Do Morality or Ideology Affect Art in Magic? ............................................ 65 9 That FATAL Signet Ring: A Short, Short Story ..................................... 69 10 Book Reviews: The Achilles Heel of Magazines .......................................... 73 10 Reflection 1: Desiderata .............................................................................. 79 10 Reflection 2 ................................................................................................. 80 Brilliant Magic with Beautiful Birds 11

Centuries of Development Unfolded ............................................................. 83 ix

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A Star Among Stars 12 13 14

Thurston: A Truly Great Magician ..........................................................103 Magic’s Most Famous Waltz: The Zenda ................................................113 Memorable Music for Master Magicians ...................................................121 Averting Catastrophe: Magic and Politics

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The Legendary Robert-Houdin Light and Heavy Chest Examined ..........129 Fascinating Opportunities in Ventriloquism

16 17 18 19

Ventriloquial Stunts: From Pactolus to Today..........................................149 The Illusion of Voice Throwing .................................................................159 Dolls that Smoke: Bodiless Heads that Talk ............................................165 New Era Ventriloquism: The Hamills ....................................................171 The Puppetry Branch of Wizardry

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Puppetry Across the Spectrum ...................................................................181 The Duck that Made John Salisse Famous ..............................................187 His Left Hand is His Fortune .................................................................191 Automata

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Machines that “Think” and Perform Like Humans and Birds ................201 The Great Indian Rope Trick

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Where, When and How the Reports Began ...............................................211 My Experiences in India and Tibet Searching for A Rope Miracle ...........219 Illusionists Who Have Attempted to do it .................................................233 The Last Word: Myth or Reality? ............................................................ 241

Bibliography and Recommended Reading ................................................ 249 About The Author ........................................................................................ 251

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Foreword

IT IS NO EASY TASK TO WRITE A FOREWORD TO THIS THIRTEENTH BOOK ON MAGIC by a man I am honored to call a friend, John Booth, because before a man of his stature, words are inadequate. We fall silent; all we can do is bow our heads in homage. To understand the artistic, historical and cultural evolution of our art in all its multiple facets over the last sixty years, we cannot ignore Booth for his books represent its epitome. That is, they are fundamental for understanding the germination and blossoming of this huge magic tree in its most varied ramifications. A cultivated and sensitive person, Booth is himself an artist of the most noble breed. Apart from being a talented writer devoted to revealing the secrets of our art with a wealth of details, he has also been able to grasp its most entertaining essence through a lengthy series of meetings and interviews with its most significant exponents. In a clear and fascinating prose style, he has described the salient aspects of their personality, as expressed in the full range of their various specializations. The profiles he has drawn of them are full of hitherto unfamiliar or forgotten details. And the judgments he has expressed of them are impartial. They recount a chronicle that has already become part of history. In reading his many books, we realize there is no argument that John Booth has not examined and elucidated with passionate involvement. And that involvement is the natural result of his innate good breeding, his positive way of confronting life. SILVAN Rome, September 2000 xi

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Preface

MY FATHER, SYDNEY SCOTT BOOTH, BORN IN BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND MARCH 7, 1880, led a varied life before he died in Hamilton, Ontario, March 6, 1946. There he is buried in Woodland Cemetery with my mother, Margaret Nicholls Booth, born near Exeter, England February 2, 1883. Soldier, Unitarian minister and radio artist, he was a pioneer screenwriter of photoplays-turned-into-films produced mainly by Thomas A. Edison Studios in New Jersey, but also Universal Pictures, Balboa and Vitagraph. From 1913 into 1915, his pictures like The Minister’s Temptation, A Sense of Humor, On the Great Steel Beam, Five Strings to the Beau, and Romance of Gervaise and Elise played North American and British theatres. But his ministry continued. I cite this aspect of my heritage to explain partially my love of magic, theatre and writing. And it is with a certain degree of sadness that I announce this book as my last in a long career bent over typewriters in several pursuits, including authorship, in the outside, wider world but also in the arena of conjuring. Ill health in the 89th year of my life is responsible. I have recorded magic history, often by interviewing, or having known, the major participants in it over the past century. Indeed, I may have been a part of the process of change or constancy that has created some of what has happened in the realm of illusion and literature, minor though it might be. It has been this direct involvement with the stream of magic as a performer, writer and traveler, rather than dealing with it second hand from a distance, that may lend a certain uniqueness to this and my other books or articles. This volume represents a sort of cross-section of my thinking and writing on significant subjects in our field over the past 70 years. It opens with the variety stage and creative efforts of four performers to develop cuttingxiii

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edge, rousing magic and illusion. The chapters move on to deal with another Houdini rumor and to look inside the amazing career of the inspiring Max Malini. In an effort to deal constructively with the mystery of my long-time friend Dai Vernon’s rejection of “fame and fortune,” or the barriers that wars raise for magic, and the inadequacies in book reviewing, I have written frankly of these matters. From canaries to eagles, some of the finest magical effects ever innovated have dealt with beautiful birds; this evolution is revealed next. Human lives and/or memories are short so that Howard Thurston’s influential reign in show business was a jewel not to be forgotten. The true mystery and history of the 156-year-old Robert-Houdin Light and Heavy Chest. The emotions and illusions generated by ventriloquism-at-its-best are analyzed, its history briefly sketched, and lead us into the drama of puppetry and the intellectual exploration caused by automata. Finally, the trick that will not die: the most famous trick in magic, whose very existence is a question mark, has taken me on two lengthy investigations halfway around the globe to India and once into (then forbidden) Tibet. In four literary sections, I have compressed my personal account of years of reflection, research and travel pursuing this haunting epic. It closes the pages of this book and a pleasurable side-interest of my life. I wish to thank heartily my esteemed friend and colleague in Rome, Silvan, for writing the Foreword to this tome. Author, former featured player in Italian motion pictures, producer of magic sets and renowned leader in European professional magic, he has been a conjurian star at the London Palladium, (12 months in all), Las Vegas’ Tropicana Hotel (12 months), Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, and other world class showplaces. Hovering quietly and supportively in the background of my life over the past 30 years, since we first met standing aboard a cable car rising to the peak of Mount Pilatus in Switzerland, but who amazingly live only six blocks away from us in California, are Clifton and Elinor Vesely, educators and very dear friends. I hope this book adds some knowledge or insights into the practices, personalities and history of this art, its opportunities, challenges and successes. Perhaps these may raise an understanding of what might be done to lift standards of effort on behalf of all lovers of wonder and mystery. JOHN BOOTH Los Alamitos, California

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Wake-up Magic!

Chapter 1

Magic that Jolts Audiences: Richiardi Jr. 1

IN THE FIRST THIRD OF THE 20TH CENTURY, PROBABLY EUGENE LAURANT, Howard Thurston or the Tarbell Course led in awakening a desire in American youth to become workers of magic. In the last third of that recent century, television conjurers like Milbourne Christopher, Mark Wilson, Doug Henning, Channing Pollock and David Copperfield stirred the juices of wonder and mystery more than most in creating would-be magical entertainers. Sometimes it was just one trick, a memorable mystery or simply something that shocked even adults. Let us look at what I call The Bloody Illusion of Richiardi to have you assess its personal effect on you, the reader, no matter what your age. Richiardi breaks several basic rules of magic theatre. Yet he does a continuing business all over the world. Rules are made to be cracked only by the person who can construct something finer because of it. Richiardi’s gruesome buzz saw illusion has appalled purists and critics. In the minds of some are doubts as to whether his approach is good for magic. This conflict in values surged through my head as I bent into a February zero-degree wind, struggling up 43rd Street in New York City, to the Town Hall, a 1400-seat house just off Times Square. It was February 1979. Richiardi had just opened after an eight month run at the Village Gate, a spot down in New York’s bohemian Greenwich Village. Heavy advertising in the press announced that The Incredible World of Magic and Illusion— witness to the impossible—starring RICHIARDI, World’s Master of Illusion would feature “A Cast of Internationally Acclaimed Magicians from All Parts of the World.” 1. The Linking Ring, February 1981.

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Performing vaudeville-type acts on the Richiardi bill were Ger Copper, Count Della Ragione, Vito Lupo, Bob Baxter and Rina. The international aspect of the show is maintained by Holland’s Copper, Italy’s Ragione, Peru’s Richiardi, and the remainder from the United States. By now, however, Richiardi has been playing internationally so long, throughout Europe, parts of Asia and Africa, South America and the U.S.A., that no country can really claim him exclusively. I had already encountered his work in Paris and Boston before this New York showing. Knowing the Town Hall stage very well through numerous personal appearance lectures there over the years, I was puzzled how the illusionist could present so large a show on it. The rear wall is not that many meters back from the apron and the backstage area at the wings is minimal. Yet I knew that the Great Raymond had offered his farewell appearance on that very platform years before. I was in for a surprise in organizing stage arrangements for maximum effectiveness. Wisely, the management closed off the balcony. Perhaps it was necessary for one or two illusions that might have been exposed to spectators sitting above. Throwing the entire audience onto the main floor on this frigid afternoon more than half-filled the seats and provided the necessary support enthusiasm for spirited artistry from the performers. The lights dimmed. Heavy overture music swelled forth. The stereo was so full, and the fidelity so excellent, that for some moments I was convinced that a full band must be playing behind the curtain. Throughout the entire production, two consoles with an operator in the balcony provided taped music of stirring and appropriate background, faultlessly timed to the action. A live band could hardly have done any better and the selection of the music reflected high professional taste and standards. Curtains swished aside to reveal a row of red light bulbs along the floor facing the audience. This helped make perfect the black art sudden appearance of signs floating into view on the darkened stage and then vanishing with their announcements of the acts that would comprise the show. A clown M.C. appeared with a floating ball which, in turn, exploded, producing in its place a beautiful, tall and svelte woman in evening gown. She walked to the center stage and announced the show in a quiet, cultured voice, a suave touch that avoided the cheap, brassy shouting of chorus girl emceeings. It was high style on Broadway!

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Richiardi Jr., was rated among the world’s finest all-round illusionists. A Peruvian by birth, he circled the globe with his shows

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I have forgotten the precise order in which the acts appeared. Two thirds of the two-hour program, run without intermission, were devoted to the supporting acts leading up to the dynamic tricks and illusions of the actual producer, Richiardi. Ger Copper, a tall, youthful, Dutch manipulator in evening clothes, whom I have caught at British conventions, displayed immaculate skills with various objects. At the conclusion, he produced three sizable candelabras ablaze with burning candles and bowed off to a big hand. He is one of Henk Vermeyden’s several notable proteges. Rina was a little girl, the daughter of Richiardi, who was advertised as “the most sensuous looking witch ever to have practiced black magic.” Her “phenomenon of levitation” turned out to be simply her role as the girl who rests on the broomstick in the suspension illusion and floats upward in the levitation. She was an adept participant in various effects, reminding one of Moi Yo Miller’s sexy assistance, well advertised, in Harry “Dante” Jansen’s show. Count Della Ragione was a husky gentleman in tails who demonstrated and explained how he pickpocketed watches. Cigarette manipulations, the thumb tie and finally producing memorable music on a truncated version of a violin that he had assembled before our eyes, added up to an entertaining turn. Whether he was “born to royalty” with an authentic claim to the title of “Count,” as the playbill claimed, I do not know. Produced as a clown from an empty box, Vito Lupo, an American pantomimic magician, worked with bubbles that became billiard balls, a pleasant silent act of manipulation. Bob Baxter, a comedy magician with a homey, low-key, modest delivery, kept the audience laughing in the longest of the supporting acts. Utilizing a handful of traditional effects, the mystery was tertiary to the comedy motif and patter. From our seats, he reminded me of Bob Lund, with his diffident manner on stage. I had known Baxter forty-five years earlier when he was a youngster getting started in Chicago and was delighted, after all these years, suddenly to encounter him playing Broadway. Richiardi, Jr., (he now seems to have dropped the Junior), is another son of a magician who has hit “the top” on his own merits, like the offspring of Kio, Sorcar and Blackstone. He is no newcomer to New York City, having already played the Radio City Music Hall (one of the world’s

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largest and most prestigious theatres), the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden, and U.S. television networks. It was quickly evident that this magician had mastered the difficulties of working on a stage without the usual space and amenities of largedimensioned theatres. The placement of drops, curtains and lights, the routining of smaller effects on the apron while illusions were rolled into place behind the front curtain, concealed all handicaps. Town Hall was built originally as a showplace for famous orchestras, lecturers and performing artists, not for theatrical stage productions. This was not a major obstacle for Richiardi, whose worldwide experience under diverse conditions helped him overcome the drawbacks. I must confess that he fooled me with several illusions, unless he had cut a slot or trap where, I know from experience, the Town Hall stage is solid. The girl vanishing from a chair in the deKolta style, hidden only by a sheet, is streamlined expertise. In another illusion, two persons enter sweeping the stage, thus establishing the idea that the brooms are ordinary without so stating. Rina becomes suspended from one upended broom which, contrary to most presentations, is not inserted into a socketed platform. Fog rolls eerily across the stage as Richiardi’s assistant levitates from a prone position down on the floor itself. No couch. One of the floating woman’s legs is bent gently, giving a more casual and certainly more graceful and sexy appearance than the typical position of two crossed legs rigidly straight. He winds up these illusions rapidly, once the full effect is over. The doll house with penetrating swords is demonstrated with a white dog going into the “temple” and a girl emerging instead at the conclusion. One of three borrowed finger rings does not immediately reappear tied around doves’ necks after being vanished but finally is located magically to the relief of a worried spectator. An egg, lemon and canary disappear from paper sacks into which they have been placed. An orange is peeled; the missing lemon is found within it. Cutting open the lemon reveals the vanished egg which, upon being cracked open, allows the canary to fly out. Very effective. I shall not mention other effects in his routine but move on to the controversial climax. Richiardi enters dressed in white like a surgeon prepared to operate. At center stage stands a huge buzz-saw, perhaps one meter

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in diameter, flanked by two girls in nurses’ uniforms. The company lays down a wide sheet of plastic running from the back curtain to the footlights, directly beneath the buzz-saw equipment. At first it is not clear why this is done . . . but it builds suspense. After being hypnotized, the magician’s daughter is lifted onto the saw platform, the buzz-saw begins to whirl noisily and the full, stereo band music comes on with a basic throb like a heart beating. As the saw moves inexorably into the girl’s body, blood seems to fly forth propelled by the rotating saw which, itself, becomes dripping red. The gore splatters outward, messing the plastic mat on the stage, creating great red stains all over Richiardi’s immaculate white surgeon’s outfit. He stops the saw although it is now embedded in her stomach. The audience sits in silent shock. No applause. Richiardi walks to the footlights, “blood” spattered all over himself, and invites the audience to line up in the right hand aisle and, two abreast, march up and across the stage to see the spectacle for itself. An unbelievable scene ensues. About five hundred people quietly and soberly line up and begin the slow walk toward the stage. Somber, almost funereal music is played as the audience, without talking but only in whispers, moves at a snail’s pace across the stage, past the saw and the unconscious form dripping blood, past Richiardi and his two nurses standing seriously, but protectively, next to the equipment. The scene reminded me forcefully of the time I marched slowly with an endless line of people past the corpse of Lenin inside his tomb in Moscow’s Red Square. As a minister, I have so often stood quietly in churches as long queues of mourners filed past open caskets. In Richiardi’s show, I felt almost as though I was watching a replay. For twelve minutes. the long line passed across the stage, a semi-dirge coming over the Town Hall loudspeakers. When the last spectators had resumed their seats, two assistants lifted the unconscious form from the saw table. They supported her by the arm pits as she hung pathetically, “unconscious,” streaked with “blood,” feet not quite touching the floor. Richiardi, who had said nothing all this time now reassured the audience that it was a trick. The girl was his only daughter; he could not injure or kill a person at each performance, he stated quietly. He hoped we had enjoyed his show. The curtain closed in with the girl still being held up, limply, head

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flopped on her shoulder, the very picture of a dying soul. The audience quietly filed out of the theatre. The Richiardi show is a fascinating case study for any student of theatre psychology. Its climax flies in the face of generally accepted theatrics. The program ends in a sort of sadness. The girl is not reawakened to bow off with happy smiles, restored in body. The gore can hardly be accepted as in good taste in a profession where some conjurors even fear unusual displays of amputation or swallowing. There was virtually no applause in this last portion of the program. Why does the show, under such conditions, generally do good box office business in every country in the world? First, the production as a whole is artistic and showmanlike in every respect, a solid, professional presentation of beauty, tempo and mystery. Secondly, Richiardi has, in the buzz-saw as he presents it, the one absolutely necessary ingredient of every successful production—one standout, talk-creating feature. Even though the blood color resembles mercurochrome in the stains, the elements of disaster, curiosity and intimacy to which people respond are introduced. In a sense, this is the old sideshow, carnival gimmick in which one usually pays an extra coin to go behind the curtain to see how the girl in the trick really works—except with Richiardi, nothing is exposed. After the show, I sat in the balcony with Ger Copper and Bob Baxter discussing the production. Richiardi was tied up with the business staff trying to iron out wrinkles in the newly-opened show. Full of confidence, the magician had taken a year lease on the Broadway house. Unfortunately, the show was to close not long after the Easter season had passed. A few blocks away, Harry Blackstone, Jr. opened at the Majestic Theater (seating about 250 more than Town Hall), May 19, 1980 but closed after 104 performances on August 17, a record for this type of show. This was a truly lavish production in the grand classical tradition of conjuring. It may be a long time before another magician playing a Broadway house will approach or exceed the record run of the musical (as opposed to the Richiardi and Blackstone shows) “The Magic Show” starring Canadian Doug Henning.

Chapter 2

Kevin James: Master of Shock Magic

2

COMPETITION FOR BOOKINGS IN THE TOP VARIETY VENUES OF THE GLOBE, Asiatic, European, African, South and North American, Australian, has heated up furiously during the past decade. Seldom has the search for fresh concepts in which to present tricks and illusions been more strenuous. Perfect, near-clones of breathtakingly skillful acts dedicated to doves, cards, and even illusions, haunt agents’ offices today, often unable to secure consistent work. Into this world of show business came Kevin James. Determined to find a mold unlike others fashioned by magical craftsmen, he worked his way upward, year by year, in field after field, paying his dues fully. Most entertainers would say that he has achieved his goal, the level he sought. But he sees a yet higher peak he would like to reach. Already he has had a long run at the exclusive Crazy Horse in Paris. As I write, he has succeeded Japan’s star, Haruo Shimada, at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, appearing in the long-running “Splash” stage show. Paul Daniels, Great Britain’s preeminent magician and television magic celebrity, brought him to London to appear in his long-time hit series “The Paul Daniels Show.” His conjuring has also graced Dutch television and three Japanese specials. A heavyset redhead with a closely cropped beard, Kevin James looks and dresses more like a burly longshoreman than a sophisticated conjurer. But this very persona is his way of establishing a distinctly different niche in show business. He is not doing pratfall prestidigitation for laughs, or 2. The Linking Ring, August 1994.

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burlesquing the art. Rather is his magic an integrated theme act with laughs emerging from the “serious” interplay and conflicts of himself and his partner, a veritable Charlie Chaplin in miniature. Uniquely different, he has little competition directly with other magicians. The son of an American stationed in France with the Air Force, he was born April 28, 1962 in Toul, somewhat east of Paris. After WWII, the family settled again in his parents’ hometown of Jonesville, Michigan when he was five-years-old. Television magicians Mark Wilson, Doug Henning and David Copperfield, along with Bill Bixby’s TV shows, inspired an interest in magic. The local public library fed him the conjuring knowledge he sought. He began doing magic for local fees. Since he was Jonesville’s sole conjurian, he says, “I had the market tied up.” He spent three years in university studying theatre with a dance minor hoping for a bachelor’s degree. At nineteen he dropped out, feeling that such a degree would not get him any more shows. He was supporting himself with magic for service clubs, parties, kids shows, fair dates and even corporations, while at Western Michigan University. California beckoned. He arrived in Los Angeles with two suitcases, eight hundred dollars, one week of free living space with a friend, but no car and no job At the start, his repertoire consisted of the standards: torn/ restored newspaper, paper balls over the head, cigarette in coat, and so on. For five years, he worked close-up in restaurants. He stayed away from cards as much as possible, but an ancillary effect, such as Tommy Wonder squeezing a deck down into a small pack, he likes. In that period, his love of invisible thread magic developed: animations, levitations, comedy. Trying to find something different, he experimented during different stages. He was looking for some form of dramatic imagery. Magic with roses and daggers was tried. A rock and roll, Mad Max period with lots of fire provided much experimentation. Entertaining in restaurants also enabled him to pass out his business cards and gain outside dates. His sights were on Las Vegas, inspired by the presence there of Siegfried & Roy, Lance Burton, the Pendragons, and others. An engagement lasting almost three years at Crackers, near Disneyland in Anaheim, became a turning point in creating his current stand-up comedy act. It was a “controlled chaos show” involving the band and variety acts. He became enamored with “shock magic.” When he produced a large

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Kevin James starring in a lavish review in Seoul, Korea’s Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel casino review for a one-year run.

duck with flapping wings, the audience was surprised and delighted. But when he appeared to tear off its head, it caused an adrenalin rush, and he got an even greater reaction because it was so amazing and unexpected. Shock magic! He had found a theme. Perhaps more importantly, it was there that he met Antonio Hojos, his 3½ foot-tall partner. Doing a perfect imitation of Charlie Chaplin, the late comedian, he strolled about the nightclub interacting humorously with the clientele. Antonio was a veteran performer in his own right. Born in Columbia, South America, he had traveled the world with circuses, even Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey, as a clown. Circus World in Florida kept him busy for several years as did Knotts’ Berry Farm in California, the third largest amusement park in the United States of America. Magic was not new to him. The noted Hungarian-born tent show illusionist, Tihany (Franz Czeisler), whose fame has made him a celebrity in South America, employed him for a few years. During the two seasons that

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Siegfried and Roy engaged him as part of their show, he was the “Little Roy” when Roy Horn himself was shrunk down in an illusion. At Crackers in Anaheim, Kevin James asked Antonio Hojos if he would like to join his act. Together, the act has now played Japan three times, including TV, the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, the Horizon Hotel in Tahoe, and, as I write, the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, among other dates. Antonio has a wife and daughter living north of Los Angeles in Visalia. Kevin and his wife are divorcing although he has a son three-years-old named Jarrett for you know whom, an idol of the illusionist. Antonio and his boss are good friends, but since they are together every night and their’s is a business arrangement, they live and room separately. Their shock act is built almost entirely around their own contrasting physical makeup. Kevin began by working on the idea of stacking body parts of a human being together, visibly, inside a trunk or box. People don’t expect an actual human being from such small human segments or an animated figure. But when a Chaplinesque doll suddenly steps out and minces about in a perfect Chaplin imitation, it is magic with drama and power. Antonio has spent over 15 years perfecting the characterization. The other feature illusion resulted from Hojos’ own suggestions. Just as the creation of Chaplin from body parts opens the act, so does a janitor and industrial vacuum cleaner episode close it. Antonio comes on stage in a janitor’s outfit, pushing a low freight cart, to clean up the stage with a wide broom. He won’t stop sweeping or tickling his boss with a feather duster. So Kevin, who wants to resume his flip stick manipulations, hypnotizes him. The little man, standing on the cart, proceeds to slant over almost horizontally, defying gravity, doing the leaning shoes routine. When he is awakened, he tries to goose Kevin who, in anger, re-hypnotizes him and uses him for the Broomstick illusion, employing all the equipment on top of the cart. The magician, who has removed the assistant’s shoes, tickles the suspended man’s feet with the duster, thus awakening him. To get rid of the impudent janitor, the magician throws him into the wings. Seconds later, the irrepressible Antonio reenters the stage, towing an industrial vacuum cleaner and making a racket with it as he tries to continue cleaning the floor. Kevin leaves the stage but not before the tiny workman has picked his pocket of a wallet. To hide from his boss, the janitor

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jumps inside a trashcan on the cart and pulls a cloth over himself and the container. Kevin returns. The vacuum cleaner is still running noisily. He picks up the hose and with it, literally sucks up the cloth covering the trashcan and apparently Antonio as well, who was still hiding inside. The magician tosses the hose aside, showing that the trashcan is now empty. Then, raising the lid of the vacuum cleaner itself, Antonio pops up, his hair sticking straight up like spikes, as though he had been sucked through the air hose. Kevin James lifts him out with one finger under the workman’s nose and carries him off stage. End of act.

Kevin James, starring in Paris’ Crazy Horse Saloon, carries his imprudent partner Antonio offstage by a gravity-defying-finger-under-the-nose.

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In between these two original illusions may be seen other Jamesian creations of smaller dimensions. The first involves donning a pair of grey gloves, picking up a square box, the lid of which suddenly and mysteriously swings open. Up comes a man’s bare forearm. Then it disappears inside the box and won’t come out even though Kevin tosses a ten-dollar bill inside to entice it. So he reaches in, grabs the forearm and seems to engage in a struggle with the arm, which is amputated just below the elbow. Suddenly he is able to pull out the entire forearm and walks around the stage with the grisly object, its fingers actually wiggling. It crawls up his shirt, and engages in other autonomous movements. Finally, Kevin seizes it and throws it back into the box to conclude another form of his shock magic. For a beautiful contrast to the rest of the fast moving act, Kevin serenely, without patter, crumples up a piece of tissue paper, places it on his palm and then performs with it his equally famous animated routine. An audience member, a woman, stands next to him and the tissue dances at her fingertip. Holding the flame of a candle beneath it, the tissue disappears, instantly leaving a lovely stemmed rose in its place. David Copperfield received permission to include this striking vignette in his stage show tours and television. “Is it true what they say about the sex separation of those who play the Crazy Horse?” I asked, as our conversation one day approached a close. Kevin described the efforts of Alain Bernardin, the long-time boss of the famous nightspot, to be protective of his dancers. The male acts have separate stage entrances and exits from the female dancers, and there is a white line that they cannot cross until the girls are all off the platform. Women can be fired if they get into detailed conversation with the men. Dates can be arranged if the boss isn’t around. Dressing rooms are apart, quite a change from the camaraderie of my day in U.S. nightclubs. Kevin found this creates unnecessary tensions when one simply wants to be social. The working schedule becomes monotonous, although it may sound glamorous. Artists work two shows a night, three on weekends, seven days a week, for two months without a break. Then come two months off, four months on, then one month off. “We needed the time off,” Kevin remarked. “Repairing props, resting up, tightening the act, and working club dates filled the off periods.” After the first year, he stayed the second year with well-known Parisian magician, Gaetan Bloom. An inspiration to be

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around, the American felt that Gaetan was like a brother. Kevin persuaded Mons. Bernardin to look at Gaetan’s tape and he is now a feature act at the Crazy Horse. “I wish some magicians would be less paranoid about their competitors,” he added, sipping his cranberry juice. “If you’re doing good magic, you’ll always get work. In the music industry, you see musicians doing concerts together, making albums together. I’d like to see more of that in magic.” Bernardin does not want his acts to change their routines. What he bought is what he demands. Except for tightening and polishing, Kevin found no opportunity to try out new ideas. At the Rivera, where he will do about twice as long a routine as in the Crazy Horse, he will be allowed to experiment and change. It will be a time to grow. The contract is for six months with options. If he hits a plateau, he will plan to move on. Toward what? Eventually he hopes to present his own two-hour show in a Hawaiian or Vegas location. The remarkable careers of Siegfried & Roy, and Lance Burton, are inspiring magicians in ways we don’t always realize. POSTSCRIPT: Monsieur Bernardin shocked the theatrical world by apparently committing suicide a few years ago. The Crazy Horse, one of the unique supper clubs in many ways, fortunately has not closed in spite of being one of the most expensive to visit.

Chapter 3

Todd Robbins: The Sideshow World

3

FEW PROFESSIONS ARE SO RICH IN POSSIBILITIES AS CONJURING. HARDLY A FACET of human interest escapes some connection with this art and craft. If performing tricks is our desire—after all, we are talking about a dramatic art— the materials for it are found in anything as small as a needle or as large as the Great Wall of China. Our audiences may be as intimate as one child or as vast as a television sea of millions. Magic attracts writers with mystery story successes to Pulitzer-prize winners, experts in woodturning, metal work, restoration, scenic painting and illustration. The followers of Maja are drawn from the ranks of professors, lawyers, the clergy, business, science . . . indeed, from virtually every niche of human endeavor. Within the great melting pot of illusion for entertainment, an indebtedness is recognized for contributions to its content and quality from devotees in all these varied walks of life. There is always some principle, concept, scheme or dream traceable back to an unlikely source, perhaps persons without education, money, opportunity, or performing skills. As remarkable as any of the foregoing factors, there is a paradox of published secrets. In a field that relies chiefly upon keeping secrets, which almost alone preserves the ultimate mystery and wonder at the core of those performing illusions, access to them is actually available readily in hundreds of books and thousands of copies of magazines printed across the generations. Some unidentified benign power seems to maintain an unseen gulf of protection for those unguarded secrets from widespread 3. The Linking Ring, February 1997.

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exposure, which would spell doom to this dramatic art if commonly known. I introduce the subject of sideshows with this prologue. It is in defense of the appropriateness of noting certain aspects of ten-in-one shows, carnivals, and the demonstrations/exhibits found in them, as worthy of discussion and attention in conjuring circles. At last, the history of this form of show business, its followers and their presentations is gaining some respectability. Todd Robbins, young California-born magician (September 15, 1958) is in the vanguard of this movement. Booked by the National Association for Campus Activities, he has been seen with his personal show in dozens of university and college auditoriums. As he talks about the rise and fall of sideshows, midways and carnivals, his repertoire includes demonstrations of sword swallowing, fire eating, walking over broken glass bottles in bare feet, as well as hammering a 4½" nail into his nose. He grants that this kind of material doesn’t appeal to everyone. Part of the reason lies in its being performed by some people in a gross, even revolting, manner, with the aim of creating shock. Todd is uninterested in this approach. Rather he finds a great deal of history in such stunts. He claims that many came from the street magicians (jaduwallahs) of India and were incorporated in American sideshows over a hundred years ago. They are part of our popular entertainment heritage and he is proud to be carrying on this tradition. He is, himself, a graduate of the University of California in Long Beach, California, with a bachelor’s degree in “Theatre Arts.” However, he calls it the world’s most useless degree. Born and brought up in Long Beach, he joined the presently defunct but once prominent Long Beach Mystics, and the Magic Castle Juniors. He and Mark Kalin were the first two Magic Castle Juniors to gain full membership in the Castle. Today, he is a tall, cleanshaven performer with a perceptive mind and excellent speaking voice. After studying traditional theatre and acting at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, he moved to New York City and has worked out of there ever since. Putting his love of sideshow lore and stunts into practice, he has been associated with the Clown Care Unit of the notfor-profit Big Apple Circus for many years. Its latest production is “The Medicine Show,” in Lincoln Center, New York City, bringing back to life a one-ring, turn-of-the-century American circus with animals, gymnasts, aerialists, and even the Russian magical act of Anatoli and Liubov

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Sudarchikov. As ringmaster Doc Pitchum, Todd purveys a “wonder elixir” which, when sprinkled over just plain folk, transforms them into the stars of this nostalgic circus. In addition to his fondness for selling nostalgia, he is drawn to the fact that, unlike a magician’s tricks, there is not an ounce of deception in any of the stunts he does. After he chews up the fine glass in a light bulb. he actually swallows it. It does not remain hidden between his cheek and lower gum. The secret, he confides, is to grind it up very fine with his teeth. When working for several years in a Coney Island ten-in-one show, he ate 12 bulbs a week, 1,000 each season.

Demonstrating the simple, direct impact effect of much side show work, Todd Robbins hammers a spike into his nose with the heel of a fancy shoe. Most side show feats should never be attempted by children or uninformed adults.

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During a talk show in Germany, when everyone was drinking champagne from lovely, slender crystal glasses, he suddenly decided to eat his glass. He washed it down with Perrier water. The sponsor remarked to him afterward, “You know, that was an expensive glass. It was made by Cartier, was crystal, cost $200.00 each and can only be bought in sets.” Robbins remarked laconically: “Well, it was very tasty.” “How did sideshows begin?” I asked Todd, checking my tape recorder again during the interview to make sure I missed nothing. “When Barnum’s museum in New York City burned down, he didn’t rebuild it. Instead, he took what remained, added to it, and went on the road. In those days, circuses were associated with shady groups; he wanted to distance himself from them. He included artworks, a Museum of Statues, freaks and an animal menagerie. Barnum cleaned up.” “Amusement parks came in vogue around the 1880s,” he added, “offering similar attractions to Barnum’s traveling museum. Tent shows, freaks, places to eat, and thrilling rides for all ages were part of the scene. Their great period stretched from the 1880s into the 1920s; about 50 years.” “Coney Island was one of the most famous in the United States. It used to be beautiful,” Todd sighed. “but it’s a sleazy area now. It doesn’t hold together any more. A lot of games; independents rent space. All equipment collapses down. Put on trucks, it can join traveling carnivals.” A faraway look comes into Robbins’ eyes as he thinks of a seemingly romantic era ended. But in his imagination it has not. In fact, he can relive it in part. For several years he has been associated with the last of the old style ten-in-one shows in Coney Island. Called Sideshows By The Seashore, and operated by Coney Island U.S.A., it is a not-for-profit performing arts organization dedicated to preserving some of the heritage of this once-great resort area. In the show, he demonstrates traditional sideshow feats including using only his lungs for blowing up a standard hot water bottle until it bursts like a balloon, and thrusting his unprotected hand into a Victor #1 muskrat/ raccoon trap. When I remarked that in the June 1995 issue of The Linking Ring, my memoirs described how I used to repeat the animal trap stunt for publicity and to show how fear can be overcome, he observed, “You were ahead of your time in doing that.” I don’t think so. Two or three others were also exhibiting it.

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“To me, these feats are exciting,” Todd exclaimed. “And rewarding. At first they think it’s a trick. But then it dawns on them that it is real. I’m actually doing what I say.” “You don’t have a slit in the hot water bottle—not quite cut all the way through—so the bottle eventually can burst?” I asked. During Docc Hilford’s annual Weerd Weekend of 1995, in Phoenix, I had seen Todd struggle for some minutes before achieving well-earned success. He assured me the bottle was right off a store’s shelf. “These stunts instill a profound sense of amazement; it goes deeper than a magic trick. One starts to think,” he maintains. “If you’ve been amazed,” he ends his programs, “my job is finished, but yours is just beginning.” People are fascinated by carnival history, Todd has found. Sideshows are the source of innumerable yarns. And, of course, magic and magicians have long been partakers of their glamour. William J. “Big Bill” Hilliar, who ghosted books by Howard Thurston and T. Nelson Downs and co-founded The Sphinx, directed publicity for the 50-all-steel-car train of the Johnny Jones exposition and also the 25-railway-car train of the Rubin and Cherry Shows. Nothing dinky characterized major carnivals, midways and sideshows in the first third of this century. But, like some other branches of entertainment, there were also the little traveling shows with a few trucks, rides and tent shows that would settle uneasily into vacant lots for a few days. The 27th annual Magic Collectors Weekend, held in Schaumburg, Illinois, March 1966, featured “Midway Magic.” Presenters included Todd Robbins, Johnny Fox, Don Theobold, Bev Bergeron, Jay Marshall and Claude Crow. Tom Ewing acted as Inside Talker; laymen mistakenly call midway “talkers” and “spielers” barkers. That word, to carnies, means a watch dog! We were reminded of the large number of magicians who have played sideshows in carnivals, midways and fairs: Al Baker, Julius Zancig, Charles Carter, Harry Houdini, Carmo and scores of others. Jay Marshall presented The Blade Box, an especially lucrative sideshow illusion. To accomplish this ruse, a scantily clad girl lies down inside a wooden box just large enough to hold her. The performer then drops wide metal blades through slots in the lid, seemingly cutting her into many pieces. A small admission charge to the tent had attracted a crowd to see several presentations, but the Blade Box was the blowoff or ding. By paying an

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extra dollar, anyone could come up onto the platform, look into the box and see how the illusion was executed. More than that, the assistant’s alleged panties or dress had been pulled out of the box during the insertion of blades. This piqued imaginations and more people trooped up to look into the box, enriching the performer’s coffers. The curious could see the ingenious pattern of blades by which the assistant’s body was avoided. But the “little lady” otherwise revealed nothing sensual. The third step in extracting as much cash as possible from the spectators trapped in the tent was termed the pitch. The fat lady and freaks sold picture postcards of themselves. Pitchmen offered Svengali Decks, Magic Mouses and Whoopie Cushions. “Exaggeration or falsehood are part of the tradition of sideshows,” laughed Todd. “Who are we to depart from tradition?” Someday, he expects to produce an off-Broadway show similar to Ricky Jay’s except that it will be themed “The Sideshow Experience.” He will lead his audiences through the history of its offerings and personalities while he performs typical but perhaps fading feats of the type we have been describing. His college dates especially have convinced him that carnival history and many anecdotes enchant people. In its day, a carnival brought exotic sights and thrills to poorer families living mundane lives. “There is nothing new in what I do,” he emphasized, “but there is in how I do it.” Are many sideshow stunts not really magic, or even related to it? Todd Robbins was “banned” from performing them in the Magic Castle in a vote by the Board of Directors divided over this issue. Bill and Milt Larsen, however, were supportive privately of the performer, he states. I believe that the two fields are akin. The Needle Swallowing Trick is a more advanced form of sideshow stunts combining the general equivalent effect of glass eating and regurgitation. Like sword swallowing and its element of danger, the challenge to a body’s vulnerability creates suspense and fascination. The greater danger to a performer in sideshow work, the closer is the parallel with escaping from a water-filled milk can and bombloaded rowboat or racing against a time-clocked eruption of fire. Sideshow stunts and escapism are more primitive and fundamentally physical than professional conjuring with its general digital skills, purveyance of polished art in delivery and equipment, and—possibly—greater need for a certain degree of intellectualism.

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Most types of escapism, as with conjuring deception, must protect their secret methods; hidden keys, faked construction, or clandestine assistance. If known to observers, admiration and wonder would evaporate, just as exposés of conjuring affect its once-awed reception. Although the threat of failure or death may dominate escapism’s attractiveness with thrill-seeking audiences, such dangers rank low on most conjuring-appeal charts. Whatever one’s reasoning or conclusions on this matter, one must recognize that sideshow and escapist stunts vary in nature just as do conjuring routines. Escapism/sideshow presentations are sometimes cousins of wizardry and occasionally are emphatically unrelated. Their feats usually favor a simple, direct, often raw and dangerous theme: evading injury or death in physically-defying actions, including escapes from restraints. Conjuring generally is not dependent on survival challenges. Instead, it overcomes the laws of nature or of science with a variety of illusory effects that require more complexity, plotting and refinement in order to create wonder and mystery in entertainment.

Chapter 4

Sylvester: The Self-Mayhem Principle

4

THE HIGH AIM OF ANY ACT IN THE THEATRE IS TO SECURE AN EXPLOSION OF applause or emotional reaction at the climax of its presentation. This doesn’t mean five seconds too soon or ten seconds too late. If that happens, a sophisticate must ask, “Why?” All the elements of a great act may be present. And the audience realizes that as demonstrated by its premature or elated enthusiasm with hands or mind. But the timing was wrong. And the act suffers an otherwise unjust fate. Generally the fault lies somewhere in the routine, in the patter, in the timing. We may dissect what we have witnessed in an effort to uncover the flaw that forbids the performer from attaining the stature deserved overall. Perhaps I am starting this screed with what might be its peroration, but I have had the cautious pleasure of witnessing thrice what I regard as a compilation of one of the most ingenious, genuinely and previously undreamed of effects for a magic act in my several score years of life. So many bewildering and unexpected occurrences tumble in rapidly, one on top of the other, that they recede into somewhat throwaway shockers, like sudden lightning flashes, each one partly negating the impact of the next one. Yet each one might have had the capacity to sear our memory and elevate our emotions. Sylvester the Jester, a relatively new act on the TV and nightclub scene, has raised these thoughts and questions. At first I felt that perhaps I was 4. The Linking Ring, August 1999.

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Princess Stephanie of Monaco presents the Baguette Or (gold, first prize) to Sylvester the Jester. October 15, 1998, at the Princess Grace Theatre, winner of the international Monte Carlo Magic Stars Festival Competition.

being over-critical, misjudging why such a brilliant aggregation of neverseen-before happenings didn’t bring down the house. After all, he is threequarters of the way up the ladder to “Big Time” success. He has appeared at the Magic Castle several times, been a feature on U.S. television’s special “World’s Wildest Magic,” worked on overseas TV in Chile, Portugal (for Luis de Matos), Germany, and Belgium. His material is not just good, it is uniquely outstanding. But other thoughtful observers beside myself have puzzled over the dilemma of how to put Sylvester more frequently

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on these higher pedestals he deserves with his original creations. He recognizes that a problem does exist. Dressed in a loose-fitting red jacket, floppy black pants and a huge, flat-topped purple hat, this modern jester rushes on stage, establishes eye contact with his audience immediately by causing his own eyeballs to jump out of their sockets about six inches. Shoving a pair of binoculars against his face, his eyes burst through its lenses and the lower part of his face seems to fall down almost to his chest. Just as instantly as these strange incidents happen, everything snaps back to normalcy. Removing his cake-like hat, he pushes his arm into it up to his elbow and pulls out a wooden pole taller than himself, proving its solidity with quick raps on the stage floor. His is, indeed, a surreal world, and we are to see effect after effect worthy of his Lewis Carroll imagination. A string threaded into one ear comes out the other. Pulling it back and forth creates friction and smoke issues from his ears. Steam suddenly erupts from each ear to the shriek of a factory whistle. He isn’t finished with his ears. Clamping a battery clip on each one, a shower of sparks roars from them. Removing his hat and reaching into it again, out comes a 15" metal anvil which he puts down with a clunk. Out of thin air he materializes in his fist a formidable-looking sledgehammer which allows him more byplay, accidentally (?) pounding his finger with it. The next sequence returns to his facial area. His fingers stretch open his mouth sideways into a yawning pit full of menacing dog’s teeth from which he pulls out his tongue—all two feet of it. It reels back in swiftly. A magnifying glass is employed to show the audience a beard is just starting. Instead, a black beard and moustache instantly appear there. Then, after slapping a large sheet of Acme Flypaper against his head, he tries to remove it but pulls away his entire face. The lifelike face now on the paper sheet actually talks, the lips moving. The sticky sheet is reapplied to his featureless head, and a staple gun fastens his face back on where it belongs. By now, the reader must be gasping at the mayhem Sylvester is committing upon his own body. Before the act is over, he will have lost his head in an explosion and regain it, but it is now on backward; and a threefoot-high safe will crash down on him from the flies, creating the final illusion. I will not describe its entire, incredible plot but provide this teaser for you to anticipate seeing.

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Pulling a cord back and forth through his head creates friction and smoke which pours out of Sylvester the Jester’s ears.

Sylvester the Jester was born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1961, making him 39-years-old as I write. Berlin Center actually raised him. Today he is a man of medium height with a background that helps to explain his ability to invent and build the unique component mechanisms that his act requires. His real name is Dan Sylvester Battagline (Italian: Battaglini). He spent three years at Youngstown State College but left in his anxiety to become a working magician. Two events had galvanized his addiction to conjuring. He invented a Rising Card Trick, based on the near-invisibility of a single strand of his sister’s hair. He so baffled his astute father with it that the proud reaction has never been forgotten. Doug Henning became the decisive key: his magic was so beautiful; his representations spoke to Dan’s imagination about his search for wonder in life.

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The young magician specialized in stage magic in Ohio but, unable to make a living with it, dropped it in favor of close-up and sleight of hand. Around 1983, he trouped to California and settled in Bellflower, a Los Angeles suburb, almost next to where I have lived since 1964. Restaurants gave him close-up work, but they seemed to change managements every few weeks and he received no wages. A friend secured a job for him entertaining children in the office waiting room of Dr. Waylan’s Dental Service three hours a day, four days a week, first at $50 an hour but later dropped to $30. In the ten years he remained on that gig, he developed himself as a cartoon character doing clownish magic and a few balloon animals. After producing a plastic sledgehammer with a chirper buried in its head, he would hit the children over the head with it. They loved it and lined up to be hit. One little child cried. Why? Dan had overlooked hitting him on the head with the sledgehammer. Anything to take their mind off the dental work lying ahead. It was there that he developed the popping eyeballs and his close-up coin pitch sleight. In the late 80s, he decided to concentrate on becoming a living cartoon character, with effects to match. Such a magician goes beyond and outside the rules of reality, creating chaos for a few moments. Cartoon logic involves exaggeration and simplification. A cartoonist throws little things into his effects that a person may not see or recognize at first: a little Picasso, a little Dali. He will do something because it is funny: take something out of a hat that is too big for it, or try to take off his hat but it won’t come off. His background helped him solve problems in constructing the mechanisms he has invented. From his father, a plumber, and his uncle, an automobile repairman, he had learned the mechanical ways of accomplishing goals set up in his fantasizing. In quiet periods during his dental office experience, he would wander into the lab and learn how they made false teeth, prosthetic fittings and molds. This later would be applied to his magic. He can’t approach customary apparatus builders because his magic requirements are better handled from his own resources and background. As a child, others thought of him as either a genius or an idiot, he says. He sees two character types among magicians. The “genius” who thinks in exact terms of what in physics is possible. And there is the idiot who, like a child, thinks in terms of wild, impossible and fanciful things: he has the ability to project an idea that one can think of—the most outrageous

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Sylvester blindly searches for his head, blown off and now rolling around on the stage at his feet.

and impossible things—and have people believe in it. Dan could be quoting characters in Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. Martin Gardner would surely approve of this. Magic is an art composed of mechanisms and perceptions. He tries to think of natural covers in order to make strange and unexpected events take place. Knowing this, one may study Sylvester’s performance looking for covers and solve an occasional secret—like the spontaneous appearance of the beard and moustache on his face. Great magic! He delights in contraptions: “How does that work?” He knows that few people spot the contradictions in some forms of magic, i.e., the flypaper should not have the face stuck on it but the backside of the face. Some in the audience might perceive that and appreciate the magic all the more. Magic is inconsistency with reality. Creating is helped if one is living in a constant state of discovery, of wondering happiness. One sounds naive, but is not a naive person. “I am seeing and thinking something that the other person isn’t,” Dan points out. “Yet he may be seeing and hearing something in a song that I don’t. That is life; that is the difference in people.”

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I will only mention two other inventions built by Sylvester to accomplish miracles, but not give details. One is a plastic vest capable of delivering the unbelievable number of diverse sounds, under his control, that are interlaced with effects during his act. The other is the method of Newtonian-ingenuity that he conceived so that an audience can look through an empty picture frame held in front of his body and, X-ray-like, see the wall or curtain behind him. Dan Sylvester creates effects and methods that have no forebears in magic. That is highest praise. Then why doesn’t this compilation of unparalleled creativity bring down the house when performed? Oh, he does well, but his ideas are worth tons more. I am looking back to the beginning of this article. Can the human mind not recognize what it is seeing, because it is without precedent? Does it require time to reflect upon what it has perceived before it may be appreciated? Would presenting it semi-seriously, not with cartoonish brevity and clothing, actually increase its theatricality and emotional quality? Does its sheer novelty plus its aggressive fantasy leave spectators to travel mentally and innocently down the wrong paths? And the confusion smothers a realization of the depths and heights this unfamiliar style of magic has obtained? What do you think? And how can it be rectified? Is Sylvester’s principle of self-mayhem as the core of an entertainment form, as I term it, self-destructive of its purposes? It is not entirely new. Conjurians’ escapes and illusion twisters victimize the performer. But blowing off one’s own head, generating a head of steam to release through the ears, or staple-gunning flypaper to his face, follow a relatively unused principle and degree of self-immolation in conjuring. But they occur and are finished in but seconds, leaving no time for gruesome reflections by the audience. Constant immediate survival demonstrates victory over pain, mutilation and death, without time for trauma. Is this psychologically hard to sell? I think so. But he is currently playing a one-year engagement in Seoul, Korea.

Harry Houdini and Max Malini

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Chapter 5

Revelations About “Houdini’s Hollywood Estate”

5

ON THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF LAUREL CANYON BOULEVARD AND LOOKOUT Mountain Avenue, in the Hollywood Hills, lie the aging remains of what local legends described as the Houdini Estate. It is not a minuscule piece of property. Originally 4½ acres, one acre has evidently been sold off as real estate agents in recent years were offering it as a 3½ acre estate for $2,500,000. On it stand the ruins of an ornate, Italian-style villa which burned to the ground in 1959 and was never rebuilt. Almost smothered in luxuriant trees and underbrush are a maze of walkways, pagodas, a stone bridge, a dried-up waterfall, high brick walls and staircases. Servants’ quarters were at the back. Guest(?) bungalows apparently huddled around the mansion at one time. Devil-cult markings adorn a cave, home to spiders. Pentagrams and triangles are scrawled on pillars in orange crayon in another cave. The smell of incense and mounds of melted wax from candles betray the recent presence of groups practicing their rituals. Among these spooky ruins, a Halloween seance hosted by actor William Shatner was shot a few years ago for a TV special on the general assumption that once this had been Houdini’s home. After passing through many hands, the forsaken property was purchased in 1947 by the Temple of Yahweh, Inc. The appropriateness of the setting for cultish expressions probably started then. The evidences continue today. 5. The Linking Ring, March 1997.

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Houdini buff, Joe Fox, stands by a surviving remnant of landscaping for a long-vanished mansion and bungalow in Hollywood which legend associates with the Houdinis.

In 1958, Fania M. Pearson bought the house and land to build a girl’s school. After the 1959 fire and futile attempts to reconstruct, she razed whatever had survived. I have talked by phone for a few minutes with Mark Jacobs, the current owner, about the future of the overgrown area. He is vague about any plans, although he mentioned that someone had brought up the matter of a museum. Whether it would deal with Houdini, the film industry or something else, he did not intimate. Houdini is said to haunt the grounds. A dark-haired man in black suit walks among the shattered masonry and then disappears. He is described as a tall, dark individual who favors a bow tie. The escapist was quite a short man. No longer seen, a lady ghost in green lingerie called “The Green Virgin” used to drift about the rotting relic that is slowly being swallowed by nature’s growth. A box of jewels reputedly buried in the grounds has attracted treasure hunters with metal detectors and pickaxes. If Houdini had bought this extravagant estate in its prime, it was quite an investment. But, did he ever own it? Or even live there. Sightseeing buses shout that he did both as they slide by. Tour books of Hollywood refer to 2398 or 2400 Laurel Canyon Blvd. as the escapologist’s one-time home. Que-

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ried about their source for this information, they quote another guidebook or unrecalled directory.6 One day I received a letter, with some informative documents, from a highly conscientious Houdini buff and amateur magician of Los Angeles named Joseph Fox. Inspired by the late, respected Houdini research scholar Manny Weltman, he had spent several hours in the Los Angeles Hall of Records/Archives Building tracing the chain-of-title on the strange property. He noted at least 16 different owners spanning 1922 into the 1950’s. He found, to his dismay, none included Harry or Bess Houdini, B.M.L. Ernst, Dr. Edward Saint or any other recognizable name. However, as I pointed out to him, Houdini’s period of film work in California had preceded 1922, when he was most likely to have purchased it. He asked if, using his research and my further study, I would do an article on the subject. With most commendable standards, Fox wrote that although the accounts of Harry’s occupancy and haunting “make great press” and contribute to the legend and mystery, he “feels strongly, for historical purposes, that the facts be set straight and no longer misrepresent the story to the public.” I would add that this moral obligation is particularly applicable to historians, libraries, educational institutions and museums. And yet we know that certain magicians and laity have put their desire to publicize Houdini above requiring an adherence to truth by institutions or media which they have an opportunity to influence on such matters. Merrill Lynch Realty hired two title research companies which looked in vain for property records prior to 1922. One of the property owners, assisted by her lawyers, examined without success, tenant and owner records far back. Manny Weltman’s own 45 years of Houdini research uncovered no mention of Laurel Canyon property. Absolutely convinced that the performer himself never set foot there, he threatened to sue a realty company unless it wiped from its “For Sale” sign the assertion that this was the “Harry Houdini Estate.” Nervous, the company complied. The vice president of Merrill Lynch in West Los Angeles weaseled, “We don’t say it definitely was Houdini’s; we say it is ‘known as’.” 6. Los Angeles Times, 29 October 1989, p. J9, article by Michael Szymanski.

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Author Maurice Zolotow, researching Houdini’s life for Los Angeles Magazine in 1979, reported: “Houdini resided in Hollywood for about two [sic] years, yet I have never been able to discover where he lived.” In 1989, producer Neal Hitchens stopped filming there for “In Search of Haunted Hollywood” because he could not confirm that the master of escapes ever lived on the property. That is integrity! Now we come to a possible break in the case. Joe Fox writes, “It is a fact that Bess Houdini had a letterhead stamping of the Laurel Canyon address (and it wasn’t #2398 or #2400 . . . but a number close to it . . . suggesting that she did live in one of several cottages/bungalows surrounding the main house) . . . and I believe that simply because Bess HOUDINI had lived on the property, the story was passed down through the decades that Harry had lived there (too).” This latter theory intrigued me. My book, The Fine Art of Hocus Pocus, had just been published (May 1996) with a chapter on the problems created by so many myths about the escape artist that masquerade as truths. I decided to look into the occupancy/ownership mystery of the Laurel Canyon estate in relation to theHoudinis. In the aforementioned book (p. 170), I had written, “Did Houdini ever actually live in the house he bought in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood? No. While making films, he bought it, I believe, as an eventual retirement home or as a solid investment.” On the next page is a remarkably good photograph with this caption: “Slowly being reclaimed by tropical plantings, the remains of Houdini’s house in Laurel Canyon remind people of the old Hollywood.” One of the hazards every published historian faces is his, or others, uncovering, at the last moment, previously unknown or unsuspected information that undermines some “facts” that he has just put into print.7 So it is with the quotes just mentioned, which reflected my, and others’ conclusions of the time. Let us review the situation in those days. In late April in 1919, Houdini arrived in the film capital and started his essential motion picture career making The Master Mystery, a 13-serial story 7. To bolster business for featured film, The Man from Beyond, H. H. at the Times Square theatre in N.Y.C. gave a stage show for which he hired an elephant to vanish. Only there and at the Hippodrome did he ever perform it, contrary to widely held assumptions.

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to be shown on 13 Saturday afternoons in neighborhood theatres nationwide. Jesse L. Lasky then signed the fledgling actor for two feature films, The Grim Game that emphasized an airplane accident and Terror Island, made on Catalina Island with African-Americans in the role of South Seas cannibals. In February 1920, these commitments finished in a little less than a year’s time, he sailed back to England and stage performances, abandoning West Coast filming for good. Thereafter, it was done back east. In studying various source materials for his brief Hollywood period, I have just come across the following key paragraph in William Lindsay Gresham’s significant 1959 volume Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls (p. 213): While Houdini was working in pictures, he rented a bungalow in Hollywood (emphasis mine) for himself and Bess. It was the first time in their twentyfive years together that they had ever stayed put in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. The bungalow was soon overflowing with Harry’s books, files of clippings, playbills, programs and general miscellany.

Mr. Fox and I recognize the possibility that the conveniently located and available bungalow on the impressive estate at 2398 Laurel Canyon Blvd., could well have been the one leased by the Houdinis. But, until evidence proves the contrary, more of a connection is needed. A start exists. The previously (to us) unexplainable letterhead/stamping possessed by Mrs. Houdini is thereby now accounted for and ties her, if not him, to this address. During that period, the performer might have quietly bought the Laurel Canyon property as an investment or retirement site, but then sold it a year or so afterward to cover some of his severe financial losses in the motion picture world. In view of the absent, as well as the examined, legal records for the property, this scenario seems only a very remote possibility. One other puzzle remained to be solved. Why would this metallic stamp for printing or engraving letterheads contain only Bess’ name and not her husband’s as well? Was it an act of female independence? Did she expect (incorrectly) to remain behind when her husband left for a British tour? Or, after his death in 1926, did she (again?) reside there and have the stamp made? In her later years, she did live in several Hollywood area cottages, in one of which I visited her and Ed Saint. It does raise some doubt as to

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Fox sits on a staircase in the ruins of the “Houdini home” in Hollywood, while researching the question of his ownership. John Booth’s subsequent investigation suggests that Houdini could have lived in an adjacent bungalow.

whether the escapologist, himself, was with her at that address . . . or ever lived there, as Manny Weltman, owner of the stamp before his own death, was convinced. This is where the drama and our thinking froze until one night. Finally, I was able to reach Nan Weltman, Manny’s capable and busy widow, who lives nearby in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys. Not only did she still have the letterhead stamping plate packed away somewhere, but a computer could give me more information about it that I sought. Within min-

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utes, she was able to describe it fully from the personal catalog of the Weltman Houdini Collection, due possibly for a New York City auction in Spring, 1997. I felt it held a little more about the secret of the Houdinis’ relationship to the so-called “Houdini estate.” The plate is actually a thin copper sheet 3¼" x 5". At the top is the imprinted signature: Beatrice Houdini. Underneath, in printed letters, it carries these words: Mrs. Harry Houdini. The plate records what is undoubtedly a phone number, GR 9058. And her actual address: 2435 Laurel Canyon Blvd., (in Hollywood). “Is there any way one can determine when she was there?” I asked. “Oh, we already know that,” Mrs. Weltman responded immediately. “It was about 1936 and she was staying in a bungalow for about three months. That would have been about the time of the last (Houdini) seance, October 31, 1936, atop the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood.” Thus Mrs. Houdini is definitely tied to the Laurel Canyon mansion property, but not her husband, who had been dead ten years. And yet, was it a happy recollection of a year perhaps spent there with Harry in 1919 that drew her back again? At the most, Houdini would merely have rented briefly, but did not own, a bungalow situated beside the villa itself on the property that is still pointed out as once his own to passing tour groups. When he resumed his ill-fated venture into film-making back east, he incurred such debts that any thought of investing then in an elaborate Italian-style mansion-cum bungalows on several acres of Hollywood land was inconceivable. Apparently, upon the flimsy thread of a temporary bungalow connection, perhaps only by his widow after his death, a massive legend of ownership, hauntings and media commercial exploitation has been built up around the vaudeville performer. Joe Fox’s conjecture holds up under extended investigation. Who started the ownership myth? And when? Does that leave “Houdini’s ghost” now homeless? POSTSCRIPT: At the beginning of 1999, the tract associated with Houdini’s name, was being offered by DBL Realtors for sale at $1,777,777.77. The price was set, feeling that seven is a lucky number, by its current one-year owner, a Georgia antiques dealer. Local lore still says that in clearing brush

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from the site of the “40-room mansion,” (?) iron gates were discovered with either the initials H & W or Houdini & Walker, and the date 1919, on them. Construction of the mansion was begun in 1911 and completed by Los Angeles department store owner R. J. Walker in 1924. Photos of the alleged gates seemingly don’t exist. The present owner of the ruins is restoring walkways, stairs and stonework of a garage building that housed the chauffeur.

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Chapter 6

Malini and His Violin

FROM BUSKING IN THE BOWERY, NEW YORK, AT AGE 12, TO ENTERTAINING royalty in the drawing rooms of the wealthy and famous only a few years later is quite a social and professional leap for any magician. It is real magic. How it was accomplished by a Polish immigrant speaking in a guttural, broken English voice, a man scarcely five feet tall with a smidgen of formal education, doing pocket tricks for the most part, had been a partial mystery to me until last year or so. Around age six, his family had migrated to North America. Such a performer deserved the utmost admiration and stoked the burning coals of my ambitions in conjuring. This was during the period in which I luckily was booked for a great deal of “high society” work in both Canada and the United States. The artist who inspired me so notably was little Max Malini, born on the Austro-Polish border in Ostrov on 1873, under the name Max Katz Breit. Spread across the bottom of his business letterheads eventually were some of the names of those before whom he had the honor of appearing: In England alone, H. M. King Edward VII., H. M. King George V., H. M. King Edward VIII., H. M. King George VI. That is four successive kings on one throne. In addition, King Constantine of Greece, ex-King Alphonso of Spain, and the King of Thailand. Add also Prince Tokugawa of Japan and the Sultan of Johore. Four U. S. presidents enjoyed his work: McKinley, Roosevelt, Harding and Coolidge. He amazed legions of non-royals in all ranks of life. I don’t believe that he ever truly qualified to be numbered among the few successful magicians who made and lost several fortunes as Sam Leo 47

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Horowitz is quoted as saying. He may have seemed to have done so but no qualified person with whom I have ever talked has agreed with Sam. The very nature of his performance schedule would scarcely bring him true wealth. But he could be well off for a few months or years at a time, which is one of the occasional thrills of a Gypsy existence. In early March 1939, I checked into a modest Buenos Aires, Argentina hotel and there lay his signature at the top of the page in the Guest

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Register. That tells nothing; he may, like myself, have been conserving funds against the inevitable droughts. But that was the closest I knowingly came to him in those days. In the ideal years of his professional life, he followed a relatively unique pattern. He always dressed well and carried himself with the air and posture of a confident, successful artist. Two or three days after checking into a luxury suite in the best hotel in a city, he would send his engraved business card to the manager, and then make an appointment to have a conference with him as a world-renowned magician. To establish his credentials, he carried with him a large, impressive, leather-bound scrapbook. Page by page, he would show letters pasted into it from heads of major corporations, staff members of the Courts of various rulers thanking him for his demonstrations of magic, and presidents or prime ministers attesting to his skills and appearances. Wherever he was, at a dinner table, an office desk, at the counter in a store, he could seem to make magic by simply picking up any article naturally lying there, and make magic. He might pluck a walnut from behind the hotel executive’s ear or transform something on his desk into a foreign object. Not only was he a gifted raconteur and shrewd psychologist quick to seize any unseen advantage, but could do so with a humorous quip. Max would walk out of the office leaving the occupant with the happy feeling that he would be conferring a great privilege on his community by allowing Malini to give one or two full evening shows in his ballroom, without rental fees, and install a low platform if one was not already there (often for a head table). Next, visiting a major flower shop and ingratiating himself with its owner or manager within a few minutes, he would wheedle a promise to have a full display of flowers on the ballroom stage with the florist’s compliments on show night. To underline the prestige of the traveling mountebank, a small glass show case in a prominent lobby position would exhibit some of the gifts, medals, stickpins or even a letter or two that he had received across time from monarchs or presidents. One might wonder how a series of small table-type tricks with cards, coins and minimal apparatus could be seen entertainingly in an uncanted hotel ballroom. We must remember that Malini was correct in telling startled hosts expecting a larger individual with bulky conjuring equipment that HE was the show. Indeed he was. Here was a man who stood erect like

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Barnum’s famed General Tom Thumb or looked, as someone has said, like a figure on a wedding cake. The accent, the magnetic patter, the continual humor, all served to create for the audience images of what was occurring unseen in the hands of the artist. His hands and arms were those of a child in size, but his acute sense of misdirection covered deficiencies in card palming or even in a large Chinese water bowl production from beneath an Oriental robe with which, for contrast, he sometimes closed his show. Max generally spent about a month in a productive city. He generated publicity in the most exclusive bars from which he expected, and usually drew a great many of his loaded patrons with masterful close-up miracles done freely for his admirers. Under the influence of his favorite scotch, Vat69, which his quickly-made friends vied to provide him, his yarns and hocus pocus made him wonderful company. This was the bait for his show tickets which he later hustled for five or ten dollars each, a high figure worth at least 15 times more per dollar in year 2000 money. In between his two separate formal ballroom shows, he performed for upper crust clubs, private home parties and corporate dinners. His obvious worldly contacts and brief time in a community made booking him at larger-than-normal stipends willingly agreed upon. In fact, when the magician checked out of his hotel suite at the end of his stay, he would be shocked if a bill was presented him, citing the prominence and goodwill his presence had bestowed upon the hostelry. It was usually torn up. Thus was the legend of wealth supported. Max spent many years of his life abroad. During my weeks in Shanghai, in 1948, I met and spent much time with Edwin Dearn and Long Tack Sam, the celebrated Chinese wonderworker. Dearn, The finest theatres in the world featured Long between waiting on customers at Tack Sam’s troupe. He was a friend of Malini, Kelly & Walsh’s bookstore on Ed Dearn, and John Booth who took this Bubbling Well Road, would relate photo in Shanghai, 1948.

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anecdotes about the peripatetic prestidigitator who came through unannounced across unnumbered years. Long Tuck Sam, as the Shanghai phone book listed him, took me out to the international community’s beloved Shanghai Race Track where Max often appeared. All over South America, and particularly in Brazil and Argentina, the magician left his footprints and memories of shows given. As a line in his publicity said: You’ll wonder when I’m coming; you’ll wonder more when I’m gone. Malini was not one to introduce new tricks into his routines often but to bring his standards in at the most unexpected moments. His pet effects, listed, astonish magicians for their simplicity. Continual usage brought performing perfection. His button trick always aroused exclamations of wonderment. Suddenly and brazenly he would pretend to see a loose button on a prominent dignitary’s coat or jacket. Bending over (which wasn’t far for him), he’d seemingly bite off the button, show it between his teeth and, before the startled victim could register irritation, plaster it back firmly in place. It was not a trick one could expect to see the tall, conservative John Mulholland perform! Max astonished U.S. President Warren G. Harding when he was made the victim of it. Five or more playing cards were selected, in another trick, remembered and shuffled back into the deck. Spread face down over a table top, Max, blindfolded and holding a knife or dagger, would stab out of the mixed-up cards, one by one, those that had been chosen. It was one of his most dramatic routines. We all know about his Egg Bag; Johnny Thompson is a master of it. His Cups and Balls routine with glass tumblers wrapped around with newspaper emphasized the ordinariness of his props. At the bar, he folded a piece of paper around a half dollar, rapped it on the bar to prove it was still there, and tore the paper into pieces so naturally, the vanish was marvelous. The Malini Legend is gilded with his remarkable stunt of producing either a heavy paving stone or cake of ice underneath an onlooker’s hat on a bar or table as a seemingly impromptu feat. Magician and layperson alike were bewildered by it. His misdirection leading up to a total surprise was perfect. The technical obstacle of hiding the melting, cold ice and its water disposal, while waiting—as Max always did for the right moment to introduce the production—would test any conjurian’s nerves. It is claimed that a small pair of ice tongs held the ice block under the left side of his coat. Melted water just dripped down freely inside his clothes. It seems to me

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that under the jacket, a rubberized bag with low open sides would better handle the water and hold the ice which would be readily accessible. Perhaps the paving block mystery depended upon a modus operandi like this. As with many prominent figures around whom anecdotes of amazing feats swirl, their reputation for some “miracles” is based upon doing them actually only one or two times. That served their purpose for years afterward. People retell them over and over. A heavy mist appears to hang around Mrs. Malini. Little has been written about her. We know that she had difficulty speaking English but was a willing participant in some of his audacious activities. But the uncertainties of traveling with a mountebank whose living depended upon wit, wisdom and wizardry probably and eventually removed her into her own world apart. There is no doubt that Max Malini was a unique personality in the annals of magic. Physically, he stood out for his diminutive frame, his round, bald head and immaculate presence. The gravelly voice, the accent that he never dropped, promoted the ambience that he created around himself. His genius as a distinctive, unforgettable and skilled performer with “close-up” effects would fill a ballroom with happily pleased audiences. These all helped to explain his success entertaining royal, political and business leaders of the world, a question with which I opened this chapter. Although they lived about a century apart in time, Max Malini’s physical resemblance to France’s Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) indicated they might easily have passed for twin brothers. This was drawn to Malini’s attention sufficiently often that he became a student of Napoleon’s career. Some said that he developed a Napoleonic complex! I doubt that we can attribute the magician’s astonishing conjuring career to this situation. But we still haven’t identified one quality in Max that perhaps accounts for his inexplicable access into upper circles of social, business and political life that few or no contemporary magicians enjoyed. Edwin Dearn, who knew Malini for so many years out in Shanghai, gives one answer. “I never knew a man who could gate-crash like Max; he had the gift of walking into any private club or institution without an invitation, and after he had introduced himself to the most important person present, he would be welcomed with open arms—everybody seemed pleased to meet him and he was made welcome.”8

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While admiring and envying Malini’s “way of living off a few simple tricks that took him all over the world and even permitted him to appear before royalty,” as he put it, David Bamberg (the eminent Fu Manchu, illusionist) summed up his opinion of Max: “I had a good chance to study this remarkable man. I have mentioned before the audacious type. Unquestionably, Malini was the king. Beside him, Houdini was a shrinking violet. I have never seen a man in show business with such colossal crust.”9 Years ago, Silent Mora (Louis J. McCord) dictated, for the record, to Eddie “Tex” McGuire, short-time business manager of Malini, how he learned one key to Max’s success in life. “Max Malini could never be called the shrinking violet type . . . very first time we met he told me what his secret was for making money . . . ‘Mora, if you want to make money, go where the money is.’” “As I watched through the years,” Mora continued, “I saw that policy of his had not changed, and that he was always with BIG people. His (apparently) ignorant effrontery would insult a person’s intelligence, and then by the softest kind of sweet verbal dynamite, he’d win you—to hear more about this man.” “He’d give you a brief and QUICK synopsis of his work and his life, and you knew he was a good magician—if not the Greatest, as he claimed.” “So, with this introduction to you, you introduced Malini into the INNER CIRCLE of your friends, and once a member of your group, he’d find WHO was the most desirable to give just a little more attention to that man than to yourself.” “As you watched this sudden interest in someone else more than yourself, it may have annoyed you at first, and then you would face the fact that Malini had a definite purpose in his “casing” his new prospect.” “You watched as the amazing plan unfolded before Your Eyes, and you remained silent before this psychological wizard—Malini.” “The new victim was totally unconscious of this master plan of Malini’s, who, during all this process of enchantment, was still devoting some of his 8. Vernon, Dai and Lewis Ganson, Malini and his Magic, p. 97, London, Harry Stanley publisher, undated. New U.S. edition by L & L Publishing, Tahoma, CA, 1999. 9. Fu Manchu (David Bamberg), Illusion Show, p. 156, Glenwood, IL, Meyerbooks, Publisher, 1988.

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time presenting some small trick and cracking bits of sparkling wit so that every onlooker was unable to concentrate on magical processes for when you are laughing, you cannot THINK.” “In just this manner was Charles Diamond ‘taken in’ by Max Malini.”10 Then Mora goes on to say that Malini had heard Diamond was sailing for Manila in his own yacht in a few days, and wanted to sail in that yacht without asking Mr. Diamond, president of the American Can Company. Not only did he succeed but his family (Mrs. Malini and son Oziar) accompanied him, according to a master plan based upon his intentional overconsumption of alcohol. This wild story was a favorite of Harry Kellar, who was fond of Max and passed it along to Louis Mora. Thus did free hotel suites and transportation in millionaires’ yachts help create the mystique of having fortunes that could evaporate without effort. His aggressiveness in social and business climbing, exploiting friendships, shocked those who knew. And so the years passed and we heard less and less about the wanderings of Max Malini. Times had changed. Fashions took new turns which did not help his way of life: men and women now seldom wore hats, refrigerators no longer needed cakes of ice, all informal accessories for eyeopening trickery. Had he retired to a paradise in Asia, South America or some islands of the far Pacific, I wondered? Until the end of September in 1940. Suddenly the little giant stepped off an elevator in a San Francisco hotel and briefly into my life. I was to be married on October first in San Jose’s Unitarian Church and had taken the evening off to attend a magic club meeting. Preparing to leave it, finally, I sauntered outside the room as a crowded elevator opposite opened its doors. Only one person moved out. Carrying a cane regally, a pearl gray fedora on his head, and wearing a finely custom-tailored, brown suit edged 10. Mora, Louis (Louis J. McCord), and Eddie “Tex” McGuire compiled by Ed Hill, The Yankee Magic Collector #5, pp. 85–87, New England Magic Collectors Assn., Boston, 1992. Years later, Ed Hill advised me that the original article from which he had derived his information was published in The Linking Ring of unknown date. Editor Phil Willmarth tracked it down to Vol. 44 #7 (July 1964), pp. 37–39, titled “Max Malini and Charles Diamond Episode: Told by Louis (Silent) Mora to Eddie (Tex) McGuire.”

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with matching braid, he looked about and posed momentarily almost like a caricature of a midget tycoon. Everyone in the elevator was staring as though hypnotized by this improbable figure, frozen in time. The elevator operator seemed to have forgotten to close the door; like the rest he was immobilized, probably wondering who this perfectly accoutered little man was. Suddenly the spell was broken. The elevator door closed. Although I had never seen him before, I immediately knew it was Max Malini. He walked slowly the few feet into the magicians’ meeting room. I followed, dazzled by the twist of fate that was bringing us together at last. Evidently he had visited the club before as few paid him any attention. We made an appointment to meet at his hotel the following afternoon. He was occupying a sparsely furnished room in a somewhat run-down hotel near the Golden Gate. The old-fashioned metal bedstead and two throw rugs on a well-worn wooden floor were fairly common in those days. Max was not feeling well although I could not see or realize that he was ill. His age was sixty-eight. It was clear that he enjoyed talking about distant cities and people familiar to both of us: Shanghai, Calcutta, Sydney, London and others, instead of the small chatter of trickery. I had heard that he seldom would do his legendary magic for magicians. Now I understand why. It needed the surprising reactions of laymen to motivate him; he bounced his effects off them. Magicians who had seen him work, seemingly had done so by watching him while he was entertaining non-magicians. I tried by subtle and diplomatic urging to break this private code. But it availed not. Oddly, I hardly noticed his speaking pattern, cultivated in broken English and a heavy accent for so many years, deliberately and humorously mispronouncing or incorrectly stringing together his words. Entertaining the dignified King George V and the stately Queen Mary, of the U.K., he is reputed to have addressed them as Mr. King and Mrs. Queenie. Only the incorrigible Max Malini, in feigned innocence, could have gotten away with that. They pretended not to notice the ridiculous, but seemingly not for him, inappropriate malapropisms. Yet Malini knew, like a fox, exactly what he was doing, when and how far he could go. The young Austrian, as he presented himself in entertaining at a dinner of the British cabinet about 1900, was careful to ask permission to bite a button off Prime Minister Lord Balfour’s dress coat. It was granted and the trick proved a sensation, this new and uncanny feat in

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magic. Basically he could be polite and respectful, using his verbal oddities to bring laughs at himself. He proudly showed me a part of his letter collection. Addressed to him, I can recollect one from the president of the Canadian National Railway system and two or three others from representatives of royal courts, designated to thank him for his appearances before their monarchs. He carried these with him still, powerful booking aids in his career. The elegant album for them was gone. The letters and other papers were now grubby with age and wear. He seemed to have little interest any more in the tricks and artifices of magic. I suspect that after a lifetime of repeating endlessly the same favorite legerdemain, it had become boring unless a fresh audience stood by eagerly waiting to see him perform. It intrigues students and performers of conjuring to learn that his love had become the violin. This is generally unknown. Entirely unexpectedly, he walked over to his bed, reached under it and dragged forth a venerable and scuffed violin case. The instrument itself inside seemed to be well preserved and in good condition.

A rare picture of Max Malini playing one of his beloved violins. Photo courtesy of Oziar Malini/ Mark Mitton.

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After the usual discordant notes tuning it, he tried to play it for me. He really hadn’t mastered the fundamental techniques and the results were unhappy. But he either didn’t seem to realize this or did not mind. I felt that he was at an age when further self-discipline to improve any skill was now an unwelcome hardship. Since life was drawing to a close, why not just enjoy scraping the strings? The afternoon that I wanted to spend reminiscing about this man’s incredible life in magic turned into a trying occasion primarily devoted to a one-man violin “concert.” But I didn’t mind. Playing for me, an audience of one, was a one-time royal entertainer of kings, presidents and leaders of world institutions and enterprises. If this visit could provide one of his final days with some pleasure, it was very much worthwhile sitting still and listening to the raucous collision of catgut and horsehair. In a little over 17 months, Max Malini would be dead. Somewhat appropriately, on March 3, 1942, he died on a distant shore, in Honolulu, where he had often displayed his miracles. With insight, his old friend and mine, Okito, reflected admiringly upon his career in these words: Among modern magicians there are several striking examples of what might be called archaic survivals—elements of the medieval mountebank and the great 18th century charlatans carried over successfully into the newer theatrical traditions. One need only mention Houdini (and) Max Malini, the modern mountebank . . . All the other magicians that I have mentioned owned carloads of apparatus and hired plenty of assistants. But can you imagine a man traveling all over the world with a show which he could carry in his pocket? That was Max.11

POSTSCRIPT: In mid-1998 I had the pleasure in Hollywood’s Magic Castle of meeting again Max Malini’s son, Oziar. We were there to appear briefly in an as yet unreleased film. Oziar, who stands half-a-foot taller than his father and is of stocky build, said that his parent often carried two violins in a double case. This indicates his enthusiasm for this form of music even though, understandably and sympathetically, he was the loving amateur in creating his version of it. 11. Bamberg, Theodore (Okito), with Robert Parrish, Okito on Magic: Reminiscences and Selected Tricks, p. 38, Chicago, IL., Edwin O. Drane & Co., 1952.

Four Brief Pieces to Ponder or Enjoy

Chapter 7

Aloha Dai

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ALTON SHARPE, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER OF OLLAPODRIDA: THE JOURNAL OF Magical Mélange, September 1992, No. 17, began his column “Back Chat from Kellar’s Den”: A memorial event was held on September 6 (a Sunday afternoon) at the Magic Castle honoring Dai Vernon who had died on August 21, at Ramona, California. Approximately 200 friends of Dai gathered at the Castle to enjoy good fellowship . . . and sampling champagne. After about an hour, all gathered in the Palace of Mystery. After a few appropriate remarks made by Milt Larsen, Peter Pit was introduced, who proceeded to introduce, graciously, several Castle board members, each of whom gave his “greatest story” about Vernon . . . The gift that was Vernon, for 98 years, his talents and kindness, were unnoticed by some, who only found his weakness worth commenting upon. It was then announced that John Booth would be the final speaker. Well, you can imagine the rest of the story. As John strode to the microphone, a hush fell over the audience. His very presence on stage filled the room with excitement. John with his compelling personality, took command immediately. He talked about Dai Vernon the inner man and . . .

As others have said before me, we have gathered here in the Palace of Mystery at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, to honor and celebrate the life 12. Booth presented this farewell to Dai Vernon at a memorial at the Magic Castle. Members of Vernon’s family were present. It was subsequently published in Genii, October 1992.

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Dai Vernon (world renowned card expert), John Fedko (author, magic dealer, professional performer) and Dr. John Henry Grossman (co-founder and long-time president of the Magic Collector’s Association). Photo by Irving Desfor.

of Dai Vernon. About four years ago, I remarked to the then-94-year-old authentic legend in magic: “Do you realize, Dai, that when you and I first met in New York City, you were a young man of about 36 years of age. For a moment he stared at me, almost in disbelief, and then commented: “You must have been a babe in arms!” Actually, I was 18, and my first book on magic had just been published in London by Edward Bagshawe, who brought out the first books of Robert Harbin and Eric Lewis at about the same time period. Across the years since then, we enjoyed many meetings together: in Rio de Janeiro, when the two ocean liners on which we were playing docked at the same time and we both went over to see Francis Finneran Carlyle off on his ship one evening. Or the time he and his wife Jeanne traveled over to Brooklyn one stormy, snowing night, with John Mulholland and Fulton Oursler, to see my full-evening lecture show on magic in the Academy of Music. John reminded us that Buatier de Kolta and Howard Thurston had both played

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that stage in their day. And my late wife never forgot the night when Dai and I sat up in my study in suburban Boston until 3 a.m. talking magic: it took 10 days for the smell of cigar smoke to clear the house. On this occasion, however, I would like to deal with the paradoxical mystery of Dai Vernon the human being. Why did this extraordinarily gifted person, with a striking and magnetic personality and handsome features, hold so little interest in money and fame? Striving for theatrical success never fully appealed to him. Throughout his life, he could be happy sitting up in bed for hours in his New York days, or, a cigar in hand, sit alone here in the Castle, pondering and trying out moves and plots with a pack of playing cards. Wasn’t it a waste of a good man’s life and genius? Perhaps his concept of, and dedication to, perfection in whatever he embraced would have prevented him attaining high commercial success as a professional stage magician. His giving up the Harlequin act after its brief, highly-located career, suggests that he didn’t want to modify his standards or fight the battle for bookings. Instead, when some monetary underpinnings were needed, he preferred to stand for hours cutting 50 cent silhouettes of passers-by in a drafty department store—as I saw him doing, to my surprise, when I played the Pere Marquette Hotel in Peoria in the late 1930s. If Mrs. Frances Rockefeller King had a society date for him he was delighted; if she didn’t that month, no matter. Without any seeming desire to shine in society’s estimation, Dai’s one compulsion was to excel in mastering all the possible techniques for controlling and exploiting a deck of cards. Into this he poured all the dedication, energy, intensity and ambition others reserve to achieve eminence or wealth. The concert artist, the ballet dancer, the businessman, are all driven by the same preoccupation: but beyond it they see the theatres, glittering lights, businesses to build, fine homes in which to live. Dai didn’t look much beyond the card table for his pleasures. With deep affection and respect for him, may I pose a psychological reason, as I see it, to explain this mystery. He was an example, perhaps one would say he revealed the problem, if such it is, of what psychologists term the “too-well-adjusted” person. Now, Dai knew my theory about him—it is explained in one of my books—and it tickled him. In temperament he adapted to, and accepted readily, too easily, outward circumstances. The end result was that he seldom drove himself at any time in his many years to gratify the normal worldly goals. The physical erosion that accompanies

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emotional struggles for success did not wear him down. Stress and cholesterol were not by-products of his temperament and way of life. Oblivious to the usual blandishments of a materialistic society, unruffled by the killing pace that destroyed so many of his contemporaries, he went his way to an independent drum beat of his own. Oh, he could assert himself: in an instant he could blurt out a powerful adverse opinion about Houdini, a card move, or any suggestion that his idol S. W. Erdnase could have been the murderer and gambler Milton Franklin Andrews! But he didn’t brood over disagreements. By being forthright, it cleared his system at that moment, like a lightning storm or hurricane readjusting to natural forces in nature to restore calm for the time being. It was a healthy release for him, not a continual state of being. In all these respects he was a rare personality. Thoreau and the mystics of humanity would applaud him. Strangely—and yet not really so . . . because the sages of religion have proclaimed it for thousands of years— while ignoring the world’s crass values, he actually and unintentionally drifted into a form of immortality. A cult has grown up around Dai Vernon. His disciples and their books and performances bear his mark and his philosophy; the laymens’ world outside those whom we entertain, have thus been the unwitting recipient of the fruits and wonder created by the explorations of his mind and the skills of his fingers. He found adventure and fulfillment in the solitude of his own reasoning aloneness. Our world would be poorer but for such souls who arise at such infrequent intervals in history with their singular dedication. Without any sense of sacrifice, they forego the usual emoluments of society in order to develop thoroughly one basically small area of human activity be it in science, industry, theatre, or our own dramatic art of conjuring. The end product of their amazing life blesses and lifts us all onto higher ground. And then they disappear forever. But their legacy lives on.

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Chapter 8

Do Morality or Ideology Influence Art and Magic?

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LENINGRAD, U.S.S.R.—“A GOOD COMPOSER MAY WELL BE AN ANTI-COMMUNIST,”

acknowledged Andrei Petrov, “But I would want to know the background and inspiration of any particular work by such a person before I could judge it correctly.” Our dialogue on the bridges between music and ideology was staged in the exclusive private club of the professional composers of Leningrad. Where better than in this “window on Europe,” this home of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Rubinstein, could I more appropriately check the pulse of post-Stalinist reasoning about notes, bars and clefs? Shostakovich had agreed to talk with me. A last minute opportunity removed him from Leningrad. My loss happily was lessened by the special meeting arranged with Andrei Petrov, one of Russia’s most popular young composers. He holds the high position of secretary of the Union of the Composers of the Soviet Union and is chairman of the Board of the Composers Union of Leningrad. In addition to a symphony and music for the ballet “Shore of Hope,” he has composed for several outstanding motion pictures. Soon we were joined by a sensitive and slightly built young man, in his twenties, like Mr. Petrov. He, Alexander Chernov, has authored five books

13. Long Beach (California) Press-Telegram September 3, 1965. This is a truncated version of an article written from Leningrad, Russia (then the U.S.S.R.) and originally titled “Russian Composers Air Views on Culture for Minister.” As my interview unrolled, I was fascinated by the philosophical positions expressed and saw how they might possibly be applied to the art of conjuring.

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A bearded Dr. Booth discusses the position of performing artists in the former Soviet Union with Arupian Akopian, renowned Armenian/Russian professional celebrity magician. Photo taken in Moscow.

on music, composed a symphony influenced by the books of Erich Remarque and an opera inspired by the poem “The 3 Joys,” and is a music critic. The clubhouse of the Composers Union is an elegant, richly furnished former home of an aristocrat. We sat, with my private interpreter, around a table which held coffee and a box of expensive little chocolates. I was probing with them the area of “musical-political” ideology because both Shostakovich and Prokofiev had been submerged as undesirable during Stalin’s hey-day. “Even during Stalin’s time, those two composers were publicly popular and were studied in schools here,” insisted Mr. Chernov. “But it is true that now the state appreciates them fully. The White Nights Arts Festival in Leningrad is dedicated this year to the works of Prokofiev. And Mr. Shostakovich wanted to meet you here.”

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“We find many bourgeois songs are not acceptable to us because of their words. And this cannot help affect the melody to some extent,” he continued. “Nevertheless, I think that today there is no major difference in the music of the Soviet Union and the West. Humanism unites musicians everywhere.” “If you would reject some music because you know that it is the inspiration of an anti-Communist composer,” I asked, “would you also turn down a beautiful piece if you knew that its composer was personally immoral?” Chernov and Petrov eyed me cautiously and reflectively. Tanya, my interpreter, flushed a little, obviously eager to hear their handling of this question. “It’s a personal matter.” Mr. Petrov finally answered. “A highly moral person may be a mediocre composer.” Mr. Chernov broke in volubly, “I disagree. A musician who composes well but is immoral has a mixed up psychological self. In art, a person’s real ego is expressed.” “But isn’t life composed of all facets of human experience?” I replied. “And true art is that which expresses any valid emotion or situation?” “Only the best that is true in man should be expressed in art,” Mr. Chernov said firmly. For the next three minutes I remained quietly fascinated, watching the two Soviet composers argue together forcefully over this philosophical point. It was refreshing to see some disagreement, at last, in this land where a united, though friendly, front on viewpoints confronts the visitor. “Please tell me your honest opinion of our American pianist Van Cliburn,” I asked. He had been snowed under with tons of adulatory flowers and bouquets after recent concerts in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and Novosibirsk. “He is a notable musician, of course,” the men agreed. “But as in many young men, his philosophy is not yet clearly defined. He plays too much— this has not given him the time to develop.” POSTSCRIPT: External political/philosophical tenets don’t usually affect the creative and performance aspects of magic and illusion as an art. True artists create from what lies within, not from pressures outside. But during the so-called “cold war,” between East and West, regrettably-biased bookers

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of occasional theatres or convention shows were deaf to my pleas for the Russian, German and Japanese of distinction in magic to be invited to our shores. Now—with peace—we have witnessed their skills and innovations, our loss is more keenly recognized. Art, sports, music and dance should be lifted above the barriers of politics, religion, race and special privilege . . . even in war.

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Chapter 9

That FATAL Signet Ring: A Short, Short Story by John Booth

14

THERE WAS A SHARP KNOCK AT MY DOOR. PROBABLY ANOTHER PERFORMER ON the bill, thought I, as I applied a little make-up to my face. “Come in,” I called. “My name is Morah; with the United States Secret Service,” stated my visitor, closing the door and extending his hand. “I would like to speak to you for a few moments about a very pressing matter.” I was rather surprised but hastily offered the handsome young man a chair, and, having lit a cigarette, following his example, advised him that I would be glad to hear his problem. “Here it is in a nutshell,” he began, blowing a “My name is Morah; with the United States Secret white cloud of smoke toService,” stated my visitor . . .” ward the ceiling. “We fellows are in a hole at the present time and have to get out of it mighty quickly. As you may be aware, there is a tremendous rum-running racket in progress along the Detroit River front. Every week a fortune in red eye crosses the 14. Genii, August 1995 (Written circa 1930).

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border but we can’t get the goods on them. We think we have spotted the Liquor Baron behind the whole work—in fact our quarry is out front watching the photo-play at this very moment.” “Very interesting,” I replied, as I made a few changes in my magical apparatus. “But I don’t quite get my connection with the affair—unless you think I am in league with the Baron,” I added, laughing. “I’m coming to that now,” he smiled. “These fellows have a slick system of communication with each other. Last week, a small piece of tissue paper was brought in. On it was a coded message that was deciphered and proved of tremendous value to us. Reports carried to us indicate that the Baron conceals these coded orders to his subordinates in a large signet ring that he wears. We are positive that he passes the messages along in the act of shaking hands. Now we want to get hold of that ring immediately. Undoubtedly it contains dope that would clear up a lot of business we have been trying to figure out. You are an adept at sleight-of-hand and I would like you to try to get that ring for me during your coming performance. You can try your luck and if you succeed, you will be accomplishing something every Service man in Michigan has been failing in for months!” “Some task,” I declared, shaking my head. “Yes, it would be,” he admitted. “But it is worth trying, isn’t it? Think of what is at stake.” “O.K. I’ll give it a fling. But remember this is the key theater for the Midwestern circuit and we have to be careful what we do. I don’t know any of the bookers out there yet, but others say they’re pretty tough and will cut your contract if you look cross-eyed at them.” “I’ll leave it all up to you,” he said graciously. “Show me the man in question,” I asked, leading my newly-made friend from my dressing room. From the right wings of the stage, a man was pointed out to me. Fortunately he was sitting next to the aisle near the front. It was hard for me to realize that this elderly gentleman could be engaged in such an unlawful practice. At that moment, the buzzer rang for my act. I hastily prepared my few properties, having left Morah by the left wings. The customary fast-moving, opening march burst from the orchestra pit as I entered. After I had completed my opening remarks. I went directly into my regular routine. A solid steel walking cane apparently dissolved into thin air. I turned over several possible plans in my mind as I plucked a steady stream of cigarettes

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from the air. My job was no sinecure. The “Baffling Block” took well but I knew the strength of my act lay in the concluding two mysteries. Yes, the Flash Billiard Ball Manipulation brought forth rounds of applause and went over with the customary bang. Finally came the sensational East Indian Rope Miracle. In this trick lay my slim chance to get the ring. After deliberately cutting in half a length of manila rope, with a gleaming dagger, I walked down into the audience. All eyes were fastened to me as I stood in the narrow aisle of the packed theater and announced that I desired to borrow a ring, with which I would attempt to restore the mutilated rope. My gaze drifted around in search of a possible ring, then suddenly I turned to the Liquor Baron, near whom I was standing, and asked him if he would lend me his ring for a few moments. He colored slightly, and, after a little hesitation, slipped the beautiful signet ring from his finger and handed it to me. My simple request had been granted! I quickly remounted the stage, tied together the two cut ends of the rope and slid the borrowed ring onto the center of the rope. Not a sound came from the expanse before me. Slowly I passed my hand over the knot— slowly it fell apart revealing the rope whole and restored once more. So great was the effect on the audience that for a few seconds absolute quietness reigned supreme, the reaction coming in a thunderous burst of applause which swept through the house as the curtain descended. I hurriedly tossed the ring to the Service man whose face was wreathed in smiles. Up went the curtain for the encore and when the applause had subsided a few moments later, I hastened to my dressing room. Morah was there already. He was busily picking away at the glittering signet ring with a tiny metal instrument. Two policemen were standing by the door as I entered while the stage manager was bent over Morah watching the picking operation with a strange fascination. “You have helped us out immeasurably,” declared Morah as he patiently pried into the niches of the ring, “only I am very sorry there is no way in which you can be rewarded. I guess the owner of this piece will be here any—” His sentence was cut short by a resounding crash of a heavy fist on the dressing room door. Before any of us had time to move toward it, it flew open and the owner of the ring barged into the room. His face had turned a deep scarlet color, and was twitching with uncontrollable anger.

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“You crook,” he shrieked, pointing a finger toward me with a menacing gesture. “I’ll have the law on you for this. You cheap showman and charlatan.” At that moment he was somewhat taken aback when one of the officers shoved a gat into his ribs. “Stick ’em up. We’re onto your game now, my friend.” “I tell you he’s crooked. There is a mistake. He’ll rue this day for the rest of his life,” he cried as he raised his arms. “Give me that ring.” For reply Morah said simply, “You crook,” he shrieked . . . “Nearly open.” Every moment, the fury of the Baron increased. His shouts and oaths did not affect Morah, who picked away constantly. Click! The signet opened and we watched a tiny piece of white cardboard flutter to the floor, leaving the cavity empty. Morah picked it up. It was the portrait of a beautiful woman! Across the back was written in a feminine hand: “To Bill Sovereign, with Love—Betty.” William Sovereign, president of the Mid-Western Booking Agency!

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Chapter 10

Book Reviews: The Achilles Heel of Magic Magazines 15

AFTER A LIFETIME ENCOUNTERING BOOK REVIEWS IN CONJURING MAGAZINES that are bland, factually flawed, biased or by inappropriate persons for the subjects under scrutiny, I feel that an analysis of what constitutes a good review ought to be attempted. This is a vital matter affecting not only magicians in general but collectors for whom provenance alone is intrinsically significant: historians, biographers, and hobbyists or professionals seeking performance techniques and insights. Mediocre reviews steer potential readers away from good books and toward poor ones. It is time that someone spoke out candidly to prevent more damage, visible or unperceived, being inflicted in the name of literary criticism. What should conjurians of any background expect from reviews in magazines? The prospective reader or purchaser of a book should receive an honest, intelligent and fair overall idea of a book’s contents and direction, as well as an evaluation of its merits and defects. While respecting a magazine’s and editor’s space and time handicaps under which most reviews must be created, a subscriber does not want misrepresentation and unin15. This is a slightly revised and shortened version of Booth’s address originally delivered at the 28th Annual Magic Collectors Weekend, held at the Hyatt Regency Woodfield Hotel, in the Chicago suburb of Schaumberg, March 1997. Mr. William Doerflinger, long-time conjuring scholar and retired senior editor of E. P. Dutton, N.Y.C. publishing house, remarked afterward: “A copy of (Booth’s) talk should be sent to every Book Review Editor in the country.”

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formed judgments, or dealing in personalities in order to exploit the reviewer’s private animosities. On the other hand, who can measure the number of young people across foregoing generations in whom the sparks of magic romance were kindled by being led toward, and reading, books like The Memoirs of RobertHoudin, Professor Hoffmann’s Modern Magic, or Howard Thurston’s Card Tricks? The list that is impressive to today’s generation is too long to detail. Whatever influences, inspires or persuades promising young people or adults to consider our art with serious intent for hobby or profession enriches it for all of us. Mature reviews can and do play a forceful role. In nudging people to read and enjoy the delights of magical biography, methodology and history we must not permit the purveyors of ignorance, bias or incompetence to denigrate such literary sources. Most vulnerable seem to be biography, history and think pieces. A qualified expert on sleights and close-up wizardry may be the least competent to review a book on illusions, biography or stage craft. Glibly articulate, he may seem to be proficient on the one but his seeming understanding fades on other subjects, providing unreliable and, therefore, dangerous judgments to the unsuspecting. Nothing is more meaningless than to say simply that a book is “readable” or contains essays. If a volume is not readable, it is probably not fit to be sold or reviewed. Essays? On what? Magic is a wide field of many subjects. Give details; be specific. Be helpful. How can a reader know if they concern his own interests? Preparing to write a review, an individual should scan the introduction or preface to learn the parameters of the author’s intentions and subject matter. To expect a literary completeness or an approach not envisioned by the author because an explanatory paragraph at the book’s beginning was not consulted, may result in an untrustworthy, unreasonable review. To illustrate mediocre quality reviews, harmful in their inaccuracy, misrepresentation or spirit, let us look briefly at three actual efforts published somewhat recently in three main-line American magic magazines. These can probably boast the three highest circulations as well. Mercifully, these are “worst case” examples so, to avoid embarrassment, I shall not name the guilty editors, or reviewers. You would know them: good magazines, men and woman all.

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The reviewer (October 1994; MAGIC ) of the two-volume work by Robert E. Olson, The Complete Life of Howard Franklin Thurston provided a grave case of the destructive features in some book reviewing. Apparently overwhelmed by the Thurston books’ below par production quality and sometimes jumpy thematic structure, the reviewer condemned the 444page, heavily illustrated books as a “$100 rip-off.” How many readers turned away from this basic book because of that statement? Newly unveiled knowledge in such large chunks as this book contains is only as valuable as the reviewer or reader is conditioned to understand it. We want well-published books. But the contents are the essential element. A union of the two is a delight. but we don’t necessarily denigrate the whole as a rip-off if a part disappoints. Generalizations are dangerous, to repeat a platitude. Years ago, card experts paid up to $100.00 for the “real work” in a short manuscript. A reviewer should know, and is wise to mention, an author’s background—if only in a sentence or two—in order to help assess his abilities and depth of investigation. The reviewer ignored Olson’s lifetime commitment to studying Thurston’s career, his vast collection of letters, clippings, documents, photographs and other memorabilia upon which he drew. The wide range of Olson’s resources was rejected because in explaining a few illusions’ methods, he is not entirely accurate; or doesn’t include legal answers (!) to some of their backgrounds. In this book, however, his fund of reliable and little-known facts is extraordinary. And so the reviewer concludes: “This book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the definitive book on Howard Thurston, a fascinating character and an institution in the American Theatre, has yet to be written.” The definitive book? Here are the experienced words of Dr. Kenneth Silverman in the Introduction to his just-published ancillary book Notes to Houdini!!!: “I don’t think of Houdini!!! . . . as a ‘definitive biography.’ Most biographers will tell you that there’s no such thing. Each new generation wants to know different things about celebrated people, so that biographies need to be continually rewritten to satisfy new interest. And new details about the subject’s life keep turning up.” Amen. I readily confess to having been guilty of using this descriptive word “definitive” on occasion. The Olson book on Thurston is, for the present, the nearest thing to a “definitive” volume in print.

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The reviewer climaxes his own chorus of disparagement with the most incredible advice of all: “Don’t waste your money.” I commend the magazine’s editor for rushing into the next issue, without delay, a contrary viewpoint. But the damage was done. The volume’s defects were properly mentioned in the review; but alongside them should also have appeared its obvious strengths that made the two-volume set a “must buy” to lovers of history, biography and inside show business details. The most complete book on the life and work of Thurston deserved this. May I be pardoned for citing next a lengthy “review” (GENII: July 1996) for my recent book The Fine Art of Hocus Pocus. Unfortunately, it did not observe fundamental standards of fair play and reliability that readers have a right to expect. The reviewer quoted the critical portion of an almost 60-year-old review of my Marvels of Mystery (1941) by Prof. Paul Fleming (Gemmill) (omitting his praise). Genii’s man should have known and mentioned that Paul later, hearing of his mistakes, hastened to apologize. All reviewers should be sure they have the facts if they intend to censure. Among several personal smears by the Genii reviewer was one over my use of the word “greatest.” To readers of my Wonders of Magic (1986), pp. 40–44, in which I actually concur with his word view, he sounded illread and foolish. In this and the Fleming case, he had seemed compellingly authoritative. Accusing me of “chopping Mr. Houdini down to size” rings hollow in the light of my carefully explained tribute to Houdini as the “World’s Greatest Escapologist” and Thurston as the “World’s Greatest Magician.” Why doesn’t he tell this background? His 2,000-plus word “review” covered essentially only 33 pages of a 298-page volume, the two chapters devoted, one each, to Thurston and Houdini. He did flip other pages because he includes a few sparse sentences to say that a highlight for him were historical and biographical profiles, and photographs. Otherwise ignored were the remaining 250-plus pages that included five chapters of close-up and stage tricks, sections and chapters on conjuring invention, collection coins, a giant memory act, presentation, hit shows, the Hooker Card Miracles and other subjects—-none of this was mentioned. These were THE book. Of course, if he hadn’t read them, he couldn’t mention them. But was this fair to the editor, publisher, author or

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readers? John Gaughan said he read the book through twice, calling it “wonderful.” And he is a busy expert in the profession. The editor also published a powerful rebuttal to the review (September 1996) by Bill McIlhany. The third and final dramatic example of failures to meet the minimal standards expected of book reviews greeted Ruth Brandon’s The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini (February 1996: THE LINKING RING). It begins by listing a series of short phrases culled from throughout the book. They serve to inflame the reader against the book and author herself. No page numbers for the phrases are given to allow the busy reader to check the qualifying context from which they’re snatched. He belittles the author’s academic and experiential background in related studies for which I doubt whether most other Houdini biographers could qualify. No mention is made of Ms. Brandon’s extensive research and visits to key primary Houdini resources around the United States or in her native Great Britain. Feminists might charge the critical reviewer with being a male chauvinist, attacking a book by a woman. I don’t think that this is the problem. The reviewer’s regard for Houdini as virtually an icon warps his judgment. Editors need to beware when anyone is assigned, or asks, to review a specific book who is motivated by excessive emotional admiration for its subject, or by the equally rigid dogmatism of anger and prejudice of the opposite position. An objective, overall review probably will not result, depending upon his or her knowledge and dedication to fairness in the task. Brandon’s too frequent psychoanalytical interpretations of the escape artist’s behavior I found sometimes interesting, often irritating, but seldom convincing. I would also have preferred to have the reviewer state his reactions briefly, without getting personal. It would have still made his point on this and her alleged “tabloid approach.” Then proceed objectively to evaluate the bulk of her book that he has left dark. Richard Hatch calls it “an important and literate addition to the growing canon of Houdiniana” and, on this account, the Magic Circle (London) made Ms. Brandon an honorary member. This unacceptable review was given special treatment in the American magazine. Lifted out of the customary review section, it was displayed in a favored, up-front 2½ page featured position with an illustration. As an article about one man’s opinion, it would not have been subject to the

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canons of reviewing which it so glaringly disregards. Was he requested to write the review? Or was it submitted without invitation? None of the three foregoing reviewers show evidence of having read, let alone digested, their books as a whole, or considered what their diverse readers wanted to know. All three, in varying degrees, whether by design or not, were inflicting their prejudices upon the readers, revealed by a subtle or sometimes strident desire to discredit the author and book involved. Two seemed to exploit their review privilege for one objective: protect Houdini at any cost, thus further damaging their own reputation. Facts became twisted or omitted; mean-spiritedness entered as a result. More insight is required to critique with civility and wisdom than to review with uncritical adulation or critical disparagement. The selection of book reviewers is too often conveniently based upon “Who will do it?,” not “Who should do it?” Some editors wind up attempting the impossible themselves, writing all the reviews. Result: often bland, trite, condensed efforts, victims of space, time and energy pressures, less informative than advertisements, suspect as they may be. One may partially judge magazines by how seriously they take the responsibility of quality reviews. Book reviews are the Achilles heel of theatrical magazines. Readers can be cheated out of receiving trustworthy information, properly presented, that is sought in deciding whether to read or buy seemingly attractive books. Fortunately, there are good reviews in reasonable and honest depth that meet the criteria I have laid down. I bemoan an explosion of incivility in our world that reaches from the streets up to the parliaments and congresses of humankind. Fortunately, in magic it is confined to a tiny minority. Where a book’s genuine shortcomings are found, they should be addressed, accompanied by understanding, constructive comments/suggestions. Releasing feelings of hostility and dealing in personalities should be verboten. A key to civility lies in how one speaks: the words, the spirit, the empathy. We may not agree but we can interact with respect and considerate honesty of expression. Generosity and idealism can work miracles as wondrous as any feats of the conjuring art. Paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi: I learn less from praise directed toward me than I do from criticism, provided it is done so politely.

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Reflection 1

DESIDERATA GO PLACIDLY AMID THE NOISE AND HASTE, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. —Max Ehrmann

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Reflection 2

I recommend this as a Credo for all lovers of the art of Magic To Laugh Often And Love Much, To Win The Respect Of Intelligent People And The Affection Of Children; To Earn The Appreciation Of Honest Critics And Endure The Betrayal Of False Friends; To Appreciate Beauty, To Find The Best In Others, To Give Of Oneself; To Leave The World A Bit Better, Whether By A Healthy Child, A Garden Patch, Or A Redeemed Social Condition; To Have Played And Laughed With Enthusiasm And Sung With Exultation; To Know That Even One Life Has Breathed Easier; This Is To Have Succeeded!! —Henry David Thoreau

Brilliant Magic with Beautiful Birds

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Chapter 11

Centuries of Development Unfolded

16

MORE BAFFLING THAN ANY CONJURING TRICK WAS THE PROBLEM OF GAINING access to the knowledge locked indecipherably within the hieroglyphic writings of millennia-old papyri and stone monuments of Egypt. But after Champollion discovered the key through the Rosetta Stone in 1822, cryptologists uncovered the story of magician Dedi and apparently the first recorded employment of an animal in magic. As a reputedly 110-year-old worker of wizardry, in a royal performance 5,000 years ago for Pharoah Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid outside modern Cairo, Dedi decapitated a goose, pelican, and ox. In succession, he removed their heads, placed them next to the east wall of the performing area and their bodies also still alive, by the opposite wall. After mystic incantations, the heads were mysteriously all rejoined to their proper bodies. On a more modest and less kingly scale, as the centuries unrolled, tales arose of shamans—counterparts or predecessors of magicians in human society from ancient to more recent centuries who could turn stones into birds and vice versa. The charming plumage of these creatures, and their free presence everywhere, made them attractive subjects to magicians and laymen alike if their ubiquity could be dependably controlled without injuring or losing them. It seems likely that the cups and balls, a truly venerable conjuring creation, were recognized as obvious vehicles for the clandestine introduction of birds during the golden ages of Greece or Egypt, the Beni Hassan disappointment notwithstanding. 16. Reprinted with permission from The Yankee Magic Collector #8 (1998), New England Magic Collectors Association.

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I Literature or records of bird magic are sparse or non-existent across the first 14 centuries of the millennium now coming to a close. Just before the birth of William Shakespeare, at the court of Henry VIII (1491–1547), a conjuror named Brandon performed an ingenious effect that has survived in few repertoires. As related in Scot’s 1584 Discoverie of Witchcraft, (Book XIII, Chap. XIII): “What wondering and admiration was there at Brandon the juggler, who painted on a wall the picture of a dove, and seeing a pigeon sitting on the top of a house, said to the king: ‘Lo now your grace will see what a juggler can do, if he be his craftes maister; and then he pricked the picture with a knife so hard and so often, and with so effectually words, as the pigeon fell down from the top of the house starke dead.’” Scot proceeded to explain that the feat was not witchcraft but a simple illusion. Beforehand, the magician had thrust a “dramme of “Eux vomica,” or some other such poison into the pigeon, from which it would die within half an hour. Once released, it would fly to the next rooftop, especially if other pigeons were already sitting there. The interval would be covered by showman-like patter to enhance the mystery. The author sees a lesson here: if an old woman should do this magician’s feat “everie bodie would crie out for fier and faggot to burne the witch.” The unjust, cruel fate of the hapless bird probably contributed to the avoidance of the trick even in those harsher times. Illusionist Horace Goldin, about 350 years later, during a series of clever hand shadows on a screen, created a dove, its wings outstretched and fluttering. Suddenly, it dissolved into a living dove which burst through the paper screen in full flight. Brandon, thou art not forgotten! As conjurians refined their art, a bird would occasionally appear in a minor role somewhere in their routines. England’s most prominent Juggler in the early 1700s, Isaac Fawkes, would transform a chosen card into a pigeon, Signor Blitz plucked canaries out of children’s hair, and John Henry Anderson hailed in an 1852 playbill as “The Only Immensely Great Wizard; dropped ten dead canaries into a pan, baked them, and out they all came (alive and possibly singing hallelujah?). Builders of automata seemed more interested in the rich possibilities of birds for entertainment in the 18th and 19th centuries than were conjurians. Sir David Brewster in his Letters on Natural Magic (Letter VIII)

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wrote of an exhibition in Edinburgh by M. Maillardet of a marvelous singing-bird. From an oval box about three inches long, a tiny bird flew out of its nest when the lid was opened. Beautiful plumage, fluttering wings, and a bill from which emerged four different lovely warbled tunes entranced watchers before it suddenly darted back into its nest and the lid closed again. It was motivated for four minutes by a spring, a remarkable mechanical construction in such confined space. All the movements and birdcalls from this hummingbird-sized creature are equal in ingenuity to that contained in the most complex magical illusion. An impressive life-size mechanical peacock, fully restored by John Gaughan to a taxidermist’s pleasure, was exhibited at the Fifth Los Angeles Conference on Magic History in North Hollywood, California, November 1997. Found in a Paris antique shop, after being rebuilt it moved its head and beak appropriately, raised and fanned its magnificent tail feathers, and located two secretly selected playing cards. In midwinter 1939, I landed at Punta Arenas, a small city on a desolate sloping plain overlooking the Strait of Magellan at the bottom of the South American continent. A decrepit one-room museum there, displaying local regional artifacts, was opened for me by request. In that most unlikely place and structure, unheated, damp and primitive, I was startled to find a European automaton. A small boy dressed in a 19th century suit was playing a flute upon which sat a feathered canary which would sing in harmony—if it had not been neglected. How had this little European masterpiece, stolen or unappreciated, landed in this Antarctic area outpost? I later wrote about it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and asked if it could be the missing twin to the famed Franz Josef pair of automata. Their letter to the Chilean museum was never answered. Is it still down there? Although man has implanted mechanical brains, sounds, and movements into the heads and bodies of life-like replicas of birds, beasts and humans, can he actually teach living birds to think, move and respond to commands? The answer is in the affirmative, thus expanding the realm of their usefulness. Talking parrots are an obviously elementary example. Some tricks or movements that resemble thoughtful, learned actions are simply instinctive responses to escape discomfort (Dancing turkeys standing on hot plates or roaring lions reacting to an electric shock, both moti-

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vators unknown to spectators). Others depend upon the promise of a food morsel rewarding a given (learned) cue carried out. A Scotsman named S. Bisset became one of the most remarkable trainers of animals and birds in the annals of show business. Born in 1721, in Perth, he experimented with teaching dogs, horses, monkeys and cats lessons in obedience to commands. Some of them mastered simple, but somewhat mystifying routines: mindreading ponies, learned pigs and so on. With patience and an uncanny rapport with sparrows, linnets and canaries, he taught them to spell the names of playing cards and people by selecting or indicating alphabet cards placed before them. Over time, other mentors arose who could entice birds to walk slack wires or tightropes, carry burdens in their beaks, climb ropes and do balancing feats.

II Everything was now in place for the right magicians to incorporate birds in the very framework of their conjuring equipment; their negative views of birds’ mental capacity slowly dissolved. Entire acts/routines with them began to grace the boards, viable competitors to successful traditional prop presentations. Bartolomeo Bosco (1793–1863), brought his talented conjuring to a Paris theatre, attracting the great Robert-Houdin to one of his performances in 1837. In an original trick of his own, Bosco cut off the heads of a black and a white pigeon. In making them whole again, he conjured the white head onto the black bird and that pigeon’s head onto the white bird. An additional winged assistant met its fate when impaled on a sword’s point during a later trick. The perceptive French prestidigitator RobertHoudin realized that the methods employed destroyed three birds. Disgusted, he recorded his reactions in Chapter 10 of his classic Memoirs. Feats that injure, or disrespect animal rights, are intolerable in today’s enlightened world. Key innovators and representative magical bird specialists arose to combat the foregoing rare aberration and help measure the growing sophistication of thaumaturgy with our colorful winged friends. From tiny yel-

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low canaries to rainbow-hued macaws and majestic eagles, they began lifting magic to fresh and delightful heights. One of the 19th century’s most successful trainers and performers of professional bird acts was a scholarly, Vienna-born musician, mechanic and inventor named Louis Haselmayer (1839–1885). Birds and white mice challenged his mind: patience, imagination and gentleness with them brought him fame and fortune. They pulled carriages, pushed barrels up inclines, pretended to go to bed and sleep, played in swings, climbed a flagpole, and brought down the flag. He routined these activities into a charming theatrical program which filled theatres across Europe, including England in 1866. His tours literally swung around the globe and earned him a fortune.

Viennese conjuror and noted worker with birds, Louis Haselmeyer, was a brilliant achiever in other fields as well.

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The Emperor Franz Josef was enchanted with his work; American President Andrew Johnson persuaded the National Theatre in Washington to book him after an impressive White House performance. At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, Karl Germain (1878– 1959), who has been termed the “David Devant of America” for his refined style and numerous originalities, enters the history of dove magic. For his Chautauqua tours, he created one of his strongest tricks and what he called his “second most favorite, The Short and Precarious Career of Miss Confetti.” He also switched about 1901, from buff-colored ringneck turtledoves to a pair of pure white Java doves, a species few people had seen at that time. This became almost a universal standard. Stuart Cramer details the routine in his slender volume The Secrets of Karl Germain. It contains seven successive surprises, each a trick in itself. From a borrowed hat, a feather bouquet is produced. Confetti poured into the hat changes therein to an egg. Crushing the egg in his hand, it transforms into confetti and is sprinkled back into the gentleman’s hat. Placing the hat aside, he fills a large goblet with confetti from a paper sack. Covers the goblet with a paper tube which, when removed, reveals a dove has been formed from the confetti. The dove is hypnotized, lying on its back on his hand. Wraps dove in a napkin and places it in a vase on a side stand. Wraps a rose (taken from the vase) in another napkin; deposits it in hat. Rose and dove change places. Walks forward with dove, tosses it upward in the air and it vanishes, only a pinch of confetti drifting to the floor. This logical progression of effects may constitute the first documented and skilled use of doves significantly in an all-conjuring routine, in contrast to a series of non-magical, semi-athletic bird stunts. It also underscores Germain as the true creator of the dove toss-and-transformation display, whether to confetti, silks or other objects. The age of actual stand-up sleight of hand with birds, not just cute table stunts, may have had its modest launch with this union of profonde and dove. In the same decade (c. 1909), a brilliant mechanical method for visibly producing several doves in mid-air within an enlarged butterfly net on a long pole, was created by Cyril Yettmah of England. The Great Lafayette and Howard Thurston popularized it with rapid-fire presentations in their big shows.

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A few years later, Howard Thurston’s extraordinary illusion show featured a bizarre, hilarious ploy with large winged, and feathered cousins of doves and eagles: a duck and a rooster. Both were about the same size. In rapid fashion he appeared to pull off and hold up the head of each “bird” in succession, transferring it to the other’s body. When both ran off stage at the routine’s conclusion, the duck with a rooster’s head and the rooster with the duck’s head, the theatre rocked with laughter. The feat, harmless to all concerned, required considerable skill and misdirection. Each bird had its own head tucked under a wing at one point. Thurston had to cope with this decapitation maneuver and the manipulation of two life-like artificial heads. No one realized that they were watching two ducks, one wearing a rooster body suit! I do not recall the boxes that were required, only the dignified illusionist holding each bird in turn under his arm, removing and relocating its head to the other’s body, and then the crazy mix-up of two bewildered creatures racing into the wings with the wrong heads. An ideal, comedic drama, without Bosco’s repugnant drawbacks, suitable for any one of the coming 21st century’s stars in wizardry.

III By such tentative degrees were magicians gradually penetrating new territory, creating hands-on tricks and manipulating various species of birds. One of the most impressive artists of his time, Frederick Eugene Powell, was already experimenting with whalebone secret holders for barehanded pigeon and dove requirements. In 1919, a London paper reported: “Val Raymond, a new magician (Cardini’s stage name for a short time) has in preparation a dove production from empty hands away from stage props and furniture.” Feeling that an act specializing in other objects offered a better future at the time, he forsook the birds. After his phenomenal vaudeville/nightclub career faded, like the venues themselves, he slid into hotels and cruises. There, he would produce a large macaw, announcing that the bird would circle the audience and light on the shoulder of the handsomest man in the room. Both women and

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men watched with unusual curiosity to see whom the bird would choose. Slowly it flapped once around the show room and finally lit on the shoulder of Cardini, himself. Always a bird lover, behind his home in Jamaica, Long Island, he installed an aviary. Fifteen Australian tropical birds brought him and his wife, Swan, great joy. To leave audiences with a strong finish in my years as a nightclub/hotel magician and a celebrity lecture platform speaker/performer on our art (1936–1958), I presented a double, barehanded birdcage and canary vanish. The repeat effect included two audience members holding a hand above and below the cage as it dematerialized. The first cage was outlined with red ribbon; the second with green ribbon to emphasize that it really was, as patter-promised, “another cage and another canary.” This caught magicians by surprise.

The instantaneous visible vanish of an uncovered cage and its canary, invented in 1875 by Buatier de Kolta, is performed by John Booth on March 6, 1936 at McVan’s niteclub in Buffalo, NY. This rare Buffalo-Courier-Express photograph of the performance in progress shows Booth saying “GO!” at the instance of disappearance. Spectators haven’t yet comprehended the effect and reacted.

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My return to the stage was delayed only about 12 seconds in order to make the exchange. A master of ceremonies (compeer) or the applause always covered this gap. It may astonish the reader to learn that I stopped using a live bird not only for humanitarian reasons but because it looked less alive than a fine dummy bird swinging slightly on threads. Audience fascination with lighted cigarette conjuring between the late 1920s and mid-1940s was intense. The mystery of how they could appear out of nowhere, lighted in such numbers, was augmented by the beauty of smoke clouds, music and graceful sleight of hand movements. As interest was waning, conjurors began to replace the enigmatic cigarette routines with equally mystifying and visually attractive presentations of barehanded small bird productions. Their instantaneous appearance, sometimes two of them simultaneously among a handful of silks, combined with their plumed beauty, serenity and being alive, aroused wonder and admiration. From the performer’s viewpoint, doves, parakeets, and budgerigars have inherent virtues just as does the rabbit, for magical operations. In confinement awaiting their bows to audiences, they are silent, patient, not restless. In appearance they are most attractive, cuddly and non-threatening. Relative to their size, birds are intelligent; their feathers and wings create an illusion of greater physical dimensions than are actually present to aid concealment about one’s body. Tony Kardyro (Italian-born Tony Barbato), an ardent admirer of Cardini, pioneered dove productions about 1940 under the name Senor Torino, The Continental Deceptionist. He origiItalian-born Tony Barbato, aka Kardyro or Senor nated the use of silks to Torino, was a true pioneer dove act performer starting in cover dove steals and in the late 1930s.

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1955 published the book, Dovetail Deceptions, an inspiration for many future dove manipulators. A cigarette act expert, A.J. (Abe) Cantu (1896–1949), turned to dove magic in 1940. By 1947, this Mexican-born artist who worked in a Mexican cowboy’s (Charro) costume and broad-brimmed sombrero, had achieved the first national reputation in the U.S.A. with birds. Booked for a popular sponsored program Party Line over WCBS-TV, that year, he cancelled it in order to protect his doves from intense studio heat. His replacement became non-manipulator Milbourne Christopher, a break that started his own pioneering period in TV magic specials. Cantu secured his dove loads from an innocent-looking serape draped over one shoulder. An orchestra struck up La Paloma after each trick or sequence, followed by the appearance of a dove at his fingertips. In 1949, he was killed tragically in an auto accident but not before generously assisting with advice two budding young dove magic students: Jack Kodell and Channing Pollock.

IV Prestidigitation with birds made another upward lunge starting in 1947, with tall, handsome 19-year-old Jack Kodell’s (Koudelka) official debut at that year’s S.A.M. National Conference in Chicago. Dressed in white tie and tails and standing alone, center stage, with only a small four-legged, rollon table with a shallow fringe around it, he manipulated small, beautiful budgerigars (parakeets) in never-before-seen routines with deft skills. A silk plucked from the air gave birth to a long-stemmed glass of wine onto the rim of which climbed a picturesque bird from nowhere. A parakeet disappeared from one clear, Plexiglas cage, momentarily draped with a silk, only to reappear in an identical cage seconds later; a die tube effect terminated in the transformation of a yellow silk into a yellow love bird as it was blown through a clear glass tube. The barehand materialization of four long-tailed birds on his fingertips, one at a time a la billiard balls, was memorable. In subsequent years he would add other clever subtleties like coin rolls over the fingers done with budgerigars. A miniature replication of the first stage in the legendary Indian Rope Trick; under Jack’s guidance, a two-

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foot length of flexible rope stiffened and remained upright on a clear, Lucite table top. With a pin spot shining on it, a bird climbed to the top of the rope in time to a beating drum. A silk was draped over the parakeet; Kodell clapped his hands; a puff of smoke; the bird vanished; both rope and silk fell to the table. The entertainer tucked the silk in his breast pocket and took his bow. In later seasons and locales, Kodell may have been the first to end his act with the barehand production in midair of a large parrot or macaw with flapping wings. Or, a covey of up to 30 pigeons would swoop over the audience’s heads up to the stage and follow the magician into the wings. Overnight, Jack Kodell became an international star. His birds played to crowds in London’s Palladium and the Hippodrome, New York’s Pal-

Jack Kodell (Koudelka), c. 1947, on the threshold of world fame with a variety act of birds requiring manipulative skills and original routines heretofore unseen.

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ace, Paris’ Cirque Madrino, the largest permanent circus in the world. His Fantasy in Birds act appeared in top hotels and theatres in 18 countries. He is regarded as the first magician to hocus pocus on ice skates, doing so in both English and American shows. In 1960, after 13 years on the Big Time, Jack retired and went into corporate business with his wife. But his influence and ideas live on in parts of today’s bird presentations. Graduating from the Chavez College of Magic and Manual Dexterity in 1952, five years after Jack Kodell’s landmark Chicago performance, Channing Pollock—tall, polished and handsome—became a globally recognized star with card and dove manipulations within a mere two years. Channing opened to the tune of Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, wearing full evening dress and carrying a cane and hat which became a small table. Each hand produced a 24" silk; bunching up the silks he brought forth his first dove from them. A striking female assistant held out a wand horizontally onto which the magician would drape the silks and perch the doves as they magically came forth. More doves and then superb card and fan manipulations. His music segued into Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine for additional playing card and dove work. The act came to a close with Lady of Spain during which Pollock’s assistant brought on a tabled, large rectangular cage with six birds relaxing inside. Throwing a large foulard over it, he picked up the hidden cage, walked forward a few steps, paused, and then tossed the cloth upward. The cage and birds vanished so spectacularly that numerous magicians thereafter climaxed their own routines with this dramatic visual illusion. James Dimmare magically caused his covered cage to shrink noticeably in size before causing its instant disappearance. About 1961, Channing Pollock formally retired as a professional magician, giving his entire act and a set of evening dress to a loyally helpful London magician named Frank Booker (aka Franklin). For the next seven years, Pollock played feature roles in Italian and French motion pictures before going into permanent retirement in California. In his 1962 film, European Nights, shown worldwide, he had performed his entire nightclub act. Magic with birds was propelled into even higher popularity among conjurians because of it. His flawless artistry and charismatically impressive stage presence put him into the foremost hotels, theatres and society engagements in Europe and North America. From Japan’s Haruo Shimada to England’s Johnny

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Hart and America’s Lance Burton, Channing Pollock had become an idol to emulate. With Cardini, he became one of the most imitated and highest paid variety artists in conjuring history.

V The power of birds to act as the keel upon which could be built a monumental full evening show was to be demonstrated by Lance Burton (b. 1960, Kentucky) in Las Vegas. Coming out of obscurity at the age of 20, the sixfoot-three Burton amazed the magic world by winning the I.B.M.’s first international Gold Medal Award for Excellence. A year later, he was a sensation in Milt Larsen’s It’s Magic two-week theatre production, Johnny Carson’s top-rated network TV show, and on Paul Daniels’ long-time hit show in London. A trial eight-week engagement with his 14 doves and three parakeets in Las Vegas’ Tropicana Hotel Folies Bergere production stretched into an almost nine-year record run. During 1982, he flew to Lausanne, Switzer-

Lance Burton floats a globe-shaped cage containing a live bird, an imaginative, effective embellishment of a floating ball routine.

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land and against 150 competitors at F.I.S.M., became the first American and youngest artist ever to win the Grand Prix award. Back in Vegas, Variety wrote: “Burton is a wonder . . . he goes so elegantly about his trickery, it is no mystery why he is a world class conjurer . . . The incredible sleights produce doves and lighted candles from vivid purple scarves, or a birdcage with tiny white parakeet revolves around a scarf. . . .” Given a few days off to appear in a London Palladium Royal Command Performance—as Burton terms it—for Queen Elizabeth II and, another time, meeting U.S. President Ronald Reagan after a TV Magic Special appearance, help his store of anecdotes to keep expanding. In 1996, he opened his own full evening production in the 3,000-room Monte Carlo resort hotel’s Lance Burton Theatre. His 13-year contract was for $100,000,000.00. He remains a top drawing attraction in the U.S. gambling capital along with Siegfried & Roy. Although he now presents striking, innovative illusions and hilarious routines involving children, rabbits and talk, it is his bird act that anchors the show. “The birds go home with me every night,” he declares. “If anything happened to them, it could sideline (that part of the show) for months. Some of my birds have been with me for 15 years.” I commented on one of the funniest moments of the evening. One bird had flown by itself to the floor of the stage. Lance asked it several times to face another direction. The lonely, little bird refused, looking blankly at the all-powerful magician. Lance explained: “The bird on the floor that amused you so much by ignoring me, is not trained to do that. It’s confused. When I act mad at it, bend down and turn it around myself, it always gets a big audience reaction.” Invisible but very much present behind a number of the conjurians who have gained rare prominence with innovative developments in magic are the mentors, the advisors who helped to create their acts. In modern times, this has been especially true. The day of the renaissance-type artist who relied almost entirely upon his own native talents to mold his routines is virtually past. And so we have Jack Kodell openly paying tribute to George and Janet Boston for their key roles steering him toward and putting together a bird act. Upon their in-depth experience as assistants to some of this era’s foremost illusionists (Thurston, Blackstone, Nicola, Carter, etc.), they drew to guide the 17-year-old initiate into the possibilities of adapting existing specific tricks to the capabilities of birds.

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Channing Pollock learned the sleight of hand moves and presentation secrets of advanced prestidigitation by attending the Studio of Magic lessons of seasoned professionals Ben and Marian Chavez in the Los Angeles area. From them, Pollock acquired an inside track on dove manipulation. After retirement, Channing generously relayed his wisdom, over many hours and days of discussion and example, to James Dimmare, Lance Burton, and others for which they have frequently expressed gratitude. Burton adds Harry Collins, Johnny Thompson and Jack Kodell to those assisting in his growth. All freely provided.

VI Bird specialists are notably kind to their performing pets. It pays off in lengthened lives and unstinting cooperation. Knowledge gained from years of dove work is freely passed from artist to artist attesting to the fraternal sense that 98 percent of all magicians feel for one another’s success. Most agree that doves require little or no training, in the sense of coaxing or learning unusual movements by repetition. They are intelligent but sensitive. Never act mean or rough with them, advises Dorothy Dietrich who has trained hundreds of birds for other magicians: “They don’t understand discipline like a dog or young child.” They do require constant (daily) careful handling (at least 15 minutes) to familiarize themselves with their owner, the equipment and surroundings. Practice with a radio going to accustom birds to doing shows in noisy spots. It is important to use the same dove all the time in the same moves or routine so it knows what to expect. Ms. Dietrich advises one to put birds in as large a cage as one can afford or carry. Otherwise they tend to fight or pick on one or another. If a new bird is placed in a cage and is not able to adjust to others, it may become an outcast or be pecked badly by other birds. Remove it right away or it may die or be severely hurt. The best way to feed doves is by hand. Stick it into the cage, full of food, and patiently wait for them to eat. They should be fed everyday and receive fresh, still water. They also need fresh water each day or two for bathing in a bowl large enough to wade in. Leave them alone: they won’t bathe until they feel safe.

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Ian Adair believes that the first work on dove magic was not published until 1955: Senor Torino’s (Tony Kardyro) Dovetail Deceptions, a 27-page treatise with sixteen photographs. In 1960, Frances Ireland Marshall copyrighted her monograph, Come Out Flying. Many of the tricks described were based upon rubber birds. The tremendous proliferation of dove and pigeon workers since then has also resulted in a flood of slender texts. Britain’s Ian Adair has written a number of large and detailed books fittingly titled Encyclopedia of Dove Magic. What was once a realm of mystery waiting to be developed now boasts encyclopedic coverage. What of tomorrow? Two young Canadians from Ontario, Canada, Greg Frewin and Jason Byrne, represent the cutting edge. Working with rapid precision, the core effects of each seem to be visibly changing doves or other objects to something else in mid-flight toward the audience. They appear to be impossible.

The tightly-fitted costume and dynamic style of Jason Byrne make his bare-handed production of a duck very impressive.

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Imagine Frewin letting fly a yellow ball loaded into a slingshot, but seemingly in midair it becomes a yellow dove. One cannot believe his own eyes. Not to be outdone, Byrne flaps the wings of a yellow paper origami dove, tosses it toward the audience and it becomes a living yellow dove. Frewin throws two yellow tennis balls to the floor at his feet. They bounce back up as two living doves of the same color. Byrne juggles three tennis-size balls, stops and squeezes them like putty, into a single large ball. When cut open, it releases a yellow dove inside. Or, playing with a stringed yo-yo, it abruptly, in midair, is transformed into a bird of an identical color. In conjuring’s preeminent competitions, Greg Frewin has captured First Place at F.I.S.M. for General Magic, the I.B.M.’s Gold Medal, and the S.A.M.’s paramount award. Jason Byrne has walked away with the Academy of Magical Arts Stage Magician of the Year, The Golden Lion’s Head Award from the Desert Seminar, and is P.C.A.M.’s Gold Medal Champion. The Canadians are dangerous! Both artists now incorporate illusions, a la Johnny Hart, along with their breathtaking sleight of hand with doves. Jason has appeared in a dozen countries around the planet, as well as North and South America, Asia, Europe, and six of Las Vegas’ leading hotels. Greg Frewin has enjoyed a similarly busy international career with cruise ships circling Australia, zeroing in on Alaska, and Chile. American television has shown his act on NBC’s World’s Greatest Magic Show, taped at Caesar’s Palace. The Cups and Balls were born again when baby chicks were introduced into their plotted routines. Veteran childrens’ entertainers say the appearance of a rabbit in their repertoires materially stimulates a program’s bookability. Standard variety length acts have added, nowadays, an illusion or two, and especially with a tiger, cat or dog, because they fashionably revivify the magic’s mystique. Acts with birds have now enjoyed marked prosperity for over half a century. Their increasing complexity has kept them fresh. New surprises prevent the boredom of sameness and overuse. Materializing a dove inside a crushed up sheet of see-through cellophane a la Johnny Thompson intrigues. The jury is still out on whether golden yellow or royal blue-dyed doves are any improvement over nature’s lovely whites. The 21st century question: which fledgling escamoteur, perhaps yet unborn, may, from the moon, be first to make the earth disappear? But, hopefully, spare the gentle doves.

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Chapter 12

Thurston: A Truly Great Magician

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WHAT QUALITIES DISTINGUISH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN AVERAGE, GOOD professional magician and one who is truly great? An examination of the career of Howard Thurston (1869–1936) can help us realize what measurements, activities, and accomplishments aid us in calculating the relative status among artists. What did the audience see when Thurston walked out, especially during the greater part of his career? He was a blue-eyed blonde, slim and 5 foot 6 inches tall, with a remarkable voice—deep, soothing, and impressive. Charles Waller, reviewing his show in Melbourne, Australia, in 1905, capsulated his appearance across the years: “His manner was delightful, his appearance good, and his address the perfection of ease and grace.” A handsome gentleman, women were strongly drawn to him. He cut his first teeth touring western American mining camps under the roughest conditions. His audiences were often booze-soaked; the venues saloons; the transportation horse and wagon. He did not let coarseness soak into his own deportment. Zealously, he practiced his card manipulations as though he already had a coming contract with Tony Pastor’s largest variety theatre in far off New York City. But that was not his immediate ambition. In Chicago, an agent booked him, with his wife, on small theatre circuits where a well-honed act slowly emerged and he began to display an uncanny, ambidextrous skill manipulating playing cards. In 1899, he was ready. Tony Pastor signed him to a contract at $50.00 a week (it read $80.00—which Thurston had 17. The Linking Ring, November 1999.

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demanded—but Pastor winked and said he was charging him $30.00 for the publicity value of his “large” fee). His act was a sensation. He had hired a very bright nine-year-old black boy, George White, to be his assistant in the otherwise one-person act. That little boy traveled with him, the world over, for the rest of his life and took part in Thurston’s funeral service at the end. Their mutual loyalty and interdependence became a show business legend. After a tour of leading vaudeville houses in the U.S.A., he received a four-week booking into one of London’s foremost theatres, the Palace. One can actually take in shows at the very same showplace nowadays, a huge building of Victorian vintage. Thurston, as the headline act now, did 17 minutes in a psychologically perfect presentation: highlights were the Ris-

Thurston, the World’s Master Magician, as he was often called, as he looked probably at the start of his big evening show career.

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ing Cards to his fingertips held high above the deck, scaling playing cards with unerring accuracy into the most remote corners of the theatre (it was said that his throw could top an eight-story building), card manipulations never seen before in theatres, and a final shakedown of a duck produced from the collar of a man in the audience. It was such a sensation that, at the conclusion of this opening appearance, all members of the 40-piece Palace pit band rose to a man and applauded. His four-week booking stretched to six months. This was followed by a tour of Europe’s leading theatres. In Berlin, when the 52-piece orchestra at the Winter Garden played his signature tune, The Zenda Waltz, 21 first violins came in as the act started. Howard Thurston went on to play the Big Time theatres of North America at a commanding salary. As the foremost card manipulator in the world, he could have settled for this level vaudeville act. It was variety’s Golden Age, that first decade or two of the 1900s. But he wasn’t satisfied. He had to move upward to the summit. Returning to London, he spent the next eight months building a 45-minute illusion show. Evenings he would play as many as four private engagements in the British capital. And then, working hard building his new show, he almost lived in the leased warehouse near Bedford Square until 4 a.m. each night and bedtime. Tirelessly, he and his hired engineers, woodworkers, artists, and designers experimented, assembled and gave birth to new concepts in illusions. Then he hired the city’s Princess Theatre and invited the theatrical agents and managers of London and the U.S.A. to a showing date of his new attraction. Paul Keith was one of the American agents who sailed over especially to see what he had produced. West End London was abuzz with rumors of what the gifted American card expert had developed. The show was another triumph. Offers poured in. But Keith’s was the one he accepted to open, not in London as everyone expected, but in Boston back across the sea. Headlining in vaudeville theatres with an original, lengthy illusion show meant another step upward. He had already toured the best in Europe but none in Asia. Expanding his 45-minute showpiece into a true full evening production in Sydney, Australia, he opened at the city’s Palace Theatre on July 22, 1905. Charles Waller writes again of his performing “The Boy, The Girl, and The Eggs” (from the hat) for the first time in Australia. Water gushed from a half coconut shell. A beautiful marble statue came to life.

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The noted Allan Shaw, master of coins, was part of his company. For nine months, he toured profitably throughout Australia before sailing onward and playing the Philippine Islands, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Cochin China, Saigon, Burma, and India to complete a two-year round the world tour. He hired Bella Hassan to join the show. In London, he paused on the way home to buy three illusions from Maskelyne and Devant, with whom he was thereafter to exchange numerous secrets and illusions. Harry Kellar, the premier American illusionist with world tours backing his claim to the title World’s Greatest Magician and successor to Alexander Herrmann, was desirous of retiring. He was not unaware of Thurston’s phenomenal record, both as an artist and as a financial success. Kellar’s show, his title, and his access to the best legitimate theatres in the country were the

Seeking innovation in transforming from a variety act to a complex illusion show, Thurston wore the garb of an Oriental prince. Courtesy Robert E. Olson.

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last trophies Howard Thurston needed in his climb to the top position. On May 16, 1908, Kellar bequeathed his wand, title, and show officially to Thurston on the stage of Ford’s Opera House in Baltimore. Now Howard had to prove he was worthy of the honor and responsibility in being titled The World’s Greatest Magician. Kellar and he traveled together for a full season, presenting the show in order to introduce the younger man to America as his successor. Soon after taking over, Thurston eliminated all Kellar’s material save for three of four of the most desirable illusions. He was his own man, not a clone of Kellar as the older man had hoped. Thurston was already a warm friend of magicians like Harry Jansen, Theo Bamberg and Carl Rosini. He settled in a Long Island theatrical colony at Beechhurst, and built a home opposite the former house of Alexander Herrmann. These three conjurors spent many weeks helping Howard build newly invented illusions in his Whitestone workshop just two miles away. A Thurston season usually lasted about 37 weeks. The remaining fifteen weeks were devoted to his insatiable desire to add three or four outstanding new illusions to his show every season. His workshop was a busy place each summer. Although Howard was not gifted in the illusion-creating manner of Harbin, Kole, Steinmeyer or Wakeling, he still was one of the most inventive of the Big Time showmen. He was the creative genius behind the sidesplitting laugh-producer “The Boy, The Girl and the Hatful of Eggs.” Documentation exists practically demonstrating that he, not Devant, gave birth to the idea and actually transferred his entire routine to England’s foremost conjuror. He and Harry Jansen—on whom he bestowed the name Dante and sent out into the world with his Thurston #2 show—were co-patentees of several new illusion concepts. He, alone, invented a life-saving device for ships, The Haunted Screen and the Thurston Kiss Waltz for amusement park rides. Youthful David Bamberg knew the operator of one in Luna Park at Coney Island and was allowed to ride it around for an hour. For audience impact, his originality, the “Rising Cards” (with horizontal thread across the stage), was undeniable. He raised the traditional Japanese Water Fountains to new heights, often closing his show with it and the “Inexhaustible Coca Nut” climax, that the visiting Tenkatsu troupe from Japan was overwhelmed by it. At Devant’s request, Thurston constructed a complete half coconut apparatus for him in 1909.

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This heavily illustrated, 96-page, softcover book was sold in large quantities at each performance garnering considerable side income for the performer.

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Always seeking additional ways to extend the income-generating possibilities of his illusions, he selected Ray S. Sugden, whom he renamed Tampa, to take out a #3 Thurston show. He actually played vaudeville, not legitimate theatres like his sponsor, and was successful according to press reactions. But Tampa faded away with the closing of so many theatres. He visited me in Pittsburgh where I was playing the Nixon some years later. Another reason why Howard Franklin Thurston was the preeminent magician in his era was a willingness to spend whatever amounts of money were necessary to keep the show in top form, constantly bringing in new

Howard Thurston was playing the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto when this photo was made with John Booth on December 11, 1930. The famed illusionist died 5½ years later, April 13, 1936, age 66. Photo by The Associated Press.

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effects. “Balaam and His Donkey” was such an instance. A boy, girl and donkey walked up a short ramp into a curtained cabinet. The donkey balked at first, until Thurston whispered into his ear, and it went right in. All three had disappeared when the curtain was reopened. Instantly an uproar at the back of the theatre revealed the boy and girl trying to pull the donkey down the aisle. No other magicians probably would spend the money needed for two sets of twins and two donkeys; their care and transport, for one illusion lasting so brief a moment in time. But he could afford it. Robert E. Olson, the Thurston authority, states that the illusionist created two special, fullcolor posters for this effect, one in 1915, the other in 1925. The transposition was a true miracle to audiences. Thurston invested in so many fine lithographed posters to bill his show that Norm Nielsen says collectors aren’t sure how many were produced for him. Throughout his career, starting at the Palace in London as a young man, his slender book on card tricks was a constant seller. Add Thurston’s Dream Book and four on Easy Pocket Tricks. No one can estimate how much the power of this exposure boosted his career. By 1914, the show was twice as large as when it first became the Kellar-Thurston extravaganza in 1908. Thurston played theatres that usually were restricted pretty much to Broadway plays, musicals, and operas, and at their ticket prices. He was the main speaker at the annual S.A.M. dinner in New York, in June 1921, presided over by Houdini, when he revealed that “receipts have averaged for the past four years an even million dollars, playing such cities as Boston, Washington, Chicago . . . .”18 Without benefit of TV, and today’s large theatres, in 2001 dollars, he was earning about twenty million dollars during that period. In his later stripped-down shows, only four years in vaudeville, in the Depression 30’s, at the close of his life, he was a $4,500 to $6,000 a week attraction. Allowing for inflation and the limited number of weeks he worked annually, that is roughly the same ratio as Siegfried & Roy or David Copperfield earn in today’s dollars. 18. In The Sphinx dinner report afterward by Clinton Burgess. About 15 years later, NYC Daily News columnist Ed Sullivan (5/15/36) stated that Thurston’s success at Tony Pastor’s led Wm. Morris, Sr., to book Thurston himself at $75.00 a week, a creditable starting salary in 1899 vaudeville. Ahead lay the big money, $16,000 to $20,000 a week for a two or three railway car extravaganza.

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The beautiful Jane Thurston, as a young dancer, song writer and aviatrix, adopted daughter of Howard Thurston. He made her co-star for several seasons. The inscription was written into a copy of Our Life of Magic, parts of which she wrote. My apologies to other historians, especially my dear friends Dr. Edwin A. Dawes and the Reverend-Canon William V. Rauscher. Each of us has his own secret (and open) admirers. Every writer of magical history presents his subjects in different ways. May our clan of historians prosper.

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Although he was made of gold as a magician, he was oddly not astute in business investments. He poured his money into Florida real estate and unscrupulous promoters. Gold mines in Canada drained his assets when hyped ventures proved worthless. Gone were the years when he had his own chauffeur and prominent personages wended their way to his large Long Island home for private dinners. And yet he was playing major vaudeville theatres until six months before his final cerebral hemorrhage complicated by pneumonia on April 13, 1936 at 66 years of age. Howard Thurston gave audiences the best show possible: he spared no expense to find and perform the most inexplicable magic and illusions. He hired as consultants to travel with him: Guy Jarrett (1910–1911); Theo. Bamberg (for four years); Cyril Yettmah from England (1928–1930); Herman Hanson, an ex-vaudeville star, in the last years of his life (1929– 1936). John Northern Hilliard of Greater Magic fame, almost the dean of all advance men, worked for him many years until his own death in 1935 and became his closest friend. Moi-Yo Miller, Dante’s leading lady for many years, says that Dante cried and almost fell apart he was so devastated by Thurston’s death. No magician was ever more beloved by his peers. Thurston, with a 17-minute act chiefly of amazing card manipulation, was a scintillating star, a headliner, in European variety and American vaudeville. As an elegant illusionist, he circled the globe performing a night of illusions. He created an illusion show beyond anything his predecessors or competitors ever presented and appeared in theatres others only dreamed of entering. His presentations were often funnier than a comedy and yet gentlemanly in every detail. These are just a few of the reasons I am convinced that Howard Franklin Thurston was the World’s Greatest Magician of his era and possibly the 20th century.

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Chapter 13

Magic’s Most Famous Waltz. Reviving the Almost Forgotten Thurston March and Two Step

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IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN CONJURING, PROBABLY NO MUSICAL PIECE HAS EVER become more associated with a magician than the hauntingly lovely The Zenda Waltz 20 and Howard Thurston. Hundreds of thousands of theatregoers attending Thurston’s 19th/20th century performances thrilled to it. This was followed by London, the European continent, across America in variety, possibly in his globe-circling two-year big show tour, and certainly throughout his full evening show career in North America’s foremost legitimate, and vaudeville, theaters until his death in 1935. Thurston, a sentimental romanticist, never performed without a band playing this waltz, usually as background for his remarkable demonstration of digital skill with pasteboards. It was as much a part of the life of his inner spirit, a good luck, inspirational ally, as was his loyal Principal Assistant and Number Two Man, George White. Neither one left his side throughout those last 37 crowning years of the illusionist’s life.21 White “joined” Thurston at the very outset of his Big Time career, in Tony Pastor’s 14th Street Theatre, New York City’s finest variety house, on August 21, 1899. George was only nine-years-old; The Zenda Waltz, four-years-old. 19. Genii, January 1993. 20. Although there is only one Zenda Waltz, its title is sometimes pluralized as The Zenda Waltzes. 21. Howard Thurston’s adopted daughter, Jane Thurston Shepard, has described George White, whom she idolized for his caring thoughtfulness when she was a young girl: a “light-colored” Black, “educated, soft and smoothly spoken, and well mannered.” He reportedly died in 1976, in his hometown of Midland, Texas. If

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Thurston was so new to quality vaudeville that he had no other sheet music ready for rehearsal before his opening. But he did have The Zenda Waltz. Billed as “The Premier Card Manipulator of the World” (and formerly as “The Man Who (or that) Mystified Herrmann”), he found that the tune suited perfectly the tempo and mood of his matchless, silent card work. For halfa-century, and beyond his death, whenever an American George White, Thurston’s principal assistant to the magician at club meetings end of his life. His demise is still a mystery. Courwould entertain his fellow tesy of Robert E. Olson. members and music would help, inevitably someone would start humming The Zenda Waltz, and the rest would chime in. This may sound strange to today’s generation! I had no particular interest in tracking down the origin of the song, its name and composer until a strange reference to the word “Zenda” appeared in connection with yachting’s 140-year-old international America’s Cup Race of 1992. Eight boats from seven countries, representing investments by competitors of nearly $500 million, had been narrowed down to two finalists”: Il Moro de Venezia, a swift Italian boat, and America 3 (America Cubed) of the U.S.A., the ultimate winner. Both were 75-foot, high-tech, costly sloops. I was startled to read that America 3 was built in Zenda, Wisconsin. The settlement consists of a post office, a saloon, a boat company, sail comthe date is correct, he would have been about 86-years-of-age. In an effort to learn of his last years, she went to Midland. After contacting all the city’s funeral establishments, the newspaper, library, and hiring an investigator, nothing turned up. George White’s portrait is from Ms. Shepard’s collection, via Robert E. Olson.

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pany and spar company. The latter three are owned by Buddy Melges, famed yacht designer, builder and world champion boat racer. They call him “The Wizard of Zenda.” My curiosity piqued, I asked several attendees of the Magic Collectors Weekend in Appleton, Wisconsin, May 1992, including Canon William V. Rauscher, John Alexander McKinven, Don Potts, Dr. Richard Mossey and Walter Graham, if they had any theories or information about the word “Zenda.” They wondered if an old motion picture named The Prisoner of Zenda had any connection. It was a start, in fact the key, to all research. Returning to my California home, some digging disclosed that in 1894, a widely popular romance novel was published by English barrister and novelist (later Sir) Anthony Hope (Hawkins), titled The Prisoner of Zenda. Securing a copy, I was entranced by its pacing, excitement and clever “fairy tale” theme. Today, 99 years after being published, it has been reprinted 112 times in the United Kingdom. Five U.S.A. companies are still reissuing it, according to Bowker’s Books in Print. Dramatized, it ran for 112 performances on Broadway, starring E. H. Sothern and G. W. Haskett. Three feature films (1937, 1952, 1979) starred Ronald Coleman, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Peter Sellers, noted actors all, in various versions. Questions: Did the novelist coin the word? How did the crossroads in Wisconsin gain its name? How did the song, itself, have birth, to which Thurston the Magician gave added immortality? Anthony Hope could not have taken the name from a landmark anywhere, including the Balkans. My Britannica World Atlas revealed none. But my dictionary provided a provocative entry: “Zend-Avesta, the original (basic) document of the Persian religion of Zoroaster, still used Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, English novby the Parsee as their prayerbook. elist and barrister, who started the Zenda They call it simply Avesta.” The full craze which continues today, almost 100 word means “Good Prevails Over years later.

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Evil.” I conclude that Sir Anthony may have dropped the “Vesta” and gained “Zenda” from it. But how did two small American towns, one in Wisconsin and the other in Kansas, gain this name? A letter to the postmasters brought immediate replies. The towns, located on railroads, had the name suggested by wives of railway employees who were reading the popular novel in 1901 and 1899 respectively. Finally: “Who, when and why” composed The Zenda Waltz that became Thurston’s signature tune? John McKinven sent me a copy of the sheet music (six pages) for the song. Composed as a piano solo by Frank M.

The first page of the sheet music for The Zenda Waltz(es), the signature tune of Howard Thurston played during his card manipulations in theatres worldwide to the end of his life. Reprinted by permission: Warner/Chappell Music Inc.

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Witmark, and copyrighted in 1895, it was tied to the novel published one year earlier. On the fourth page, later editions of the sheet music record: “First a great novel—then a brilliant motion picture and NOW A LASTING IMPRESSION OF THE FILM SCORE.” Probably the tune was partly written for, and played by, pit pianists or organists in theaters, who often provided appropriate live solo background music for films before the advent of talking pictures with soundtracks. A large market also existed for sheet music in the many homes then with pianos. The composer wrote the scores for several musical comedies of the Nineties. But The Zenda Waltz remained his most celebrated composition. Witmark, a bachelor and youngest of six brothers who established M. Witmark & Sons, music publishers, died August 3rd, 1948 in Weehawken, New Jersey, a Septuagenarian.22

THE THURSTON MARCH AND TWO STEP We have traced the previously unknown background of the 1890’s waltz to which Howard Thurston gave renown in magicdom and beyond. Another mystery, however, has long intrigued me. So I set to work on it. In tribute to Thurston’s preeminence as the world figure in magic, an Anthony J. Stastny composed the Thurston March and Two Step,23 and copyrighted it in 1913. I thank Jane Thurston Shepard, the vivacious letter writer and attractive daughter (even in her eighties) of the magician himself, for providing me with a four-sheet copy of the music published in Cleveland, Ohio by the A. J. Stastny Music Company. Who was this composer and entrepreneur? His song has a rousing and melodious quality to it that is worth reviving in shows. Richard Zimmerman, ragtime music master and authority, as well as collector of noted magicians’ background music, told me he thought that Stastny was Thurston’s musical conductor in the first years of the Big Show 22. New York Times, August 6, 1948. 23. Richard Zimmerman provided the reproductions of the sheet music cover of the The Zenda Waltz(es) and the Thurston March and Two Step.

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after Kellar left it. Mike Caveney, possessor of much material of Thurston’s, checked and came up with a program for Thurston’s week at the American Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, starting Sunday, December 24th. No year was given. But it confirmed A. J. Stastny as the musical director and listed Theodore Bamberg and Beatrice Foster as members of the company. The trail was warming. A quick check of two books in my library indicated that Theo. Bamberg spent four years in the Thurston show, c.1910–14. Beatrice Foster, an assistant since c.1903, was married to the illusionist from May 1910 to April 1914. She undoubtedly departed then because the 43 year-old conjurian married his beloved Leotha Fielding in November 1914. The St. Louis year of Mr. Stastny’s musical connection needed but one more step to be ascertained. Reference to a perpetual calendar showed that Sunday, December 24 fell in both 1911 and 1916. That fixed the possible date as only 1911. It also helped explain the copyright date of the Thurston March and Two Step: MCMXIII (1913). Until enough more printed programs of the Thurston extravaganza can be examined, we may find it difficult to figure out how many seasons Anthony J. Stastny was connected with the show. Diligent efforts to learn more about his career failed until Dick Zimmerman finally researched past issues of The Metronome for me. The May 1923 issue reported the sudden death on April 9th of “A.J. Stastny, well-known New York music publisher . . . well known throughout the entire industry.” He administered the business from his New York publishing house while Mrs. Stastny was in charge of the London offices. A well-liked, pleasant man, his connection with conjuring was apparently of somewhat short duration but marked by a significant contribution. One more notable personality among composers in the musical world who lent considerable talents to enhancing the Thurston show was named Seymour Brown.24 A charter member of ASCAP at 25 years of age, he wrote for the famed Ziegfeld Follies from 1907 to 1919, and produced much 24. Jane Thurston Shepard checked through ASCAP records and phoned me the Seymour Brown biographical data. 25. Raymond Goulet has given me a copy of the lyrics and music for My Daddy is a Magic Man.

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material for the Greenwich Village Follies. Many prominent vaudeville entertainers leaned upon him. Brown composed the still popular Oh, You Beautiful Doll. This song probably inspired Thurston to have his own “beautiful doll,” young daughter Jane, a singer and dancer, present a specially written Seymour Brown number. Thus, the birth of My Daddy is a Magic Man25 in the middle of the Thurston big show. The composer, born in Philadelphia May 28, 1885, died at 62 in the same city, December 22, 1947. Howard Thurston recognized the critical role music can play in establishing and augmenting an audience’s appreciation of magic. It creates moods of excitement, admiration, serenity and happiness. I think that The Zenda Waltz taught him a lot!

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Chapter 14

Memorable Music for Master Magicians

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MUSIC WRITTEN FOR, OR PLAYED CONSISTENTLY IN, THE ACTS AND ILLUSION shows of leading conjurians constitutes one of the most charming of studies, research projects or collectibles. Whether on records, tape recordings, or sheet music, one can actually listen to it and recreate the experience, to some small degree, of audiences watching performers long since dead. Hearing the background melodies chosen to enhance their stage mystification sometimes almost outshines just reading about them. On our over-crowded planet with steadily diminishing-sized housing and storage space, the filing away of music requires minimal room. A hobby of sheet music or recorded melodies may be placed in a few small boxes or acid-free filing folders. Neither does it require mortgaging your yacht as in poster collecting, or adding a wing to your home for books and apparatus. A hasty judgment might conclude that the quantity and quality of scores arranged for conjurers past and present are so limited that a collector hasn’t much to thrill him. But when Harry Blackstone, Jr., was preparing to present magic and music as guest artist with the Houston Pops Orchestra, Charles Reynolds, Robert Lund and Dr. John Henry Grossman surprised everyone. They brought forth original scores of background music from Alexander Herrmann in the 19th century; Ching Ling Foo—the most famous of all Chinese wizards; and Karl Germain of both U.S. and U.K. fame, along with the expected Blackstone, Sr., Houdini and Thurston band numbers of a somewhat later period. 26. Genii, March 1944.

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Well-known melodies have often proved perfect for specific magical themes, moments and performers. Houdini started pulses beating faster with Sir Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. Modern American audiences know it well as the favorite processional number of school and college graduation exercises. During the nightclub/hotel bonanza for silent, standup manipulation acts (circa 1930–45), cigarette specialists found that the popular Smoke Gets In Your Eyes expressed the dreamy, sensuous mood and tempo they sought. Howard Thurston raised the use of music to new levels and created in his audiences the feelings he wanted to evoke from his many illusions. In a section called “Music Cues for the Thurston Show,” pages 244–251 in Vol. II of The Thurston Work Book, a rare peek is given into the actual numbers—fifty different scores, counting the overture and the audience exit music—and how they were cued into each presentation. “A music historian, or interested party with access to a music library,” wrote Jim Steinmeyer in part of his excellent commentary throughout the volume, “could use this list of cues to effectively reassemble the sound of the original Thurston show.” Little wonder that the legendary illusionist needed full-time music directors for his Wonder Show of the Universe. But then he could afford these skilled leaders and the pit bands that always played his show. In those days, taped recordings for theatrical productions had not been invented. His fullevening productions stood out from the rest of the leading illusionists for their fullness and brilliance of the musical background. Unfortunately for others, when one artist is paramount in significant features, only he will tend to occupy the pedestal at a time. That performer was Thurston. Music and theatre are so intertwined, the one augmenting and enhancing the other, that collecting magicians’ background accompaniments leads one into fascinating by-paths. When and why did a composer write the song in question? What is it about the melody or tempo that caused an artist to choose it for a particular part of his presentation? Anyone with an enquiring mind and a reasonable curiosity, not to mention a love of solving puzzles and mysteries, will relish many forms of collecting or even just accumulating historic items. Don’t underestimate the interest in this subject of historic music. One of the heavier mail responses I have received for any article of mine published in a magic periodical arose from Thurston and Magic’s Most Famous Waltz

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(and) Reviving The Almost Forgotten Thurston March And Two-Step (Genii, January 1993). And yet Dante Larsen, then the editor of Genii, The Conjurors’ Magazine, wondered if an article on magic related to something “modern” like rock and roll might be of greater interest. Stuart Cramer, life-time professional magician and perceptive biographer of Karl Germain, wrote in a vein repeated in several letters from the readership: “What memories (the article) conjured for me! It seems that I was forever humming or whistling that unforgettable tune (The Zenda Waltz) every time I thought of the master magician—which was often. Your research was remarkable and I sincerely thank you.” From Portugal came a note and clipping courtesy of David Southard in Manta Rota, V.R.S. Antonio: “Enjoyed your Thurston/Zenda article in the January Genii. Congratulations on a fine piece of research. I thought you might like to know that Zenda (the drama) is still very much alive in the U.K.—a favorite with amateur theatrical companies and recently a professional revival of the play was put on in London’s Greenwich Theatre. It received good notices. I am enclosing one from the Sunday Times.” My article had traced the Zenda Waltz’s beginnings, the inspiration for its composer in a best-selling novel The Prisoner of Zenda and subsequent plays and films, and Thurston’s spreading its fame around the world in the last 37 years of his star-studded life. All of this simply is to point out the fascinating additional paths into which research can lead when we are curious about an artist’s choice of his music. Equally important in sharing such information is the added material others are motivated to find and round out the accuracy and/or completeness of the original presentation. In my piece, I mentioned that Thurston had started using The Zenda Waltz at the suggestion of the bandmaster when he opened at Tony Pastor’s famous New York City theatre in 1899. Robert E. Olson reminded me that Thurston’s first wife, Grace Butterworth, wrote in her book, My Magic Husband, Thurston the Great (pp.59–60), of playing The Zenda Waltz herself for his card manipulation act on honky-tonk pianos before the New York break came in 1899. “It was his good luck music and something of a superstition with him,” she wrote, “. . . Whether scraped out by me on a violin or majestically played for him by a full royal orchestra (in Europe).” May I turn to another matter brought to my attention in a letter from Mike Kelly of Kirkwood, Missouri? “I happen to be a fan of Howard

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Thurston and have in my collection an original of the sheet music for the Thurston March and Two Step, but had no idea it had such a fascinating history. I noticed your article mentioned a copyright date of MCMXIII (1913). When I checked my copy, it showed a copyright date of MCMXI (1911).” “I don’t know why anyone would copyright the same music twice. Perhaps it’s another little mystery surrounding the music,” he continued. “Maybe there are two different versions of the song.” In exchanging copies of the sheet music with him for comparison, I suggested that the composer, A. J. Stastny, “might have improved on the first (1911) version copyrighted and so copyrighted the next one (1913).” Although each copyrighted version was substantially the same, an examination disclosed that changes in the melody at a number of places had been written into the widely known, later 1913 version. In actually playing the Thurston March and Two Step nightly for the full evening show, composer/ conductor Stastny had made improvements to give the tune more “oomph.” Dick Zimmerman is very impressed by the number and has used it in his fast moving act with great effect. Until enough more printed programs of the Thurston extravaganza can be examined, we may find it difficult to figure out how many seasons Anthony Stastny was connected with the show. This sent Bob Olson back to his archives. He has all Thurston programs except 1912 and 1918. He found that a February 21st, 1909 program lists Stastny as Musical Director, indicating that he was with the Thurston show in its very first season—1908–1909—after Harry Kellar had left it. He remained in that position in the programs through February 19, 1911, listing Stastny again. Peterschen may not have worked out and was dropped. We still do not know the full term of A. J. Stastny’s Thurston affiliation, although by 1913 Eenest Gargann had become the Musical Director. Trying to relocate longago events can be both trying and intriguing. That is the fun of it! The death of Thurston in 1936 did not spell extinction for The Zenda Waltz on the world’s stages. It lived on as the major theme enhancing the famous act of the immortal Cardini (1896–1973). The score for Cardini’s act was a musical masterpiece. It opened with Three O’clock in the Morning and, equally appropriate for the sleight of hand expert’s finish, it closed with Goodnight Lady. The main theme in between was The Zenda Waltz. Finally, a cynic might ask what value lies in locating, saving and preserving the background music that is part of professional magic. After all,

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a Blackstone, Jr., Brian Glow, David Seebach or Landis Smith in appearing with a symphony or “pops” orchestra is unusual. A letter from Leonard V. Paul of northeast Maryland answers that question. “Until I saw your article in January’s Genii,” he wrote, “I have been unable to get anything on “Zenda” from the libraries in Maryland. I am a member of the Delaware Knights of Magic; have been for about 10 years . . . attendance averages 65, 10 times a year.” “My interest in ‘Zenda’, if I can get a copy of the music, would entail making a tape of the same, and using it in a lecture on Thurston. I would get our church organist to play the music while I would tape it.” What a wonderful touch to include this magnificent waltz in a lecture on the magician with whose name it has became synonymous. An organ would surely give a fuller beauty to it than Grace Butterworth Thurston’s raspy violin or a honky-tonk piano! Warner Chappell Music, Inc. holds the sheet music copyright. The melody should be respected and preserved; passed along, not thrown away. To someone it might be a goldmine, the solution to a vexing question, a happy puzzle or a practical need.

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Averting Catastrophe: Magic and Politics

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Chapter 15

The Legendary Robert-Houdin Light and Heavy Chest Examined

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A SORCERER IS ONE WHO IS BELIEVED TO EXERCISE SUPERNATURAL POWER through the aid of evil spirits. Assuming that magicians are sorcerers in league with evil powers explains why superstitious persons had felt hostility and fear in their presence until recent more enlightened years. In the middle eighteen hundreds, a credulous population in Algeria fell under the influence of Marabout priests who professed to a mastery of sorcery. The situation rose to the point of a threatening rebellion against the rule of colonial France, fomented by this Marabout brotherhood. The only example in history, of which I am aware, wherein a single, confirmable magician was drafted by his country, a major power, to stop an incipient insurrection against it, occurred in this north African nation. By pitting superstition against superstition, the rebels’ threat finally faded into nothing. How was this accomplished? The attempted solution began in 1855 with a letter to France’s greatest magician, Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, from Colonel de Neveu, head of the political office in Algiers. But the magician was now in full retirement from his professional performing career. He was expectantly waiting to receive momentarily a medal first class from jurors at the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris for his brilliant application of electricity to assorted mechanisms. 27. The version of certain events and facts in this article are from the Lascalles Wraxall translation from the French of the Memoirs of Robert-Houdin, and Professor Hoffmann’s translated and edited version of a French edition of the RobertHoudin posthumously published work The Secrets of Stage Conjuring.

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Monsieur Robert-Houdin’s credentials for this unique challenge were distinguished. In Paris’ Palais Royal, he had founded the long-surviving Théâtre Robert-Houdin, which spread his reputation widely. Queen Victoria enjoyed three of his command performances during tours of her realm. Further successes sparkled periods of shows in Belgium and Berlin. Scholarly papers were printed covering his research and innovations in ophthalmology, electricity and mechanisms, besides cutting-edge creations in magic. His book of Memoirs is considered the finest of all magicians’ autobiographies. A gravity, poise and freshness of the master magician graced his performances.

Robert-Houdin posed for this last photograph in his life. It served as the frontispiece of his Memoirs, an autobiography, in 1868. Courtesy Ken Klosterman.

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Years later, symbolizing his enduring international stature, was the flattering adoption by a young performer of the name Houdini (c. 1891), the British naming a full-size, fictitious decoy battleship, in 1943 during World War II, the H.M.S. Houdin, and the government of France in 1971 issuing a postage stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of magician Robert-Houdin’s death. When approached again in 1856, and learned that he would go to Algeria in a quasi-political role (a sort of ambassador), his sense of patriotism fueled by some pride, obliged him to accept. Accompanied by Mme. Robert-Houdin, he was provided a luxurious suite of rooms in the Hotel d’Orient for his extended stay in Algiers. His objective would be to undermine the influence and authority of the rebels—Marabouts, with their simple tricks and like-minded and secular intriguers/believers—by showing that the French could perform wonders beyond anything others could claim. Any hope of an uprising’s success, he must convince them, would be futile. After several weeks delay, October 28, 1856 was fixed for his first performance in the immense edifice of the Bab-Azoun Theatre. Much of its interior was used for staircases, rooms and corridors, to offer coolness against the region’s excessive heat. Marshal Rendon’s family and suite sat in two boxes stage right; stage left, facing them, were the prefect and civil authorities. The best dress circle seats and orchestra stalls, for the true guests of honor were occupied by the titled Arab chieftains to the number of sixty. A colorful public filled the rest of the house. Robert-Houdin had brought his finest tricks. The government expected him to demonstrate that he, this representative of France, could make the mediocre feats of the Marabouts look inconsequential by comparison. He must not only amuse but cause a startling effect upon “coarse minds and prejudices,” a tall order. Western literature, describing later this amazing event, has generally reduced the operative essence to one invention: his unique wooden box. He claimed that the strongest man present could not lift it if he, a Frenchman, willed that a challenger’s strength would be drained away. In historical reality, his program was far more shrewdly arranged. Cannon balls freely materialized within a hat, implying without words that the French could produce deadly ammunition readily or, next, a beautiful bouquet of flowers, if a harmonious occasion required it. He sped several five-

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From the Ken Klosterman Magic Collection comes Robert-Houdin’s Crystal Casket into which he invisibly tossed five franc coins. Courtesy Ken Klosterman.

franc coins invisibly across the theatre into a crystal box hanging above the spectators’ heads. A silver punch bowl suddenly became overflowing with candies. Emptied, hot coffee refilled the bowl time after time. The entertaining, disarming prelude finished, he turned to the three tricks on which the effectiveness of his mission depended. Now he must disclose his superior ability as a sorcerer, even to the extent of terrifying his audience. Carrying a small, solidly-built box to the middle of the plank connecting the stage to the audience, over the pit, he declared that he could deprive the most powerful man of his strength and restore it at will. A muscular, self-assured Arab came forward and showed that he could easily lift the chest, now resting in the center of the plank (not on the stage floor as so often reported)28. Making an impressive gesture over the box, the magician solemnly stated that now the volunteer was weak as a woman. He would not be able to lift it. The victim confidently grasped the handle, Robert-Houdin writes— which means there was only one handle, and that had to be centered in the top—and strained to the limit of his power. Angry and panting as the box 28. The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, p. 56.

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David Copperfield holds the Light and Heavy Chest believed to be used by RobertHoudin to prevent a rebellion in Africa. Ken Klosterman calls it the Holy Grail of his extensive collection. Courtesy Ken Klosterman.

remained immovable, he, seemingly now weak as a child, renewed his effort, legs planted on either side of the stubborn chest. Suddenly he let out a cry of agony. He fell to his knees and the muscles of his arms contracted with pain. With a sorcerer’s grave gesture, Robert-Houdin broke the spell and the hapless victim, now terrified, jumped up and rushed from the theatre. The Parisian prestidigitator moved on to his next-to-last feat, propelled strategically but unwittingly by a Marabout who leaped to the stage and threatened to kill him. Calmly, Robert-Houdin handed him a cavalry pistol, urging him to inspect it carefully. Then he was told to load a marked leaded ball into the barrel on top of a double charge of powder. The wouldbe assassin, standing a few yards away, fired the gun, as directed, at an apple impaled on the point of a knife held before his heart. Embedded within the apple, they found the marked bullet. Thus did he prove to the assembled Marabouts his invulnerability to gunfire, because he carried a protective talisman. An illusion dramatically completed his program. A tall, handsome young Arab was told to stand on a plank laid across a slightly built table isolated in the middle of the stage. A large cloth cone, open at the top, was placed over him. The illusionist and his assistant grasped each end of the plank and carried it, with its heavy

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burden, to the footlights. They allowed the cone abruptly to topple over, now empty. Panic broke out. This sorcerer had been able to make one of their own brethren disappear, a terrifying power to possess. They fought their way out the front entrance of the theatre only to find their revived companion facing them below the steps. Informed magicians will recognize the methods utilized in the three closing mysteries with their undertones of implied supernaturalism: the then generally unknown force called electro-magnetism causing the chest to be temporarily immovable, the traditional though still dangerous bullet-catch, and the 19th century style, gaffed and draped-to-the-floor table of the cone get away illusion. Tobin’s mirrored table had not yet been invented. Psychologists and persons of wisdom will comprehend and praise Robert-Houdin’s remarkable insight into how feelings of terror and superstition may be converted into friendliness and support. He writes: “. . . all those who had dealings with Arabs received orders to make them understand that my pretended miracles were only the result of skill, inspired and guided by an art called prestidigitation, in no way connected with sorcery.”29 The Arabs then realized that prestidigitation was more wonderful than sorcery, a stronger power than that of the Marabouts. Robert-Houdin was their friend. Three days afterward, in sincere appreciation and admiration for him, about 30 of the most important chiefs and dignitaries of the various tribes assembled at the government palace. On a magnificent manuscript bearing a finely calligraphed address in Moslem verse, each man placed a signet imprint of his tribe. As this was being presented to him, rolled up, an orator proclaimed: “To a merchant, gold is given; to a warrior, arms are offered; to thee, Robert-Houdin, we present a testimony of our admiration, which thou canst hand down to thy children.” The retired magical genius avowed later that never before had he experienced such sweet emotion . . . never had his success penetrated so fully to his heart. This homage was the most precious souvenir of his professional career, attesting to his successful pacification of a people on the verge of bloodshed. 29. Memoirs of Robert-Houdin, p. 271.

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In 1845, the year in which Robert-Houdin first displayed his Light and Heavy Chest, the principle of electro-magnetism was known to few people. How he applied it to this conjuring trick is both simple and ingenious. Evidently he carried with himself wherever he was to perform his chest effect, a wide board which, in theatres or halls, would allow him to walk from the stage across the orchestra pit down into the audience, an “innocent” gangplank. The translator refers to it as “practical” in the Memoirs, which it certainly was. In the underside center of this board, a shallow recess was hollowed out large enough to bury in it an electro-magnet.30 Two hidden wires from it ran backstage where an assistant could turn on or off the current when desired to make the box “heavy” or “light.” Allegedly so that the audience could see the trick better, the magician placed the chest down on this ramp, above the electro-magnet and had the challenger stand over it. This counterbalanced his upward pull on the handle. Very ingenious. It was not done back on the stage. Both the plank with its secret inset magnet and the thick metal outside bottom of the chest were covered with a thin cloth resembling the mahogany wood veneer of the box itself. Inside the chest’s lid an induction coil provided the handle with the final shock into the victim’s hand. In a few words, that is the illusion’s true secret. The verbal plot is what renders the result so impressive. British barrister and author Professor Hoffmann (Angelo Lewis), with his usual articulate perspicacity, sums up in a few sentences Robert-Houdin’s psychological patter twist that explains the chest’s terrifying effect on the Marabout observers: The fact that the chest became immovable on command would only have been attributed by the Arabs to some ingenious mechanical arrangement beyond their comprehension, but exciting only a momentary wonder. With great tact, Robert-Houdin contrived to turn the attention of his audience from the object to the subject of trick, professing, not to make the chest light or heavy, but to make the person who volunteered weak or strong at his pleasure. Thus presented, the trick had the appearance no longer of a mere achieve30. The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, p. 56.

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ment of mechanical or scientific skill, but of a manifestation of supernatural power.31

Algeria in 1856 was still incognizant of the electro-magnetic phenomenon. More sophisticated France possessed a better-educated population. Lest a few knowledgeable observers there would deduce the trick’s modus operandi and give it away to others, the magician created an addition or follow-up of which he wrote, “I do not think, modesty apart, that I ever invented anything so daringly ingenious . . .”32 These are strong words coming from one so gifted with creativity. But the principle he devised would lead witnesses away from the secret electro-magnetic trail. It required replacing the intimation of supernaturalism and imparted weakness with an acknowledgment that he really caused the chest itself to become very heavy or light at will. “In order to prove to you that the weight I impart to the chest is genuine, and does not depend on any external artifice,” he pattered, “I will attach it to one end of this cord,” (a cord passing over a pulley attached to the ceiling), “and if you will hold the other end you will be able to form a fair estimate of the amount of the downward pressure of its normal weight.”33 Robert-Houdin would hook the chest to the cord and ask a spectator to hold the other end of the cord securely to keep the box suspended at chest height. Being light this was no trouble, he pointed out. “But as it is to become, at my command, very heavy, I must ask five or six other persons to help this gentleman, for fear that the chest should lift him off his feet, or even carry him away altogether.” Almost immediately the chest dropped to the stage floor, sometimes pulling all the spectators holding the cord off their feet or along the floor. One can imagine the humor of the situation. This was a later, secondary climax of the Light and Heavy Chest. Nothing one could do would top it. Robert-Houdin could carry the plank anywhere with him. It was disarming, saved time and prevented his exposing his method rather openly if he had the sometimes complicated task of installing the electro-magnet beneath whatever stage he was to work on. 31. Hoffmann’s Modern Magic, chapter XVII, Stage Tricks. 32. The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, p. 54. 33. The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, p. 59.

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In contrast, however, his climactic addition required a low ceiling, a pulley fastened to it and a hole through which the cord, unseen, could pass to a windlass in the room or space above, ready to be turned by his assistant. When he was appearing in his own Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris’ Palais Royal such a permanent arrangement would be no problem; it was a gratifying convenience. The explanation of the mechanics which give the impression that the chest has become so heavy a counterweight that up to half a dozen spectators are lifted off their feet is revealed by the drawing of the pulley. The cord or rope appears to go into the pulley on one side and, as expected, out on the other side. In actual fact, as the dotted lines show, the length of the cord goes straight up through the block and through the ceiling. In the room or space above, the rope then runs directly to a windlass, around which it makes several taut loops; the rope then goes back down into the

Workings of the sequel addition to the Light and Heavy Chest. Rope goes from the performer up to a pulley fastened to the ceiling. Directly above the pulley is a concealed opening through the ceiling. Rather than going around the pulley and back down, the rope goes through the hole straight up to a windlass, winds tautly around it a number of times, then goes back down through the opening, around a second pulley next to the first one in the pulley “box,” and terminates tied to the chest resting on the floor. Inset reveals two smaller concealed pulleys that act as channels to keep the rope in the pulley “box,” as well as create the illusion that the rope merely goes up, around the pulley and back down.

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ceiling hole where it hangs down and can be attached to the chest handle. Robert-Houdin does not clearly reveal the threading of the rope. Please refer to my daughter Barbara Booth Christie’s sketch of the apparent arrangement on the previous page. The magician standing on stage can pull the rope back and forth through the visible pulley just as though it hadn’t detoured up above out of sight. This enhances the illusion of no trickery. Through the laws of mechanics, the person above who turns the unseen windlass can exert more power than five or six spectators. The requirement of a low ceiling prevents trouping this final effect in most theatres or auditoriums. I doubt that five percent of all people interested in the art of conjuring have read The Memoirs of Robert-Houdin (1858) and his The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, published posthumously in 1877, six years after his death. Pneumonia took his life on June 13, 1871 at the age of sixty-five. Both books are necessary to learn a fuller picture. Hence, for exactness, I have recorded in detail the legendary Light and Heavy Chest Algerian routine. It exists in most minds dimly as someone’s long ago experience. In averting a bloody revolution so cleverly, it is to me the most romantically fascinating and humanitarian story in the long epic of conjuring. Has the actual strong box exhibited by Monsieur Robert-Houdin survived for us to see and hold? The answer to that question is complicated by the knowledge that catalogues of the Magical and Conjuring Repository of Joseph Bland (Giuseppi Belasco) founded in London, 1855, and the Judd Magical and Conjuring Repository, founded in 1869, New York City, (eventually the most completely stocked shop in the country) stated that they would construct the Light and Heavy Chest for customers on order. The illusion’s reputation had circled the world. Evidently, the amazing chest sold rather well. In a Sphinx article January 1938, I wrote of the travels and magic of Homer S. Woodworth (1842— 1942): “He performed fairly standard effects of the day including: The Linking Rings, Light and Heavy Box, Cups and Balls, card tricks, a suspension and other smaller platform feats.” My source was a close friend, Howard Huntington, (1905-19 ) a serious, lifetime professional magician who knew Woodworth and had witnessed performances by this former assistant to Signor Blitz.34 34. See also: Conjurors and Cornfields: Magic on the Indianapolis Stage, by Thomas A. Ewing, self published, 1999, p. 121 ff.

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What did happen to the original chest which was the central focus of Robert-Houdin’s memorable mission to France’s colonial possession in northern Africa? After he had ceased working his miracles of prestidigitation professionally, it was reported that he stored his equipment within the protection of his Parisian theatre. But, in a 1998 letter to me, distinguished French collector Jacques Voignier wrote, “When Georges Méliès bought the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in 1888, no Light and Heavy Chest was put into the inventory. Another Light and Heavy Chest (which is not the original) is put on display at present time in the ‘Maison de la Magie Robert-Houdin’. Very likely, the original Light and Heavy Chest should be in U.S.A..” If the Chest was still stored in the theatre, which is unlikely, it would have been burned up in the conflagration that destroyed the historic building in 1901. However, it was rebuilt and shows resumed there until World War I closed it again for the duration. Reopened with the advent of peace, it barely survived until 1924 when the Théâtre Robert-Houdin was finally torn down. Backtracking to May 23, 1908 when prominent Parisian magic dealer, Charles De Vere wrote a holograph letter to Harry Houdini offering to sell him a number of Houdin-related items: “I have here the light and heavy chest. Houdin’s make, it is lined with steel and 4 Dollars can be made to appear in it by Electricity. $50.”35 In this year, Houdini’s scurrilous book The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin appeared. Interesting though this versatile model may be, and we don’t know if Houdini did purchase it, the description rules it out of consideration as the Algerian chest. If genuinely a product of Robert-Houdin’s workmanship or even of clockmaker J. F. Houdin, his wife’s father, it would still be a worthy collectible today. On what basis have a few speculators advanced the notion that Houdini bought the true chest directly from the great Robert-Houdin himself? Don’t they realize that the French escamoteur died almost three years before the Hungarian-American escapist was born? If he acquired it later through De Vere, he would undoubtedly have left it to Bess or Hardeen when he prematurely expired. I know of no record of these or any others receiving this valuable illusion directly from the master himself. However, there is one chest in existence today that seems to fulfill virtually every requirement for having been Robert-Houdin’s in Algiers. It lacks a time-short documentary link across the gap from Robert-Houdin 35. Photocopy of De Vere letter sent to John Booth by John Gaughan.

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John A. Petrie (left), born just before Robert-Houdin died, was the first confirmed owner of the original Light and Heavy Chest. This photograph (c. 1932) taken next to the Petrie-Lewis plant (New Haven, Connecticut) shows Petrie with John Booth and the legendary Frederick Eugene Powell standing by. John Booth Collection.

to John A. Petrie, the American Petrie-Lewis entrepreneur who was born in New Haven, Connecticut August 23, 1870, about ten months before the Blois native succumbed. But a logical bridge was present. Petrie, being a master craftsman in both metal and wood, expectedly would be fascinated by the chest and have a good business relationship with De Vere. In turn, De Vere had the confidence of the Robert-Houdin family and associates, as evidenced by other “Houdin-associated” articles he was able to offer for sale. It seems almost undeniable that he was the likely transfer agent of the chest from the theatre or family to Mr. Petrie. At any rate, the provenance is quite clear from Petrie down to Kenneth Klosterman, the present owner. Dr. Samuel C. Hooker, creator of the enigmatic Hooker Card Rises, pressured Petrie to sell him the historyassociated box. From him, it went to my friend N.Y.C. automobile magnate Charles H. Larson. After a few years, collector John J. McManus, president of the Rolls Royce Motor Car Company in America, acquired it from Larson. Hoping to find a stable institutional home for it, in 1954, McManus (who died only about three years later) gave his monumental collection to

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Owner of the largest magic collection in the world (at the time), Charles H. Larson lifts the legendary Light and Heavy Chest (c. 1945), already displaying signs of wear before going to the Ringling Museum/Cyprus Gardens group. Courtesy Ken Klosterman.

the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, following the lead of several other millionaire collectors of magicana. Then the incredible happened. About a dozen years later, the museum curator traded all the assembled conjuring collections to a Cypress Gardens, Florida, group which planned, but never opened, a major museum of magic. Irresponsibly, the new owners allowed their children to play with the apparati like toys. Hearing of the shameful debacle, engineer Charlie Kalish of N.Y.C., a dedicated amateur magician, drove a truck to Florida and negotiated a deal for all the loosely gathered collectibles he could find. Thus were saved for posterity many priceless articles including the now battered Light and Heavy Chest. He sold it, as is, to the Rev. Willard S.(not Adrian) Smith, a respected Massachusetts magician and Congregational clergyman. Enthusiastic magic collector and baking company executive Kenneth Klosterman purchased the peripatetic chest from Smith. Under his care its former prominence and elegance have been restored. He calls it the Holy Grail of his rich collection and perhaps of the magic art itself. One of his

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first acts was to engage the services of Carl Williams, a Los Angeles-based retired electrical engineer. Born in Wales of a Welsh father and an English mother, he and John Gaughan are the master restorers in this country of antiquarian conjuriana. They work miracles with the most complicated magical creations that have fallen into seemingly hopeless disrepair. “The chest was in terrible shape,” Williams has told me. “It looked worthless: veneer chipped off, scarred, abused and drab on the outside. The interior was eroded away by 19th century acid and electrolyte splashed over it. Kenny wanted it restored to the way it used to look.” How much of this disaster was caused by unsupervised children dur-

Ken Klosterman (right) congratulates master craftsman Carl Williams on his superb restoration of the Light and Heavy Chest resting on the heavy table he constructed to perform it on. Courtesy Carl Williams.

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ing a Cypress Gardens interlude or by a journey through many hands and stressful performances in over 150 years one can’t say. All the rotten wood had to be scraped out carefully. He believes that the wooden box is made of hard maple. Crotch mahogany veneer 40/1000" thick, laid over the chest, was in such poor condition that Carl had to visit several violin makers before he could locate enough replacement sheet. It has an inherent lovely swirl pattern. Handling it was like touching brittle eggshell. I was particularly curious as to how the wooden box could be built to withstand the enormous pull of a truly powerful man. Closely examined, the chest is far sturdier than first realized. The sides are almost an inch thick; a coarse iron plate covering the entire outside bottom is 5/16" thick and apparently fits into grooves in the wood sides. This helps to withstand the upward stress a pull would exert on the chest. The sides are held together by an old style of dovetailing that Williams had never seen before. It would take a coping saw, chisel and wooden mallet to duplicate. He was trying to retain as much of the original wood as possible. Two latches in front are really like hooks that clamp the lid securely shut. Long screws secure the hinges. No nails or screws were used on the sides; old-fashioned dovetails insured that no human power could tear apart the wood. Cleverly, Robert-Houdin had made the chest’s single handle small and narrow so that the strongest man could barely insert four muscular fingers in it. This weakened his upward pull; its thinness alone caused pain to gripping fingers. Concealed in the lid is a large horseshoe mechanism that creates the demoralizing shock in the handle. The unexpected shock is not dangerous because the unit is normally set for only A rare look inside the chest’s normally 30 or 40 micro amps. A 9-volt battery sealed lid, showing the complex, modern and a couple of AA’s produce that electronic source for the handle’s shock. level. A tiny switch in the handle conCourtesy Carl Williams.

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trols that feature. A modern electronic unit has been installed today in place of the 19th century battery system to produce the handle shock as before. Carl Williams removed the lock from the chest and asked a Beverly Hills locksmith when he thought it was made. Its period was the end of the 1700s or early 1800s. They were not used any more—too easy to pick. Another locksmith suggested the 1850s. This feature, as well as the apparent age and construction of the box, and odd wiring of the electromagnetic installation, convince this astute craftsman that this is truly the RobertHoudin chest. Whether this particular chest was constructed by the magician himself, or his father-in-law, the eminent watchmaker J. F. Houdin, he won’t try to guess. No provenance is entirely watertight without complete, reliable documentation, all agree. A number of Light and Heavy Chests are currently being exhibited. No owner, except Klosterman, claims to have the original of RobertHoudin. One was displayed in an exhibit called MAGIC: THE SCIENCE OF ILLUSION at Los Angeles’ California Science Center in Exposition Park. From July 22, 2000 to February 28, 2001, without exposing any secrets, they maintain, it showed how basic scientific concepts are applied in stage illusions like the Living Head, the Rising Chair and Magic of the Mind. Science seeks to explain the wonders of the world; magicians seek out and exploit these same principles to entertain, using them for mystification. Anxious to learn whether the Magic and Science chest is of Judd, Bland or other construction, I was told by the Science Center staff that all the exhibits were made by an Exhibit Fabricator for museums named Hodgetts Frung near Valencia, a suburb of Los Angeles.36 To my pleasant surprise, the total exhibit has been such a huge draw that, as a touring exhibition, it is booked up for the next seven years. Settling in major cities all over the United States for long runs, Philadelphia is reputedly its next stop. Dressed up for this exhibition as a magician’s make-up case on a table in a backstage dressing room, the Light and Heavy chest can become so “weighty” that no one can lift it. I am told that a sign says that the trick can be effected in many ways. But this one involves electro-magnetism, a 19th century scientific discovery. To say that no secrets are exposed is, therefore, not fully true, in spite of the sign’s valid phrasing. It must be admit36. Ellen Kwan Lewis and Shell Slatom Amegah of the California Science Center provided photos and information.

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Children can operate a Light and Heavy Chest illusion in an amazingly successful exhibition , MAGIC: THE SCIENCE OF ILLUSION, touring the larger cities of the United States. Courtesy California Science Center.

ted that the inventor, Robert-Houdin himself, exposed his illusion’s secret to the world in several languages and translations of his internationally published Memoirs. A generally excellent and informative videotape made in France but available with English narration is titled Robert-Houdin: A Magician’s Life. Dramatically, in period costumes and photographed in the actual historical locales, it describes the magician’s life and achievements in magic, science, mechanisms and literature. French professional conjurian, Pierre Switon, plays ably the role of Robert-Houdin as an adult performer. Cameo commentary appearances bring in John Gaughan, with Antonio Diavolo (Robert-Houdin’s automaton masterpiece), Jan Madd, Edwin A. Dawes, Volker Huber, Christian Fechner and even Robert-Houdin’s heavy-set, shaven-headed great grandson, André Kieme Robert-Houdin. A technical error mars a superficial presentation of the Light and Heavy Chest: it has two handles on its sides, nothing on top. A Light and Heavy Chest is displayed in a remarkable exhibition that opened June 1998 in Blois (Robert-Houdin’s area of birth and death) in the new $11,000,000 Maison de la Magie Robert-Houdin. Magician Georges

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Proust had persuaded the Minister of Culture during President Mitterand’s term of office to provide substantial support for a national museum dedicated to the country’s most famous illusionist. With this enormous backing, a small team of magical specialists, and hard work, this spectacular museum was created. Daily in the peak season, over 1500 people flow past the exhibits. Kenneth Klosterman, in Cincinnati, was requested by the museum authorities in France to lend his Light and Heavy Chest for the grand opening of this monumental project dedicated to Monsieur Robert-Houdin. Could there be any greater salute of confidence by the land of the Marseillaise in the background of the only vintage chest of its kind known to exist in the world today? For reasons of security he declined the invitation.

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Chapter 16

Ventriloquial Stunts: From Pactolus to Today

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THE ABILITY TO THROW SOUND, ALMOST LIKE A BASEBALL, INTO BOXES, UNDER tables or into a doll-like figure is actually an impossibility. In reality, it is an illusion created by hiding the source of sounds (the mouth reveals no lip movement), misdirection (looking at the place from which the sound allegedly has come) and changing the voice or sound to make it appropriate coming from its supposed location—either distant, close-by, or through a telephone receiver. Certain imaginative early shamans or witchdoctors discovered the power and influence they could gain over others by attributing this skill to a special relationship with spirits or the supernatural realm. Other persons mastered it as a form of entertaining they enjoyed. The first surviving ventriloquial dolls were just crude representations of a human face and body with no moving parts. A “dialogue” ensued between the entertainer and his inanimate wooden “effigy,” but actually a monologue of pretense. About 1750, a Baron von Mengen first presented a doll with a moving lower jaw, which was synchronized to match the spoken words the performer was “throwing” into his figure’s mouth. By the 19th century, these were called speaking dolls or automatons. From then on, a succession of refinements in the construction and possibilities of ventriloquial figures took place: movement of eyes, ears, lips and cheeks, even fright wigs. The performer secretly was becoming like the proverbial one-armed paper hanger, operating controls within the figure. 37. The Linking Ring, August 1981.

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Walter Cole is often credited with introducing the first life-sized figure that could walk. Evidently this produced a sensational act as he headlined major variety theatres from 1870 to 1900. Fred Russell, however, is called the “father of modern ventriloquism.” In his period, it was customary to have a group or line-up of dolls across the back of the stage. From a fixed position on stage, the performer would cause them to speak while secretly pulling levers or wires connected with their jaw movements, seemingly without any physical contact between them. But Fred Russell, a big enough star to dare break respected traditions, dispensed with the gaggle of vent figures in London’s historic Palace Theatre, introducing but one. And so it is with most artists of voice chicanery today. He died in 1957 at the age of 95. As the 20th century wore on, they featured new sounds to work with. Walter Walters’ act stressed “The Baby’s Cry.” Another artist replicated perfectly a log being sawn in half. The Great Lester, one of the notable ventriloquists of the century, invented the incoming telephone voice. Australian Clifford Guest brought down the house with his distant voice routine. Mimicking birds and barnyard animals is one of the more venerable arts of voice masters across the ages. Significant role changes have occurred today. The ventriloquist usually becomes the straight man, feeding the best or funniest lines to his figure, who becomes the source of the laughs. This draws attention from moving lips. A Spanish ventriloquist moved his audiences to tears of laughter when he and his life-sized figure became involved in a Greco-Romantype wrestling match. To the audience’s delight, “it left the vent flat on his back,” one writer has reported. Jim Henson’s Muppet Show on TV is watched nowadays by up to 250,000,000 people globally. Kermit and Piggy, the stars, are two unlikely but lovable characters. Ventriloquism and puppets have, indeed, climbed to astronomical heights. The 1946 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, my left elbow’s companion for decades, reports under VENTRILOQUISM: “Many uncivilized races of modern times are adepts in ventriloquism, as the Zulus, the Maoris and the Eskimos. It is well known also in Hindustan and China. It is even practiced by such birds as the chickadee and the dove.” Whether this means that the voice throwers of modern times owe their skills, in part, to an unknowing physical relationship to birds and “uncivi-

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lized” humans I’ll leave to the sharp wit of Jay Marshall to untangle. Although I have traveled among the groups and in the areas of the world mentioned above, I must confess to never having seen anyone there practicing ventriloquism. It has been suggested that one explanation for the mysterious temple sounds in pharaonic Egypt and those issuing from the Oracle of Delphi might have had such an origin. Even the sounds coming from the stone in the river Pactolus, which mythology states caused some thugs to flee in panic, were possibly the mischievous work of an ancient ventriloquist. Visions of duplicating the Pactolus stone episode in my classroom at school, persuaded this (then) nine-year-old lad to send away ten cents for the purchase of a voice-throwing device. We dreamed of sending our teacher into tantrums as cavalry horse sounds would float mysteriously through the classroom, an invisible pupil would keep chattering, and other unseemly noises would occur far from this innocently quiet little boy. To my chagrin, but the salvation of tutorial decorum, an unusable, twisted tin object came through the mails. Supposedly, when inserted in the mouth, it made vocal miracles possible. My career as a ventriloquist ended before it started.

During the author’s boyhood, vast numbers of boys spent ten cents (equal to $1.50 in 2001) to master this exciting device. Girls were not considered customers!

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Conjurers have often included specialty acts like ventriloquists in their full evening shows to cut down their own burden and enhance their production with variety. Herrmann the Great didn’t try to perform all evening in the later tradition of a Blackstone or Thurston. A Hamilton (Ontario) newspaper for September 24, 1880 reported: Herrmann, the king of prestidigitateurs, and his excellent company of specialists mystified and delighted a fair audience last evening—they were charmed with the bewildering tricks of Herrmann, the gymnastic dancing of Onofris, the inimitable ventriloquism of Val Vose and the ludicrous contortions and graceful evolutions of the Lorellas.

It was in Hamilton that I first came to see and know some of the top ventriloquists of sixty years ago. Into the two top vaudeville houses linked with American theatre circuits came these experts. From Britain, in naval uniform and with military bearing, we saw Arthur Prince; Marshall Montgomery, who always seemed stiff to me, later brought in his figure. Walter Walters worked with a doll that would wail and cry so convincingly that the act was titled The Baby’s Cry. He accepted an invitation to spend an hour between shows in our home to meet some of the local wizards. Well do I recall my father and Walters engaged in a discussion of word origins after the former mentioned that “ventriloquism” emerged from two Latin words: venter for stomach and loqui for speak. Walters pointed out that actually the stomach was not a part of voice “throwing,” although the ancients had so believed. Walter Walters’ beautiful wife divorced him and married Valentine Vox, another ventriloquist, the source of whose stage name is obvious. She was also an expert at the baby’s cry routine. The sensational climax of the act involved only Vox and his figure sitting together on the stage, the doll singing, while Vox played an accompaniment with a slide whistle in his mouth. Impossible? I had not yet seen their act from out front and was standing in the wings when Ms. Walters came rushing by to stand, unseen by the audience, behind the curtain directly in back of where Vox was about to start his climax stunt. She popped a slide whistle into her mouth and provided the music that onlookers thought her husband was emitting on stage. He was actually pantomiming the operation of his whistle while providing the singing voice for his figure. Vents must have their tricks!

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Edgar Bergen, destined to become the most famous of all modern ventriloquists, was the one I came to know best. He must have been in his late twenties then, having graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, not too long before and had already tried a brief fling in Chautauqua as a few rare booking folders attest. Now he was a success on vaudeville’s Big Time. Dressed as a surgeon in white, assisted by a beautiful nurse and a sassy doll named Charlie McCarthy (yes, 50 years ago!), the act was called The Operating Room. After his last show one evening, he taxied out to my home at 167 Rosslyn South, in Hamilton, to spend several smoke-filled hours with about five local magicians. I still blush to think of my hospitality. We were crushed into my small bedroom/den more than half of which space was occupied by my bed, desk and file cabinet. But good conversation won out over cramped quarters and the smoke-choked chamber. Although he wrote on a playing card for me, “Here’s hoping that we may soon meet on Broadway or maybe on the same bill,” this never happened. Years later, when I wished to draw a pictorial comparison between the careers of Will Rogers (humorist, actor, vaudevillian, radio star), and Edgar Bergen (humorist,

No American ventriloquist has ever attained the popular fame and fortune of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. In this scene from the film You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man, Charlie has just bitten comic W.C. Fields’s hand.

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vaudevillian, radio star), both eventually millionaires, he invited me to film in his home in Beverly Hills. Thus my hospitality was returned but on quite a different scale! It must be remembered that in those early years, theatres boasted neither public address systems to amplify voices nor air conditioning to ventilate. Yet I cannot recall any difficulty hearing the ventriloquial voices. Performers knew the art of projection unspoiled by depending on mikes. Most theatres, however, were not the cavernous auditoria they later became. An intimacy prevailed. I never met the Great Lester, who is credited with inventing a number of the key tricks introduced by ventriloquists. Was the telephone voice his idea? Drinking a liquid while the figure sings? Walking dolls? I knew Frank Marshall mildly, the Chicago craftsman who carved the head of Charlie McCarthy and other “dummies.” Heads could become quite complex with eye, ear and wig movements. Bergen was properly adamant about never calling one’s doll a “dummy.” It should be a “figure.” The connotation of the former appellation repelled him. The figure should be handled as though genuinely alive, with fondness and care, never departing from the illusion even when bringing it on or when finished. I, too, am offended by those few ventriloquists who will toss the figure aside when done, or ram it into a suitcase for the muffled voice effect, destroying the whole image formerly cultivated. At such times, I wonder who really is the dummy. Featured on tours of the WLS National Barn Dance group, and a movie actor in his own right, ventriloquist Max Terhune was a familiar personality to magicians. His wise cracking figure was named Skully. The Hoosier Mimic, as this Indiana native called himself, was a master at mimicking animals of the barnyard, climaxing his act with a fierce fight in which one heard the intermingled roar of roosters, pigs, dogs, cats and horses in one glorious cacophony of sound. An adjunct of ventriloquism is puppetry. When done well, the image of ventriloquism is generated although the puppet’s mouth may never open. Many performers are switching to simulated animals in place of impertinent little boy or girl figures. Part of the audience appeal lies in the fact that most people imagine that their own pets have such traits as the performing figure demonstrates; independence, mockery, embarrassment, funloving, sassiness and so on. They are like children even if animals or birds

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Movie actor, ventriloquist and magician, Max Terhune, with Skully.

are represented. The puppeteer or vent is the object of the animal or child’s ridicule. The world is seen through a child’s eyes, much to our amusement. John Salisse of London, England, vice president of the department store chain, Marks and Spencer, is a superbly professional puppeteer. His eight-minute act at the Variety Arts Theatre in 1980, as part of the Larsen brothers IT’S MAGIC extravaganza, gave me the biggest laughs of the month. A sad-looking duck resting on his arm actually never speaks. But the impression, whenever it opens its mouth, is that of ventriloquial art. In silence, the duck is simply reacting: bored, it falls asleep; irritated, it imitates Salisse’s constant chatter with a jaw action of its own; surprised at flattery, it looks up endearingly into the performer’s face; it appears forlorn when one eye falls off its head.

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My old friend, Dr. Abraham B. Hurwitz, formerly Peter Pan, the Magic Man, official magician of the City of New York (and a part-time university instructor), invited me to dinner in Beverly Hills to meet his daughter, the famed puppeteer, writer and TV performer, Shari Lewis. Not only is she a beautiful person but few people in the profession can match her flawless lip control and clear ventriloquial enunciation. As we sat in the living room of the commodious Beverly Hills residence awaiting the arrival of Ms. Lewis and other guests, Abe showed me trophies and scrolls honoring his daughter for her humanitarian contributions, as a performer, to various important causes. I also discovered that she is the author of numerous slender, soft cover books of tricks, puzzles and games for children, the contents of which her father assists in gathering. This led to two amusing boners on my part. “I see that Holt, Rinehart and Winston, of New York, is her publisher,” I commented, examining her book Impossible Unless You Know. “You might suggest to her that we have an excellent publisher here on the west coast— J.P. Tarcher. The company brought out in fine style a work on psi by Thelma Moss, a local professor.” Dr. Hurwitz grinned. “That’s interesting. You are in J.P. Tarcher’s home! He is Shari’s husband. You will meet Jeremy shortly.” When Shari Lewis arrived, I presented her with a copy of The John Booth Classics inscribed to her and her “sidekick, Pork Chop.” She accepted it gracefully although she looked at the inscription quizzically. Later, when I apologized for calling her popular puppet “Pork Chop” instead of “Lamb Chop,” she relieved my embarrassment, and drew an appreciative laugh from the guests, by saying: “I could call her Pork Chop everywhere but in Miami; there, she must be Lamb Chop!” Edgar Bergen, Jay Marshall, Shari Lewis: what fame they have achieved with one small figure! Another contemporary, Jim Henson, has probably taken puppetry close to the ultimate, as far as theatre goes, with his internationally honored Muppets. An American, he and his ingenious staff have produced the weekly Muppet half-hour TV programs shown world wide, and the feature films, in England. Sometimes thirty or forty puppets will be seen in action, simultaneously, as an audience in a theatre or striding on stage to sing. The featured Muppet characters are known as Kermit (a streamlined frog) and Miss Piggy (a portly

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An incomparable master of ventriloquism, Shari Lewis, with Lamb Chop.

pig, the femme fatale). A well-known singer, cinema star or other personality often mingles conversationally with the Muppets in amusing situations. The technical innovations developed to achieve some of the Muppet actions jiggle the imagination. The scripts have required outstanding writers and the musical backgrounds would befit the most impressive shows with living actors. The days of stiffly wooden puppets only has long since departed. Now they may be made of foam rubber, cloth faces capable of infinite twists to express emotions, or other newer substances. In 1980, the 6th annual ventriloquists’ convention, held in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, attracted 250 practitioners. Located there is the Vent Haven Museum containing the amazingly large collection assembled by the late W. S. Berger. Ventriloquism has a regiment of followers.

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Recreating human and animal life in Lilliputian form allows us to laugh at our foibles without endangering our egos. We live vicariously in this smaller world, one we can control and that aspect is part of its charm. Life can be made playful, when we direct it at ourselves, through puppets and vent figures, cutting off embarrassment, mockery, hypocrisy or boastfulness whenever we tire of them. The appeal of ventriloquism, brought to one peak by Eurycles of Athens, will continue onward from peak to peak, an art whose interest should never grow old. Neither will the legends about the powers of voice throwing ever diminish. A Toronto paper described some university students who were stopped by the police one night as they carried a stolen corpse from a cemetery for medical studies. One member of the party, a ventriloquist, caused the inert body to drawl: “Leave me along; I’m sleepy.” Whereupon the officers of the law apologized and left, believing it was only a sleeping man. How often variations of this story pop up in different locales! In a 19th century Horatio Alger novel a ventriloquist saves a certain situation by “throwing his voice.”

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Chapter 17

The Illusion of Voice Throwing

WHY IS VENTRILOQUISM A POPULAR AND APPROPRIATE SUBDIVISION OF MAGIC and deserves to be included in this book? It deals with the ability to cause voices and sounds of various kinds to apparently emanate from telephones, boxes, people or animals, close-by or distant. Similar reasons explain why people are attracted to the art of magic and discover the magnetism within ventriloquism that has drawn numerous conjurians into becoming voice illusionists, as Edgar Bergen called it. Many have begun as magicians. Jay Marshall leaped into both forms of entertainment as a youth. Skilled magician though he is, it is Lefty, his glove puppet, that highlights so many magic conventions. Richard Potter, (1786–September 20, 1835), the first professional magician of some distinction to be born in this country (U.S.A.), featured both magic and ventriloquism in his programs. One of his broadsides (reproduced in full on page 160) asserted: He throws his voice into many different parts of the Room, and into Gentlemen’s hats, trunks, &c,—Imitates various kinds of Birds and Beasts, so that few or none will be able to distinguish his imitation from the reality.—This part of the performance has never failed of exciting the surprise of the learned and well informed, as the conveyance of sound is allowed to be among the greatest curiosities in nature. He will conclude with the song of “Barney, leave the girls alone.”

Potter was a skilled and charming performer, slim and graceful. He amassed a small fortune, invested well in land, and is buried at Potters Place, New Hampshire on the site of the mansion he built and made his home. 159

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A handbill issued c. 1830 by Richard Potter, featuring ventriloquism and magic. The son of a former slave girl, he amassed a small fortune as an entertainer. Courtesy Robert A. Olson.

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He was born to a former slave named Dinah, owned by Sir Charles Henry Frankland, who died many years before Potter’s birth. His unidentified father was white. A novel by Frances L. Shine Conjuror’s Journal: Excerpts from the Journal of Joshua Medley, Conjuror, Juggler, Ventriloquist, and Sometime Balloonist (Dodd, Mead & Co., N.Y., 1978) owes much to the career of Potter for the fictional Joshua Medley’s life story. The history of ventriloquism is also hardly confined to the male gender, although it overwhelmingly dominates. Virtually a superstar, Shari Lewis was mostly a product of the television medium, emphasizing programs for children. Perhaps more than any other ventriloquist, she registered dynamically with small animals, hand puppets, not large, traditional human dolls. Her key figure was Lamb Chop, a squeaky-voiced sock puppet which she endowed with all the qualities of a living, gentle little lamb. Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy augmented her diminutive family. Lewis touched children with her lessons on child-related subjects like cheating and sharing, backed up by funny songs. It is de rigeuer in ventriloquism to have one impudent puppet who can top the performer or needle him for his seeming weaknesses. Long-lashed Lamb Chop served this purpose endearingly. Obviously, this puppet was an idol of parents for her wholesome and constructive influence through her tiny presence. Shari could command loyal adult audiences even in Las Vegas. There she entertained often until rock and roll performers became the rage and more bookable favorites. Throughout the inevitable dry periods she turned to other activities that her fame justified leading her into: celebrity shows, conducting symphony orchestras, working in dramas and motion pictures. Phyllis Hurwitz, her true name, was married to publisher Jeremy Tarcher 40 years. Credited with writing 60 books, actually her magician father, Abe Hurwitz, did most of the research and drafted her literary efforts to remove this load from her busy shoulders. She won 12 Emmy Awards, the John F. Kennedy Award for Excellence and Creativity, a Peabody Award and seven Parents’ Choice Awards. She appeared in several musicals including “Lamb Chop on Broadway” and had her own show on NBC-TV from 1957–63. Born January 17, 1934, according to reference books, she actually died at age 65 of uterine cancer, her family asserted. Her death, like that of Señor Wences and Edgar Bergen, was prominently reported on the front pages of American newspapers everywhere, a tribute seldom accorded magicians.

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The reason, I believe, is an emotion of losing a down-to-earth friend who has touched our heartstrings closely in a way that conjurors rarely do. Richard Potter was not unique in being a successful mulatto or black ventriloquist. Vaudeville was enriched by the act of John W. Cooper called “Fun in a Barber Shop” in which a playlet with several different characters required their own special voices. In fact, Señor Wences may have created Pedro in his box from seeing or hearing about Cooper’s black man’s head in a towel box, which popped out every time a towel was tossed into it. In December 1992, The Smithsonian Magazine published a well-done article on ventriloquism which, in turn, produced several pertinent letters. One from Cooper’s daughter claimed that Shari Lewis had been a pupil of his and that his puppet, Sam, was carved by Chicago’s Theodore Mack, who gave birth to at least one of Edgar Bergen’s figures. One indication of Cooper’s status among voice projectors of his period was having Sam put on display in the Brooklyn (NY) Historical Society after his death in 1966. All of today’s ventriloquists are quietly measured against the incredible success of Edgar Bergen, born in Chicago, Illinois February 16, 1903. No one yet has come anywhere close to permeating society in a way comparable to his celebrity puppet Charlie McCarthy’s presence as a household phenomenon. Few human beings have a closet in which hang so many custom-tailored suits appropriate for diverse “unexpected” occasions. In fact, the irritating figure who had insulted world personalities from W. C. Fields to Winston Churchill occupied a finely appointed bedroom of his own in the Bergen household. Even Bergen’s real life daughter, the beautiful television actress Candace (or Candice), who was raised along with Charlie, confesses in her autobiographical volume Knock Wood, (Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1984) that she felt a twinge of competitive jealousy over little Charlie’s attention-getting charms. Thousands of cookie cutter Charlie McCarthy puppets for would-be child vents drenched the landscape. Comic books, souvenirs, toys and watches carried his images. He played major roles in films like Goldwyn’s Follies (1938), You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939) and Letter of Introduction for which he (or Bergen) received a special Academy Award. Radio and television deepened and broadened the softly refined ventriloquist’s reputation whose lip movements were obvious. But so pronounced was the feeling that Charlie McCarthy meant fun and romance that even children pretended not to see the flawed delivery itself.

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Edgar Bergen died in his sleep on the third night of his retirement engagement at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, September 30, 1978. For a fuller account of his life and work, with a psychological analysis of the raison d’etre for his triumphs, read Creative World of Conjuring (Booth, Ridgeway Press, 1990, pp. 63, 211–214). While on a far Pacific ocean cruise with my daughter in the spring of 2000, I was nonchalantly loitering in a Balinese (Ubud) woodcarver’s shop. Seated at a small table conferring seriously were two men. I recognized with surprise a booking circular for a ventriloquist in the hands of one. After they separated, I introduced myself to the bearer of the circular. He was Don Bryan, a Vancouver, British Columbia, professional voice wizard newly arrived on our ship, negotiating with a senior carver to make the head for a new doll with Balinese-influenced features! I admired him for catching this imaginative opportunity to freshen up his artistic presentation, not to mention his being the only bearded ventriloquist I have ever met. With this preamble behind us, let us give a little more detailed picture of several representative leaders in the illusion of directive voice transference for entertainment.

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Chapter 18

Dolls that Smoke; Bodiless Heads That Talk

SOME HAVE CALLED SEÑOR WENCES THE TECHNICALLY MOST ACCOMPLISHED ventriloquist in the world. His life was dominated by large numbers. He was one of 17 children, born 30 miles from Salamanca, Spain, April 17, 1896, in Peñaranda de Bracamonte. He died in Manhattan, N.Y.C., April 20, 1999, at the age of 103. In 1937, he strode across the boards at the London Palladium as part of a Command Performance before the King and Queen of England. His voice and image radiated nationwide (U.S.A.) in 48 appearances on the popular Ed Sullivan TV Show, certainly a record for any magician or ventriloquist. He played the unique Crazy Horse in Paris for ten years, dialoguing in three languages for its international clientele. Wenceslao Moreno, his real name, at about 15-years-of-age, tried becoming a torero. Bullfighting could be the fastest road to fame and fortune. However, bulls found him easy game, goring him readily. Juggling and ventriloquism were safer and he was very good at these. So he switched goals. Itinerant theatrical companies, first in Spain, and then in South America, enabled him to make a hand-to-mouth living and polish his skills as both a juggler and a ventriloquist. Starting in Buenos Aires, year by year he worked his way northward. In 1932, he reached Puerto Rico and remained two years before finally entering the United States and Hollywood. Americans and Britishers embraced him immediately. Within five years, he was playing in a show at the Berkeley Hotel, London, the first of countless appearances on the U.K.’s stages and television. He last appeared in 1982 on BBC’s Paul Daniels’ Magic Show. But his reputation had already soared in those pre-television seasons. 165

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On his way to a 1936 show in Chicago, his “talking” figure Pedro was crushed in a railway baggage car accident. The head was spared. That night he improvised on stage by bringing on the bodiless head in a box, opening the lid and asking Pedro inside, “S’Okay?” Pedro, in his gravelly-voice, barked back, “S’awright!” Repeated a couple of times, rapidly, at intervals, it became a catch phrase, increasingly amusing. When Wences delayed a second too long, Pedro would demand, “Close the door,” as though he was in a draft. In contrast, the ventriloquist’s other starring doll, Johnny, of the falsetto voice, was created in front of the audience, a hand puppet. Making a fist, Wences brought the tips of his curling forefinger and thumb together, applied lipstick to them, thus developing a mouth; then added two but-

Ed Sullivan, on his national network television show, applauds Señor Wences for causing Johnny, his hand puppet, to blow actual smoke rings. Courtesy Norm Nielsen.

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tons for eyes, an oversize wig, and hung a boy’s suit beneath the boyish face. The speed with which the good señor could carry on a three-way conversation with different accents, without stumbling and simultaneously opening/closing Pedro’s box door made observers gasp. Wences would tell Johnny, “I’m going to try something difficult.” The little figure would reply, “Deefeecult for you, easy for me!” Tight shots for television were often possible because of his practice of conversing with his puppets while holding his face right up to theirs. Had his lips moved, the TV audiences would see it. But they didn’t, an impressively subtle statement in itself. His act was not based on jokes. One writer noted that just saying “S’awright!” brought laughs, partly because his patter was “bizarre, farcical and Spanish-accented.” Total strangers would recognize him immediately by his voice. Though you sensed what was coming, someone has remarked, you would laugh before he said it. If one is funny basically, he doesn’t need punch lines or even jokes. A multi-lingual gift to which were added little tricks like bantering with Pedro and Johnny while smoking, drinking or juggling widened the numbers of people to whom he could appeal. Usual or unusual ventriloquial stunts like muffling a puppet’s “gabbiness” by stuffing its mouth with a handkerchief or offering Johnny a burning cigarette which led to the doll blowing smoke rings endowed the routines with glitter. His act might be called “precise and economical.” It lasted exactly 19 minutes with a one-minute encore. The only props he wouldn’t bring with him were a card table and a glass of water. Television made him a household name. He enjoyed performing for U.S. Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon. He gave the strongest lines and the stellar roles to his puppets, by design. They drew the laughs by trying to irritate the performer. But they were gentle, fundamentally polite and loving, not somewhat dashing wiseguys like Bergen’s impertinent Charlie McCarthy. Whereas Señor Wences’ voice sounded guttural with Pedro and squeaky high for Johnny, Edgar Bergen’s was soft and understanding for himself but cocky adolescent for Charlie. There is no such thing as a best or proper voice for successful ventriloquism. In his fifties, Wences married Natalie Cover, who spoke seven languages and was his able manager for the rest of his life. She declared that

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The gruff-voiced Pedro talks back to the Spanish ventriloquist from his home in a box. Courtesy Norm Nielsen.

he had a sense of timing that few acts possess. He truly felt that his four figures were real and alive. When past his prime, he continued working. Vivid in his memory was his long run on the Milton Berle show and frequent appearances on the Ed Sullivan variety hour. His act registered powerfully on the Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Perry Como, Jack Benny and Danny Kaye shows. Wenceslao Moreno, son of an amateur musician and house painter, had come a long way. The National Comedy Hall of Fame presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996. A key to the city of New York was given to him by the mayor and a special blue street sign erected alongside the Ed Sullivan Theatre designating a block of West 54th Street from Eighth Avenue to Broadway as Señor Wences Way. In the last years of his life, Manhattan, New York, was his and Natalie’s home, the city from which he had set out so often to play the foremost theatres, hotels, and cabarets of the globe. Six months of each year they

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spent back in the university city of Salamanca, drawn to his roots. To celebrate his 103rd birthday, April 20, 1999, a special party drew friends to New York City from around the world. That night he died. For protection in case of loss or employment in commercials, Señor Wences had extra puppets constructed. A trunk full of originals was sent to Norm Nielsen, a close friend since both had played lengthy engagements at the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris. A few other pieces were bequeathed to a female ventriloquist friend of the family named Michele LaFong. Señor Wences was well organized to the last.

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Chapter 19

New Era Ventriloquism: The Hamills

38

CRUISE SHIPS TODAY PROBABLY EMBRACE AS MANY VARIETY-STYLE THEATRE ACTS as any other form of showplace. The world’s oceans are being plied by increasingly large vessels of numerous nationalities, most, if not all, carrying entertainers and bands for the pleasure of their passengers. I returned last May from 16 days aboard the Star Princess, an 805 foot, 7 inches long—about 76 feet shorter than the Titanic—63,524 gross tonnage vessel carrying a full complement of 1500 passengers and crew of 625. Built in St. Nazaire, France, in 1989, for the British P&O Line of Princess “Love Boat” ships, she sailed from Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale), traversed the Caribbean, slid through the Panama Canal, and touched ports northward toward San Diego, California, its destination. On all but one or two of these evenings, a show lasting 50 minutes to an hour was presented twice—for roughly 750 different passengers each time. A wide stage and cue-perfect, eight-piece band played productions ranging from large companies replicating Broadway hit shows to a single magician (Alexander, a young, rush-about comedy performer) and the first ventriloquial team I have seen in years (Bob and Marty Hamill). An act or an entire company could come on board in one port, play that night or the next one, sail onward with us, and disembark at the following port, as another entertainment unit came aboard. A veritable procession that kept the artists working different ships, and passengers enjoying quite a range of shows, almost every evening. How things have changed 38. The Linking Ring, October 1997.

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since my day. In Caribbean cruises, the ports are so close together that this schedule is readily managed. I stayed overnight, before joining the Star Princess, in Don Schula’s Hotel in Miami lakes, named for the famed former coach of the Miami Dolphins. Coming out of the main entrance, to my surprise, I saw a store named “HOUDINI’S TRUNK OF MAGIC” across the street. A married couple, Hardeen Houdini and Cyrene Houdini, own the business. He states that his grandfather was Theodore Hardeen, which would make him Houdini’s grandnephew. (I haven’t had time to check into Hardeen’s own family lineage.) One of their claims to fame is an ability for both to be secured in one straitjacket dangling in midair, and escape from it. Their store is neat, well-stocked and a center for lessons in magic and bookings. I enjoyed my brief visit with them. At sea, we witnessed several evenings of large professional companies offering popular musicals. When I read that a ventriloquial couple, Bob and Marty Hamill, were to occupy that expansive stage for 50 minutes, I wondered how they could maintain interest. The typical vaudeville acts of the last wave of greats—Edgar Bergen, Marshall Montgomery, Arthur Prince, Walter Walters, Vox & Walters, and even more the recent headliners—have run from 8 to 20 minutes, no more. Dressed in a tuxedo, Bob Hamill and wife Marty, are a handsome, young-middle-aged couple working usually with four puppets, all on center stage. A stout, balding gentleman, Bob has developed a unique characteristic voice for each figure, from the traditional smart little boy to a whitehaired grumpy old man. In keeping with so many elderly cruise audiences, the other two are a typical slightly plump, aging tourist couple. With this puppet team, the 50-minute show sped by before a continually laughing audience. “They are an ugly-looking bunch,” Bob admitted about his figures, laughing. I guess it helped to make the well-dressed audience feel superior, laughing at their foibles. Hamill’s interaction with his audience was impressive. A real or imagined statement, latecomer, expression of surprise in the audience, he picked up and commented upon humorously. The daily printed events notices mentioned that he would conduct a one-hour free seminar on ventriloquism the following morning: “Please bring a sock.” Sockless, I appeared promptly along with about 40 other

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persons, most of whom were properly armed as requested. The number quickly grew to about 60 in spite of heavy competition from other offerings at the same hour. Bob began with a brief history of ventriloquism in which Edgar Bergen and The Great Lester were prominent. The problem of faking certain sounds was explained to replace those letters which can’t be pronounced otherwise without moving the lips. The core and magnetic bulk of the talk centered upon those with a sock being taught how to turn it into a hand puppet.

The entire Bob Hamil & Co. cast (clockwise, left to right): Hamill, Grumpy Old Man, Clyde, Marty Hamill holding Sock (an audience favorite), Phyllis and Sidney (39 years married ). This group echoes an early style of ventriloquial acts.

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This involved slipping the sock over one’s fist and wrist, held out palm down. The toe of the sock was pushed in between the thumb and side of the hand to create a mouth. Rubber bands had been handed out to snap around the sock in order to hold its mouth shape. By moving the thumb up to meet the fingers in the sock, the new-born puppet could engage in conversation with the ventriloquist. This audience participation brought little squeals of delight from the mostly older folk present. Finally, he offered a five dollar, paper-covered booklet for those who wished to go deeper into the art of ventriloquism. About a third of the group lined up, reminiscent of profitable sideshow tent pitches done in polite low key. None of the group will ever forget happy Bob Hamill! He typifies the successful qualities that 21st century cruising will demand of its artists. It must be treated as a business. This will take differing forms. One must not be afraid to reach back 100 years for ideas, when, for example, it was common for a voice illusionist to appear on stage with a line-up of dolls, not just one. Above all, creating emotional response—laughter, sympathy and fresh novelty—entertains in any era. Marty Hamill, his wife of about eight years, came aboard a ship to work as a nurse. The ventriloquist, smitten, bought her an ice cream that first day, setting his trap. Romance began. “In order to keep her with me,” Hamill confesses, “I had to make her a part of the act.” She loves her role, soon learning to “throw her voice” (which, of course, does not happen). However, the show is definitely Bob. Hamill was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of six brothers and three sisters. The family bought him a small boy figure when he was eleven, although not approving of his excessive interest in ventriloquism. He dropped it for two years before taking it up again. Working behind the counter in his father’s compact variety shop developed his personality. In trade school and high school, he became part of talent shows, worked hospitals and children’s affairs. When the army called, about 1972, Mayor Frank Russo, a controlling figure in Philadelphia life, gave him a strong recommendation as an entertainer. This allowed him to have an extra foot locker at Fort Dix for a tuxedo and his figure. The assistant drill instructor loved Clyde, Hamill’s favorite figure. “Go get Clyde,” he would drawl in his hillbilly accent. “I want to talk to Clyde.”

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Out of the footlocker came Clyde who would say, commandingly: “Let me see that rifle over there.” The drill instructor would then pipe up to the GI: “You heard Clyde. He wants to see you clean that rifle.” The kid holding the rifle thought the drill sergeant was crazy. Shipped to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, Hamill was engaged to M.C. shows, along with his vent, in the five prisons, hospitals and charities there. Back in civilian life, he moved to California, sold copy machines assisted by “Clyde B. Copier,” who also had his own business cards. Show business was in Hamill’s blood; no matter what he did for employment, Clyde was always with him. In 1984, his career began on the bounding deep, his voices of illusion now in cruising vessels. (When we met he had already worked ten years on all ships of the Carnival Cruise Lines, the QE2 (Queen Elizabeth II ), Azure Seas, Vistafjord, and various Princess Line ships. In Acapulco, he left us, motor-boated across the beautiful harbor to his next assignment, the 2000-passenger Sun Princess, the command of which our own Captain Christie was to assume shortly. At the end of the season, the Star Princess would be renamed the Arcadia and sail under the flag of a P. & O. subsidiary company. Change is the name of the game among ships. Bob Hamill developed rapidly from then on. He and his dolls have appeared on TV programs like “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” “Live from Las Vegas,” and with the Statler Brothers. Dates played include Bally’s (Las Vegas), the famous Steel Pier in Atlantic City, Philadelphia’s Adelphia Hotel, The Comedy Store in San Diego, and others, as well as state fairs in Kansas and California. I mentioned having a very old, oft published book by Henry Cockton titled The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, The Ventriloquist, undated but brought out in London by W. Nicholson & Sons, Ltd. In 464 yellowed pages of fine type, loaded with conversational text, the ventriloquist undergoes odd experiences beyond number. (Toole Stott does not list this edition.) “Vox” means “voice.” Aside from this appropriateness and the easily remembered name, why have so many generations of vents taken this as a stage name? In my youth, a handsome older man “named” Valentine Vox, who married ventriloquist Walter Walters’ beautiful former wife, played major theatre circuits as Vox & Walters. An excellent act. In Las Vegas,

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the Magic and Movie Hall of Fame on the Strip, over O’Shea’s, was operated by a ventriloquist named Valentine Vox. Any more wanting to borrow the name, please step forward. A vent doll in the image of Jimmy Nelson, a popular ventriloquist, was given to Hamill as a youngster, for his birthday. A small Danny O’Day figure was acquired “because it was on sale,” Bob smiled. Like all dolls, until recently, they had hard heads, only the mouth, eyebrows and eyes moved. Shari Lewis was perhaps the key person to make a significant change in the art. She introduced to the world on TV the soft puppet, Lamb Chop. I grievously once inscribed a book to her and Pork Chop, as we stood in the living room of her Beverly Hills home. For a moment or two she stood looking silently at my faux pas and then passed it over diplomatically. I apologized for mixing up my meats. A soft puppet, like a sock puppet, often surpasses a hard figure because it is more affordable, cuter and expressive. Fingers inside the fist doll can twist its mouth and hence its features into every expression imaginable. Steve Axtell has carried it a step further with latex, rubber-faced characters. Bob rejects ventriloquism as pseudo when based on fakery, i.e., pretending to have the figures speak or sing while he seemingly drains a trick glass of its watery contents. Or the Vox & Walters apparent stunner of Vox causing the doll to sing while he also is blowing a slide whistle. Actually Walters, hiding behind the curtain, is playing the whistle for Vox on stage. Bob says that the Baby’s Cry and Telephone Voice are still standards with ventriloquists. Is this art hard on the lungs? Señor Wences would say “No!” He celebrated his 100th birthday in New York City recently. A party attended by Norm Nielsen, among others, flew the 6,000 mile round trip to see his old friend. What do some ventriloquists do as they approach the end of their days? They will their pet figure to the Vent Haven Museum, established by W. S. Berger in Fort Mitchell, next to Covington, Kentucky. In the past, it has been financed and supported by the annual convention of several hundred ventriloquists meeting there since 1976. Last year no one was willing to organize and run it. So this year in May, they moved into the Imperial Palace Hotel in Las Vegas for the first time.

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Bob’s parting comments: “You don’t have to move a dummy’s mouth to create ventriloquism’s illusion. Just the movements of a Teddy Bear can seem to make it talk. But you must look at it when it is ‘talking.’ Movement is illusion. “You must study your puppet: what is the right personality to develop for it? The wrong voice and personality for a figure is the worst thing to do in the world. It’s like performing a trick backward in magic.”

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Chapter 20

Puppetry Across the Spectrum

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IF THE VISITOR TO LOS ANGELES WILL GO TO 1345 WEST FIRST STREET ANY weekday at 10:30 a.m., or Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 p.m., he can spend an hour or two at a theatre unique in North America. The Bob Baker Marionette Theatre is the longest, continuous-running theatre of its kind on the continent, now in its 26th year of shows. It is fully professional. Admission charge is seven dollars and reservations are often necessary. One enters a “small jewel box of theatre with red carpet and a velvet-fringed curtain.” Sit on chairs if you wish. Most people prefer the floor for fully experiencing the feel of living marionettes which sing to you, may sit in your lap or pat your head. The audience is advised of two rules: sit quietly in place during the performance and do not touch the marionettes, for they are working out on your own level next to you. The audience is part of the show and the puppeteers are in full sight. So realistic are the figures that, within minutes, the operators and strings recede from conscious view and only the expertly-crafted figures become your companions. Music backs up certain numbers; imaginative backdrops change to increase the illusion; each costume is a work of art. Jugglers, bulb-nosed clowns, bears and elephants balance on balls; two snowmen glide about on ice skates; spectres glow and float in the blacklight sequence; a Mexican couple sings in English and Spanish. After each one-hour show, a free guided tour of the workshop follows. The parts of marionettes, as well as full figures, hang from ceiling 39. The Linking Ring, November 1989.

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and walls. We are told that it takes up to nine months to make a marionette; twenty different artists work on each figure. The climax of one’s visit, taking a seat at a table and being served ice cream and cookies, completes an enchanting experience. No wonder the theatre has been successful across so many years. The psychological appeal of puppetry to magicians is not difficult to decipher. The illusion of an inanimate representation of an animal or person that turns into a living object with human-like thoughts, emotions and actions is intriguing and humorous. When the puppet interacts with an actual individual, arguing, sassing back or exchanging viewpoints, a level of escape from reality is achieved that makes life less threatening. For such reasons among several, Jay Marshall stops shows with his hand puppet, Lefty, and Shari Lewis amused the world with Lamb Chop, another hand puppet. Puppetry can be traced back four thousand years in the culture of India, often connected with dance and Hindu mythology. In China, audiences were laughing at the humanly operated figures two thousand years ago. Glove puppets were entertaining the Romans and Greeks in 400 B.C., according to ancient records. I have sat on floor mats watching a wayang golek in Surakarta, Java, wherein the shadows of puppets are thrown on a screen by light from a coconut oil lamp. The operator and narrator delivers mythology, philosophy, and other subjects in an ongoing one-man entertainment that can last hours.

PUNCH AND JUDY Punch and Judy shows delivered from a proscenium opening at the top of a small curtained booth were popular public entertainment in Italy by the end of the 15th century. If you will visit Covent Garden in London, you can read a small plaque on a church wall stating that here the first Punch and Judy show in Britain was exhibited. Pepys describes in his Diary seeing the show there May 9th, 1662, the first reference in English literature. The character of Punch, incidentally, was seemingly derived from a prototype in the Italian Commedia dell’ Arte named “Pulcinella.” On the English seashore sands, I am told that Punch and Judy shows are common. For years, the Dean of Punch workers was the late Percy Press, a regular at the Magic Circle, whom I once photographed doing the Cups

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Percy Press II of London, England, starring in a documentary cinema picture giving the cultural history of Punch and Judy while paying homage to Giovanni Piccini, perhaps the greatest punchman to have lived.

and Balls for a film of Great Britain. His son, Percy Press II, not only is a capable successor but was featured with his father in a 47-minute, 16mm color film, “Punch and Judy,” an opera in one act, available to the public through the Arts Council of Great Britain. Puppets and marionettes have been going through slow but steady evolution across the centuries. Oddly enough, although Punch and Judy is regarded as a children’s entertainment, it contains incidents of wife beating, abuse, sex, cheating and stealing! The drama is more delicate and refined in Asia than in most traditional Western presentations. Nevertheless, television has exerted a substantial moderating and refining influence on the art. Significant TV puppet shows in the U.S.A. may well have begun in Chicago in 1947, from the very same station and in the same period when

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this writer was delivering the first series of talks, on his own television program, by an American clergyman. Burr Tillstrom’s ground-breaking “Junior Jamboree” merged into his “Kuklapolitan Players” to become one of TV’s longest-running children’s programs. One of its unique features was the presence of an attractive woman, Fran Allison, who remained in front of the “stage” on which a variety of puppets acted. Her informal, unscripted conversations with the puppet stars, a gentle, bald clown named Kukla, and a buck-toothed serpent, Ollie (Oliver J. Dragon), delighted millions of youngsters. She acted as a bridge builder between the puppets and the audience, an interesting concept. This pioneering show, “Kukla, Fran & Ollie,” ran from 1948 to 1957, but reappeared at intervals for another 20 years. Tillstrom was honored with three Emmy and two Peabody awards, high TV accolades. Its spirit and influence became reincarnated in Jim Henson, the brilliant creator of the later troupe of Muppets in TV’s “Sesame Street” shows. Henson has stated his indebtedness to the Tillstrom programs as a major influence in terms of his own puppetry. Nowadays, figures are no longer confined to wood-carved heads. They may be of plastic, and especially the easily shaped foam-rubber of clothcovered shapes with big, toothless, hinged mouths. For centuries, of course, they have been manipulated by strings or by being wrapped around the hand, or worked from below by sticks. We know that magician Comte de Grisi performed with his “Talking Hand” puppet about 1796 for Louis XVIII of France. The present-day Muppets have raised the art to new highs via television. Photographed and staged in British studios with Americans in most key production roles, they have been presented in their own feature motion picture dramas, with humans appearing often in almost secondary roles. There is in this a symbolism of the reversal going on in society as machines begin to take over from humans. And we find it marvelously entertaining!

PUPPETS IN CHILD THERAPY I am attracted by a new, practical and humanitarian project which can almost be accomplished better by puppets than by humans. In 1977, Barbara Aiello, a special education teacher in Washington, D.C., developed

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what is now a worldwide puppet program to help disabled school children integrate better into public school classrooms. Called “The Kids on the Block,” the three-foot tall figures are taken into classrooms by volunteer puppeteers. They present frank but amusing skits dealing with serious subjects affecting the children’s lives—deafness, blindness, learning disabilities, cultural differences and physical abuse. Programs arranged for the older children may deal with their problems when their parents divorce, teen-age pregnancy and drugs. More than 70,000 children in the Long Beach, California, school district alone, next door to me, have seen the program sponsored by the Assistance League. Thirty volunteer puppeteers perform 80 skits using 26 puppets in area schools. Why is this kind of program so effective? The Long Beach chairman of “Kids on the Block” sums it up: “What excites us about the program is how the kids relate to the puppets. They ask the puppets questions they won’t ask an adult, parent or teacher.” One teacher added: “The children can ask the puppets straightforward questions in a relaxing, non-threatening situation. We can’t deal with many of these things in the classroom.” The children treat the puppets (who claim to have the problems) like humans, asking them such questions as: “Would you (puppets) like your Dad and Mom to get back together again?” “When the divorce was going on, were you afraid they wouldn’t want you any more, and you’d have to go into a foster home?” “Has your Dad ever hit your Mom?” The programs are open-ended and educational but never dull. Props are used, like roller skates, a telephone, pom poms and baby carriages. The children roar when the puppets use the same slang and colloquialisms that they do out on the playground. Positive attitudes are being learned by teaching the children to rephrase traditional outlooks. One puppet character, named Ellen, has “Down’s Syndrome,” but explains: “I am slow to learn, but it doesn’t mean I can’t learn.” Another puppet with diabetes calls it a “condition,” not a “disease.” The puppets seem so real to the children that, after a few minutes, they forget adults are manipulating the colorful, child-size puppets and speaking their kid-sounding lines. The magic of puppetry knows no limit to imaginative handlers of them. From helping handicapped children understand their problems, and cope

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better with them, to sophisticated audiences watching it on TV or seated in the Palladiums and Palaces of the world, the artificially-created universe of puppet illusions brings joy and strength. My hat is off to the puppet magicians wherever they may be. POSTSCRIPT: In all the years in which these memoirs were running in The Linking Ring, the heaviest mail reaction to any month’s piece greeted those on ventriloquism and puppetry. The runner-up was the obituary story following the death of Jane Thurston (Shepherd), adopted daughter of Howard Thurston. A letter from Robert K. Weill reminded me of eminent, modern puppeteers who established enduring reputations in the U.S.A. Tony Sarge and his “Marionettes,” as they were then called, in vaudeville. Bill Baird and his wonderful book. Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody, one of the finest, belonged to Buffalo I.B.M. Ring 12, before he broadcast from New York City. Bob Weill recommends the book Say Kids! What Time Is It? by Stephen Davis, Little Brown, 1987.

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Chapter 21

The Duck that Made John Salisse Famous 40

WHENEVER I THINK OF LONDON’S CIVIC LEADER AND RETIRED BUSINESS EXECutive, John Salisse, his trappings of power sink into the background and I see him awkwardly holding a sad-looking duck in his arms. This one-time vice-president of Marks and Spencer, major British department stores chain, and chairman of so many trade, tourist and charity organizations, is also one of Britain’s prominent magic collectors and former long-time Honorary Vice President and/or Honorary Secretary of the Magic Circle. Mr. Salisse was born in the south of England March 24, 1926, and educated in Portsmouth, home of the still-displayed ship, Victory, Admiral Lord Nelson’s flagship at the historic Battle of Trafalgar. His parents were in the retail business. A local public library introduced him to paperback books on magic. The Memoirs of Robert-Houdin made a particular impression on him. Moving to London in 1944, he soon became acquainted with The Magic Circle, then located in two or three permanent basement rooms in St. Erwin’s Hotel, near the House of Commons. Many conjuring societies existed in London, but he concentrated on The Magic Circle. John’s magic was not sleight of hand, but the self-working kind, like Hughes’ “Coins in the Glass.” Joining the Drama Society in the company where he worked and serving as actor and stage manager, he performed two or three illusions in a week-long, well-financed magic show put on in London’s 1,500 seat Scala Theatre. 40. The Linking Ring, December 1996.

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“How did you develop your well-known act with the duck?” I asked. Americans have seen him present this hilarious routine at Tannen’s Jubilee, Milt Larsen’s “It’s Magic” shows, and Abbott’s annual Colon convention. It is Britain’s closest counterpart to Jay Marshall’s memorable Lefty hand puppet. The wide-eyed plastic duck originally belonged to Willane, British winner of the 1948 F.I.S.M. Grand Prix and publisher of magic books under the ARCAS label. His wife, for whom he bought it, couldn’t use it in an act. It went on to Jack Salvin and finally John Salisse purchased it. He played with it for a year, at first as a mindreading duck that wagged its head for answers. Finally, he concocted his own act with it and hasn’t changed the routine in the years since. It has become a classic. Pathos and humor mingle creating an almost human creature in his hands. In the August 1981 Linking Ring, p. 43, I described the essence of his eight-minute act in a few lines: “A sad looking duck resting on his arm actually never speaks. But the impression, when it opens its mouth, is that of ventriloquial art. In silence, the duck is simply reacting: bored, it falls asleep; irritated, it imitates Salisse’s constant chatter with a jaw action of its own; surprised at flattery, it looks up endearingly into the performer’s face; it appears forlorn when one eye falls off its head.” After seeing it, a TV director made a short series of programs with him. Later, for five years, he was on top star Noel Edmund’s Saturday morning unrehearsed show, once a month, doing three two-minute spots between 9:30 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. On one of his week-long appearances at the Magic Castle, David Copperfield and Mike Caveney drove in specially to see the Duck act. But he was not doing it that year. Doug Henning was another conjurian who loved the little fellow. However, the daughter of one of John Salisse’s friends had a complaint. After his act she said: “People were laughing so hard I just couldn’t hear what the duck was saying.” In 1947, The Sid Field Show at London’s Haymarket Theatre presented a French cabaret performer, Robert Lamouret, offering a musical act in which a voiceless duck named Doodles appeared. Lamouret sang everpopular Italian operas while holding Doodles in his arms and who reacted openly to his vocal efforts in ways that only puppet ducks dare to do. One of its eyes fell to the floor. Picking it up, the opera singer “unwittingly”

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plastered it back on the wrong side of poor Doodles’ face, not upside down as in Salisse’s version. That duck became the star of the entire show, creating waves of laughter. Ed Sullivan flew the act to New York so that North Americans could break up over the expressive reactions of the hapless Doodles to the dignified opera singer’s role. In my interview with Mr. Salisse, he had made no allusion to the presence in so conspicuous a London theatre as the Haymarket, in 1947, of a similar duck-dominated variety presentation. I wrote John for a clarification. In his reply, he stated that in 1949, he had no interest in a French singer with a duck. In 1956, he had acquired his duck and started performing with it in 1959. Not until he and Gerald Holgate wrote a script and called in John Cox, a producer, did the act start to mean something. Whether

Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, remarked to John Salisse: “Didn’t I see you the other day?” Salisse replied: “Yes, I was with a duck.”

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Holgate or Cox were aware of Lamouret’s duck routine 12 years earlier we do not know. We do know that John Salisse has brought a lot of happiness to multitudes in the U.K. and U.S.A. with a silent wooden duck that, today, he uniquely empowers with an amazing comedic life and talent. As John rose up through the business world, he still found time to serve as a key executive in The Magic Circle’s operations and built up his collection of Maskelyne, Devant and Egyptian Hall posters, photos, programs, letters and other related materials. This latter field is what drew us together in London about 25 years ago. I had persuaded Bill Larsen, Jr., to dedicate one issue of GENII: The International Conjurors’ Magazine to the life and works of Great Britain’s most famous and skilled professional magician, David Devant. Bayard Grimshaw joined me in enticing several of the most qualified persons on this subject to contribute to it. John Salisse invited us to his Hampstead home one evening: Claude Chandler (David Devant’s replacement on stage when the master retired), Francis White (Magic Circle president who had taken lessons in magic from Devant), Bayard Grimshaw (conjuring authority and writer), and myself. The special issue appeared in July 1974. We reveled in the treasures John showed us, some of which were illustrated in the special Devant issue which was pushed to fulfillment at that gathering. My greatest thrill was in chatting with Claude Chandler. I had not realized he was still alive. Born November 12, 1896, he died May 10, 1977. In his quiet, persuasive, and suave manner, John Salisse has been able to accomplish things for magic that many don’t know about, partly because of his respected position in so many fields.

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Chapter 22

His Left Hand is His Fortune

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COMPETITIVE SPECIALIZATION CHARACTERIZES THIS AGE. THE AMBITIOUS YOUTH of today usually struggles long years to gain a preparatory education and technical or professional training for life’s work. Then how does one explain humanity’s weird sense of values? Here is a man who can stuff his left hand into a white glove and travel the world just talking, arguing and singing to himself while staring at his own gloved fist? In fact, like a four-year-old, this grown person, pretends that his fist is a smart aleck little boy, a doll he plays with. And people pay well to watch him do it. Is this the basis for a career? Like the formula for Einstein’s theory of relativity, there is more to it than this description suggests. The man, Jay Marshall, has created a ventriloquial bit with glove and finger action in which every word, move, nuance and emotion have been honed and developed for enduring, haunting entertainment. Two buttons sewed to the glove for eyes; thumb and forefinger curled to create a mouth. This early 18th century novelty has charmed audiences at such great theatres of the world as London’s Palladium, New York City’s Palace and Chicago’s Chicago Theatre. Television in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and North America, to name a few examples, has brought “Lefty” to countless additional millions. There is more to Jay Marshall than playing with a homemade doll. At Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1939, at the Post Tavern (hotel), I first saw and was impressed by a tall, skinny, unknown lad of twenty tearing up and restoring a strip of paper. His immaculate diction, precise moves, skill and com41. The Linking Ring, May 1985.

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pact patter lifted that simple, old effect into a masterpiece. I made a note to follow his career. After all, I was in Battle Creek to appear with Les Levante and several other professionals on the headliner evening shows in the Kellogg auditorium and the younger men coming up stimulated us. Some scared us! Soon after Battle Creek, Marshall was caught up in World War II as a United Services Organization (USO) entertainer in charge of small blue units playing throughout the United States of America. Henry, his vent doll, proved too large for a traveling barracks bag. So the resourceful performer (he had made his first vent figure out of cigar boxes, cloth and his sister’s doll clothes) wrapped a bit of fabric around his fist and inked in the eyes. Later, he saw the glove idea in The ABC of Ventriloquism by an English voice tosser and Lefty was fully born. Mustered out of the army in February 1946, Jay’s ambition was to spend the rest of his life as a vaudevillian. The dream had started long before. Certainly this was not in the minds of James E. Marshall and Edna Ward Marshall, his parents, when they brought him into this world August 29, 1919. Jay has told me that Abington, Massachusetts, was his birthplace but others say it was (North) Andover. Although he was present at his birth, his mind is apparently not clear about the facts. At age seven, he saw Houdini perform a big show for a bankers’ convention in Boston but fell asleep during it. His sole memory of the affair involves some slates, a man nailed into a coffin, and then a bow. Silent Mora (Louis J. McCord), was a major early influence, his act providing a model of smooth, impressive delivery. Ironically, Jay Marshall, still a youth, was booked with Henry, his figure, as next to closing (feature position), on a six or eight act vaudeville bill, wherein Mora, the master magician, was relegated to fourth position. The reason: ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, at the time, was astonishing the nation over the airwaves; hence Marshall was basking in the reflected glory of timeliness. Eventually he was to reach heights legitimately that his skilled mentor never touched. Another source of inspiration: Al Ellis, a New England performer of chalk talks, ventriloquism, rag pictures and magic. One wonders if this helps to account for Jay’s universal curiosity, his wish to master so many forms of human activity: magic, comedy, acting, chapeaugraphy, troublewit, book accumulating, horology (not as evil as it sounds), false teeth design, publishing, shadowgraphs, puppeteering. . . space limitations force me to stop here.

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Al Wheatley (Tung Pin Soo), inventor of the Chop Cup, summered on Gardner Lake, near Norwich, Connecticut. Jay would periodically tote a full bucket of beer to his place to learn from Al while the latter enjoyed the proffered suds. For nearly a year, one could see the lanky legerdemaniac assisting L. Raymond Cox in his “Company of Wonder Workers.” Among the various assistants hired by Russell Swann, the irrepressible young New Englander must be included. “How did you get your breaks in show business?” I asked him one day as we sat in Las Vegas’ Riviera Hotel. “Spivy’s Roof on the chic East Side of Manhattan had as its pianistentertainer, Liberace, who has since made millions,” Jay responded. “He wanted to move along but couldn’t until the boss could find the right act to replace him. I was it.” “I was doing Troublewit with a monocle in my eye and an English accent,” he continued. “Introducing this, I would say that it was first done on the stage of the Palladium, in London, in 1902. One night as I left the floor, a long arm stuck out from a table and grabbed me. ‘Beg pardon young man,’ said a proper British voice, ‘there was no Palladium in 1902.’ The speaker was Arthur Treacher.” The quintessential “English butler” and featured player in so many shows and films did know his history. The Palladium, in 1902, was actually Hengler’s Circus. A stream of celebrities dined and drank at Spivy’s Roof. But the major break, oddly, was to come during an S.A.M. show at New York’s BarbizonPlaza Hotel. On the bill, Ade Duval (Adolph Amrein) presented his Big Time act, “Rhapsody in Silk.” He would not appear if any photographer (meaning particularly Irving Desfor), would flash his camera, blinding him, during his routine. Mark Leddy, his agent, beforehand talked tough to Desfor to prevent this. In the middle of Marshall’s Troublewit, immediately preceding Duval, Desfor’s camera flash went off. Jay put down the folded paper, stalked offstage, returned with a camera, leaned over the footlights and flashed a picture of the well known Associated Press cameraman (Desfor) seated in the second row on the aisle. Then he walked back, picked up Troublewit, and continued his routine. Only then did the humor of it rock the audience and Mark Leddy, one of the country’s most powerful booking agents. Thus

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began a relationship that eventually put Jay Marshall on top of the theatrical world. At first it wasn’t easy. Leddy had to lend Jay enough money for the miniscule trip to Providence so that he could play Fay’s Theatre. Once he owed his agent twelve hundred dollars. “A good way to make sure you get work from an agent,” I commented, chuckling. “Mark got me an audition at the Blue Angel in New York” Jay observed. “I played it, Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe and the Village Vanguard for over a year, soon wiping out all my debts. All top spots. Only a short time before, I had been getting five dollars a night. Still, that wasn’t so bad: working men received about thirty-five dollars a week in those days” “How many times did you play Loew’s State in Times Square?” I asked. “I worked the Palace on Broadway beginning about 1949 or 1950, once or twice a year right up to 1957,” he answered, in a typical non-sequitor. “Four acts on the bill.” The Roxy Theatre and Radio City Musical Hall in New York, Golden Gate in San Francisco, Orpheum in Los Angeles—these and other leading houses watched his linking rings, serpentine silk, Chinese sticks, Troublewit—and Lefty. Mark Leddy booked him fifteen times on the foremost weekly television variety show in American history, Ed Sullivan’s one-hour Sunday evening show. Several times our subject substituted for Ed Sullivan as Master of Ceremonies on his personal appearance tours in colleges. Leddy booked him for a month in Australia, a month with Sullivan in Vegas, and opened up the English market for him, starting at the Palladium. He appeared in the last edition of the famed Ziegfeld Follies with Beatrice Lilly and Carol Lawrence. “I wasn’t aware of your work in plays and musicals,” I said. “Oh yes. In the Kurt Weill/Alan Lerner musical ‘Love Life,’ I played the magician who did the sawing and levi for a total of exactly four minutes and fifteen seconds. Then I was finished for the night. Also played in ‘Alive and Kicking.’” For some years Jay Marshall was married to Naomi, the daughter of little, white haired Al Baker, one of the wittiest and most lovable of magicians, long since gone. Two sons, James Baker Marshall (b. November, 1941), and Alexander (Sandy) Abbott Marshall (b. February, 1946), a suc-

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cessful writer, came of that union. On July 26, 1954, he married in New York City, Frances Marie Ahrens Ireland, (b. March, 1910), widow of magic dealer Laurie Ireland, with Mark Leddy as Best Man. It is not reported whether he borrowed the marriage license fee from his agent. Although reportedly retiring for many years, work still comes in. Lefty is to Jay Marshall what Charlie McCarthy was to Edgar Bergen. Magic, Inc., the Marshalls’ busy store, publishing center and mail order firm in Chicago, keeps the family and staff jumping. Without the stability of Frances, many wonder what would have happened to the volatile, mischievous, unpredictable extrovert some call the Peck’s Bad Boy of Magic. The stories of his escapades are legion. Yet, beneath it, is a man with a deep love of the cultural in life: one who has (with wife), published important books of biography and history with little money-earning potential; made himself familiar with the con-

The versatile Jay Marshall. Photograph by John Booth.

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tents, and their location, in the British Museum as few outsiders have done; collected and preserved books, memorabilia and other products of the conjuring craft until the Marshalls’ building groans from the weight and space of it all; opened their facilities to an annual Collectors Weekend that draws noted historians and collectors from great distances. No one can measure the full, abiding worth of Jay and Frances’ legacy to the magic art. “Bob Lund tells me that you and he have an arrangement,” I stated, “whereby whoever dies first leaves his book collection to the other.” “True. Bob is ten years younger than I; but he smokes. So I’ll do alright.” Jay says. “I don’t want to inherit his collection and he doesn’t want to collect mine. Nevertheless, we each know what to do when it happens. Duplicates will be culled and sold, the proceeds going to the widow.” “Most of my books are theatre or show business related,” he continued. “I even have gambling, carnivals, crime—surprisingly, a number of magicians are interested in crime. Gary Bontjes has a marvelous collection in this area. What is the attraction?” “I would guess that such collectors want to discover how the criminal mind operates,” I answered. “What subterfuges do they employ? How do they plot their moves? What psychology helps them succeed? After all, magicians plot a form of deception for entertainment, but without criminal fraud.” On the stage, in action, Jay Marshall has an aura of the English music hall artist. Years ago he somewhat reminded me in appearance of the now almost legendary Jasper Maskelyne, “The War Magician,” whom I knew out in Kenya. His ability to imitate a cultured English accent is formidable. He once innocently created an amusing scene involving my (then) very young daughter, Barbara Anne. It happened in the early 1950s during a magician’s convention show in a Boston hotel ballroom, the night Long Tack Sam was an honored guest. Staring reflectively at Jay Marshall, during a quiet moment in his act, Barbara suddenly stood on her chair, pointed directly at him on stage and shouted in amazement: “That’s my Daddy!” I guess all my friends were amazed as I at this revelation!” POSTSCRIPT: When Bob Lund died October 20, 1995 at home in Marshall, Michigan, Jay decided to leave the Lund Library in place with Elaine Lund instead of collecting it per the agreement the two old friends had made years before, a magnanimous act. A noted collector of magicians’ posters,

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Jay ultimately divided it in half and sold it thusly to Norm Nielsen and David Copperfield. Since being appointed Dean of the S.A.M., in a distinguished line of previous occupants of that position, he has mellowed noticeably and adopted a jacket and tie. The annual collectors’ conventions finally expanded so demandingly that they were forced to leave the Marshalls’ premises and convene in major hotels in the Chicago environs.

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Chapter 23

Machines that “Think” and Perform Like Humans and Birds

AUTOMATA—MECHANICAL FIGURES OR CONTRIVANCES CONSTRUCTED TO ACT as if spontaneously, through inherent or concealed motive power—do not as often involve sound or interaction with a human being, as do ventriloquism or puppetry. They have long intrigued magicians with their ingenuity of construction and the imaginativeness of the inventor. Automata are usually assembled in human or animal form and can duplicate from internal or invisible external power lifelike motions not controlled by outside sources, as are marionettes. The figures are often referred to as androids, or perhaps less accurately, robots. The dream of constructing such mechanical beings to duplicate some of the activities of their living counterparts is millennia old. Archytas of Tarentum, in 400 B.C., allegedly contrived successfully to make a wooden pigeon capable of flying. In the Middle Ages, androids were put together like the fly made of iron by Regiomontanus, which they said could rise from his hand and fly around the room, returning to his outstretched hand. More recently a man-made eagle was said to swoop before the Emperor Maximilian as he entered Nuremberg. Such are the myths.

ROBERT-HOUDIN, J. N. MASKELYNE, AND VON KEMPELEN A truly complicated and puzzling automaton was invented and constructed by France’s most celebrated prestidigitator Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin in 1849. A small loose-jointed acrobat named Diavolo Antonio could per201

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form some of the most incredible swinging feats on a cross bar inches from anyone’s face and bewilder the observer. The difference between a genuine automaton like Diavolo and the incredible but actually spurious automata like Maskelyne’s creations is explained in the captions under the next illustration. To retain the mystery of which “automaton” is which, I have used just the one generic word automaton throughout this book. Reader beware! Across the English Channel in London, John Nevil Maskelyne, another brilliant inventor, craftsman, and performer, spent two years constructing Psycho (1873–1875), a card-playing (whist), 22-inch high figure seated atop a clear glass (see-through) cylinder, sometimes winning his games against (usually) three audience volunteers. At last, had man created a “thinking machine?” Next, he built Zoe, a life-size woman on a pedestal who could draw, in pencil outline, portraits of prominent people of the time. Again, a source of help outside could not be detected. Maskelyne’s third automaton to amaze the public was a seated, trumpet-playing boy called Fanfare. Labial, his fourth and last android in a series

John Nevil Maskelyne stands with four ingenious spurious-automata he invented and built for his Egyptian Hall shows. Left to right: Psycho, a whist player; Fanfare, played the cornet; J.N.M.; Labial, blowing a tuba; and Zoe, sketching prominent public figures. All amazed and baffled audiences. A true automaton operates independently of human control once its mechanism is set in action. A spurious automaton is actually secretly controlled by a human while in operation.

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that combined mystery, wonder and high mechanical skills, was a dressed figure blowing a euphonium (baritone tuba). All four of his automata played daily for differing periods in the Egyptian Hall shows and were strong attractions. Psycho gave about 4000 performances. As a sort of climax, show-wise, Fanfare and Labial (who even possessed mechanical lip action) and Maskelyne himself, as a trio, played Sim Reeves’ song, “The Death of Nelson,” on the stage. The 18th and 19th centuries were a rich time for the creation and building of lifelike animals, birds and humans, in their appearance, movements and even uttered sounds. Singing canaries were favorites. The master builder of them was Bontem, who placed three such birds, singing simultaneously, in a cage. The most sensationally and widely acclaimed automaton of record was invented, constructed and exhibited by a Hungarian nobleman and master mechanician, Baron Wolfgang Von Kempelen, attached to the court of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. It was a turbaned Turkish chess player, seated behind a squarish cabinet or chest on which rested a chessboard. Inside the cabinet, almost seeming to fill it, were the gears, wheels and clockwork that observers were told motivated the Turk’s head and arm as he

On December 20, 1815, The Illustrated London News ran this artist’s sketch of the chess playing spurious automaton invented, built and displayed by Von Kempelen, a sensation in its early period.

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played chess against celebrities and volunteer chess experts wherever he traveled. Among those who tried to best the mechanical marvel were Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin and Edgar Allan Poe. All were defeated. Books were written and articles published by analysts to try and explain how this man-made machine could think and reason well enough to overwhelm chess masters. Even the shrewd Henri Decremps, conjuring scholar, attorney and student of physics, attempted to unravel it. An occasional unexpected, genuine loss only increased public fascination with a “machine” with unforeseen human shortcomings. Von Kempelen’s estate sold the Turk automaton to Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who exhibited it in Europe and then brought it to the United States. The success of this automaton depended more than was realized upon the secret operator hidden inside the cabinet of pseudo machinery being a superb chess player. When an inferior player was employed—and too many games were lost—interest in the Turk waned and receipts fell. The method and construction of the cabinet to enable the operator/ player inside to move secretly from side to side as panels (doors) were opened and closed, without revealing him, were quite complicated. Indeed, essentially it was a forerunner of illusion methods later devised by the Selbits, Harbins and Steinmeyers for future big apparatus illusions, particularly of a box or cabinet nature. The last two or three owners of the oncebewildering chess games equipment, lost all interest in the cabinet once they knew its secrets. It finally was given to the Chinese Museum in Philadelphia where it was consumed in a fire some years afterward that enveloped the institution in 1854. In the view of collector Bill McIlhany, the ultimate achievement he has seen are three life-size automata in Neuchätel, Switzerland of JaquetDroz (18th century) performing hair-raisingly complicated tasks. He tells me that “two male children are seated at desks, one writing on a sheet of paper, the other drawing perfectly a picture of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette who were married in 1770, thus giving an approximate date for the work’s creation. A young girl harpsichordist, life size, actually fingers as she plays, her eyes following her hands’ movements, her chest rising and falling with her breathing.” I asked what motivates these automata. “A windup spring mechanism is responsible,” he answers. “They are very complex. The one android can execute five different drawings.”

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Michel Bertrand in the village of Bulle, Switzerland will construct a classic automaton, on order (c. 1995), for about $15,000, which is half what an original would cost. His seamstress wife sews clothes for them that fit perfectly. Several American collectors of magicana have small numbers of automata. Alan Wakeling, in his retirement, has been building these intricate devices. In England, Jon Robertson presides over a Museum of Automata in the city of York which displays creations of the distinguished Bontem.

AMERICA’S FIRST AUTOMATA MUSEUM: THE PLANS If European developers can attract $45 million U.S. dollars, the United States may have its first automata museum on the Long Beach, California waterfront promenade within a quarter mile of the majestic British liner Queen Mary. Tentatively named Robotis, the 60,000 square-foot museum would contain, on two floors, a private collection of Swiss, French and Belgian automata spanning three centuries. About a dozen similar museums already exist in Asia and Europe. Swiss banker and gemologist Jean-Francois Moyersoen owns the $15 million dollar collection from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. His remuneration would be royalties from the museum’s attendance revenues. An involved official, Alain Sarfatti, optimistically predicts the museum would attract 500,000 visitors in its first year, rising eventually to a million a year. No more than 70 pieces would be on view at any one time, in a revolving exhibit, to keep it fresh. Education would be a large component of Robotis, with free tickets to area schools. A demonstration area run by a practicing automata artist and a workshop offering introductions to craftsmanship for visiting children are envisioned. The total proposal has come from French and Swiss investors who are also planning to build a Hotel D’Orsay one block north of the museum. With nothing concrete about the projects having been mooted about for eight months, I picked up my phone and asked the Development Officer for Long Beach if they were dead. He replied that final contractual details were almost completed for the hotel. If the D’Orsay should prosper then Robitis would be assured. The two were linked. Enthusiasm prevailed.

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The popular appeal of automata differs from that of ventriloquism and puppetry. The robot attracts more on an intellectual basis, raising analytical questions of a mechanical nature. Like magic, there is mystery in the “how does it work?” And the wonder of its achievement by a human “engineer.” Yet its actions may seldom vary, mechanically repeating themselves, although still an object of admiration. Maskelyne’s androids were far-out exceptions with amazing capabilities. Illustrating the above characteristics of automata, beneficial and limiting, is “Balsamo, the Living Skull,” the creation early in the 20th century of a Viennese-born electrical engineer and magician, Joseph P. Freud, aka Joseffy. A realistic human skull, enameled in a cream color with brown shadows, is made of metal so that the teeth in the movable jaw will click loudly, two for “no” and three times for “yes,” in answer to a routine’s questions. Isolated on a glass sheet held by two spectators, with no outside connections, the skull turns in various directions, pauses when being addressed, and clicks appropriate, often humorous responses to comments, all before the age of radio and computers. The script for it is cleverly conceived and set, difficult to memorize, and limited to seven minutes. The brilliant mechanism inside that skull is as heavy as a bowling ball, an intricate masterpiece of invention. It required a restorative genius, John Gaughan, to figure out its mechanism, as he had previously done with Diavolo, the acrobat, Hooker’s Rising Cards, and other complex, neglected illusions and equipment. He brought them back to life, brain dazzlers all. Magicians even more than laymen, appreciate the mental giants behind these automata. Their effect is often best experienced close up. Puppetry and ventriloquism can generate emotional reactions of laughter, pathos and sympathy in an audience, varying with the occasion and the mental agility of the artist. There is little mystery here although skill in speaking without lip movement detection also arouses some astonishment. The performer can make a puppet or figure become alive, a lovable object seemingly capable of speaking and thinking, which most androids cannot metamorphose into becoming. Most automata lack soul. All three categories have their own unique functions and may boast their own devotees in the conjuring domain. No such entity exists as a perpetual motion machine. Similarly, it is impossible to build a true automaton. To keep such mechanisms running, there must be some regularly applied human intervention. The less con-

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trol from outside, the closer the ideal goal is reached for an impossible achievement. That would become a true endless motion or self-working machine, real magic. What we are really creating is a pseudo or counterfeit automaton. The more undetectable the form and action of the power source that generates a simulation of self-operation, the greater the appearance of possessing a genuine automaton.

Called the most complex mechanism ever created for magic illusion is Joseffy’s “Balsamo, The Living Skull.” Formed of hammered copper, the skull encloses a clockwork of four interactive motors with an encoded sevenminute routine of pauses and clicks of the jaws. Thus performer and Balsamo “converse” as one feeds comments to the other. Photo courtesy of John Gaughan, its current owner and restorer, standing beside his automaton. Joseffy, the original inventor and craftsman, looms above.

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The acrobatic Diavolo Antonio required only to be wound up. Without any further human help, the automaton went through its complex routine with perfection. But then it stopped. On the other hand, in company with other highly refined counterfeit automata, card-playing Psycho’s every move was being directed without detection during the entire act. Its function actually was entertainment, pretending to be an exhibit of a scientific breakthrough, not a toy, thus making it a new form of magic trick. It was housed appropriately in London’s Egyptian Hall. From a simple basic part of ventriloquism with dolls, a glove or sock, humankind has slowly widened its efforts to endow with lifelike characteristics increasingly complex automata. Constructed to resemble living animals and persons they are capable of duplicating some of their simpler abilities. All of this evolved for entertainment purposes before the age of computers and electronics had arrived with its miraculous benefits. Science and magic sometimes appear to be in a race with each other. Where will it all end? Nostradamus, where art thou?

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Chapter 24

Where, When and How the Reports Began

IN THE BIBLIOTHÉQUE NATIONALE, PARIS, RESTS A 640-YEAR-OLD DICTATED manuscript, one of the earliest European eyewitness accounts of magic’s best known, but most controversial, illusion. It requires a murder in order to be fully successful. But then the victim must be brought back to life. Omitting the gory climax, several 20th century performers have staged it; after one season they usually dropped it, a theatrical disappointment. Is it cursed? I am referring to the mercurial Indian Rope Trick. Its pedigree even precedes Ibn Batouta’s 13th century account of it. An Indian philosopher named Shankaracharyya, in his 9th century commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad (Sutra 17), mentions “the magician, the mayavin, who throws a cord up into the air and, armed, climbs up it, beyond the range of sight, to enter into battle and be dismembered; after his bodily parts have fallen to the ground, he is seen to rise up again and there is no concern over thinking of the reality of the magic trick that has been performed.” Only about 39 years before Ibn Batouta’s rope trick sightings, the Venetian traveler-trader, Marco Polo, in 1289, witnessed a performance in Kublai Khan’s Peking palace courtyard. We have few details, however. These were written down by dictation in prison and are in one version of his book. The later Parisian document is one of conjuring’s sacred texts. As the memoirs of Ibn Batouta (meaning “the traveler”), an actual historical figure, it sets down 29 years of a trip covering 75,000 miles—three times Marco Polo’s wanderings—from Tangier, Morocco to farthest China, starting June 13, 1325. Our interest lies in his documenting a Chinese magician’s performance at a banquet hosted by a Khan in his summer palace at Hangzhou. 211

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It depicts the general outline of a feat that has captured the world’s imagination and tested its credibility across the centuries since. The entertainer flung high into the air a wooden ball to which was attached a strip of countless leather thongs, fastened end to end. The sphere soared upward, finally becoming invisible in the clouds. The magician’s diminutive assistant then climbed up the leather strip, hand over hand, until he, too, disappeared into the sky. After the boy ignored three times the order to come back down, the conjurer seized a knife and angrily went up after him. A struggle ensued in the heavens, heard but unseen by those below. Physical parts of the lad began to rain down: a head, arms, a leg, the torso. The magician slid back down the strip, assembled the lad’s body parts on the ground, and brought life back to the body by a strategic kick. Sheik Abu Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Abdallah Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ibrahim al-Lawati, Batouta’s own name, was overcome by the sight. To comfort him, the Kazi Afkharuddin, sitting by him, remarked: “Tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down, neither marring nor mending; tis all hocus pocus.”

Ibn Batouta allegedly saw the Indian Rope Trick and restarted the legend flowing. Booth photographed this imaginative ceramic art panel in the dining room of the M.V. Ibn Batouta, while sailing from Spain to Tangier, the original home of “The Traveler.”

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And so in that year (c. 1328), a trick solution based on the hypnosis of an audience was spoken. This recurring explanation, even in modern times, unfortunately is repudiated by “experts” as unrealizable in group situations. Variations of this scenario pop up in almost every habitable part of our globe. Sometimes, instead of a rope, it is a thread, a chain, a growing plant, or leather thongs linked together. Usually a boy assistant ascends the heaven-reaching strand, battles the magician himself who has come up with a knife to force him back down to the ground. The boy’s body parts come thumping to the earth, horrifying spectators. Still carrying the now-bloody knife, the jaduwallah slides back down the rope, probably to no applause at this point. Legends end with conflicting events; the boy’s parts are dumped into a woven basket and disappear or, fully restored, he emerges from the basket or comes running back from the edge of the crowd. Sometimes his remains are covered with a cloth, kicked, and up he jumps in one piece. Are we discussing an obsolete fairy tale out of a distant, superstitious past? Hardly. Across the 19th and 20th centuries, so-called eyewitness reports and more-or-less serious searches have kept alive the reality or image of this haunting drama. The Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook, in 1875, issued a proclamation posted throughout that country, offering the sum of £10,000 to any performer who would present the miracle before the Prince of Wales. It would constitute a memorable point of a celebration in honor of the future King Edward VII’s forthcoming visit to India. No one ventured to claim this small fortune. The Golden Age of fascination with the possible existence of the Rope Trick and skeptical reaction to it was probably 1930 to 1935. I attribute it to the widely-publicized activities of the Occult Committee of The Magic Circle in London at that time. A 500 guinea reward backed up its expressed disbelief, was augmented by a later 10,000 rupee amount from the Times of London for any successful performance. Neither one has ever had to write a check in connection with this matter. Feeling that the time had arrived when a definitive position ought to be reached and advertised, the Magic Circle convened a well-attended meeting to settle the question of the Rope Trick’s actual status as fact or fiction. Thus, on April 30, 1934, in Marlyebone, a section of London, at the Oxford House Theater, the Magic Circle’s president, Lord Ampthill,

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former Governor of Madras and acting Viceroy of India, denied ever seeing it. Another former viceroy, Lord Halifax, and the Bishop of Calcutta echoed this experience—or lack of it—in letters. Scientists, journalists, politicians, magicians and others listened to testimony or spoke. Finally, Lieut. Colonel R. H. Elliot, world famous eye surgeon, long-time medical officer in India and Chairman of the Magic Circle’s Occult Committee, summed up the findings: not proven. At last, like a bombshell, an English magician professionally named Karachi (Arthur Claud Darby) of Plymouth, assisted by Kyder, his 11-year-

English magician Karachi and son Kyder in one of the most realistic Indian Rope Trick photographs ever taken. By sitting down, the magician makes the rope appear to have risen higher than it has. Photo from the Daily Herald, December 14, 1934.

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old barefooted son, seemed to duplicate part of the Indian Rope Trick. It happened in a large, open field, selected by others, at the village of Weathampstead, on a cold, drizzly and snowy January 7, 1935. Observers included representatives of the BBC; University College, Aberystwyth, Wales; British Adult Education; Gaumont-British Films; and others. The core effect: an eight-foot length of loosely woven rope, two inches in diameter, was passed for examination. Handed back to Karachi, seated cross-legged on a carpet in the field, he put it under a star-spangled velvet cloth. It immediately reappeared, pushed up from below in jerky movements until eight feet of rigid rope (now tightly woven, a witness noted) rested vertically in the air. On command, young Kyder shinnied agilely to the top and rested there for photographs before sliding back down. The Listener (London, January 16, 1935) published psychic researcher Harry Price’s report with photographs. Without revealing Karachi’s method, Price stated that any intelligent person within a 50-yard radius recognized that a “certain method” was used to create the illusion. This writer doesn’t need to point out the palpably switched rope and the giveaway jerky movements as a tricked rope apparently was pulled up from a pit underneath the carpet—which the magician’s voluminous red and yellow robes partly concealed. Nevertheless, for the ingenious construction of the mechanism within the rope and the base strong enough to hold upright the rope and the weight of the lad climbing it, no one has suggested an engineering design. Railway bookstalls throughout India used to sell for two rupees a 162page, soft-cover book titled The Indian Rope Trick. Dedicated to H. H. Maharajah Ramanuj Saran Singh Deo., C.B.E., of Surguja State, and authored by a government minister of that state, Rai Sahib H. L. Varma, it was published in 1942 under the auspices of The Society of Indian Magicians, Bombay. I picked up my copy in the railway station at Benares (Varanasi) in 1948. Loaded with anecdotal evidence in the form of scores of dated newspaper accounts, largely between 1934 and 1936, in mainline Indian newspapers, they are both for and against the reality of the drama. Interlaced here and there are accounts of hearings and analyses by members of London’s Magic Circle, a few government officials and British leaders working in India in the early part of the 20th century. Throughout the 1930s and later, reports of performances by both Indian jaduwallahs (street magicians) and western professional magicians hit

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the newspapers. We can readily dispose of the publicity-seeking, romanticized searches, sightings or offers to duplicate the feat of Horace Goldin, Howard Thurston, William Von Arrensdorff (Voltaire), Joseph Dunninger and others. P.C. Sorcar (Sr.) claimed to have performed it on the pavement in front of the Statesman House, Calcutta, and cited, in support, a full page about it in Amrita Bazar Patrika; the page of photographs in the monthly magazine Modern Review, January 1937, and in the illustrated weekly magazine Orient, April 23, 1944. I can vouch for Sorcar’s dominant status as an illusionist in India. In the early fall of 1948, as he was escorting me to my train in Calcutta’s Howrah Station, he bought three national magazines from a vendor for me to read on my journey north to Cooch Behar. After rolling out of the teeming metropolis, I opened them and found an article in each one by or about my then 35-year-old-friend. Dr. Alexander Cannon, a British Psychiatrist, conjurian and world-traveled scholar, wrote that he would do it “providing you (the Magic Circle) are willing to lay down enough money to bring over a shipload of special

India’s foremost illusionist P.C. Sorcar (Sr.) greets John Booth in Calcutta where, starting his Rope miracle search, he played a number of professional magic engagements in 1948. Bourne & Shepherd photograph, Calcutta.

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sand to heat up the Albert Hall (a huge London institution) to tropical temperature, and to provide my own tropical lighting—and also to place with a bank £50,000 (at that time about $250,000) to be handed over to me as soon as I have produced the phenomenon . . .” Imposing conditions like that ensured that he would not have to prove his boast. Joe Dunninger, the American magician, wasn’t quite so lucky, although he laid down no restrictions. Ridiculing Cannon’s terms, he offered to present the feat in New York City’s famous Madison Square Garden for $50. Reacting immediately, the (U.S.) Sunday News reported on January 21, 1935, that when it asked Dunninger to perform the trick in its offices or on the roof of the News Building, “he declined with a laugh. Instead he offered to give $10,000 to anybody who could do that trick on the roof or even in the open.” He said that there are 35 different methods of creating the illusion, many impractical, but he had demonstrated the trick “years ago” when he was in vaudeville. Oh! Leading illusionists have recognized and exploited the box office power and draw of the plot, advertising its presence in their shows. Thurston and Selbit spent large amounts of money and two or three years before they created their individual methods. Yet, preceding them, David Devant, on the stage of London’s St. George’s Hall, November 11, 1907, had launched his presentation, followed by Servais Le Roy in 1914, and Horace Goldin in 1917, among others. The conjuring profession, of all the arts, should be the first to know correctly the contents of the Indian Rope Trick. It is a series of illusionary happenings: to imitate a small section of it is a spurious basis for claiming to duplicate it. No illusionist has ever shown more than a small portion of it, one of the reasons it so often falls somewhat flat. A rope that rises, then is climbed by a boy who vanishes at the top may be, hopefully, superbly original. But it is not the legendary Rope Trick. Pallid and painful to audiences have been these so-called replications. Even the best efforts with wires, black art, bamboo wrapped in “rope,” lighting lantern slides, and experimental stage craft, couldn’t excite audiences. But, like the Vanishing Elephant illusion, it attracted crowds for one reason: great in advertising, a letdown on stage. Why? Where was the climax? A fairly short rope rose and remained still; a boy climbed up, but the top vanish was either poor or non-existent.

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The rope fell down. Finish. The elements that made the Indian Rope Trick legend so sensational were missing: a rope wiggling up into the sky, the jaduwallah himself climbing up, armed with a knife; the unseen but noisy conflict and “murder”; the boy’s limbs dropping from the sky; and his final resurrection in front of the audience, a happy ending to a brilliant dramatic sketch. Perhaps it is impossible for a great magician anywhere to bring reality to such a scenario on a theater stage—or outdoors.

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Chapter 25

My Experiences in India and Tibet Searching for a Rope Miracle

THIS STORY HAD HAUNTED MY MIND SINCE BOYHOOD. I GATHERED PRINTED accounts of alleged witnesses. I sought out people of integrity who had been to India. After his address to the Chicago Adventurers Club, around 1945, I asked Sir Ramaswami Srinivarsa Sarma, editor of The Calcutta Whip, his opinion of India’s “renowned” Rope Trick. “I never heard of the trick until I reached America,” he answered. “Someone could make a fortune if he could perform that trick, couldn’t he?” The enigma of the Indian Rope drama had seized my imagination during high school and college years (1926–1934), possibly because world interest in it had been galvanized by the publicized activities of the Magic Circle’s Occult Committee in London. A number of fortuitous connections enhanced my opportunity to move closer in becoming an actual investigator on the spot in Asia. A member of my first settled church, in Evanston, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), to my amazement, proved to be Dr. William Montgomery McGovern, author of the 1924 classic To Lhasa in Disguise. Now a distinguished professor at Northwestern University nearby, he had startled the world—and the Dalai Lama—by penetrating the forbidden boundaries of Tibet disguised as a low-caste porter walking with a caravan: a remarkable feat. He re-stimulated my yearning, during our talks, to get inside the sealed “roof of the world” in central Asia. However he was not able, personally, to help me get permission—for obvious reasons. In 1948, I resigned my six-year pastorate for a sabbatical year in Asia. It combined three of my major interests: I was designated a special corre219

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spondent in Asia for the Chicago Sun-Times, a feature writer for The Christian Register (the then title of our denomination’s monthly magazine), and I made it thirdly, a world tour as a professional magician for private, diplomatic, and club functions. Think of the opportunities and contacts in each area to help the others. Thus it happened across many months in circling the globe. Live your dreams! After keeping my typewriter clacking steadily and my over-size carrying case of conjuring equipment and formal clothes busy in Japan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, I flew into Calcutta. My jaduwallah challenges began there. As I have written in explanation before: “The search (for the Indian Rope Trick) was undertaken as a quietly exciting adventure. It was a psychological study of human beings embracing either a conviction or a disavowal of what seemed to me nothing more than an indelible legend. In order to secure first hand, hopefully fresh statements and ingredients for my reflections, word must get out widely, coupled with enticements (financial) to respond.” My program was launched with a two-column-wide, six-inches-deep advertisement in Calcutta’s Star of India newspaper offering 25,000 rupees (about $8,000 in 1948) for a single performance of the Rope Trick. It must be accomplished in accordance with the customary, widely reported accounts of it. I wanted the real thing; my wording protected me. To my pleasure, the Bengal government radio broadcast several times, during one day, news of the “visitor’s” offer. American Embassy personnel in New Delhi were both amused and agog. Several local organizations booked me for shows and talks. It was a good start! Even alleged witnesses didn’t venture in my direction to tell their stories; accounts of friends or relatives having the experience didn’t occur. As I moved slowly up through Benares, Agra, and Delhi, an occasional journalist showed interest. Fortunately, this side project did not embarrassingly intrude itself into my interviews with Prime Minister Pandit Nehru, Indian Congress Party Chairman Dr. Sitaramayya, or Lord Mountbatten’s successor as Governor General of India, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari in New Delhi. “A fool’s errand,” they probably would have remarked if they had lifted their heads for a moment from affairs of state smothering them. To reach villages less conspicuously, I occasionally peddled my way on rented bicycles. English was spoken rather widely. I talked with village leaders, city teachers, clergy, professors, anyone potentially helpful, but

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Above: reduced reproduction of John Booth’s original advertisement seeking a performance of the Indian Rope Trick. Below: Investigating reports of sightings in villages caused less suspicion and resistance when made on a bicycle.

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never long enough to waste their time, as some may have thought was my own problem. In rural areas, many betrayed ignorance of the legend, especially up in Cooch Behar where my week as palace guest of the Maharajah revealed India in a softer, more traditional glow. When I departed, the palace chauffeur drove me up to Darjeeling. Situated on a 6,000 foot Himalayan ridge, it faces the world’s third highest mountain, Kanchenjunga, and is within sight of Everest’s white tip. My final chance to secure a coveted permit to enter Tibet met with success here, partly due, politically, to the Canadian years in my background. Busy days followed: an imposed physical examination, hiring four Sherpa porters, laying in our food for the entire time away, signing insurance agreements covering my men for deaths or bodily injuries on the trails, and so on. Then, off we trudged to a land (then: 1948) without roads or wheeled vehicles, living relatively unchanged as it had for a thousand years. Within three years, China was to re-conquer its former military province. Revolutionary policies began to change the country. But I was not entering that modernized country.

Left: Devadas Gandhi, top editor of India’s national newspaper The Hindustan Times and son of Mahatma Gandhi; his wife, daughter of India’s first (Indian) governor-general; their son. Right: Pandit Nehru, India’s first and founding prime minister. Photographs by John Booth following interviews.

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Tibet is often spoken about as the land of wonders where lamas float across canyons, and mystics breathe life back into the dead, create phantoms as solid as reality by mental concentration, and psychically divine events occurring in faraway places. A courageous French woman explorer, Alexandra David-Neel, was probably foremost in creating this reputation for the remote country locked in by the glamour and terrors of inner Asia’s loftiest peaks. For these reasons, it is especially intriguing to knowledgeable magicians, let alone adventuresome travelers. Like Timbuktu, it had been a particular target of explorers. After crossing the entire state of Sikkim, we spent days slowly circling— without recognizing it—huge Kanchenjunga and climbing until we reached Lake Changgu. This was our last campsite before penetrating the border at Nathu la (15,000 feet), thence down into the Chumbi Valley. An Abominable Snow Man (yeti) is said to dwell on the shores of the lake. About 3 a.m. I was awakened in an otherwise empty Dak Bungalow. A most hideously appearing “being” was outside trying to lever open a window in the moonlight.

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By rhythmically pounding, unseen, a foot on the floor, and yowling ridiculously, I caused the puzzled, superstitious intruder to move backward and then flee. My purpose was to convince it that a demon was manifesting itself inside the dark and otherwise silent structure. Get out! The next morning my superstitious porters crowded around, declared it was the Abominable Snow Man and, worried, hoisted their loads and left doublequick. To me, it was probably a Tibetan bandit. The region was associated with them. Eventually, we reached Phari Dzong, my destination, although a leg injury required my riding a pony part way. Explorers have termed Phari the “dirtiest city in the world,” three miles above sea level. Yet overlooking it is one of the planet’s most glorious mountains, Chomo Lhari. Shaped

Dustjacket painting of Booth riding past the nearly 24,000 foot sacred peak of Tibet, Chomo Lhari. This was the primary Travel Book of the Month Club selection when published.

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like a pure white mastodon’s tooth, it soars in solitary splendor 23,930 feet, the holy mountain of Tibet. We were all sensitized for some evidence of lama power, although India’s Rope Trick is apparently not included in Tibetan lore. Through my guide, interpreter and head Sherpa, Ang Bao, I asked leading questions of the High Lamas of three lamaseries en route. They bore no fruit. Only vacant stares froze on faces. We tramped out to two of the three monasteries on the Phari plain. In the first one, a low, long rectangular building with huge prayer wheels on the roof rotating almost ceaselessly in the eternal winds, resided a leading scholar, the High Lama. Seated cross-legged on a platform in his dark maroon robes, he denied any knowledge of the rope trick. More importantly, he had never heard the legend that Jesus (Issa), from distant Palestine, had spent the unknown, missing years of his life in Tibet. This was actually my primary interest in the historical aspects of the territory. A claim tying the Hemis monastery in Ladakh to this legend was later blown apart. Hiking on toward Tang la—“la” means a “pass” through hills or mountains—Ang Bao (my sirdar, lead Sherpa and interpreter) and I visited one

’

Showing the effects of his grueling trek through the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountains, Booth is received by the High Lama of a Phari Dzong temple. The American was pursuing two legends: The Indian Rope Trick and the question whether Jesus of Nazareth spent the unknown years of his life studying in Tibet.

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other monastery that day. No information or recognition from its chief lama again greeted my description of the two legends. On our way back to Phari Dzong, at sunset, bent against an icy wind, a phenomenon took place worthy of the most miraculous Tibetan experiences of record. We had just paused to photograph a yak herdsman’s skin tent, with holy Chomo Lhari rising majestically behind it against a darkening sky, when it happened. Suddenly a crystal-clear note like a celestial chime, seemed to emerge from high up on the almost vertical flanks of the white mountain. We stopped, listening. Three seconds later, the note was repeated, almost chillingly beautiful, filling the plain softly. No humans lived around the base to account for them. Nine notes quivered, at intervals, in the freezing air. I have not encountered such musical sounds since. The great peak had become a cosmic chime. Was this Tibetan mysticism at work? This was real: it had happened. It was no figment of an expectant imagination or result of an altitude-caused hallucination. For several hours afterward, I pondered the meaning and cause of such a phenomenon in so barren a setting, save for that incredible mountain towering over us. The only solution acceptable to my rational instincts must lie in the unknown presence to me of a hidden monastery somewhere among the

John Booth with lamas on steps of Tibetan temple. Two years later Chinese troops invaded and seized the country, closing many monasteries.

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upheaved base valleys of Chomo Lhari. As the Swiss well know, short bursts of sound from long horns, facing correctly in their valleys, can be bounced back and outward from other rock walls, like echoes. Gongs, bells and horns are part of Tibetan temple rituals. Although these Chomo Lhari chimes were unlike anything to which I had ever been exposed, I must conclude that they had been sound-bounced from an unseen temple. Ang Bao, who was equally enchanted, and I must have been marching across that windswept plain at precisely a point where the ethereal music could be heard. Summing up: the year 1948 yielded no acceptable evidence either in India or Tibet that the Indian Rope Trick had ever been performed there. Science had not been threatened in its basic theories about gravity or civilization in usages by its entertainers, mystics or holy men. My search for a rendition of the full Indian Rope Trick did not terminate in 1948. Nine years later, again during a sabbatical year, but in a different capacity this time, I returned to the colorful subcontinent. In the process of shooting two 80-minute adventure documentaries, The Glory of India and Golden Kingdoms of the Orient, for both world television and my personal appearance platform lectures, my quest for elusive rope roguery was facilitated in fresh ways. We carried our cameras into corners of Pakistan, Kashmir and Nepal, as well as India, new to me. Advertisements were placed in local dialect newspapers, more likely than the 1948 emphasis on the English language press, to reach jaduwallahs. To my inestimable pleasure, two weeks after a two-column by four-inch ad appeared on March 21, 1957, in New Delhi’s Daily Milap, a handsome letterhead arrived bearing a message from the Arabian Magic Corporation India in Lyndhurst West, Simla. Curiously, I was staying at the Marina Hotel in Connaught Circus, just a few rooms away from that occupied in 1948 by Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin just prior to the killing. S. S. Luther, Secretary of the A.M.C.I., wrote that the organization’s Director, Professor Batuta—The Wizard of the East, “has already undergone a chilla to perform this act.” He would complete the course in another six months; they were confident that he could then perform the act as I desired, and for which my ad offered 25,000 rupees. Could I wait?42 I gathered that chilla is some form of yoga process or achievement which enables one to self-levitate. Doug Henning had been apparently striving 42. This letter is reproduced in my book Wonders of Magic, p. 227.

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to master this gift before his untimely death. Even if floating upward is possible, the rope routine has other equally remarkable difficulties to overcome. Sweating illusionists can say “Amen” to that. My friend in India’s capital, Jehangir Busla, was convinced that the rope mystery had once been regularly performed. But the secret of yoga selfdiscipline that made it possible has long since been lost. Perhaps Professor Batuta had rediscovered it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t linger in India another six months just to savor the honor of possibly giving away 25,000 rupees. So Mr. Busla gladly agreed to investigate the situation for me on a business trip to Simla in about six months. At last, after 18 months had passed, Mr. Busla’s overdue letter arrived in the U.S.A., climaxing the only lead I have ever received. The key paragraph follows: I have not been able to contact the Simla fellow. If my information is correct, he did succeed in the Rope Trick. He climbed up and since the rope was very long he went so high that he has not been able to come back.

Resuming his search in 1957, the author advertised in the native dialect papers of India. This Daily Milap advertisement in New Delhi brought a promise to perform the feat “in six months.” What did happen?

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That was certainly a most opportunistic alibi given for not fulfilling a promise to perform this trick! But I was pleased to feel that I had now ended my search in India on a note that was both sad and humorous. That China rather than India does not boast ownership of the rope extravaganza may raise some bushy eyebrows. After all, the illustrious Venetian traveler-tradesman Marco Polo described in his dictated book, with few details, a performance he reputedly sat through, in 1289, as a guest in the Peking (Beijing) palace of Kublai Khan. In 1948, I spent some time in China reporting for the Chicago Sun Times and had performed magic at quasi-diplomatic functions in Shanghai, Nanking and Peiping (now Beijing). But I had not visited Hangzhou and knew only that it had been probably the world’s largest city in Polo and Batouta’s time. Ever the optimist, in the spring of 1996, I made an extensive return visit, with my daughter, to the celestial kingdom, inspired by a Rope Trick article that I had written that had just been published. Could I find and photograph the site in Hangzhou on which had stood that palace where the historic show for Ibn Batouta had occurred? I found a capacious city of commerce enclosing one of the most beautiful lakes—West Lake—in the known world. Pavilions, parks and lovely low hills surround it. We sailed around it in a small boat. No wonder Marco Polo and Batouta had come here. But no one could identify where the Khan’s summer palace had stood. Kublai Khan himself had conquered the great city and “treated it like a trophy” in 1276. After centuries of being respectfully spared depredations, nine-tenths of the city and its palaces and temples were demonically razed to the ground during the Taiping rebellion of 1861. No clues remained. Nevertheless, I still felt like a pilgrim, arriving in a magically holy land and lake. Such is one of the side effects the venerable legend has had upon this poor romantic. The general location of Kublai Khan’s fantastic palace in Peking (Beijing) is known. Its grounds encompassed today’s Beihai Park with its small lake just beyond the high wall of The Forbidden City. Not in its banquet hall for 6,000 people but in the courtyard, Marco Polo asserted that he saw gravity defied and a dead man restored to life. India’s grasp of the Rope Trick’s title is based not only partly upon the ninth century Mandukya Upanishad reference, but also to the performance of it described by the Moghul Emperor Jehangir in his memoirs, Dwazda-

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Shaha-Jehangiri (Persian). Reigning from 1605 to 1627, he once invited seven Bengali wizards to present a long show in his Delhi palace courtyard, capped with a 50-cubit-long chain being tossed upward. Hanging vertically, five animals ran up it—a dog, hog, panther, lion and tiger—and disappeared at the top. Would an emperor lie? Or were all smoking hashish? Across a lifetime, I have been researching the history of this simple one-act drama allegedly seen anywhere from a dusty Indian village street to the courtyard of a powerful Chinese khan in perhaps the world’s greatest city. One wades knee-deep through imaginative and often erroneous information, sometimes from surprising sources. Before me is a personal letter dated July 1945 from the respected C.A. George Newmann, the “Original No-Contact Mind Reader” as his letterhead reads. Because he was noted for his substantial book collection, I had written him for information, as he knew it, on the origins of the rope stories. His no-nonsense response: The first published account of the trick can be found in The Voiage and Travelle of Sir John de Maundeville Kt., of which I have the rare first edition . . . .That Sir John was an arrant liar the contents of this book clearly reveal—at any rate he is responsible for the fable which has survived with many variations unto this day. It is an interesting tome and in my opinion rivals the fabled travels of the better known Baron Munchausen. Later accounts have all been founded on the original tale by de Maundeville.

Aware of the prior ninth century Indian description of such a happening, I devoted some effort to examining the verdicts of concerned scholars on Maundeville’s [sic] famous book. Its influence on thinking in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was considerable. It seems that Sir John Mandeville claimed English birth, and a knighthood, but was a 14th century physician known as Johains a la Barbe or Jehan Bourgogne, living in Liége. In addition to his own travels, he had borrowed and compiled information, attributing it to himself, imaginatively adapted from “reliable” geographical and social recordings of other prominent travelers in his age. Between 1357 and 1371, they were “published”—it was just before Gutenberg—in French. Hence Newmann’s first edition would spell the author’s name de Maundeville. Marco Polo had enjoyed his own Rope Trick experience 68 years before Mandeville’s compilation was first issued. It is possible, even likely, that Sir John copped the myth from this predecessor.

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In speed-reading a 1983 English language edition of Mandeville’s Travels, emphasizing the sections on Peking and Hangchow (Hangzhou), I failed to come across any mention of the fable. Why? I learned that 300 versions of the manuscripts survive in at least five languages. Divided into two main groups, Continental and Insular, some material in one does not appear in the other. His writing was most probably more responsible than any other source for the rapid spread of the illusion’s reputation throughout Europe. Travels was circulating, by 1500, across the continent in assorted versions. Hoping to reach China, Columbus had studied Mandeville in preparation for his first voyage. Leonardo da Vinci chose Mandeville’s records as his sole fount of Asiatic geographical knowledge. Professor C. W. R. D. Moseley, a medieval studies scholar who taught at Cambridge in England for many years, acknowledges that much of the account is imaginative or derivative. But, he adds, in the light of latest studies there is “strong evidence of genuineness” in Mandeville’s own travels and observations, i.e., now proven true. He fails to offer us any of this “evidence.”

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Chapter 26

Illusionists Who Have Attempted The Great Indian Rope Trick

IF THERE IS NO SUCH TRICK, ITS PLOT IS STILL TOO GOOD TO ABANDON. AND SO a number of our leading British and American stage artists, not to mention film producers and others, have tried to fulfill the dream. The first brave soul in recorded magic history to attempt the “impossible” on a theater stage was apparently Britain’s master magician David Devant. As part of a drama called The Magical Master, involving several clever and original tricks, he first performed The Indian Rope Trick at St. George’s Hall in London on November 11, 1907. Invented by Henry Bate of Maskelyne and Devant’s staff, Devant wrote the scenario, produced the drama and starred in it. Devant started by saying he will only perform the most important parts of the Indian Rope Trick as the others are impossible, like throwing up the rope. He and his butler unpack an Indian wicker case containing the dismembered limbs and head of a man, each piece wrapped in cloth. Written instructions for the trick are in the case. Following the directions, they repack the body parts in the case and cover them with a sheet. This slowly rises up, disclosing underneath it the Indian himself (an adult), alive and reassembled. The Indian climbs up the rope about ten feet and disappears in a puff of smoke. The aforementioned body parts then come raining down from above, are repacked in the case and the trick ends in the same situation as it began. The secret: the Indian was actually packed tightly beforehand into the wicker case along with the various limbs. It would seem impossible but wasn’t. Many in the audience felt that the opening action of the limbs 233

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becoming a whole person was more mystifying/enjoyable than the actual rope climb and vanish. There is a brief black out—with blue lighting—during which the rope first displayed and hung from a ring in the ceiling is quietly withdrawn and a faked, double rope takes its place. It is a hollow case or tube covered with rope material. A pair of lazy-tongs is inside. Devant’s description in his Secrets of My Magic is foggy—perhaps on purpose—but, to abbreviate his words, when the Indian reaches the top of the rope, he kicks his legs

During the world’s first stage attempt to duplicate the Rope Trick in London (1907 ), David Devant, Britain’s most illustrious conjuror, has just reunited the body parts of an Indian who is emerging from the wicker case in which they had been placed.

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out sideways, motivating the lazy-tongs, which drive screens outward, thus masking him from the audience’s view. If any other illusionist has tried to copy this Rube Goldberg-sounding method, I am not aware of it. Yet the illusion was good enough to be introduced, on and off, into Maskelyne and Devant’s famous shows in London across many years, from 1907 onward. It was clearly a drawing card. If it disappointed, the rest of the show or the sketch itself overcame that with its own wonders. Howard Thurston was offered the secret by Devant in 1907 but declined buying it. Twenty years later, after spending $10,000 (at least $150,000 in 2001 dollars) and several years coping with the problems of his own concepts for it, he launched his East Indian Rope Trick: World’s Most Famous Illusion, First Time Out-of-India. I shall discuss its method shortly. Undaunted, more illusionists joined the parade: Servais LeRoy in 1914, Horace Goldin in 1917, Dante in 1939, and Kalanag about 1955, among others. Few of the methods being tried were simple to build or sure-fire to present. P.T. Selbit’s idea depended upon the climbing boy to be switched at a crucial point for an exact dummy of himself. Covered by the usual explosion of smoke at the summit of the rope, the dummy was pulled instantly inside a “thin” (Selbit claimed) rope. What a prescription for disasters of timing and mechanics with that (inflated?) dummy. Selbit seems to have been the first to suggest an obvious but unthoughtof-way to overcome the perception of mediocre height, which the rope usually attained—only 10 to 20 feet on theater stages: Simply perform the stage illusion on a higher platform of its own, thus increasing the rope’s apparent elevation in audience eyes. In an article of mine on English magician Karachi presenting his rope feat in the open air, I stressed that he was photographed sitting down on the ground beside it. This emphasized its appearance of rising higher than it actually did. Thus creating an illusion within an illusion! As usual with Thurston, his feature illusions were carefully worked out down to the smallest details of presentation. If his levitation was one of the most emotionally beautiful pictures of magical drama ever staged, he tried with the rope illusion to create an ambience fit for a king’s lasting memory. The illusionist placed a coiled rope in a round Indian wicker basket resting center stage under an artistic arch. A few hypnotic passes over the

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basket soon caused the rope to rise slowly out of it about eight or ten feet into the air and remain stiffly suspended. From the wings, came a turbaned lad in a loincloth. He knelt before an oriental incense burner as though in a moment of prayer. Upon command, he rose and pulled himself up the rope hand-over-hand. Suddenly, Thurston clapped his hands; a small cloud of smoke exploded around the lad and one saw him seemingly dissolve rapidly into nothing. Clapping his hands a second time, the rope dropped limply to the stage. The curtain leisurely closed in upon this scene. A fine piano wire had pulled up the rope and supported the climber’s weight. In theory, the visible dissolving vanish was revolutionary and sensational. But it required a coordination in timing, and angle problems in wide theaters, almost insurmountable. At the instant the smoke was most dense, the boy was quickly drawn upward the few feet needed to hide him behind the ornamental arch above. At that instant, a same size slide picture of him hanging onto the rope was projected through the smoke onto the background set for only two or three seconds, and then “dissolved” by moving the slide picture out of focus. But it was an audience let-down in expectations and convincing elements of drama. Some clever solutions for the illusion could not be trooped. This limited the venues for their usefulness. The Australian-born magician and newspaper artist, Henry Clive (Clive O’Hara) required a heavy 10' by 16' mirror and a specially built theater for his performances at the San Francisco World’s Fair of 1938–39. This also enabled him to control the angle and distance from which the audience was obliged to witness the show in his method. During the 1940s, Harry Blackstone (Sr.) presented his own climbing and vanishing aspect of the ancient yarn in his touring full evening shows. Once the boy had reached the top of the rope, in one dramatic moment, a black mask flew upward, concealing the original rope and lad. A duplicate rope was attached to this black mask, and the upward rush of the unit was covered by the customary, huge puff of smoke (flash powder). The effect, when it worked perfectly—which wasn’t always the case—was that the young chap disappeared in a flash. Efforts to reproduce such a legendary miracle in modern times have been valiant, expensive and not very satisfactory. However, most of the performers experienced higher box office receipts until the backlash of headaches and negative reports forced them to withdraw it from their pro-

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grams. Perhaps the moral is to let sleeping legends lie. The trouble is that they are still very much awake. Even so, some of the better known world-girdling illusionists of the 20th century—The Great Raymond, Carter the Great, John Calvert—did not include the Indian Rope Trick in their repertoires. It is said that McDonald Birch developed the best method and presentation in the business. Did you know that Ireland includes a version of the miracle among its own Celtic fairy tales? “At the time when the Tuatha De Danann held the sovereignty of Ireland.” the story begins, “there reigned in Leinster a king who wished his favorite story-teller to relate one each night.” One day, the teller of stories claimed he met a beggar man, a miserable-looking, decrepit creature who showed him a strange trick. The lank,

McDonald Birch, Thurston’s top choice for his successor, who retired wealthy from his performing career unlike most professional magicians, is said to have presented the finest stage Indian Rope Illusion.

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grey beggar man took from a bag under his arm-pit a ball of silk. He unwound it and flung it slant-wise up into the heavens. It became a ladder. He placed a hare upon the thread and up it ran. Again, he took a red-eared hound and it ran swiftly after the hare. A lad of O’Donnell’s said he would chase after the dog on the course. “Alright,” said the juggler, “but if you let my hare be killed I’ll cut off your head when you come down.” The lad ran up the thread. All three disappeared. After a long wait, the beggar man was afraid that the hound was eating the hare and the boy had fallen asleep. With that he wound up the thread and down came the lad fast asleep; the hound followed, a last bit of the hare in his mouth. The beggar man/juggler took his sword and sliced off the head of boy and animal. “It’s little that I’m pleased, and sore angered,” said O’Donnell, “that a hound and a lad should be killed in my court.” The juggler relented and promised that their heads would be restored if five pieces of silver would be paid twice for each of them. O’Donnell paid and thus each had his own head back on again. And “though they lived to the uttermost end of time,” the story ends, “the dog never bothered a rabbit again, and the boy was careful to watch out thereafter. The lank, grey beggar man immediately disappeared. Whether he flew away through the air or the earth had swallowed him, no one present could guess.” This charming Celtic fairy tale shows evidence of being inspired by the Emperor Jehangir’s 17th century account of the Indian jugglers’ suspended chain up which five different animals ran to their oblivion in his own royal courtyard.

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Chapter 27

The Last Word: Myth or Reality?

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THE TRICK THAT WILL NOT DIE RECEIVED WORLDWIDE PUBLICITY ORIGINATING appropriately in New Delhi, the capital of India, in 1995. A 24-year-old street magician named Ishamuddin announced that he would successfully perform the fabled feat for the first time in 600 years. On July 4, 1995, during a warm monsoon rain in New Delhi, on the grass surrounding the Pisa-like, Qutub Minar Tower, 800-years-old and breathtakingly high, he caused a 10-foot long, heavy rope, to rise slowly about six feet out of a coir basket. A boy clung to it momentarily. Then it returned leisurely to its container. The sensational hype, fueled by Sarathi, a non-governmental organization attempting to create interest in, and work for, traditional Indian artists and performers, had persuaded nearly 150 curious or concerned persons, largely journalists and by invitation, to attend. Some were impressed; others were disillusioned by a failure to fulfill adequately the barest element of the legend. On the 23rd of November 1997, only some two years later, the bearded and tireless Ishamuddin, reemerged on the world’s stage. Sponsored by the Shankar family of magicians as the highlight of a Gily Gily Convention for native street conjurians in Udupi, a coastal village south of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Ishamuddin really did demonstrate a puzzling Rising Rope. It was a major public event in India. A multitude estimated at 25,000 people gathered on the seashore. Fearing a riot if the promised feat was 43. A composite article from the author’s writings in MAGIC, May 1996; The Linking Ring, February, March, April 1998.

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not acceptable, authorities had assigned 500 uniformed police and traffic officers to control the excited crowd. A sea of cameras, TV crews and a London film company (which had paid $5,000.00 for exclusive rights) recorded the scene carefully. Standing away from trees and buildings, under brilliant sunshine, a huge crowd watching, he showed an empty cylindrical basket and set it down on the expanse of a sandy beach. A 24-feet long rope resembling a thick ship’s hawser was then held out for a few members of the audience to feel superficially before being placed inside the basket. Accompanying the plaintive melody of a flute and the rapid beat of a small hand drum, the rope slowly slid upward six feet and stopped. To the amazement of experienced magicians watching, Ishamuddin unhurriedly lifted the basket two or three feet off the sand for a few seconds, showing that the risen rope was still based in the basket, unconnected with the ground. The rope descended into the receptacle again. In about 15 seconds, it reappeared and smoothly rose about 19 feet into the air. A small Hindu lad laboriously pulled himself about two-thirds of the way up the rope, paused for photographs, and then slid back down. The rope did not descend slowly as it had risen, but simply collapsed spectacularly to the ground. The crowd erupted in sounds of jubilant approval. India’s media—newspaper, television—featured the happening the next day. The jaduwallah began enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. I consider this a brilliant breakthrough in devising a method for duplicating one part of the Indian Rope Trick. It may be based upon a 20th century mechanical innovation, actually widely known to every motorist. It can be done in any theatre with a stage trap or not. It should be well patented by now. Illusionists with honor should respect the rights of the creator. I agree with Edward Morris, former international president of the I.B.M., an actual observer of the event in India, that Ishamuddin should be allowed to exploit and benefit from his original illusion without others rushing in to take over. In California, months later, I received a phone call from Inflight Productions, in London, the filming company that had exclusively covered the Udupi event in India. It had learned from Anthony Owen (later to be selected as new editor of The Magic Circular, official organ of the Magic Circle) that I would be in Britain’s capital soon to help celebrate Davenport’s 100th anniversary as a magic shop. As a lifetime student of the rope trick, would

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In 1997, on the sands of Udupi, India, jaduwallah Ishamuddin performed his historic version of the Indian Rope Trick before 25,000 spectators. Photograph courtesy The Linking Ring/ Phil Willmarth, editor.

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I appear in the almost completed picture evaluating the footage they had acquired? After my statement was accepted that I would not expose or discuss any possible methods or solutions, but deal with it historically and psychologically, predicated upon my actual search for a performance of it in India, in 1948 and 1957, a contract was finalized. The new headquarters building of the Magic Circle was sought for the interview. But it turned out to be too far from completion to provide a satisfactory location. Instead, it was accomplished in what appeared to be the drawing room of a magnificent former British aristocrat’s mansion with paintings of Victorian nobles on the walls. It was a raw midwinter morning and I was seated beside a large fireplace with a cheerful fire burning. After the partially completed footage was run for my inspection, I commented at length and this was inserted in brief spaces within the finished product. An American magician, now a London resident, John Lenehan, acts as a sort of tour guide throughout the 30-minute picture, moving the story forward briskly from the legendary beginnings to today’s more sophisticated outlook. Two professors appear in the production as commentators also, Peter Lamont of the University of Edinburgh and Richard Wiseman from the University of Herefordshire. They stressed that research indicated the more time that elapsed after observers had allegedly witnessed the trick, in person, the more they tended to exaggerate what they thought happened. Professor Shankar, “The Industrial Magician,” was also on camera, asserting: “It is not a mere legend. I can do it. But you must provide me the same conditions as when it was done.” Considerable ink and space have been afforded this latest and most interesting effort simply to make a rope rise from the ground magically, go high enough and support the weight of a small boy climbing up part of its length. Why? First, because it is partly the touching story of a poor, illiterate street magician, representative of one of India’s lowest castes, trying to improve his next generation’s niche in life. If he could succeed in duplicating the Indian Rope Trick he could win (?) the (relatively) “enormous” rewards traveling magicians like myself or organizations like London’s Magic Circle in the past have offered. Secondly, one corporate entity in London with a romantic imagination and an empathy for the dreams of a street magician have given Isha-

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muddin a realizable hope and a practical reward: 100,000 rupees ($5,000 plus residuals) to photograph his ingenious achievement, although falling short of its announced goal. That money may allow the education of his own children to begin their upward movement. Watch for Routes of Magic: In Search of the Indian Rope Trick. It may appear as a major portion of a feature film being considered by Disney and the Discovery Channel (TV). Horace Goldin proclaimed that he was “the only white man in the world to discover the secret” of the Indian Rope Trick. Thus have illusionists exploited a scenario that could not have been improved upon by that master playwright, William Shakespeare. Lee Siegel in his book Net of Magic? Wonders and Deceptions in India aptly states: “The Rope Trick became a sensational metaphor with which people talked about India, the mystic realm of Fakirs . . .” Pretenders to the power will continue, periodically, to stir the press. Apologists, conceding that the miracle has never physically occurred, defend the statements of alleged observers with fanciful explanations: smoking braziers laced with hashish, under jaduwallah’s power of suggestion, hallucinated visions. Or hypnotism and the projection of mental images created the event. In either case, experts say, groups cannot succumb as a whole. If a few persons did, others would disabuse them of their

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imaginings. People do not recall details of happenings under hypnosis. Stories of photographs failing to confirm what people maintain they saw are pure inventions, like the other tales. Even hopeful theories involving ropes tipped with hooks and threaded with rams’ vertebrae to stiffen them enough to carry two persons’ weight, shaved monkey limbs simulating a dismembered human, and under-garment harnesses to hide and carry away the vanished boy, plausible to laymen, are pipe dreams in practice. Some critics, presuming personal psychological insights and knowledge of fakir and jadugars’ thinking processes, say that religious reasons or disinterest in offers of money blocked any desire to show me their mastery of the Rope Mystery. Such reasoning is smothered under an avalanche of contrary evidence. Sideshow magician Todd Robbins has speculated: “The legend is actually a composite of a number of elements that actually do exist, but the classic scenario for the trick has never been performed.” To support his theory, he cites Chinese acrobats who ascend poles, standing atop them; Indian street magicians, angry at their recalcitrant boy assistant who tries to hide from them in a basket, plunge a sword through it repeatedly until the lad dies or seems to disappear from the basket. Expressing remorse for his act of killing, the jaduwallah begs onlookers to fill his baksheesh bowl so that he can make an offering to Kali, and gain forgiveness for his sin. The collection finished, the boy is miraculously reproduced, unharmed, from the basket. Robbins feels that he sees essential, if not all, elements of the Indian Rope Trick being acted out here. But observers—with their reporting inaccuracies, omitting or supplying details they thought, retrospectively, that they had seen—embroider their reconstruction of events. He believes, in conclusion, that this human trait of erring vision, recall and retelling of a seemingly wondrous happening is what built the Indian Rope Trick legend. Why doesn’t the Indian Rope Trick die like an outmoded fashion, an obsolete bit of nonsense? John Mulholland perceived in the story a universal dream: the idea of a stairway to heaven. But its endurance, he felt, is also due to a process of believing akin to brainwashing. Facts die or may not have even existed, but legends survive. The more the retelling, the more the believing. The drama of the Rope Trick is one of them. The basic theme of this ancient trick associated with India, I should point out, has also arisen in the minds of people in other lands around this

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globe. In the southwestern regions of North America, Indians solemnly tell of a fast-growing stalk of corn which came up through the empty crater of an extinct volcano. This enabled their tribe, living then in the earth’s interior, to climb up it and find a better home on the surface. Such black craters are still to be seen there. In China, one reads a legend about a grain of household rice that grew incredibly and provided a means of climbing up into the heavens. Hemp, a big export from India, weaves the rope that created the notion of a ladder into the skies for a jaduwallah. And, somewhere in Europe, a storyteller conceived the same plot in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” story: a single bean that one might eat, sprouts a stalk that grows high into the sky. A lad named Jack climbs up it and enjoys lively adventures among the clouds. Perhaps because distance lends enchantment, faraway fields seem greener. Only India’s version is taken with factual significance in some quarters. Mankind has found techniques for duplicating certain miracles in nature. We can fly through the air like birds, travel under seas like fish, bore through the earth like worms and whiz into space like lightning. Indeed, we can do more than the birds, the fish, the worms and lightning. We can move among the planets in space. But we still cannot replicate the Indian Rope Trick. Our efforts result in partial exhibitions with unreasonable failure rates. Ingenious as some have been, the presentations insult the standards set by other illusions. They disappoint. The true goal may be achievable, but probably not. The target is to duplicate something that doesn’t exist. Birds, fish, worms and lightning are real and tangible. The Indian Rope Trick, notwithstanding all our research in the remote wildernesses of Tibet and the ancient land of India with their achievements in mysticism, proves to have been created in man’s imagination, not born in reality. Why haven’t theatrical replications of the Indian fairy tale succeeded so far? Is the trick protecting itself by invoking a curse on those who would attempt to create literal reality from mythical symbolism? When the images that each illusion builder must replicate are chained within the confines of a procrustean bed, they dictate techniques, as in the Indian scenario, which perhaps have not yet been developed enough to handle the challenge. This does not rule out future achievements. A stage illusion may be born when one controls, or may change, its outlines so that they can metamorphose

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within the boundaries of newly conceived techniques capable of generating a seemingly impossible event. If any curse exists, it is in the disappointment it visits upon those who would treat legends as living fact. It isn’t always translatable into theater. The siren song of its poetry—the blending of wonder and mystery with life, conflict, horror, death, hope and blessed resurrection at the end— seduces the intellect and excites the emotions. It sends romantic and adventuresome spirits hunting for a Holy Grail that lives only in an imaginary world. As a legend, it does take on additional meanings. It demonstrates the power of myth. The desire to believe. The yearning for wonder. And the frustration if we cannot separate myth from actuality in daily living. As we often do not. Yet all people cherish legends and myths. They are a part of life. They bring pleasure, hope, warmth and even insights. The magician provides these when he invites you into his theater of magic. Step out of the mundane world and into a realm of honest mythology with its floating beauties, automobiles and tigers. Let us still dream that somewhere, sometime, if not yet, a compact drama with a rope that can stretch into the heavens, and a wonder worker with his indestructible little boy, may appear out of nowhere and convert a myth into a miracle. We’d love it.

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Bibliography and Recommended Reading

Adair, Ian. Encyclopedia of Dove Tricks (5 vols.). Bideford, Devon, England: Supreme Magic Co., Ltd.; Various years. Bamberg, David. Illusion Show. Glenwood, IL: Meyerbooks, 1991. Bamberg, Theodore (Okito) with Robert Parrish. Okito on Magic: Reminiscences and Selected Tricks. Chicago, IL: Edwin O. Drane & Co., 1952. Bergen, Candace. Knock Wood. New York: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1984. Booth, John. The Fine Art of Hocus Pocus: Watertown, MA: Ray Goulet’s Magic Art Book Company, 1996. Booth, John. Keys to Magic’s Inner World. Watertown, MA: Ray Goulet’s Magic Art Book Company, 1999. Booth, John. Fabulous Destinations. Lima, OH: Fairway Press, 1998 (3rd Edition; Softcover). Original edition (hardcover), The Macmillan Co.: New York, 1950. Booth, John. Wonders of Magic. Los Alamitos, CA: Ridgway Press, 1986. Burns, Stanley. Other Voices—Ventriloquism from B.C. to T.V. Brooklyn, NY: ShowBiz Services, 2000. Christopher, Maurine (editor), Steinmeyer, Jim (additional material). Howard Thurston’s Illusion Show Work Book (2 vols.). Pasadena, California: A Magical Publication, 1991. Two volumes, beautifully published, in slipcases, photos, patter, diagrams, commentary, unique insights. Christopher, Milbourne. The Illustrated History of Magic. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1973. Cockton, Henry. The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, The Ventriloquist. London: W. Nicholson & Sons, Ltd., c. 1850–60. 249

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de Vaucanson, Jacques. An Account of the Mechanism of An Automaton . . . playing on the German Flute. 1742. Devant, David. My Magic Life. London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1931. Ewing, Thomas A. Conjurors and Cornfields: Magic on the Indianapolis Stage. Selfpublished, 1999. Ganson, Lewis. The Dai Vernon Book of Magic. Tahoma, CA: L & L Publishing, 1994. Haselmayer, Louis. New Book of Magic. Melbourne, Australia: Charles Trodel, Printer, 1870s. Hill, Ed and Bob Schoof, ed. The Yankee Magic Collector #5. Boston, MA: New England Magic Collectors Assn., 1992. Hill, Ed and Bob Schoof, ed. The Yankee Magic Collector #8. Boston, MA: New England Magic Collectors Assn., 1998. Hoffman, Professor (Angelo J. Lewis). Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring. London: Routledge, 1876. Various U.S. publishers thereafter. Jenness, George A. Maskelyne and Cooke: Egyptian Hall, London, 1873–1904. Enfield, Middlesex, England: Self-published, 1967. Minch, Stephen. The Vernon Chronicles (vols. 1–3). Tahoma, CA: L & L Publishing, 1987, 1988, 1989; (vol. 4), Cervon, Bruce and Burns, Keith, L & L Publishing, 1992. Nielsen, Norm. The Magic Castle Walls of Fame. Hollywood, CA: Nielsen Magic, 1983. Olson, Robert E. The Complete Life of Howard Franklin Thurston (2 vols.). Calgary, Alberta: Hades Publications, Inc., 1993. Price, David. A Pictorial History of Conjuring in the Theatre. New York, London, Toronto: Cornwall Books, 1985. Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène. Memoirs of Robert-Houdin. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., (Lascelles Translation), New Introduction and Notes by Milbourne Christopher, 1964. Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène. The Secrets of Stage Conjuring. England and New York: George Routledge & Sons, and Magico Magazine edition (translation, editing and notes by Professor Hoffman), 1900. Shine, Frances L. Conjuror’s Journal: Excerpts from the Journal of Joshua Medley, Conjuror, Juggler, Ventriloquist, and Sometimes Balloonist. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1978.

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Thurston, Grace. My Magic Husband Thurston the Great. Novato, California: Phil Temple & Co., 1985. Thurston, Howard and Jane Thurston. Our Life in Magic. Additional material by Robert E. Olson and Phil Temple, San Rafael, CA: A Phil Temple Publication, 1989. Vernon, Dai. Malini and His Magic. Edited by Lewis Ganson, Tahoma, CA: L & L Publishing, 1999. von Windisch, Charles Gottliev. Inanimate Reason: or a Circumstantial Account of M. de Kempelen’s Chess-Player. London: Printed for S. Bladon, 1784. Vox, Valentine. I Can See Your Lips Moving. North Hollywood, California: Plato Publishing/Players Press, 1993. Walker, Barbi and Robert C. Seaver, and other contributors. The P & L Book, San Leandro, CA: Byron Walker, 1992. Whaley, Bart. The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Magic. Oakland, CA: Jeff Busby Magic, Inc., 1989. Whaley, Bart. Who’s Who in Magic. Oakland, CA: Jeff Busby Magic, Inc., 1990. Willis, Robert. An Attempt to Analyze the Automaton Chess Player of Mr. De Kempelen. London: Printed for J. Booth, 1821.

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About the Author

JOHN (WILLIAM NICHOLLS) BOOTH IS ONE OF THE VERY FEW MAGICIANS OF distinction to be sketched in Who’s Who in America, the foremost book naming persons of major achievements in the nation. He is the author of seventeen books, thirteen on various aspects of the art of magic, and producer of eight full-evening, feature adventure/documentary films personally shot for TV and the lecture platform, in Asia, Europe, North and South America, Africa and the South Seas. He is a graduate of McMaster University (1934, Hamilton, Ont., B.A.), Meadville/Lombard Theological School (1942, Chicago, MDiv), and has been honored with the Litt.D., degree in 1951 by the New England School of Law, in Boston, MA. Honors include the first John Nevil Maskelyne Literary Award (Magic Circle, 1987); Honorary Membership in World Body of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, its highest honor (2000); The Academy of Magical Arts (Magic Castle) most coveted distinction, the Masters Fellowship (Hollywood, 2001); and a glassed-in alcove, dedicated to Booth and displaying a Tussaud-like immaculate figure of him (S.A.M. Hall of Fame and Magic Museum, Hollywood since 1995) wearing the actual white tie and tails of his professional show business and lecture careers. Many magicians, some unknowingly, have been enriched and inspired by his ideas. Super Magical Miracles (London, 1930) and Magical Mentalism (1931) contain nothing but his conceptions. For years in London, Alan Alan’s magic shop sold his “Master Gimmick”; “Booth’s Baffling Block” was manufactured by the Blackstone Magic Co. in Colon, Michigan. A few of the standard techniques Booth developed: “Instant Handkerchief 253

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Spread” (Tarbell Course In Magic, Volume 4, page 365), “Booth False Count” (Tarbell Course In Magic, Volume 3, page 223), the “Block Push-off” and “Fourth Finger Pull-down” (The Vernon Chronicles Volume 2, page 23), etc. Not sensational but basic stuff. Most of his own books have one or more chapters devoted to his original routines, many from his professional shows and acts. Magic explained in Marvels of Mystery (1941) has made it a modern classic. Forging Ahead in Magic (1939) is called the “Business Bible” for magical careers. For 36 consecutive years, John Booth wrote an article for the Religion section of the Encyclopedia Britannica and for 36 years and 9 months, an article every month for The Linking Ring, official magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Today’s generation tends to forget that Booth was once one of America’s highest-paid nightclub, society and lecture platform magicians. His book Marvels of Mystery, introduced by Mrs. Harry Houdini, explained tricks actually performed (1936–1940) in Booth’s act in the Casino Atlantico, Rio de Janeiro (which Cardini also played about then), Mon Paris (New York City), Bismarck Hotel (Chicago), Chez Maurice (Montreal), Chase Hotel (St. Louis), and aboard great ocean liners sailing from New York to Buenos Aires. For 15 years (1943–1958), he appeared on the foremost lecture platforms and auditoriums of America (Brooklyn Academy of Music, Chicago’s Civic Theatre, Chautauqua Ampitheatre, N.Y., Cleveland Town Hall, West Point Military Academy, University of Minnesota’s huge Northrop Auditorium, etc.). Partly based upon this performing career, John Booth has written innumerable articles and 13 outstanding books on conjuring. These reflect the wisdom, experience and research that have brought him so many top awards from the profession. Forging Ahead in Magic, perhaps Booth’s most influential book in magic, dealt with booking, publicity, showmanship, music, fees, photography, dress, lighting, direct mail, the first book of its type published in the profession. John Mulholland, magic authority and historian, wrote in The Sphinx: “It should be required reading for anyone who shows magic either as a professional or amateur . . . it should be his Bible.” Robertson Keene’s review in London’s The Magician Monthly said: “I can say with truth, and without exaggeration, that nothing like it has ever been written or published in the whole history of magic.” Goodliffe printed in Abra: “The reader gets

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the benefit of the wisdom of one of the most remarkable figures in magic during the last half century.” Mark Wilson, Marvyn Roy, The Great Sorcar, Billy McComb and countless other professionals shaped their careers partly on this book. Karrell Fox, one of America’s most successful professionals, advised: “These (Marvels of Mystery and Forging Ahead in Magic) remain my two favorite books of all the magic literature ever written.” Leaving show business in 1940 to enter seminary, and in 1942 be ordained in the Unitarian ministry, as John Nicholls Booth, he served four churches full-time until 1971. First, Evanston, Illinois, where, in Chicago, on WBKB, he was the first clergyman in North America to have his own series of talks on television. It is now one of the largest Unitarian churches in the Midwest. Second, Belmont, Massachusetts, a few miles from Harvard and MIT, believed to have the largest number of university faculty members in his denomination. Third, the Second Church in Boston, founded in 1649, the original Old North of Paul Revere, Increase and Cotton Mather and Ralph Waldo Emerson, where Booth’s published book and research proved it was the belfry site of Revere’s lanterns (see Booth’s records in the Massachusetts Historical Society); finally the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, California, where he was also head of the Long Beach Mental Health Association. Time period (four churches) 1942–1971. Dr. Booth, as he had been titled since 1951, filled interim ministries next: First, The Community Church of New York City, where he was briefly also New York Times radio preacher over WQXR; Gainesville, Florida, second, with many University of Florida faculty connections; Detroit, Michigan, third, “Mother Church of Michigan,” for a year as a bridge between two pastorates. All parishes since 1943 granted him absences for 35 national magic or film lectures annually. Booth’s book, The Quest for Preaching Power (Macmillan, N.Y.C., 1943), his degree thesis, appeared in many seminaries’ homiletics courses. He wrote an illustrated 32-page pamphlet, Introducing Unitarianism (1943), which eventually sold over 500,000 copies. In 1964, after the Unitarians and Universalists merged, he produced Introducing Unitarian Universalism. The two explanatory pamphlets covered an “in print” period of 50 years. In 2001. he was selected for a series on Notable American Unitarians (1936–1961), which included the placement of his illustrated biography online (world wide website: www.harvardsquarelibrary.org).

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Lest the reader think that our subject wrote and worked like a perpetual motion machine, there is another side to his life. He made the grueling trek (1948) with four Sherpa porters across the mighty Himalayas into (then) forbidden Tibet in central Asia, tackled Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro (1954) with two British army climbers, lived in the heart of the Sahara desert for a week (1954) in remote Timbuktu, and circumnavigated the South American continent in 1939. As a cinematographer whose films enjoyed worldwide showings, his portrait was hung, in 1967, in the Cinematographers Wall of Fame, formerly in Town Hall, New York City. The King of Morocco decorated him with the rank of Officier in the Order of Ouissam Aleouite Cherifien, 1954. The government of Indonesia tried to buy a master print of Booth’s film for global promotion. The National Cinematographer’s Archives, in the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio has his feature-length film “Golden Kingdoms of the Orient,” major scrapbook and photographs. He has interviewed and photographed every prime minister or president, as the Chicago Sun-Times’ special correspondent, in Japan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia, Thailand, India and Pakistan (i.e., Asia) during a sabbatical year 1948–49. In other years, he has written series of articles from abroad for the Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram and the Boston Globe. Twice he has been a guest for a week in the palace of the Maharajah of Cooch Behar, and for another week in the jungle hospital of Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Lambarene, Gabon, Africa. His non-magic books are The Quest for Preaching Power, 1943 (alternate choice of the Religious Book Club), Fabulous Destinations, 1950 (THE choice of the Travel Book of the Month Club), The Story of the Second Church in Boston: The Original Old North, 1959, and Booth’s in History: Their Roots and Lives, Encounters and Achievements, 1982. All are written under the name John Nicholls Booth. Married 41 years to Edith Kriger Booth (1907-1982), their direct descendants are daughter Barbara Booth Christie, grandchildren Anne Margaret Christie and Sean Booth Christie, and great grandchildren Robert Michael Christie-Richards, Ariel Ludmila Christie and William Booth Christie. Our magician, minister, cinematographer, lecturer and author, in his 89th year, is “retired” restlessly in Rossmoor (Los Alamitos), California, his base and home for 36 years, close to Los Angeles. Upon death, his ashes

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will be divided in half and one portion added to half of his wife’s ashes, already scattered in a Rossmoor rose garden. The other half of each will be mixed in a single urn and buried next to an already waiting “monument” in the magicians’ section of Lakeside Cemetery, Colon, Michigan, among many admired and old friends like Jack Gwynne, Karrell Fox, Harry Blackstone, Jr., Bill Baird and Bob Lund.

] Magic is a shared experience. A sense of immediacy is essential, and requires from the performer not only character and context, but direct and subtle adjustments for each audience. Strive for a unique “happening” that will never be experienced again. For some audiences, this very well may be true.

AJP (03/05/01)

o