Jim Steinmeyer (21 page)

When Thurston arrived in Sydney, his first concern was George White. At the end of the 1890s, the Australian Labour Party had championed a White Australia policy, barring any additional non-Caucasians from entering the country. On board the
Saratoga
, Thurston made arrangements with one of the officers to let George wear a uniform and join the crew on the deck, where immigrations officials might overlook him. Thurston then arranged a little signal, a sort of magic routine, to sneak George onto the dock. When the man from Australian immigration joined the ship, and Thurston had him distracted in conversation, the magician mopped his brow with his handkerchief. George took his cue and disappeared into the crowd with the stevedores—it was his usual act of accomplishing something while becoming invisible. He arranged to meet Thurston hours later outside of Tattersall’s Hotel in Sydney.

Thurston had scraped together some money and booked a grand room at Tattersall’s, which he could not afford. Then he arranged for George, the cast, and the crew to stay at nearby theatrical boardinghouses. His first priority was a special performance—not magic, just bluff—for the Australian theatrical managers. A group met him at the famous marble bar at Tattersall’s, where everyone took turns buying rounds of drinks. Thurston plied them with stories of his success, his reviews from New York and London, and his state-of-the-art apparatus. A Mr. Collins represented George Musgrove. Another manager, Edwin Geach, had been responsible for Dante the magician’s tour of Australia several years earlier.

When it was time for Thurston’s round of drinks, he ordered champagne and cigars for the group, and then tipped the waitress lavishly with a casual gesture. Pushing the extra money into the waitress’s hand pained Thurston, and at the moment of truth he almost weakened. But he noticed the raised eyebrows around the table and realized that his plan worked perfectly. They thought he was rich. Geach offered a generous contract to handle an Australian tour, and Thurston was happy to accept. He knew that Geach would be familiar with the technical requirements of a magic show.

In fact, Geach had a number of good ideas. He booked Thurston into Sydney’s Palace Theater and supplemented the show with Allan Shaw, a Canada-born coin manipulator who had traveled to Australia with Thurston, a cello soloist, and a comic singer. The final feature on the show was an Edison motion picture projector, which Thurston brought from America for the tour. He had selected several short, comic films,
A Touch of Nature
and
The Lost Child
.

Geach set the opening for July 22, 1905, and advertised it extravagantly in the newspapers: “What Irving is to drama, Melba to opera, The Great Thurston is to magicians, absolutely the greatest living exponent.” It was a nerve-racking opening, with repairs and adjustments being made throughout the day and until the curtain time. Realizing how difficult the show had been to mount, Geach was horrified to hear the orchestra repeating the overture, as the crowd stamped their feet in anticipation. He rushed backstage to find Thurston still onstage in his work clothes, adjusting a prop. The manager marched his magician into the dressing room, insisting that he put on his tuxedo and makeup for the performance. Once Thurston had been pushed onto the stage and the performance began, any of Geach’s fears were quickly dispelled. The orchestra began the “Zenda Waltzes,” and Thurston started his faultless manipulations. The audience swooned with each new marvel. Geach knew that he had a star.

Thurston appeared for four weeks in Sydney and was then held over several additional days. The company moved on to Melbourne, where they opened at the Athenaeum Hall on September 2. This theater was a particular challenge, as it had only a concert stage and needed extensive work to accommodate Thurston’s scenery, trapdoors, and electrical effects. Again, the crew worked until the show time; in fact, the audience arrived to hear hammering behind the curtain. The opening-night show was interrupted several times when the lights failed unexpectedly. Thurston patiently waited, chatting with the crowd, and when the lights flickered on again, he resumed the show.

“There isn’t so much patter,” a reviewer noted favorably. “No magician has used less in a show. He has a strong personality and holds his audience firmly.” His eloquence was admired; his rich voice with a nasal twang, combined with his neat Americanisms, were considered enchanting. An Australian magician recalled a friend who had been studying public speaking.

In Adelaide, a reviewer admired Thurston’s marvels but chafed at the conventions of a magic show:

HOWARD AND BEATRICE
had arranged a little deception that made their travels together much easier. By the time the ship landed in Sydney, the ship log recorded her as “Mrs. Thurston,” and she was introduced this way to the press. It was an odd twist on his earliest days with Grace, when they denied they were married and insisted that they were brother and sister. Adding to the complication was the fact that Howard was still married. After their final argument in London, Grace had been anxious to leave, but she never actually filed for divorce.

Howard explained to an interviewer in Australia, “I am not a club man,” insisting that he didn’t drink and rarely socialized. “The only day I go out is Sunday, and then I take Mrs. Thurston to church. The rest of the time I work.”

Curiously, much of his appeal in Australia was to members of the opposite sex. Reviewers noted the high proportion of women in attendance, explaining that his marvels held a “strange fascination for womenfolk.” Perhaps the attraction is represented in photographs published in Australian newspapers—Thurston’s handsome, placid face and dark-lidded eyes staring out from a formal portrait; or his proud pose, gazing upward, arms crossed, in his embroidered Oriental jacket and neat turban. He embodied the dashing, romantic prince of countless fairy tales, and his movements on stage displayed a balletic elegance. “The Napoleon of Magic,” his billing proclaimed. “Thurston is a married man, and he passes all his letters on to his wife,” a Perth reporter warned his female admirers. Presumably, Beatrice had become suspicious of his fan mail, just as Grace had in London.

 

 

IN MELBOURNE,
Thurston first met Servais Le Roy, who was then touring Australia with his own one-hour magic show. Le Roy’s career had neatly crisscrossed Thurston’s; he had been taught Dr. Elliott’s Back Palm in New York just before Thurston learned it, and may have been the first performer to use it on an English stage. By the 1890s, he was an established performer in London. In 1905, he was also touring through Australia with an impressive show, Le Roy, Talma and Bosco. Talma was his pretty wife, the coin manipulator, and Bosco was a fat comic sidekick.

Servais Le Roy was four years older than Thurston, born in Belgium in 1865. Le Roy always looked the part, a small, athletic, dapper man with a wave of blond hair and a long waxed mustache. On the stage he was charming and impish, an instinctive performer. He could seemingly do anything—intricate sleight of hand, split-second comedy, and physical illusions. Most of all, he was ingenious. His magic was all of his own creation, and astonishingly novel. One of his greatest feats, which he was then performing in Australia, was his version of the levitation, titled the Garden of Sleep. Talma, his wife, reclined horizontally on a table. She was covered with a large silken cloth. Then she floated into the air, high above the performer’s head. The table was removed from the stage. Le Roy passed a hoop over the floating lady—now a standard bit of business for these levitations. His surprising climax came when he gripped a corner of the cloth and pulled it away. At that moment, the lady seemed to visibly disappear in midair.

Le Roy and Thurston pledged admiration for each other’s work. Le Roy envied Thurston’s natural grace, but he realized that few of his illusions were original. Thurston took note of Le Roy’s brilliant innovations. In fact, he was too proud to admit it, but Le Roy had fooled him with many of his effects.

But as he traveled through Australia, the magician that Thurston heard about most was Dante—the young man who had reached such renown, and then died tragically. Dante seemed to haunt the public’s memory, and reviews often compared the two magicians. Thurston even visited the magician’s grave, sending back a photo to an American magician’s magazine. Thurston realized that he’d succeeded when he read, “Dante was a marvel, and it might be thought he reached the top of his profession, but Thurston goes one better.” The reviews also document how the show was undergoing changes as he moved from city to city in Australia. Some of these were the rotating guest stars hired by Geach. For example, George Stillwell, who performed a magic act with silk handkerchiefs, replaced Allan Shaw. Then American comedians Maude Amber and Winfield Blake joined the company. They presented a fast and funny act burlesquing operas. As new motion pictures were rented, they were billed as the latest features with the Edison projector. But Thurston also improved his tricks. “Mr. Thurston is gradually adding to his program as he gets his budget of wonders unpacked and placed in position,” a newspaper explained. Two of his most successful were the small tricks called Mysterious Dice and Eggs Extraordinary.

Mysterious Dice was an import from American magic dealers. Thurston showed a large wooden block, like a large child’s block, painted with spots like a die. He had an accompanying box, a small horizontal coffer that was exactly twice the size of the die; it consisted of two compartments, side by side, and accompanying doors.

Thurston started by placing the die inside a tall opera hat and explained that he would make it disappear. The die was then taken from the hat and placed in one of the compartments of the box. The doors were closed. Thurston then indulged in a silly comedy of errors, showing the box empty by subtly tipping the box from side to side. He opened one door, and then closed it again, tipping the box before opening the door on the opposite side.

Of course, the children in the audience took the bait, gradually voicing their disapproval. Thurston identified two of the loudest boys, inviting them up on stage. He asked them to open the box and remove the die. They rushed to the box and opened the doors, only to find that the die was really gone. Thurston showed that it had returned to the hat.

He then kept the smaller boy onstage. He showed an empty hat and demonstrated how he was able to make eggs by magic. He asked the boy to blow on his hand, and then dipped it into the hat, producing an egg. He handed it to the boy, and repeated the procedure, showing another egg. As Thurston increased the pace, the boy crossed his arms, to collect the stack of eggs, and struggled to keep up. At one point, Thurston produced an egg and then held it at arm’s length, waiting for the boy to take it. The magician looked in the opposite direction, supposedly oblivious to his helper’s predicament, forcing the boy to reach for the egg. The audience giggled throughout the boy’s trial and roared as he finally began dropping eggs that smashed on the stage.

From city to city, the egg trick got better, as Thurston indulgently tried different gags and combinations. It would finally come together several years later as the Boy, the Girl and the Eggs. Thurston’s ultimate formula was the addition of a little girl, who took each egg from Thurston and then relayed it to the boy. Each transfer, from hand, to hand, to hand, increased the potential laughs.

In Australia, Thurston began using a phrase in his programs, “Howard Thurston is the originator and inventor of every illusion he presents.” It was pure hyperbole, particularly unsuited to Thurston, who was always dependent on other magicians for his ideas. But the egg trick was the exception. It was a brilliant bit of situation comedy, refined and perfected during his world tour.

Some of his other new magic included the Man in Red, a disappearance and exchange illusion, and Incubation Thurstonia, the production of dozens of barnyard birds, inspired by one of Le Roy’s popular tricks. Chang Ling Sing, A Cantonese Conceit, was a sequence of Chinese magic with Thurston in Chinese costuming. Ah Sid was the production of a small Chinese boy from within a tall rolled piece of matting. These new features were prominently printed on the bill when Thurston’s show returned to the Sydney Palace during the Christmas season at the end of 1905.

 

 

SHORTLY AFTER
the company arrived in Australia, Howard had wired his brother Harry, encouraging him to join the company. Like his big brother, Harry’s marriage had dissolved, and he was now ready for a welcome distraction, a reminder of his years with the sideshow or the circus. Always anxious to attach himself to his brother’s successes, Harry found the tales from Australia especially irresistible. Howard brought him onto the show as the business manager. As the company was headed to different countries, Thurston reasoned that it would be a good idea to have a tough, trusted negotiator. For Harry, it was a big adventure, as well as an opportunity to look after his business interests—after years of steady loans, he was now an investor in the Thurston magic show. Harry left San Francisco on the
Ventura
and arrived in Sydney at the end of January, joining his brother in Brisbane in February 1906.