Jim Steinmeyer (24 page)

 

 

ONCE HE
had been cheated out of his twenty-five dollars and his hackles were up, John Northern Hilliard discovered the truth about the Levitation of Princess Karnac, that it had been purloined from Egyptian Hall. The crowning achievement of Kellar’s career was actually his most brazen bit of espionage.

Surprisingly, it took a year before this became apparent. Few magicians had actually seen both levitations, and as they occurred in different settings on stage, it was difficult to compare them directly. Even Maskelyne was confused when he heard about Kellar’s illusion. Maskelyne’s only solution was to have the steel wires delicately looped around projections on the cradle, and the trick took days to set up on stage. In fact, Kellar had hired the Otis Elevator Company to develop the illusion; they were responsible for engineering the wire connections, allowing Kellar to pack the illusion in cases and move it from city to city.

In December 1905, Hilliard reviewed Kellar’s new show for
The Sphinx
:

In the middle of this wholesale pan, there is another Hilliard twist of the knife: he knew very well that Kellar was not capable of rewriting anything or evaluating a script.

Kellar reddened by the time he’d finished the review: Hilliard again. The magician ripped the magazine to shreds, erupting in a long string of profanities.

 

 

THURSTON COMPLETED
his two-year tour at a theater in Delhi, India, in March 1907. Several days before their last engagement, one of the sheets of glass in the water tank, Creation, cracked when the water poured inside was too hot. Charlie and George located a large mirror in the theater lobby and brought it backstage, scraping away the silvering on the back so that it could be used to replace the glass. The repaired tank was used for the two final performances.

In an effort to economize, Thurston sold a number of illusions that were particularly heavy, or broken, or unusable. For example, the hastily repaired Creation tank never left India. He also sold stacks of his lithographs that had been produced for the India tour. The company traveled back to Bombay before splitting up and going in their separate directions. Standing on the docks at the end of his long adventure, Thurston spoke, surrounded by his loyal workers. His voice cracked with emotion. “I want to thank you, but I also want to tell you what you’ve done for me,” he said. “I landed in Australia two years ago completely broke. And right now, I can sign a check for fifty thousand dollars.” There were cheers and hearty pledges of friendship. Maude Amber and Winfield Blake returned to Australia. Doc Henry remained in India. George White and Charlie Holzmueller supervised the return of the remaining equipment to the United States, arriving in May 1907. The props and scenery were sent on to Chicago, where Harry Thurston was ready to warehouse them.

Harry had returned to Chicago with a handful of gems and a trunk of Oriental knickknacks. Of far more value was a practical inspiration from the Great Thurston show—the Edison motion picture machine that was featured at every performance. Harry used his profits from the tour to open the Five Cent Theater on South State Street, one of the city’s first permanent movie theaters. Harry remarried and settled down with his new wife, Isabel. He was becoming an influential businessman in Chicago’s famously crooked First Ward, a hotbed of nasty, big-city political intrigue. Harry fit right in.

 

 

HOWARD AND BEATRICE
took a more leisurely route back to America, stopping in London. In 1904, Maskelyne had moved his theater from the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly to St. George’s Hall, just off Regent Street. Maskelyne’s new partner was David Devant, Thurston’s good friend.

John Nevil Maskelyne, the old man of British magic, was of the same generation as Harry Kellar, and over the years they had squared off in a simmering rivalry. But Devant and Thurston were both a generation younger, bristling with new ideas and anxious to develop a new style of magic. Although Maskelyne had always been too stubborn and high-handed to negotiate with Kellar, Devant saw his job as expanding the Maskelyne and Devant franchise, and retaining a cool, diplomatic relationship with all his fellow magicians. These important British magicians found a new ally in Thurston: he was now cash rich from his world tour and had an opportunity to buy some of the greatest magic in the world.

Thurston was interested in three of Devant’s recent illusions. The Problem of Diogenes was the production of a man from the interior of a sealed barrel. The New Page involved a tall, narrow cabinet, just large enough for a person. An assistant was strapped inside, against the back wall. When the doors were opened seconds later, the assistant had turned upside down. And finally, Thurston negotiated a price for the Mascot Moth, Devant’s amazing new vanishing lady illusion, in which she seemed to shrivel up and disappear as she was standing in the middle of the stage. Devant arranged a contract and pushed it past the old man; the prices were high and the terms strict. For example, the New Page was £52, plus £4 per month rental ($260 plus $20 per month), and the Mascot Moth was £104, and £8 a month ($520 plus $40 per month).

Thurston’s contract for the Mascot Moth was particularly significant. Kellar had already managed to produce a poor imitation of Devant’s illusion for his 1906 show. Devant’s original Mascot Moth depended upon an ingenious mechanism and split-second timing. Kellar’s version, titled the Golden Butterfly, had none of this sophistication. A number of Kellar reviews noted that the lady had obviously disappeared through a trapdoor in the stage. Frustrated by this especially tricky trick, Kellar had given up on it. By negotiating a price for Devant’s original version, Thurston had officially trumped Kellar’s best efforts.

Thurston and Devant vowed to keep each other informed of their best ideas and exchange material for their shows. Devant especially intrigued his American compatriot by telling him that he had solved the problem of the legendary Indian Rope Trick, the boy who disappears on the rope. Devant was already having the intricate mechanism built in Brighton.

Before Thurston and Beatrice left for London on May 11, 1907, they had added one additional person to the company. Bella Hussan was a charming old Mohammedan fakir whom Thurston had imported from Bombay, the very best native magician he had seen during his travels. One of his specialties was a juggling feat with a long bow, like an oversized violin bow, that supported three wooden balls. As Hussan held the bow diagonally, pointed upward, and spun his body in a circle, the balls climbed the bow in various puzzling configurations. He was engaging on the stage but, according to Thurston, “we had to teach him half of his tricks; the best thing he did in his act was to wrap his turban around his head.”

 

 

ONE OF THE GREAT PUZZLES
of American show business was the sudden transaction, in May and June 1907, when Paul Valadon was pushed aside and Thurston quickly stepped in to inherit Harry Kellar’s show.

For three seasons, Kellar had teamed with Valadon, featuring his skillful manipulations on stage and exploiting his knowledge of Maskelyne and Devant’s illusions. Kellar had hinted in print that he would be retiring and that Valadon would take over the show. At the end of 1906, Kellar even told a St. Louis paper that he may “put a big spectacular show on the road next season, featuring Paul Valadon.”
The Sphinx
, the magician’s journal, seemed set on this idea, promoting Valadon as Kellar’s successor.

There had been friction backstage. Eva Kellar, Kellar’s wife, was often featured in the show in a mind-reading act she performed with her husband. She didn’t like Valadon, and was even frostier to Valadon’s wife, who worked as his assistant. Compounding the problem, both Eva Kellar and Paul Valadon drank, and then allowed the alcohol to saturate their arguments. “Mrs. Kellar was an awful souse, and a battler, one of those kind that just has to win a decision off of somebody each day.” Guy Jarrett, a stagehand and magic show insider, was repeating the gossip that he had been told. “One day Mrs. Kellar was dishing out some of her grandest, with the Valadons on the receiving end, and Valadon broke, and passed it back to her, plus.”

If the story is true, it must have happened long before the end of the tour, for Mrs. Kellar left the show in the spring of 1906 for an extended vacation to her hometown of Melbourne, Australia. When she was there, she was told about Thurston’s success in Melbourne earlier that year—perhaps she even saw newspaper clippings.

Back in the United States, according to Jarrett, Mrs. Kellar “came in one evening, all in a dither, and excitedly explained to Harry [Kellar] that she had found a successor to take over the show.”

But the story can’t be that simple. In February 1907, just after Kellar and Valadon had performed in Baltimore, Henry Ridgely Evans, a friend of Kellar’s and a Baltimore author on magic, contributed an article for a British publication. Evans speculated about Kellar’s retirement. “Who will be Kellar’s successor? Go ask the Sphinx, and perhaps the stone monster will tell you,” Evans wrote. This was a joke on
The Sphinx
magazine, and their endorsement of Valadon. Evans had a different opinion. “If you ask me, I say Howard Thurston, by all means. I predict that upon Thurston, Kellar’s mantle will fall.” In February 1907, with Thurston touring in India, this was a shocking prediction, and it suggests that Kellar may have just provided the hint to his friend Evans.

In April 1907, Harry Houdini repeated the speculation in his own magazine,
The Conjurer’s Monthly
. “What do you think about Kellar’s retiring? Is Valadon going to succeed him? Would you like our opinion? From all signs and indications, the dark horse in the race seems to be Howard Thurston.” Houdini had also been hearing rumors.

 

 

THURSTON LATER CLAIMED
that the partnership with Kellar had been set, by telegram, before he left India. But this story is also much too simple. Thurston could not have had his deal when he contracted to purchase illusions from Maskelyne and Devant, because he made tentative arrangements for the Mascot Moth, an illusion that Kellar had just produced. He also wrote that when he returned to New York, he raced to Blaney’s Theater in Brooklyn to see one of Kellar’s last performances that season and to greet the master from the front row. But this was also untrue. Howard and Beatrice boarded the
Etruria
, from Liverpool to New York, on May 11, 1907, and only reached New York on May 20. Kellar and Valadon’s last engagement had already taken place in Atlantic City two days earlier, on May 18. Thurston never saw Kellar’s show after 1904 and never watched one of Valadon’s performances in America. When he later wrote of these events, Thurston must have realized that his fast-paced negotiations, behind the scenes, looked unpleasant and suspicious.

When they finally sat down to dinner in May 1907, the two magicians must have made an instant connection. In many ways, they had shared the same childhood, selling newspapers in midwestern cities, contemplating the ministry, and sharing remarkably similar tours, a generation apart, through Australia, the Orient, and India. And Kellar’s decision probably involved a combination of elements—personalities and temperaments, Kellar’s impatience, Eva’s reports from Australia, as well as Thurston’s occasional telegrams. But the ultimate reason for Thurston’s success with Kellar is much simpler: money.

Valadon had agreed to slowly pay off Kellar’s show. Thurston was willing to pay for Kellar’s show. When Kellar told a St. Louis newspaper that he would consider producing “a big spectacular show ... next season ... starring Paul Valadon,” it suggested that Valadon was not in a position to buy Kellar’s show, but would be hired as an employee and would be working off the investment. More than likely, this was the reason for the protracted seasons with Valadon. But Thurston now had all the money he needed and was ready to write a check to Kellar. He didn’t need Kellar’s investment. It would be a perfect way for Eva and Harry Kellar to start their retirement, and a comfortable, flattering way to contract a successor.

 

 

THEIR CONTRACT
was dated June 8, 1907, and Thurston was to pay $7,000 for all the illusions, props, and scenery, as well as permission to perform the famous levitation. Thurston agreed to credit Kellar for the illusion whenever it was presented. In exchange for his work on next season’s tour, Thurston would receive $150 per week. Thurston would take possession of the show at the end of the next season, in June 1908, and if, at any time in future, he desired to “strengthen the show,” he could arrange for Kellar to take part, when convenient.

According to the contract, Thurston would also engage Dudley McAdow for five years; he had been Kellar’s manager for sixteen years in conjunction with Stair and Havlin, a theater chain. And if Kellar desired, Thurston would not prevent him from establishing a permanent magical entertainment in a large city. Kellar had long fantasized about establishing a permanent magic theater, the way Maskelyne had with Egyptian Hall in London.