Jim Steinmeyer (47 page)

The family originally sought as much as $125,000, but when it was finally settled at the end of 1930, Thurston was ordered to pay $20,000. The judgment couldn’t have come at a more perilous time. Howard’s investments were failing and the magic show was continually strapped for money, suffering along with the country’s failed economy.

 

 

IN OCTOBER 1930,
when little Delhi joined the show, she was too sick to be used on stage. Robinson nursed her backstage and Thurston had a special blanket ordered for her to keep her warm. “Don’t worry about the elephant,” Howard wrote to Harry and Rae. They were obviously concerned about their investment, but Thurston reminded them that they’d always made money from him. It was, after all, the Maid of Mystery, the peep-show device from their amusement business, that had netted Harry between $40,000 and $50,000 of profit over the years. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have the Maid.”

But despite these reassurances, the elephant died just days later. The trainer Robinson wrote, “Harry, I am writing you to let you know that your brother was in no way responsible for Delhi’s death. He had just given her medicine. I loved the little thing and she loved me.”

But Delhi’s fate seemed to trigger Harry’s wrath. To him, the incident represented Howard’s carelessness and his lack of support. Robinson gave several accounts of Delhi’s last days, inspiring a rambling letter from Harry that boiled over with frustration:

Harry noticed that Howard had reneged on their agreement and had never mentioned Harry in publicity.

Harry ended with a long accounting of the money owed him—for taking care of Tampa and driving him out of the business, for buying the elephant, for investing in his projects. But he was sure that Bernard Hyman, Thurston’s lawyer who had heavily invested him in failed real estate deals, would be ready to step in.

Of course, the elephant’s death had devastated Howard. He had planned on this feature for the new tour and couldn’t afford the loss. Harry’s wrath knocked his older brother back on his heels.

For years, Harry had reminded Howard of all of his worst qualities—his embarrassing background, his criminal associations, and the dirty show business that he had left behind. Howard had these elements erased from his life. But Harry, the portrait of Dorian Gray, represented all of the worst secrets hidden away at that State Street address in Chicago.

Howard was increasingly horrified by the thought that the portrait was about to climb out of the dime museum and take center stage.

Billboard
announced:

Howard was exasperated with each line of the ridiculous ballyhoo, but was now trapped into the partnership. Mysteries of India became one of the most infamous productions in the history of entertainment.

DELHI’S FATE SEEMED
to represent the hopelessness of the times, the mounting disappointments and business failures—Fasola’s death, Harry Thurston’s inevitable show, the Monkey Case ruling, and, of course, Jane’s marriage, which had managed to alienate her from her parents. Thurston was typically stoic about it all. He would have retired, if he could have—if the breathing device, the gold mine, or the real estate investments had ever paid off. Leotha took to her bed in a dark personal depression. It was as if her enchanted world of magic had collapsed around her.

C
yril Yettmah was a stone-faced English magician of the old school, stiff and proper. But he had an encyclopedic knowl edge of magic and a knack for new ideas. He suggested an astonishing illusion to Thurston, which was first introduced in the 1929 season. Thurston called it “Iasia, The Unattainable Attained, the Impossible Realized.”

A tall, rectangular skeleton cabinet was pulled onstage. It was a little larger than a phone booth, with a vague Oriental motif and a roof festooned with silk tassels. A rope was lowered from the ceiling of the auditorium and attached to the top of the cabinet. One of Thurston’s assistants, dressed as an Indian princess in a silk robe and veil, stepped inside. Two more assistants, standing onstage, tightened the ropes, which squeaked through a large metal pulley. The cabinet and princess were slowly lifted, swinging off of the stage, until they dangled several feet over the orchestra pit.

The band quieted, and the flute continued with an Indian melody.

“You see before you Princess Iasia, keeper of the secrets. Salaam Iasia!”

The lady reached to a small cord within the cabinet. Pulling on it, she raised a curtained canopy, from the bottom to the top, which concealed her from view.

“Swing forth the ancient Hindu prayer cage!”

The band transitioned into a clanging Oriental march. Now the lady reached through slits in the curtain. She held bunches of lucky Thurston throw-out cards, the same cards, emblazoned with his portrait, that he scaled from the stage at the start of the show. Handfuls of these rained down onto the crowd as the cage was slowly raised, higher and higher. The children below squealed and grabbed for the cards. Thurston slowly followed the motion of the cabinet, walking out onto the runway over the orchestra pit as the audience craned their necks to watch the cage slowly ascend. It stopped at the top edge of the proscenium, brightly illuminated in the spotlights. The kettledrum rumbled and the music reached a crescendo.

“Iasia, are you there?” The lady waved her hand from a slit in the curtain. “Garawallah! Begone! Iasia! Iasia!” Thurston raised his pistol, firing directly at the cabinet. As the shot rang out, the curtains suddenly dropped, showing the cabinet empty. At the same instant, the bottom of the cabinet hinged open, falling away like a trapdoor. Instinctively the spectators sitting under it ducked, then looked upward as the skeleton cage twisted and turned in the light, throwing angular shadows on the walls of the theater. The princess was gone.

“Those above can look down upon the top of the cage, those that are below may look up through the floor. She is gone. Just... gone!”

The trick was almost too good. Walter Gibson recalled how the first performances of Iasia, in 1929, ended with an uncomfortable pause. The illusion was so spellbinding, and the audience so bewildered by the empty cabinet, that Thurston’s final pronouncement generated only a stunned silence, then a smattering of applause. One night, Thurston hit upon the solution. After a long pause, he repeated, “She is gone,” and then added, “And night after night, I stand here gazing at that empty cabinet, wondering myself ... where ... she... could ... possibly ... be!”

The notion of grand Mr. Thurston contemplating one of his own illusions, fooling himself, was pure bathos. The audience quickly laughed, and then, brought back to their senses, offered a resounding ovation.

The ingenious secret was partly Yettmah’s work and partly Thurston’s. The lady was concealed in the top of the cabinet, lying in the roof. Thurston suggested positioning her on her stomach and concealing her bent legs in the decorative Oriental cornices, which made Yettmah’s cabinet even smaller and more deceptive. A folding ladder concealed inside allowed her to climb up to the top of the cabinet. When the Iasia cage reached the top of the auditorium, this hiding space was naturally concealed, as almost everyone was gazing up at the apparatus.

The illusion was performed near the end of the show, and remained against the ceiling until everyone in the auditorium had left. Only then was it lowered to the stage and the assistant released. The Princess was billed as Christine Townsend. But the tight little enclosure was unbearable, and the top of the theater was invariably hot and stuffy. Neither Christine nor any of the other girls was willing to perform it. It was George Townsend, Christine’s husband and the stage manager of the show, who donned the wig, silk robe, and veil each night to become “Princess Iasia, the keeper of secrets.”

 

 

THURSTON’S
MYSTERIES OF
INDIA
—the smaller type explained that it starred Harry Thurston—opened on May 18, 1931, in Harvey, Illinois. The show was a strange hybrid of a circus and magic show, with a beautiful new waterproof tent and a neat four-piece band. The tent was tested the first night, when rain drowned out most of the music and the opening dances. Eugene Laurant performed a short magic act and then introduced the star of the show, Harry Thurston.

Harry sauntered on stage in an elegant tuxedo. Many in the audience did a double take. He looked a great deal like his brother Howard, though fatter and sloppier. A long cigarette dangled from his lips.

“It’s great to see you all turn out tonight,” he snarled across the footlights. His voice, a deep nasal drone, sounded like a comic parody of the famous magician. “I mean, considering all the rain. That’s why we’ve got a waterproof tent, right? Well, I guess Roosevelt can’t take care of that sort of stuff. Rain. He ain’t got a government agency for that, does he? Anybody know? Geez, too bad for us.” Harry’s opening monologue soon became notorious with the company, a freewheeling improvisation by one of the stupidest men anyone had ever met. He would indulgently wheeze about the Depression, or a carnival he remembered working, his friends in Chicago, or a local “celebrity” in the audience, like the sheriff. “His ignorance was blatantly displayed so much that his splendid introduction was completely a lost cause,” recalled Percy Abbott, one of the magicians who had been hired to carry him through the performance.

When he started performing magic, Harry was even worse. According to Abbott, “It was utterly impossible for Harry to memorize as much as three words of patter.” The assistants, standing nearby, were expected to cue his next lines. Harry signaled that he needed help by growling “Crack!”—carnival slang for “talk.” Harry never learned his patter. Night after night, he had every line and gesture fed to him. George Boston, an assistant on the show, recalled the ridiculous procedure, which seemed a sad parody of his brother’s famous levitation.