Jim Steinmeyer (52 page)

 

 

HARRY BLACKSTONE
became one of America’s favorite magicians. In 1933, he acquired the apparatus for the levitation that Harry Kellar had been building in Los Angeles, purchasing it from Kellar’s heirs. In his show, he billed it as the Levitation of Princess Karnac, presenting it with the same grandeur as Kellar and Thurston. The Dancing Handkerchief and the Girl and the Rabbit—borrowed from Thurston—became trademarks in Blackstone’s show. Harry Blackstone continued touring until 1955, and made occasional appearances on television. He died in Hollywood in 1965.

 

 

GEORGE WHITE
did his best to guard the Thurston props in Long Island, and even obtained a job with the lumberyard near where they were stored. In 1941, when Dante returned to the United States, George joined the company. Every night, Dante proudly introduced him on stage—as the great magician Howard Thurston’s chief assistant. George traveled back to Los Angeles with Dante and assisted, off camera, during the filming of
A Haunting We Will Go
, a Laurel and Hardy feature that costarred Dante.

In the 1950s, George returned to New York and took a job as a porter at a Brooklyn glass company. He was a loyal, hardworking employee, and seldom spoke of his days in show business. He died in Brooklyn in 1962.

 

 

THE PROPERTIES
of the Thurston show had seemed priceless in the hands of the famous magician. But just like illusions, the actual apparatus, in storage, had no special enchantment. They were big, heavy boxes and crates, bits of wood and steel in need of paint, repairs, and rehearsals. A wand is worthless without a magician, and the same analogy applied to Thurston’s carloads of equipment.

Harry and Rae Thurston sold the Mysteries of India show to a young, charismatic performer named Will Rock, who used some of the illusions in his show. Jane, in turn, sold Rock some of her father’s props. But in the late ’30s, she neglected to pay the storage bill at the Beechhurst warehouse. A magician named Gerald Heaney purchased the contents of the warehouse for the back storage, paying a mere $380, and arranged with Jane to have it shipped to his barn, near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The cases and boxes moldered for decades. The barn was finally emptied in the 1980s, when some of the illusions were destroyed and other mementos were sold to magic collectors.

 

 

HARRY THURSTON
died in Miami, Florida, on May 6, 1941. After a brief tour of Mysteries of India in 1935, he never performed, but acquaintances felt that he’d always considered himself a magician, and talked proudly of his work on the stage. He was buried at the family plot in Columbus, Ohio.

 

 

JANE THURSTON
worked for several years with Isham Jones as a performer and songwriter. Her songs were composed under the name Gene Willadsen: Willadsen was used to deliberately put her years as Jane Thurston behind her; Gene was used because ASCAP, the songwriter’s union, was restricted to men. One of her most successful songs was a hit from 1942 titled “My Best to You.” Later Jane was employed by PanAm in Miami, working in operations. She also learned to fly. She married a flight engineer named Guy Lynn, and had two children. After Lynn’s death she married Dick Shepard, a retired navy captain. Sometime in the 1960s, she proudly became Jane Thurston again, gradually contacting her old friends and fans in magic, visiting magic conventions, and writing about the years with her father’s show. All of the unhappiness was forgotten, all of the good times were recalled with warm good humor. Once, when a friend asked her about her “birth father,” she offered a conspiratorial response. “I think it was Thurston. I mean, my mother was a showgirl at the time, and Howard Thurston was a big star. Who is to say that something didn’t happen?” At the end of her life, she didn’t mention the name Willadsen, nor did friends hear the song title “My Best to You,” as this would have led them to her real name.

Jane’s happy memories of the Thurston show usually centered around the cast. She didn’t focus on the tricks or the theaters, but remembered almost everyone—assistants, technicians, carpenters—with fondness. One day she paged through a Thurston scrapbook that had been assembled by a magic collector. “Oh, there’s Jackie! She was so kind to me when I joined the show.... And Fernanda, she was beautiful in the Levitation. Oh, Herman and Lillian! Dear Herman!” She turned the page and found a formal portrait of Harry Thurston. Jane stared at it for a long moment. “He was a pig.” Then she moved to the next page to find another friendly face.

Jane Thurston Shepard died in 1994.

 

 

TODAY THE PUBLIC
has forgotten the name Thurston. That’s a shame. Ironically, when most people imagine a great magician of the 1920s, they summon the name Houdini. But few understood what Houdini’s show really looked like—gazing at a curtained cabinet and waiting for him to escape, or listening to him harangue the local spiritualist mediums. It was Thurston who presented the magic show of our collective memories, the bright, fast miracles that complimented the 1920s—the floating princesses, the painted boxes suspended over the heads of the audience, and the gunshots that caused handfuls of fluttering showgirls to disappear.

Houdini’s legacy was Houdini. After his death, scarcely a handful of performers managed to achieve success as “escape artists.” The category existed solely for Houdini. Without the force of his personality, there was no special artistry in escaping.

But Thurston’s legacy was much more complicated. Just as he inherited the tradition of the great magic show from his predecessors, it continued after Thurston, in the performances of Dante and Blackstone.

Of course, fashions and entertainment trends have changed. There’s no need for a World’s Greatest Magician in a world saturated with media opportunities, when fame is the result of instantaneous recognition rather than a lifetime of careful choices. But the grand touring magic shows have continued with new generations of performers, like Harry Blackstone, Jr., Doug Henning, and David Copperfield—and in Las Vegas, where these spectacular shows were exemplified by performers like Siegfried and Roy, and Lance Burton.

It’s often been proclaimed that magic is dead, that the good old days are over and modern audiences are too sophisticated to watch a magician. But the fantasy of magic has always been at the root of any entertainment—and the promise of seeing it live, in front of our eyes, continues to be irresistible. “The love of mystery” was a part of our human condition, an unchanging trait that Thurston recognized in audiences throughout his career. That’s why another young, charismatic wonder-worker, surprising us with a combination of new feats and old classics, can always find an audience.

When Theo Bamberg was touring with Thurston, he met with Karl Germain, the artistic Lyceum magician. Thurston’s impressive show had put Bamberg in a philosophical mood, and as the conversation turned to the changing tastes of the audience, Bamberg asked if Germain ever doubted the future of magic. “Of course not,” Germain answered quickly. “Magic will never die so long as children are born.”

If we’ve forgotten one particular magician, standing in the spotlight with his face turned up toward the balcony, it’s because he performed his magic so effortlessly, so masterfully. For many years afterward, audiences fondly remembered the exhilaration of Thurston’s marvels. The spell that he left behind sparkled in the memories of countless American children.

Photographs, letters, manuscripts, and memorabilia from Thurston can be found in important collections devoted to the subject of magic. My research was a happy process, an opportunity to visit with many friends in this field and examine many wonderful libraries and storehouses of information. I was extremely grateful for the help I received and the generous offers of information, manuscript copies, or time to peruse these collections. Generations after his death, many historically minded magicians are fans of Thurston’s memory and were encouraging and enthusiastic about his story.

First, thanks to my friend Mike Caveney and his Egyptian Hall Collection in Pasadena, California, for his continual help and inspiring advice. George and Sandy Daily’s exquisite magic collection included many important Thurston artifacts. Kenneth Klosterman was generous with time and enthusiastic in his support. Rory Feldman has amassed an astonishing collection of Thurston material, and his help was essential to this project.

I am also grateful for the help of William Kalush and the Conjuring Arts Research Center. George Goebel was especially gracious, sharing his Thurston artifacts and his perspective. William Self, who as a boy knew Thurston, was interested and encouraging, helping with an early draft of the manuscript.

And sincere thanks to the following collectors, magicians, or interested parties: Robert Bazell, Jim Berg and Fred Baisch (Twin Cities Magic), David Copperfield, Claude Crowe, Noel Daniel, Diego Domingo, Tom Ewing, Gabe Fajuri, Gary Frank, Steve Freeman, John Gaughan, Joseph Hanosek, Jay Hunter, Ricky Jay, Richard Kaufman, Jim Klodzen, Dennis Laub, Bill Maloney, Tom O’Lenick, Robert E. Olson, Michael Perovich, William V. Rauscher, Ben Robinson, Dale Salwak, Mike Sanderson, Laurie Schaim, David Sigafus, Peter Weis, and Wayne Wissner.

I recall the help provided by my late friends Werner Dornfield, Walter Gibson, John A. McKinven, Jay Marshall, Vic Torsberg, and Orson Welles.

It was a big adventure, but it only became a book because of the clever insights of my agent, Jim Fitzgerald, and my editor at Tarcher/Penguin, Mitch Horowitz, who somehow instantly understood the appeal of a story about a forgotten magician and then made the story even better with their suggestions.

And finally, thanks to my wife, Frankie Glass, who is knowledgeable about the subject and a good judge of how to tell a story. Her love and support were important parts of this formula. Frankie is the critic whom I respect most of all.

I’ve previously written about Thurston in my book
Hiding the Elephant
(Carroll and Graf, 2005), principally related to his interactions with Harry Kellar and Guy Jarrett, and in
The Glorious Deception
(Carroll and Graf, 2005), regarding his interactions with William Robinson. Harlan Tarbell’s remarks are quoted from
The Tarbell Course in Magic
,
Volume 2
, published originally in manuscript (Tarbell Systems, 1927) and then in book (Louis Tannen, 1942). Al Jolson sang “My Mammy” in the famous 1927 Warner Bros. talking film
The Jazz Singer
, and his spoken lyrics have been incorporated into most versions. The biographical information is from Herbert G. Goldman’s
Jolson: The Legend Comes to Life
(Oxford University Press, 1988). Edmund Wilson’s quote is taken from his essay “John Mulholland and the Art of Illusion,” from Wilson’s book,
Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties
(Macmillan, 1950).

My account of Houdini’s visit to the show is based on a letter from Houdini to Kellar, reporting on the event, December 7, 1920, now in the collection of David Copperfield. Thurston’s presentation was in transition at this time; he was using a committee of assistants on stage. To dramatize the account, I’ve constructed his routine using lines of patter from levitation scripts recorded in
Howard Thurston’s Illusion Show Work Book, Volume 1
(Magical Publications, 1991) and
Volume 2
(Magical Publications, 1992), both edited by Maurine Christopher, with additional material by this author. Thurston’s backstage ritual has been described by his daughter, Jane Thurston, in Howard Thurston and Jane Thurston Shepard’s
Our Life of Magic
(Phil Temple, 1989) and by Fred Keating, “Howard Thurston, Merchant of Magic,”
The Sphinx
, March 1952.

I was fortunate to know Orson Welles, who recounted his memories of Thurston’s show. Gresham’s account is from “The Voice of the Master,”
The Linking Ring
, April 1956. I wrote about the Levitation in
Hiding the Elephant
. Dale Carnegie is quoted from
How to Win Friends and Influence People
(Simon and Schuster, 1937). Walter Gibson shared his impressions with me in a 1980 interview.

I had the opportunity to examine Thurston letters, and letters related to his time at Mount Hermon, which are in his personal file at Mount Hermon Academy, Northfield, Massachusetts. These included Round’s letters about the boy and Thurston’s letters pleading for an opportunity. During my day in the library, the Mount Hermon archivist, Peter Weis, helpfully negotiated these files, grade books, photographs, and school newspapers. He insightfully interpreted Thurston’s schooling in conjunction with Dwight Moody’s intentions and could finally pass judgment on the prevailing myth: Howard Thurston did not study for the ministry.