Jim Steinmeyer (30 page)

After his long illness, Valadon died in April 1913. He was forty-six years old, leaving an orphaned thirteen-year-old son.

The Valadon Fund had seemed to tap into the admiration, and the deep-seated guilt, that surrounded Valadon within the magic community. He had been a fine, skillful performer whose ambition had pushed him within the cogs of a grinding show business machine. Professional magicians sent their contributions glumly. They knew, with some embarrassment, that the tragedy was both personal and professional. The world of magic was to blame.

For Thurston, the sight of Valadon sitting in his dressing room was particularly haunting. Thurston believed in dreams and omens; he realized that he might have been gazing at his own future. Valadon had almost become America’s Greatest Magician. Even more sobering, America’s Greatest Magician had become almost as destitute as Paul Valadon.

 

 

ON FEBRUARY 6, 1913,
Al Jolson ran onto the stage at New York’s Winter Garden Theater in blackface makeup. He danced down the runway, rolled his eyes, joked with the audience, and pushed aside the ragged plot of
The Honeymoon Express
so that he could stop the show with his latest songs. It was this show that introduced his comic song “The Spaniard That Blighted My Life,” as well as the perennial hit “You Made Me Love You.” Fanny Brice and Gaby Deslys were also in the star-studded cast, and the new Shubert musical was a roaring success by offering a little bit of everything, adding up to a long, wearying evening in the theater.

But the
New York Times
reported that it was a novel special effect that started the audience cheering.

The Mile a Minute effect—that’s what it was called—was created by Langdon McCormick and developed by Thurston’s company. McCormick was an American playwright and scenic designer who had specialized in extravagant, melodramatic stage effects, the crashing, flaming, roaring spectacles. As McCormick sometimes worked in London, his association with Thurston may have dated from Thurston’s early act, advising him on the fountain and fire effects. McCormick’s sort of sensation melodramas had fallen out of fashion by 1913, but short, flashy special effects had recently become part of the formula in Ziegfeld and Shubert reviews on Broadway. McCormick and Thurston had patented the effect, and Thurston had sold Mile a Minute to the Shuberts for their latest review.

It wasn’t really magic, but an element of theatrical hokum that added to the witty show. In
The Honeymoon Express
, the plot had worked its way around to a chase between one character in an automobile and another character in a train. A motion picture screen descended, showing a short film of the actors boarding the train and jumping into the car, bidding their farewells. The film screen was raised, and the audience was now looking at the set of a train station exterior, to one side of the stage. An elaborately painted backdrop showed a mountain in the distance, with winding paths extending down from its peak. The Winter Garden orchestra started a quick gallop, and the audience noticed two tiny pinpoints of light at the top of the mountain. They maneuvered around the winding road, suggesting the tiny headlights of a car. Shortly after this, another tiny lamp appeared, as if the train had reached the crest of the mountain and was following down the tracks, approaching the audience.

The music quickened. The tiny lights descended the mountain. As they did, they seemed to grow in size, and the headlights of the car spread farther apart. Finally, they reached the bottom of the mountain as full-sized headlights. “From the first faint glimmer of distant lights way up on the mountain side, through the devious turns of the road and down to the valleys, it could all be seen and heard,” the
Times
reported. There was a rumble offstage and a roar of wind. The backdrop was raised, and the lamps were revealed as real auto headlights and a real locomotive lantern—the car and the train were now side by side. They charged forward, squealing their brakes, and stopped at the edge of the stage as the audience cheered. The actors bounded from the vehicles, and the plot of
The Honeymoon Express
was neatly resolved.

McCormick and Thurston’s effect was actually simple. The two headlights were provided with mechanical irises, allowing them to be made smaller or larger. Similarly, they were handheld, mounted on a hinged arm, so the lamps could be brought close together or spread apart. Stagehands stood on raised platforms, holding the headlights just behind the translucent painted backdrop. They traced the path of the road, gradually opening the irises and spreading them apart. A single locomotive light was handled in a similar way. As the stagehands lowered the lamps to the stage, additional carpenters had pushed on the prop car and locomotive just behind the curtain. The lamps were then smoothly placed on the fronts of these vehicles, giving a seamless effect. The stagehands and carpenters ran for the wings, and the curtain was lifted, showing the completed effect.

Unfortunately, the success of the effect created a problem for Thurston. Another inventor of scenic effects, Lincoln Carter (not related to the magician, Charles Carter) smelled the profits from
The Honeymoon Express
and insisted that he had already patented that effect, for an 1898 melodrama called
The Heart of Chicago
. Through 1913, he pelted Thurston’s attorney, Thomas MacMahon, with threats and challenges. MacMahon urged the magician to settle with Carter, but Thurston optimistically held out. He desperately needed the money from the Shuberts and was afraid to have them omit the effect or cancel the show because of the legal action.

When Carter’s patent papers were finally examined, his game was finished. In
The Heart of Chicago
, he had used a prop locomotive that approached the audience from the back of a darkened stage. In his patent, the lamp on the front of the locomotive grew in size, giving the impression that the train had been traveling a much longer distance—that was the only similarity to Mile a Minute. Carter had accomplished it with a surprisingly clumsy device. A round glass covered the front of the lamp. This was covered with a layer of lampblack—soot. A small sponge on an arm pressed against the glass. As the glass revolved, the sponge wiped off the soot in a widening spiral, giving the impression that the lamp was enlarging. Carter could not patent the idea of a racing locomotive; he could protect only his actual devices, like the one used to enlarge the spotlight.

For the magician, the lawsuits provided a white-knuckle chase even more thrilling than the Mile a Minute effect. As late as November 1913 Thurston had still been avoiding creditors, and his show was almost attached in Pittsburgh for a $500 note, past due. But early in 1914, Carter finally withdrew his claims and the Shuberts paid Thurston in full for
The Honeymoon Express
, which had run for months in New York and on the road. Thurston had spent extravagantly on attorney fees and patents, but
The Honeymoon Express
raced across the finish line by delivering a bundle of much-needed cash to Thurston and McCormick. The magician was able to pay off the loan on his show to Hyman Fish and temporarily right his wobbly bankbook.

 

 

ANOTHER WELCOME SUCCESS
was Thurston’s amusement park ride, now completed, patented, and delivered to Luna Park at Coney Island. The first model had cost over $25,000, the equivalent of nearly half a million dollars today. It was called the Thurston Waltz Ride. According to one of Thurston’s friends, its gyrations “caused many a loving couple, under the delusion that they were waltzing, to throw up their hot dogs.” It was renamed Tango Waltz Ride, as confusing as that seemed, to capitalize on America’s obsession with the tango, and then sold to Magic City in Paris, Atlantic City, and Riverview Park in Chicago, where Harry Thurston supervised the installation. Thurston’s advertising claimed that it was the “Best, Newest, Safest, Cheapest Ride Ever Invented.” It was hardly the cheapest, and after years of work, Thurston couldn’t have realized much of a profit.

Thurston’s next invention was inspired by the
Titanic
disaster of 1912. He proposed a special ship that could be turned into a series of lifeboats. The deck was built with double thickness. If the boat sank, large wedges of deck could be released, so they could float away as oversized rafts. It was a ridiculous idea, but he obtained the patent and proudly turned it over to the U.S. government as a special lifesaving device. A thank-you letter from Charles D. Hilles, one of President Taft’s secretaries, was later featured in Thurston’s souvenir books, with the headline, “Thurston Inventions Benefit Humanity ... Gives His Knowledge and Creative Genius to His Fellow Citizens.”

Howard was delighted with the publicity, but his obsession with invention seemed to be aimed directly at his father, William Thurston, who was still living in Detroit. He’d never had any faith in his son’s abilities and had even insulted him by offering a quarter toward his career in magic. Now Thurston made sure that William read of his lifeboat patent. This was William’s comeuppance: his son was not only a famous magician, but he had surpassed his father as an inventor.

 

 

AT THE SAME TIME,
John Northern Hilliard was busy reinventing Thurston. Howard’s journalist friend from Rochester had holed up in a writer’s colony in Carmel by the Sea, California, writing the magician’s biography for him. “I have got to write the story of your life, because the book is in my blood, because it is part of my actual existence.” He refused an offer to write a Thurston newspaper serial on Indian magic, as it didn’t interest him. And he turned down an invitation to travel with the show for a few weeks; as much fun as it might be, he was receiving a small stipend from his newspaper and his expenses were covered. Hilliard was luxuriating in the process of simply writing.

Hilliard had been critical of Thurston for the silly ballyhoo and exaggerations he’d used in his souvenir books—claiming that he’d been abducted as a child, or was related to Senator Thurston, or fooled Herrmann the Great. Instead, Hilliard wanted to lightly dramatize the real events. Thurston had trusted him with stories of his early life, riding the rails and traveling with the races. When Howard and Tommy read Hilliard’s first chapters, they were gripped by the colorful scenes but embarrassed by some of the language. “Many minister friends would be greatly shocked,” he wrote to Hilliard, by the words “damn and God damn.” Hilliard sulked, and then put aside the work. He had considered each word to be realistic and perfectly chosen.

At the end of July 1913, Howard and Tommy left for a monthlong trip, visiting England, Paris, and Budapest. Thurston was able to promote his Waltz Ride to amusement parks and discuss business with David Devant. The previous year, Devant had been invited to appear on the first Royal Command Variety Theater performance—a select group of music-hall artists performing before the King and Queen—and Devant scored a success by performing Thurston’s Boy, Girl, and Eggs routine.

In the hands of Thurston and Devant, the trick was now a minor masterpiece. As the little boy escorted the little girl onto the stage, the orchestra played the “Wedding March.” Once on the stage, Thurston would ask the little boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A policeman,” he would answer. And then he’d ask the little girl. “A policeman’s wife,” she’d respond. Thurston accomplished this neat trick by whispering the responses to the children, timing his instructions so that they were unheard as the audience laughed at some previous joke.

Maskelyne and Devant had been having their own financial difficulties at their new theater, and Devant was shrewdly looking for investors. He proposed establishing a permanent theater of magic in New York and told Thurston that they had already been approached by “two quarters” about this sort of deal, but, of course—the smooth salesman’s touch—they preferred to collaborate with Thurston and Kellar. Remembering the clause in his contract with Kellar, in which the older magician could set up his own theater, Thurston sent on the proposal. Kellar shot it down instantly. He had “no present intention of going into the permanent theater scheme,” and then concluded with an admonition. “Take my advice and don’t get entangled with Devant or any other English showman.”

Thurston had intended to secure several Maskelyne and Devant illusions for his show but couldn’t arrange a deal. Devant’s recent feature, the Window of a Haunted House, looked wonderful in Devant’s music-hall show illusion, but Thurston discovered, to his embarrassment, that he’d already purchased and performed a crude copy of the trick for his previous season. He didn’t know it was Devant’s idea. When they discussed the matter, Thurston took it out of his show.

Howard may have originally intended the trip as a long-delayed honeymoon, but their marriage was waning before the trip even began. Beatrice had moved out of their home in Cos Cob by the beginning of July, and after they returned from Europe at the end of the summer, she remained at the Hotel Walton in Philadelphia. In September, Howard received a report from the hotel detective that his wife had been staying in a room that adjoined and shared a bathroom with an insurance doctor, Olin M. Eakins. Their “dress, conduct, and the conditions of the rooms” suggested that their relationship was adulterous. In October, Thurston filed for divorce in Bridgeport.