Jim Steinmeyer (31 page)

Thurston’s attorney, Thomas F. MacMahon, added this to a long list of problems that he was then juggling for the magician. “Why don’t you answer my letters regarding your divorce matter?” MacMahon asked in a letter. Thurston had been paying Beatrice twenty dollars weekly and wanted the payment reduced to ten. “Mrs. Thurston came into my office and made a scene the other day because she hadn’t received money from you,” the attorney wrote. “She wants her notes paid.”

MacMahon had been busy trying to finagle Thurston into deals and simultaneously out of trouble. He seemed genuinely confused and humiliated by his client’s frustrating decisions and changes of focus. The Lincoln Carter case was a good example of Thurston’s meddling; he had ignored requests, complicated deals, insisted on changes, and then jeopardized his business associations when he impulsively grabbed for a settlement. He also complained about MacMahon’s neglect. “All of your ugly letters can be answered very easily and with gentlemanly calm,” MacMahon responded. The attorney provided the details of his meeting with Beatrice, the latest advice on the
Honeymoon Express
injunction, and information on the foreign Waltz Ride patents, but much of it was news that Thurston didn’t want to hear. MacMahon pointed out that they were about to make $1,900 on the French Waltz Ride, and spend about $2,200 on the French version of the patent, a foolish decision. MacMahon was suffering from stomach problems, and ended one letter by warning Thurston, “It is such letters as you write, proving you lack the confidence in those supporting you in every direction, that chills your friends.”

When his friends noticed that Beatrice was no longer traveling with the show, Thurston explained that she was under doctor’s care in New York; it’s not clear if the remark was intended as a sardonic joke. The divorce was granted on April 24, 1914. Beatrice had started her relationship with Howard Thurston as a seasoned professional and finished the same way. The “Queen of Magic” had not only been featured in his show, but was the original assistant in many of his important illusions. Shortly after the divorce was granted, she married Dr. Eakins and retired from the stage.

ONE OF THURSTON’S
new effects, the Spirit Paintings, was astonishing. A stack of blank canvases were shown and examined by the audience. A bright electric light was placed behind two of the canvases, held upright in a frame, and members of the audience selected a subject for a painting, or a personality for a portrait. As the audience watched the back-lit canvases, a picture seemed to slowly materialize, from misty colors to sharp, clean lines and colors. When the canvases were separated, the finished work of art—fully painted and dry—had materialized.

It was an amateur magician, David P. Abbott, who had discerned this secret from two Chicago mediums, the Bangs Sisters. The Bangses’ phenomenon was a brazen fake; the ladies manipulated the frames as they held them in front of a bright window. Abbott’s secret worked its way to England, where it became a sensation in P. T. Selbit’s music hall act. He featured it throughout America in vaudeville. Abbott showed the secret to Thurston and Bamberg when they visited him in Omaha, Nebraska. Spirit Paintings was a perfect mystery, designed to make audiences scratch their heads—the visual, puzzling sort of marvel that Bamberg loved.

Unfortunately, the next season Thurston’s new effects were just more
Sturm und Drang
, those monstrosities that made Theo Bamberg wince. For example, the Vanishing Piano was a Fasola inspiration. An upright piano sat on a low wooden platform. An assistant sat at the piano and began playing. She was covered with a curtain, and the piano and player were lifted high above the stage. Thurston fired a pistol. The music stopped, the curtains and their framework fell to the stage with a crash, to reveal that the piano and assistant had disappeared.

The Boy, the Girl, and the Donkey was even sillier, and more spectacular. Two assistants, a boy and girl, led a donkey down the aisle of the theater and up to the stage. There, the donkey was coaxed inside an enormous cabinet, painted with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Once the donkey was inside, the boy and girl instantly followed. The curtains were closed at the front of the cabinet and the prop was given a turn. When it was opened, all three had disappeared. The most wonderful surprise came just seconds later, when the boy, girl, and donkey instantly reentered at the back of the auditorium.

The box part wasn’t very interesting at all. The cabinet simply had a false back that was large enough to hold the human and animal assistants—the kind of “garage” that had horrified Jarrett. But Thurston had hired twin girls, twin boys, and twin donkeys.... Or nearly twin donkeys: he needed animals of a specific size to fit in the box, and in 1914 an animal broker wired him, “Nature doesn’t make mature animals according to your specifications; smallest matched pair available forty-two inches ground to top shoulder. Price, forty dollars.” Three sets of twins, a ridiculous extravagance, explained the miraculous reappearance at the back of the theater.

Thurston asked his friend Karl Germain to paint the cabinet with colorful Egyptian hieroglyphs. When the show returned to Cleveland, Germain made a habit of visiting backstage after the show and touching up the painting. One evening, he found himself alone on the stage with Thurston’s lion. As he walked by the cage, the lion’s paw shot through the bars and grabbed Germain’s sleeve, ripping it to shreds, just missing his flesh.

Thurston now had numerous reasons to look for new ideas, and reasons to be always looking over his shoulder, with an eye on his competition. Charles Carter was eagerly filling his show with magic from the Kellar and Thurston shows. He now had his own lion illusion and was touring America. Harry Houdini seemed to have tired of his escape act and toured England briefly at the end of 1913 with a magic act, including a disappearing pony. His English magic tour was a flop. Audiences weren’t interested in watching Harry Houdini, with his reputation as an escape artist, performing magic tricks. But to Thurston, who was wary of Houdini, it sounded suspiciously like the first steps toward some real competition.

When he heard that Houdini was returning to the United States with a new illusion, Walking Through a Brick Wall, Thurston hurriedly had Bamberg rebuild one of his small tricks—a neat little effect in which a pencil or a wand was pushed through a small square of fabric—into a gigantic piece of apparatus to accommodate a person instead of a pencil. Bamberg objected, pointing out that it would be a bad trick, and it was. But Thurston wanted to be ready to steal a little of Houdini’s thunder if he managed to score a hit.

One winter morning in Indianapolis, as he traveled with Thurston in 1918, Bamberg arrived at the theater and found the stage brutally cold. Thurston was onstage rehearsing in dress gloves, to keep his hands warm. Bamberg called to him, “Don’t forget to take your gloves off.” Thurston responded, “Nothing doing, Theo. I keep them on.” Bamberg was amazed to see him present the first part of his show, including his intricate card routine, wearing gloves. In this, Thurston was years ahead of the times; a generation later, it became fashionable for magicians to perform card manipulations wearing gloves.

Bamberg worked for three seasons with Thurston before returning to vaudeville. He admired Thurston as an engaging performer and a magnetic personality. But he also was mystified by Thurston’s strangely tin ear with magic; Thurston always fancied himself an inventor, but always depended on other people to lead him to a genuinely new idea.

 

 

PERHAPS IT WAS
Theo Bamberg who even led him to Nina Fielding, Thurston’s third wife.

As the story was told, the show was playing in Ottawa, at the start of World War I. Howard and Theo were lounging in the hotel, feeling lonely, when Bamberg began flirting with a pretty woman and her little girl. She’d just seen the Thurston show and was anxious to meet Bamberg and Thurston, but her little girl had not seen the performance because, she told Thurston, “my mother won’t let me.” The magicians amused the little girl with pocket tricks, and the mysterious lady revealed that she was a widow and her husband had been a victim of the war.

The story can’t be even slightly true. Neither the year nor the situation was correct. So, here’s another story. Thurston was performing in Montreal; he supposedly saw a pretty lady seated in a box during his show. She loaned a monogrammed handkerchief—N.F. for Nina Fielding—and there was a mix-up in handkerchiefs as it was returned to her. The lady seemed amused, returning to the show and then inviting Thurston to perform at a children’s birthday party. That one’s not true, either.

Or there was the story that he met her in Atlantic City. Or on the steps of an Asbury Park, New Jersey, hotel....

The lady’s name was actually Nina Leotha Hawes Willadsen. She was born in 1885 to George Hawes and Ellen Fielding Hawes. It seems that this was Ellen’s second marriage, as Nina had an older half sister, Emma, who was born in Nova Scotia. Her mother was Canadian, but later claims—that Nina was the daughter, or niece, of the former premier of Nova Scotia, William Stevens Fielding—were untrue.

She had a short career in the theater, working under the name Nina Randall, playing comic supporting parts in several Broadway productions, including Florenz Ziegfeld’s musical for Anna Held,
Mam’selle Napoleon
. Nina had sparkling dark eyes and a pleasant smile, with broad features and a square jaw. She was too large to be a Ziegfeld showgirl, or for that matter, one of the slender waifs that Thurston pushed through trapdoors or balanced on the levitation cradle. In 1908 she was married to John R. Willadsen, an experienced theater manager, who had been responsible for running one of the most successful Broadway shows of all time,
Abie’s Irish Rose
. This probably signaled the end of her stage career. They lived in Weehawken, New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan, where he built his wife a three-story brick apartment house, on Oak Street near the waterfront. The couple occupied one of the five apartments, with a maid. In July 1909, Nina gave birth to a pretty, blond daughter, who was named Jane Jacqueline, and John Willadsen called their home “Villa Jane.”

Thurston knew Mrs. Willadsen from New York show business circles, where they may have attended parties together, and it’s very possible that their relationship preceded their own divorces—this might be the reason for constructing innocent fictions about how they met. By the summer of 1914, both Nina and Howard were recently divorced. He was America’s greatest magician, a prominent figure in the theatrical world. She was a minor star of the stage, now a wealthy and attractive lady of independent means who owned an apartment building. Articles around this time refer to her as “not engaged in the theatrical profession.” As their relationship became more serious, his letters were concerned with disappointing her.

We can imagine the list of problems: his unpredictable temper, his criminal past, his shaky finances, failed marriages, and a tie to low-life show business that he could never quite shake—Harry Thurston was always nearby to draw him back. Thurston’s first two marriages had been with very young women who had been longing for the spotlight. He may have reasoned that the time was right to pursue one of those wealthy, independent socialites who used to visit his dressing room early in his career. If he had started the relationship with this cold, calculated business plan—a confidence game—then he fooled himself. Thurston fell head over heels in love.

There’s a strange desperation in Thurston’s love letters. He was awed by Nina’s Broadway connections and social status, and also intimidated by her worldliness. She had her own money and property and was accompanied by a young daughter, a maid, and a number of independent women. The assembled retinue seemed to not only impress Thurston but throw him off balance; he had always been ready with a deception or a brash bit of self-confidence—“Never worry, George!”—but now seemed so helpless that he could only rely on the truth. In October he wrote to Nina. He called her “Leo,” short for Leotha, or his “Love Girl”:

Even after they resolved to be married, at the last minute Thurston was fretting over her social status. He wrote on October 24, 1914: