Jim Steinmeyer (36 page)

But the cures didn’t work fast enough for Thurston. One evening, during a performance, he stepped into the auditorium to borrow a handkerchief, and a small boy called out, “Why Mother, he doesn’t look at all like his pictures close-up, does he?” The boy was loud enough to cause giggles throughout the audience. Thurston laughed along with his crowd, but the incident embarrassed him. In fact, for years his photos had been airbrushed of lines and sagging skin. He decided to do something about it.

Dr. Lutz of Rochester performed the plastic surgery. In the early years of the twentieth century, this consisted of softened paraffin, injected under the skin, to smooth out wrinkles. By 1920, the use of paraffin was already an old procedure and greatly discredited; Thurston should have been advised to avoid it. When newspaper reports exposed the dangers of paraffin injections, Thurston pointed this out to the doctor, who assured him that he had been using his own special compound.

The operation was not a success, especially under the hot lights of a stage, where Thurston’s face visibly sagged. Thurston now looked oddly puffy and jowly; his vanity and the failed operation became a private joke with his friends. One day, Theo Bamberg and his son, David, saw a wax mannequin that had been slowly melting in a sunny window. “Look, it’s Howard Thurston,” David told his father, and they both fell over, convulsed with laughter.

Thurston’s interest in his health encouraged his doting on his wife and daughter. Leotha was often ill, or under a doctor’s care, and she became dependent on depressants to reduce her pains or sleep. To Thurston, these drugs were just another category in the wonders of medicine—patent medicines, paraffin injections, or barbiturates. Howard recommended to his wife Émile Coué’s cure, the autosuggestion “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better,” which was then a fashion around the world.

When Thurston was away on tour and Jane was in boarding school, Leotha and her friends might dash to a seaside resort for a short vacation, or Leotha would visit her sister in New Jersey, who now lived in her apartment building in Weehawken, or her brother in Halifax. Thurston followed with quick letters of cheery advice, urging her to get plenty of relaxation and eat only healthy food. She had her own way of feeling better. Like many socialites, she liked champagne, and when alcohol was banned under Prohibition, she traveled with bottles of bootlegged booze.

 

 

EVER SINCE HIS AUSTRALIAN TOUR,
Thurston had been intrigued by motion pictures, and he’d written several film outlines, attempting to mix magic into the plots. But it was probably Houdini’s involvement in the film business—a cliff-hanging serial called
The Master Mystery
produced in 1919—that galvanized Thurston to become a motion picture actor. Thurston’s film was completed in 1920.

Thurston wisely realized that his magic did not translate to the screen, where special effects could easily dazzle audiences. He wrote a script, first titled
Eternity
, about a fake spiritualist who encounters genuine marvels. The press reported that it “dealt largely with Thurston’s experiences in India and China” and depicted “the truth of spiritualism as demonstrated by the Yogis of the Hindustan.” It was shot at the Hal Benedict Studios on Long Island and directed by George Kelson.

The finished film, at six reels in length, was ultimately titled
Twisted Souls
. It was never released, and only a few segments of it survive, including Thurston as the rumpled and distraught medium, brandishing a gun and encountering Indian mystics in a ramshackle mansion. Several years later, Thurston attempted to recut the film, renaming it
The Spirit Witness
, but distributors weren’t interested. It offered none of the derring-do from Houdini’s film adventures, although the film encouraged Thurston to try his hand at additional scripts.

 

 

EARLY IN 1920,
Jane was diagnosed with the flu, a serious threat after the recent influenza epidemics, and was hospitalized. At the same time, Leotha’s cold developed into flu, and she was put under doctor’s care at their home. Thurston, on the road at the time, rushed from the theater each night, waiting for telegram updates about their conditions.

Suffering from a lack of sleep and raw nerves—this was also the time when the impatient Samri Baldwin was performing with Thurston’s show—on February 3, Howard was standing on the stage just before the curtain was about to rise, and he glanced into the wings. His company manager was trying to catch his attention, frantically waving a telegram. Thurston felt his knees weaken. He ran to the edge of the stage, grabbed the telegram, and opened it. His younger brother, Charles, had just been murdered.

The company manager had the overture repeated several times, as Thurston stood behind the curtain, trying to collect his thoughts. He was frozen in place by the shocking news.

Charles had been working as a railroad detective in Columbus the night before, examining the seals on freight cars in the Pennsylvania Railroad yard. Sometime after six p.m., shots had been heard, and Charles was found hours later with eight bullet holes in his back. He’d left a widow and three sons. The murderer had escaped, but police suspected a group of boxcar thieves.

The cast gathered around Thurston and watched him expectantly, wondering if the magician would be able to continue with the show. After a few minutes, Howard took a deep breath and went on the stage, mechanically going through all the motions, the smiles, and the little drolleries with the children as his mind raced over the situation. He had lived his life by omens and now wondered if Charles’s murder would start a cascade of misfortune with Jane and Leotha. For the next hour he was crazed with grief, wanting to dash from the theater. He felt it was only the decorum of the performance—the expectant audience staring back at him, the regimented movements of the assistants, and the laughter that arrived perfectly on cue—that kept him sane. As the curtain fell, the adrenaline that he had summoned seemed to drain from his body; in the darkness backstage, he collapsed onto George’s shoulder.

Fortunately, Jane and Leotha recovered within days. Harry Kellar brushed aside past differences and sent a fatherly note, filled with soothing advice from an old friend.

IN LETTERS TO HOUDINI,
Kellar had exhibited far less goodwill. “I am afraid of Thurston being able to hold his own,” Kellar wrote, “as he has greatly improved his work and works smooth now, but I am afraid competition would worry him to death, as he lacks that self confidence so very essential to success in magic.” Kellar heard that Thurston had been approaching other magicians like Harry Blackstone and Harry Jansen, to follow him into the marketplace—Thurston even considered retiring from the stage. The last few seasons had been profitable, and he was looking forward to spending time with his young daughter. Houdini loved these rumors, and he imagined that he would soon be able to step into the role of America’s leading magician.

Thurston always relied on a loyal group of magicians around him. Ostensibly they were there to supply him with ideas and new tricks. That’s why Fasola, Bamberg, and Jarrett had been recruited to help. But invariably they became involved in the backstage drama. Thurston was suspicious if they didn’t show the proper deference. That was Guy Jarrett’s problem. Or Thurston lost patience if they proved too needy. Fasola, working in England, was happy to chase steel wire for the levitation or send Thurston news of the latest illusions. But Fasola continually included reminders of how he depended on Thurston’s material and professional help, and Thurston tired of the weight of the friendship.

Most of all, Thurston’s men were there for a psychological boost, so that he could self-confidently play the part of the theatrical entrepreneur, allowing him to erase his embarrassing, ragtag background. That was always the problem with associating with Harry, whose dime museum businesses in Ohio and Chicago were roaring successes.

Now that he had his wrinkles surgically smoothed out, Howard had become the handsome hero to millions of children, gazing placidly from bright lithographs and promising them magic. Harry was a living embodiment of those previous embarrassments, the coarse and ugly painting of Dorian Gray that exhibited its frowns and wrinkles in his nasty State Street storefront. That’s where the Thurston Brothers’ original Maid of Mystery exhibited peeks at naked ladies; a coin in the slot raised each shutter with a buzz and a clatter of machinery.

Howard was the master of magical fantasy, but Harry was collecting pocket change with cheap vice—and it amounted to a lot of money.

H
oudini was the president and Thurston was a vice president of the Society of American Magicians, an organization founded in 1902. The SAM accommodated both amateur and professional magicians, and became very good at creating controversies and encouraging political squabbles. For example, the SAM was powerless when one magician stole material from another, but continually indulged in laborious arguments about “exposure,” the bane of every amateur magician. If a magician like Thurston or Houdini should dare to explain some simple “do-it-yourself” tricks with string or coins in a program or a newspaper, encouraging children’s interest in magic, the SAM was there to deliver retribution. Presumably most of the members of the SAM forgot that they’d learned magic themselves.

On June 3, 1921, Howard Thurston attended the annual banquet of the Society of American Magicians at the McAlpin Hotel in New York City. These annual shows—by magicians, for magicians—were long and indulgent, unconstrained by a need to be entertaining. Thurston wasn’t looking forward to it, and Leotha decided not to attend, having already endured some of these endless industry banquets.

Houdini was the master of ceremonies, and he was in rare form, bouncing from his chair to help move the tables on and off stage, standing and sharing anecdotes, reading a congratulatory telegram from Kellar, or offering glowing introductions for each guest. Halfway through the show, Houdini’s attorney stood up, told several stories unrelated to magic, and presented Houdini with an engraved loving cup for no apparent reason. Houdini blushed, insisting that he didn’t deserve it, and offered a short speech of acceptance.

Houdini also called on Thurston for a few words, and Thurston spoke extemporaneously about his early adventures and the amount of work that went into producing a large show. He pointed out that there were probably fifty thousand magicians in America, and ended by noting that his last four seasons had netted an even $1 million, a figure that must have been intended to differentiate him from the other magicians that shared the banquet room.

Not every speech was so eloquent. Houdini introduced Madame Herrmann, who stood and said, “You will have to excuse me. My magic is all in silence,” before she sat down again. Horace Goldin, the illusionist, stood and also delivered just two sentences. “There are fifty thousand magicians in America. I am one of them.”

John Mulholland presented magic with thimbles. Blackstone performed some rope tricks. Dornfield performed some comedy magic. The Floyds demonstrated mental telepathy. And then, in an unscheduled addition to the program, Horace Goldin introduced his latest illusion.

The curtain opened on a heavy wooden platform that supported two chests, side by side. A hotel busboy, who had been recruited for the trick, scooted inside one of the chests, so that his head and hands emerged from one end, and his feet emerged from the other end. Sliding stocks locked his extremities in place.

Goldin picked up a large crosscut saw and dramatically sawed between the chests. He slid two wooden panels down between the boxes, and then pulled them apart about two feet, showing a clear space through the middle of the man. Goldin reversed the process, sliding the chests together and restoring the boy to one piece.

Thurston leaned across the starched white tablecloth, suddenly glad that he was there. He glanced from side to side, looking for the reaction from his fellow magicians. They weren’t impressed. To most of them, it was obvious how it was being performed. In fact, Goldin’s new illusion meant so little to the assembled magicians that Clinton Burgess, the SAM member who wrote up the event for the magazine
The Sphinx
, forgot to mention it in his official report. The editor included a hurried account as a postscript.