Jim Steinmeyer (39 page)

Jansen found himself blindsided by Thurston’s own correspondence from many months earlier, now read into the court record. As part of his awkward carrot-and-stick technique, Thurston wrote to George that he had been “contemplating or had a desire to assist in some way and possibly enter into some sort of combination” with the young magician. He’d tried the same trick with Blackstone, teasing that he’d be looking for a successor, with the same disastrous results. The judge seemed confused about Thurston’s sincerity and quickly dismissed the injunction.

“Am indeed sorry and feel very bad at the results of things,” Jansen wrote back to Thurston, licking his wounds. “One never knows what a judge will do.”

 

 

KELLAR’S DEATH
seemed to trigger dozens of little skirmishes between Thurston and his fellow magicians. He fretted over many of these; it seemed as if the dam had just broken and his reputation were under assault. Blackstone the magician had recently been advertising his show with a new poster portrait; two red imps now sat on Blackstone’s shoulder, with one of them whispering in his ear. In 1923 Thurston sent a curt note to the younger magician, warning him to stop using the imps and reminding him to remove all of Thurston’s tricks from his own show, like the Dancing Handkerchief and the Girl and the Rabbit.

Part of Thurston’s ire must have been genuine—his increasing concern with his legacy. Although the little red imps were never protected as a trademark, Thurston considered them an inheritance from Kellar and an important motif for his show; he had incorporated them into all of his advertising and even had woven them into bedtime stories for his daughter, Jane. But now Thurston was also looking for an excuse to pick a fight. Blackstone had just premiered a Vanishing Horse in his show. It was a sensational idea that generated wonderful publicity. Thurston quickly put Dante to work creating a Vanishing Horse for the Thurston show, and then wrote to Blackstone. “If you think it is fair to use my tricks without my consent, it is only fair for Dante and myself to treat you the same.... I will decide accordingly whether I will do the Vanishing Horse.” His past experience demonstrated that the young magician would be defiant. Thurston was going to make the most of it.

Kellar’s death also inspired a discussion of who might become the next dean of the Society of American Magicians. Dr. Wilson, writing in
The Sphinx
, mentioned that Houdini and Thurston had both been discussed for the honor, but he felt that neither was qualified, as the title deserved a person “of ripe experience” and “retirement.” Early in 1923, Henry Ridgely Evans, a respected writer and historian of magic, contributed an article to
Billboard
and
The Sphinx
, asking “Is Magic Decadent?” and excoriating Thurston for including secrets of simple magic tricks in boxes of candy that were sold during his performances. Evans quoted Thurston, in a private conversation, saying that his intention was to “popularize” magic by educating the public about its secrets. As always, it was the subject of exposure that seemed to obsess amateur magicians, causing them to predict the downfall of the art. Evans’s criticism was particularly stinging, as he had been a good friend and admirer of Thurston’s, part of a small group of Baltimore magicians, including Thomas C. Worthington and Fulton Oursler, who had socialized with Howard, Leotha, and Jane.

Many professionals, like Thurston and Houdini, found it advantageous to contribute little “do-it-yourself” pocket tricks to newspapers and advertising promotions. As a schoolboy, Thurston had been inspired by learning the secret of the Ink to Water Trick. David Devant, Thurston’s friend in London who retired in 1920, wrote a series of beginner’s books, and always considered that spectators with a real knowledge of magic formed the very best audience for a magician—patronizing shows and appreciating the finer points of presentation and style. The magicians’ clubs had devised various rules to deal with the subject. It was acceptable to sell books of secrets, but unacceptable to give secrets away in an article or advertising promotion. Certain simple tricks could be explained, but others that might hint at professional secrets were strictly off-limits. Still, magicians realized that the simplest trick, in the hands of a good performer, was capable of becoming a masterpiece. The subject was hotly debated among the Society of American Magicians, and Evans’s sudden pronouncement was a cruel rebuke of his friend.

In his conversation with Evans, Thurston had probably been quoting Paul Carus, a theologian and publisher. In one of Thurston’s press releases, Carus’s remarks were reproduced in full, and they constitute a wholesale endorsement of the importance of magic:

READING ALL OF EVANS’S ARTICLE,
it seems inspired by the subject of Kellar’s passing, nostalgically recalling the “palmy days of magic,” as the historian put it, when “only two magicians held the field—Herrmann and Kellar.”

Even worse, Henry Ridgely Evans’s “Is Magic Decadent?” seemed to let loose a floodgate of criticism. A month later, a columnist and amateur magician, Gene Gordon, arrogantly wrote in
The Sphinx
:

In the same issue, editor Dr. A. M. Wilson criticized Thurston for offering coupons to children, which could be collected and redeemed to purchase tricks, ranging in price from fifteen cents to a dollar. Evans quoted one of Thurston’s flyers, “The most wonderful tricks are all done with special apparatus.” Wilson snapped, “If this is promoting magic, I have missed my calling as an exponent of magic.” Several pages later, Evans continued with another sarcastic remark. “If such an institution as a College of Magic ever be established ... among the professional chairs will be the gentle art of exposés in public magazines, to be filled by Prof. Thurston.”

Dante wrote a nasty reply to Gene Gordon’s article. Thurston himself lodged a protest with A. M. Wilson, who quickly retracted his comments. It turned out that Thurston was not “giving” coupons to children, but selling them in boxes of candy, Wilson explained. Magic organizations defined exposure with just this sort of odd hairsplitting: if a secret was sold with candy, it was not exposure; it the candy was given away, it constituted a breech of the magician’s art.

Thurston contributed a long, sarcastic response to Evans in the April issue of
The Sphinx
:

Thurston went on to clarify his point: he did not tell Evans that he advocated teaching magic to the public, but suggested setting up a permanent school of magic and teaching the public some elementary principles to demonstrate the “vulnerability of the senses” so that the public had a better ability when it came to “accepting new theories and doctrines ... to guard them in their business relations.”

Privately Thurston wrote to John Mulholland, another writer and historian of magic, complaining about the insult. “If I am not entitled to the title of dean of magicians, I would like to know who is.” The Society of American Magicians finally selected Fredrick Eugene Powell, a late-nineteenth-century magician for the honor of dean. Powell was one of the last—and least effective—of the old guard, but his selection was a sentimental favorite, avoiding all of the controversy within the club.

 

 

THURSTON WAS RIGHT
to imply that his show was profitable and successful with the public. More than any other magician, he had established magic as a popular attraction and inspired a generation of magic-mad young boys. Thurston now billed his production as “The Wonder Show of the Universe,” and his marketing relied upon the same theaters and the same cities year after year. This meant that his show had to always be fresh, promising new marvels.

In 1919 he added the Water Fountains to his show, providing a new finale. Thurston purchased the act from an old vaudeville couple named the DeBars, but the idea was actually based on a Japanese spectacle, first introduced in America by the Ten Ichi Troupe in the early twentieth century. Thurston would coax a small spray of water from a bowl on a table; the fountain could apparently be lifted on the end of a wand, transferred to different spots on the stage, or even made to multiply, spouting in arrays from the costumes or the heads of his assistants. Gradually the sprays of water increased until the stage twinkled with dozens of mysterious fountains. The act was accomplished with a large container of water, suspended backstage, which was attached, with rubber tubing, to various spots onstage, costumes, or props. The Water Fountains was first costumed as a Chinese act; in the 1920s Thurston re-dressed it with white polka-dot costumes to suggest circus props. Dante added a number of additional tricks, and Thurston included his old Coconut Illusion. The finale was an elaborate fountain, center stage, with a lady reclining horizontally, on the tops of the water jets. She revolved above the fountains as the curtain fell on this pretty picture.

The Vanishing Horse was finally ready for the 1925 season. Thurston wanted an illusion that was magnificent and mysterious; he insisted on lifting the horse in the air, over the stage, before it disappeared. When this was attempted the first time at Thurston’s Beechhurst factory, the horse bucked and kicked, tumbling from the platform and then galloping, enraged, around the workshop as Thurston and Dante ran. Dante finally decided on a suspended platform, like a swing. The following season, 1926, Thurston’s workmen improved this by using a small, enclosed pen that surrounded the horse’s legs.

The final trick provided a spectacular bit of magic. Beauty, a white Arabian steed, was ridden onstage by Arline Palmer, a stunt rider and animal trainer who had worked with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. She took Beauty through a series of tricks, bowing to the audience and marching around the stage. Thurston entered and supervised as the horse was locked into the small pen. This was then lifted, with Arline on the back of the horse, so that the horse and rider dangled about ten feet over the stage.

A large white net was dropped in front of the pen, and then, for several seconds, a white banner was lowered in front of the net. “We use this netting as sometimes the horse becomes frightened and makes a wild jump,” Thurston explained to the audience. “Behold the impossible. Sixteen hundred pounds of rider, horse and stall. Are you ready?” Thurston asked. He fired a gun into the air. The empty pen fell away, landing on the stage with a crash, and the banner dropped. The audience gazed at the empty stage. Within seconds, the horse was gone.

Fasola suggested several new illusions to Thurston, including a new version of the old carnival sword box—in which the lady entered a small wooden chest that was pierced by swords. And Thurston’s success with the Sawing Illusion inspired a new collaboration with P. T. Selbit, who had originated the Sawing Illusion in England. Selbit proposed a series of new torture illusions, Stretching a Lady, The Human Pincushion, Crushing a Lady, Through the Eye of a Needle, apparently pulling an assistant through a small hole in a steel plate, or, for a change of pace, Televising a Lady, in which the assistant seemed to dematerialize in a chair, only to rematerialize in a second chair several feet away.

His dealings with Selbit, like his earlier contracts with Devant, were scrupulously honest. But occasionally, Thurston’s yearly innovations managed to trample on the reputations or innovations of his fellow performers. In 1925 he included an illusion titled Fire and Water, in which a lady seemed to be consumed in flames on one side of the stage, only to be reproduced submerged in a tank of water on the other side of the stage. Fire and Water used a number of mechanical principles that had been created by Valadon, Fasola, and other magicians. But this particular combination of tricks had been created by the Great Leon (Leon Levy), and it became his feature in vaudeville. Leon tended to avoid the controversy, but his wife, Edythe, sent a blistering letter to Thurston, warning him to take it out of his show. “I feel sure you did not read it before it was mailed,” Thurston wrote back to Leon. “Had you read it, you would have advised her not to send it.” He collected a number of excuses, how the trick was based on a number of previous ideas, and shrugged off the complaint.

At the end of 1925, Thurston was playing a New York theater. On one night, Theo Bamberg, his son David, and Harry Houdini were his guests, seated in a box. Thurston hadn’t realized that Leon and Edythe Levy had also purchased tickets for the show and were seated in the middle of the auditorium.