Jim Steinmeyer (50 page)

ACCORDING TO
Thomas Chew Worthington, Thurston’s lifelong friend, the magician had suffered a minor heart attack during that tour. When Worthington found him backstage at the Century Theater in Baltimore, Thurston was lying on a couch in his dressing room. The magician took his hand and told him, “Tom, you are the only one in this world who really cares for me, and the only one who will care a damn when I am gone.”

Months later, before his sixty-fifth birthday, Thurston arranged to see Dr. Harry Benjamin of New York City for a full health evaluation and a treatment of injections. Dr. Benjamin advised him on diet, sleep, and exercise. He told Thurston to limit his drinking to beer, avoid drugs, and smoke no more than six or seven “nicotine free” cigars daily. He also felt that the magician should gain eight to ten pounds.

Thurston boasted to
Modern Living
magazine that he would devote a year to rejuvenating his health, as an experiment, and he praised the diet cards. “Next year at this time, I will look and feel twenty years younger.”

Still, he complained when his age became a matter of discussion. “People are beginning to think I am older than you,” he wrote to his advance man, John Northern Hilliard, accusing him of an indiscretion.

Hilliard wrote back, incredulous. “I am not aware that I have been telling any newspaperman your age. In fact, I don’t know your age. Should they ask me, however, I will tell them that you are 35, per instructions.” In fact, Hilliard was three years younger than Thurston.

On March 14, 1935, Hilliard finished his day in Indianapolis, preparing for Thurston’s appearances in that city. He’d left press releases with the local reporters, arranged stands of colored lithographs, and spoken to the theater manager about the chairs and tables that Thurston would require in his dressing room. Hilliard returned to his room at the Lockerbie Hotel and suffered a heart attack, dying in his bed.

Several days earlier, he had shared a dinner with a friend and magician in town, Doc Brumfield. Hilliard told him, “Doc, I think that the greatest tragedy in life would be to die, and suddenly wake up and realize that you had never lived.” Brumfield nodded. “I have lived,” Hilliard told him.

The company avoided telling Thurston the bad news until he had left the theater that night and was on the train for Indianapolis. He was devastated by the loss of his friend, whom he considered a brilliant writer and a talented magician. Hilliard’s contributions to Thurston’s career, often anonymous, were essential to how the public perceived the magician. His honest, poetic phrases and elegant tales enhanced Thurston’s reputation and attracted audiences to see his magic.

 

 

AT THE CLOSE
of the 1935 season, Thurston married Paula Mark. The ceremony took place at midnight on May 25 in Harrison, New York. The bride, newspapers reported, was twenty-seven years old. The groom was sixty-six. During the ceremony, which seems to have collected a handful of curious reporters, the justice of the peace left out the word “obey.” He explained that he hadn’t used it for so long that he forgot where it went in the sacrament. Thurston insisted that his wife still had to agree to “obey.”

The reporters had a field day. First, there was Paula, a former assistant on the show, who explained that she had first met Thurston many years before when she was one of the little girls who volunteered to come onto the stage. He presented her with a rabbit.

Then there was the groom, the old master showman, who mused on the secret of youth:

The whole affair could have benefited from John Northern Hilliard’s good taste. Paula’s grandmother later explained that the story about winning a rabbit in Thurston’s show was pure publicity. Paula had met the magician when she auditioned to be an assistant with the show in the late ’20s. She was Paula Hinckel, of North Adams, Massachusetts, one of a pair of twins who had been employed by Thurston. She used the stage name Paula Mark, and then married Kenneth Claude, Thurston’s chauffeur. Kenneth and Paula were divorced in July 1934.

She had since become notorious, among the company, as a loose woman. Thurston’s cast was suspicious when she returned to woo the boss. Jane was shocked that her father would consider a relationship with someone like Paula, especially after the death of her mother. To her, it was a sign of rejection—Jane protested to her father and hissed insults to Paula backstage.

Thurston lied to the press about Paula’s age. She was not twenty-seven at the time of the marriage, but twenty-five—younger than Jane. It was an uncomfortable fact that no one wanted publicized.

After the ceremony the couple posed for photographs and then left for a Miami honeymoon.

 

 

THE 1935 SEASON
Started late, with an engagement in Clarksburg, West Virginia. It was exactly the sort of town Thurston had never played before, but these small cities offered enthusiastic audiences. This was followed by a four-day engagement at Charleston, West Virginia, at the Kearse Theater, opening Sunday, October 6.

Herman Hanson had a difficult time at the Kearse. It was the first non-union house they’d encountered, and this meant that their three union stagehands and their orchestra leader couldn’t work. The scenery and cases had to be handled by a smaller crew and local stagehands.

The backbreaking work started at six in the morning and everything was ready for the matinee. Thurston performed two shows and the theater was filled to capacity, grossing nearly $4,500. As Hanson walked by his dressing room, Thurston called out to him. “Hi, kid. You have had a tough day.” Hanson admitted that he was bushed, but suggested that they go across the street for a sandwich and a glass of beer. Howard, Paula, and Jane Thurston joined Herman and Lillian Hanson.

Thurston stood and Herman helped him on with his coat. As he was placing his right arm in his sleeve, Thurston collapsed on the floor with a stroke. He was taken back to his hotel room, and the following morning a physician insisted that he be taken to the local hospital.

Thurston had a paralyzed left arm. The doctors advised that it would be some time before he could appear on stage again, but Howard’s spirits were good. He joked to his new advance man, C. Foster Bell, that he would perform at the next town, even if he had to do it on crutches. Hanson and Jane finished the engagement in Charleston. Thurston was sure that Jane and Herman should be able to keep the show running and keep the company together. The theater managers from the next two cities came to Charleston and reviewed the show, approving Hanson’s performance.

But suddenly, there was another opinion to be considered. Harry Thurston heard the news and dashed to Charleston before the end of the engagement. He watched the last show and hated what he saw. He immediately closed the tour, canceled future engagements, and arranged to have the equipment shipped back to New York. As a longtime investor in Howard’s projects, Harry could not be ignored, and his strong-arm tactics could not be dismissed. He wrote to an agent he knew, explaining his plan:

Harry’s notion of a “100 percent Thurston show” was ominous—although Jane was unaware that she was adopted, Harry knew, and obviously considered himself a more authentic partner for his brother.

Paula took Howard to recover at Briarcliff Manor, New York. With no real direction, the family and crew seemed to drift apart, forming allegiances and enemies in mysterious combinations. George White and Kenneth Claude traveled back to Beechhurst with the show and stayed with the equipment, ensuring it would all be ready when Mr. Thurston, or Jane, resumed the show. They realized that it would be necessary to watch over the apparatus and keep it in good condition. Herman Hanson stayed in New York City until he heard back from Thurston.

But Jane was prevented from seeing her father. Paula had no tolerance for her; Jane had made her feelings about their marriage clear. Harry also wanted her out of the picture, as Jane would be the logical performer to continue the show.

Howard was taken to Biloxi, Mississippi, with Harry and Rae to recover. There he managed to send a letter to Jane.

Thurston hinted that a copy of his will had been stolen and his life insurance policies had been examined. He assured Jane that he would soon be well enough to resume the show, but ended the note cryptically. “Address care of McMahon [his attorney]. He is the only one who knows my address. I have reasons for not wanting others to know.”

Howard and Paula took an apartment in Miami near Harry and Rae. By now, Thurston had shaken off Harry’s suggestions and was making plans to resume his own tour. He sent brief notes back to his cast and crew, assuring them that he was recovering steadily and inquiring about their availability for future dates. In December 1935, he wrote to George White, asking him to assemble checkbooks and contracts, as they would probably resume the tour in the South in March. Soon after this, the Associated Press announced that Thurston would soon be returning to the stage, with his first engagement in Charleston, West Virginia, where he had been forced to cancel shows.

Thurston contacted his old attorney, James Wobensmith, asking him to help drawing up a new will. Wobensmith suggested that Thurston compose a short note of what he wanted to include, so that the lawyer could turn it into a legal document, and in response Thurston produced a paper that chastised the people around him and made stipulations that his wife, Paula, would have to stop drinking. Wobensmith thought that it was ridiculous. “I told him that wasn’t a will.” He advised Thurston to find someone else to draw it up.

 

 

ON THE MORNING OF MARCH 30,
Thurston suffered another stroke while he was sleeping. His condition improved, but it was then complicated by pneumonia. Howard Thurston died at the Casa Casuarina Apartments in Miami at 1:39 p.m. on April 13, 1936, with Paula at his side. He was sixty-six years old.

The body was sent to Columbus, Ohio, his hometown, for burial. Jane arrived with Ada Wolfe, Thurston’s cousin, and found that “the family” had left instructions that she was forbidden to visit the mortuary. However, the mortuary director, E. E. Fisher, proved understanding. He phoned her when the family had left, and she arrived to pay her respects to her father.

The funeral was held the next day, on the eighteenth, and the Columbus paper remarked on the sparse attendance; barely one hundred people arrived at the Broad Street Methodist Church. Jane arrived with Ada Wolfe. Paula arrived with Thomas MacMahon, Thurston’s attorney.

After the eulogy, S. W. Reilly, the president of the local Society of American Magicians club, read a short tribute. George White, Thurston’s lifelong assistant, stepped forward and picked up Thurston’s ivory-tipped wand, breaking it in half—the SAM ceremony was used to symbolize the end of a magician’s career, and George performed the ritual for “The Governor.” A group of local policemen, out of uniform, served as pallbearers as the casket was taken to a mausoleum at Green Lawn Cemetery.

OBITUARIES INVARIABLY
dwelt on Thurston’s status as the World’s Greatest Magician, his ability to entertain children, his greatest illusions, like the Levitation, and the countless benefit shows at orphanages, crippled children’s hospitals, and veterans’ homes. But no one had perspective to recount the astonishing range of Thurston’s career—from street peddler to carnival talker, itinerant showman, vaudeville star, film exhibitor, illusionist, and radio performer. He had managed to negotiate some of the tightest curves of show business, steering clear of fashions that had dashed many famous performers from the pinnacle of fame to a rocky failure. No one was able to calculate how much of this winding, bumpy path actually created the World’s Greatest Magician.