A Short History of Card Conjuring and Magic up to the 19th Century Arranged, Updated and Rewritten by Dr. C. Matthew McMahon
Originally published in another form in the book, "Panorama of Magic"
by Milbourne Christopher (New York, Dover Publications: 1962)
Dispensing with all the occult practices that have often been associated with "magic", we turn to the idea of conjuring as it surrounds entertaining. Certainly more than five thousand years before the first known magician appeared on the North American continent, conjurors were working their wonders in Egypt. Egyptologists say that there are many glyph versions of the amazing feats surrounding "cups and balls". One painting in particular is of note - the burial chamber of Beni Hassan which dates back to 2500 B.C.
In the Westcar Papyrus (which is now housed in the Bode Museum in East Berlin) there are several excellent stories of the "wizards" of the Nile. One such story was about Cheops, who built the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. He was intrigued by the fantastic tales he had heard about Dedi of Ded-snefru. Dedi's most famous act of conjuring was the beheaded goose. He decapitated the head of a goose, put the head on the east side of the pillared hall, the body some distance away on the west side. He pronounced his magic words. Suddenly, the goose was whole again. The king called for an encore. This time Dedi used a pelican. Even in the days of the pharaohs, conjurers never performed the same trick twice in exactly the same way. This, of course, is a cardinal principle of conjuring, and should be headed by every neophyte in the trade.
You will find, as you search through the annals of history, Eunios, a Syrian, who was "gifted" with the ability to breathe fire like a dragon (about 135 B.C.) Alciphron of Athens wrote an eye-witness account of a cups and balls performance more than 1,700 years ago:
"A man came forward and placed on a three-legged table three small dishes, under which he concealed some little white round pebbles. These he placed one by one under the dishes, and then, I do not know how, he made them appear all together under one. At other times he made them disappear from beneath the dishes and showed them in his mouth. Next, when he had swallowed them, he brought those who stood nearest him into the middle, and then pulled one stone from the nose, another from the ear, and another from the head of the man standing near him. Finally he caused the stones to vanish from the sight of everyone. He is a most dexterous fellow and even beyond Eurybates of Oechalia, of whom we have heard so much."
Alciphron confessed the feat "rendered me almost speechless and made me gape with surprise." Joseph of Ulm included a cups and balls conjuror in his 1404 drawing, and which is preserved in the Tuebingen University library in Germany. Historically, the cups and balls routine (more than any other feat) caught the fancy of many artists. Hundreds of woodcuts, prints, and paintings show it being performed through the years. Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1460-1516) made the most famous painting. As his magician diverts the audience a thief takes advantage of the moment to lift an astonished spectator's purse. Joseph of Ulm included a cups and balls performer in a drawing showing the influences of the moon. His 1405 manuscript is in the library of the University of Tuebingen. Another fifteenth-century artist made a woodcut of a similar scene for his Wirkungen der Planeten, which was issued about 1470.
Some histories provide us with information about Apollonius of Tyana, who flourished in the first century A.D. He was said to be such a remarkable conjurer that he was worshiped as a deity and temples were built in his name. (Well, who knows - people will usually do anything or say anything to attract attention.) They say (whoever "they" may be) that he not only made the wedding feast of Menippus vanish, but he conjured away the guests as well. He was tied securely before Emperor Domitian of Rome (an exceedingly evil emperor), and escaped by the simple act of vanishing completely.
Then there was Lamblichus who walked in the air, ten cubits above the ground, as casually as if he were strolling in a park. Looks like modern day conjurers will have to tip their hat to Lamblichus for "doing that first." During this airy promenade, he further astonished those who saw him by changing the color of his clothes.
Zedekiah, who performed before royalty in the ninth century, pleased his audience by conjuring up a garden filled with flowers and ripe fruit trees in mid-winter. He also cut up a man and put him back together. Both of these feats could have been done by known methods. But his piece de resistance, the old books say, was to swallow a gladiator on horseback, plus a cart of hay and, for a tidbit at the end, the driver of the hay cart and his horses. He must have had a wonderful appetitive!
In the early Christian era the Church was critical of all demonic magic that passed itself off as entertainment. It was not as though Christians thought entertainment was evil, but certainly throughout the years of "superstition" and other manipulating tactics that arose during the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, Christianity was opposed to anything that was not glorifying to God. Magic, being associated in any way with the devil, satan or Lucifer, would obviously be detested (and for good reason!), but magic as entertainment (like the cups and balls routine) was something that entertained harmlessly.
As with anyone given over to "superstitions" and afraid of things they do not understand, as late as 1066, sleight of hand performers were not permitted to settle in some French towns. Louis IX, more than 140 years later, tried to banish magicians and tumblers from France. He explained that they encouraged evil habits and tastes among his people. This doe snot mean that these "magicians" were not distasteful - Louis may have been justified in his actions. You know, there is always a rotten apple that spoils the bunch! Maybe they did just that.
Zeito, court conjuror to good King Wenceslaus of song and story, is said to have gulped down a rival performer after a quarrel, leaving only his dirty boots. Later he brought him back, unharmed.
Perhaps the saying "the hand is quicker than the eye" owes its origin to Mr. Roger Bacon. Early in the thirteenth century he wrote of "men who create illusions by the rapidity of the movements of their hands." He also noted that "wonderful things that do not exist" could be simulated "by the assumption of various voices or the use of subtle apparatus, or by performing in the dark, or by means of confederacy."
Early in the fifteenth century a German girl in Cologne performed tearing a handkerchief into pieces, then making it whole again. This is the same kind of conjuring that is accomplished today and "marketed" so well as if things are bright and new. A century later the magician Triscalinus hocus-pocused the rings from the fingers of one of Charles IX's courtiers. The entire audience said that they saw the rings whiz through space to the magician. Such men became known as "legitimate deceptionists."
The British magician Banks and his "talking" horse Morocco staggered seventeenth-century audiences. Morocco "talked" by stomping his hoof to answer questions. The quadruped could indicate immediately the number of pence in any silver coin tendered his master. The horse gave equally quick and correct evaluations in France, the answers tallying with the current rate of exchange. Later "talking" horses played cards with spectators and learned to drink the company's health. The most patriotic was "The Military Horse of Knowledge." If Mr. Henley, his British owner, remarked that the stallion should serve the King of France or the King of Spain, the horse would bare his teeth and seize his master roughly by the arm. When, however, it was suggested that he fight for the British sovereign, the animal would demonstrate his enthusiasm by rearing back on his hind legs "and returning thanks."
Sadly, little is known about the first magicians on the North American continent. The chronicler of Hernando Cortes' expeditions in Mexico noted that the Indians there were familiar with conjuring. Mention was made of a magician puppeteer, a member of Cortes' retinue, who entertained at night during the trek to Honduras in October, 1524; but neither the performer's name nor the tricks he exhibited were recorded. Several water spouters gained fame in the mid-seventeenth century. After drinking a quantity of lukewarm water, they would lift their heads and eject streams of wine from their pursed lips. Other conjurers showed their skill with the cups and balls along with their more spectacular spouting stunts. Floram Marchand of Tours learned the human fountain technique from Manfre. He enjoyed a considerable success on the continent and so impressed two Englishmen that they brought him to London. Once they tumbled to "Le Grand Boyeur's" methods however, they called him "a moist cheat" and, in 1650, published The Falacie of the Great Water-Drinker Discovered, explaining his secrets. Further, they announced that they, Thomas Peedle and Thomas Cozbie, would demonstrate the deception to all who would come to their "lodgings at the Widow Oilman's house in Golden-lane." Convenient eh?
Another eminent water wizard of the time was Filippo Giuliani. The water-spouting demonstration was most effective in the open air, where the sun would cause the streams to sparkle. Someone devised a metal mouthpiece which permitted the more
showmanly spouters to shoot half a dozen jets at once high over their heads. On occasion the regurgitators would bow to the wishes of teetotalers and spew forth milk instead of wine.
Even more unusual than the water spouter was the stone eater. Yes, that's right, these conjurers ate stones instead of color-changing a card. The first on record swallowed thirty-six pieces of gravel, weighing three pounds, in Prague in 1006. The most noted, an Italian called Battalia, was said to enjoy three pecks of pebbles daily during his performances in London in 1641. When he shook his body, an impressed spectator wrote, you could hear the stones "rattle as if they were in a sack." A doctor vouched that every three weeks Battalia would void sand, after which he would be ready for more pebbly meals. Yes, crazy, but still, in the day, quite amazing. As late as 1788 a stone eater could still draw the curious in London. "The Original Stone Eater—The Only One in the World" appeared every day except Sunday at Mr. Hatch's trunk-making shop on the Strand. This stone eater
invited his viewers to bring their own black flints or pebbles for his demonstration.
Two of the most unusual magicians of all time appeared in Germany early in the eighteenth century. Johannes Brigg had no legs and only one hand. And you thought the Erdnase change was hard! Despite these tremendous handicaps he acquired rare skill with the cups and balls and also played several musical instruments. Brigg worked balanced on a pillow behind a table. Using his handless arm to move his conjuring equipment and his good right hand to perform the necessary sleights, he developed a technique which many wizards with two hands envied.
Even more curious was Matthew Buchinger, "The Little Man of Nuremberg." A mere twenty-nine inches high, he had neither hands, legs, nor thighs. He was born June 2, 1674, the last of nine children. Early in life he played the flute, trumpet, and dulcimer. Eventually he even mastered the bagpipes. Using the fin-like extremities which served as his arms, he became a fine penman. He also drew landscapes, portrait sketches, and coats of arms. He had a knack for card playing and dice games, could play ninepins and shave himself without aid. During his performances of magic, Buchinger presented the cups and balls, tricks with birds, and feats with apparatus. His charm of manner made onlookers forget his infirmities. In 1716 he showed at the Duke of Marl-borough's Head in London and after that exhibited in other taverns and show rooms. Besides his performing activities, he lived a full life. However, poor choices pressed him to marry four times and had eleven children. He died in 1722.
Other magicians without legs and with digital deficiencies appeared from time to time, but none came close to the celebrity of "The Little Man from Nuremberg."
It was long believed that the magicians of several centuries ago were all mountebanks who traveled from town to town with the humblest of equipment, performing for the most part at marketplaces, fairs, and taverns. But then as now magic fascinated men in all strata of life. A Spanish knight, Damautus, performed for Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, when Duke Francesco Sforza visited the court. He showed several solid, separate metal rings, then tossed them in the air. When he caught them they were linked in a chain—a classic feat, the origin of which is generally credited to the Chinese.
The most distinguished magician of the sixteenth century was Hieronymus Scotto. He was equally talented as a diplomat. King James of England in his Daemonology (1599) commented on Scotto's skill at conjuring with cards and dice. Scotto once promised to produce the likeness of the most beautiful woman in Cologne as Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, the archbishop of the city, gazed in his magic mirror. After appropriate mystic passes and strange words, a lovely face appeared on the surface of the glass. The archbishop looked—and fell in love! The face enchanted him. He eventually found its owner, Countess Agnes von Mansfeld, paid her ardent court, and married her. Some writers claim that this alliance brought on the bloody Cologne War. Was it a shrewdly executed diplomatic maneuver that caused Scotto to conjure up the Countess' face, or just a whim of fate?
In England, Scotto entertained Queen Elizabeth I. The royal journal reported: "There is an Italian at Court that doth wonderful strange tricks upon the cards. As telling any card that is thought of, or changing one card from another though it is held by any man ever so hard under his hand. And you thought Harry Houdini or David Blaine started it all! Well, it was said, "The Queen gave him 200 crowns for showing his tricks and divers gentlemen make meetings for him where he getteth sometimes 20, sometimes 40 crowns and yet they say he spends it strangely as he cannot keep a penny in his purse." Scotto lived up to his earnings. He dressed as well as any duke and traveled in a magnificent coach accompanied by a retinue. At various times he carried out diplomatic missions for Archduke Ferdinand II, of Tyrol, and Kaiser Rudolph II. Typical of his lavish manner, Scotto had a gold medal struck which bore his portrait. When he entertained the Duke of Prussia at Konigsberg he included a trick with the medal in his routine. At the table he casually tore the soft center from a piece of bread and squeezed it into a round, thin shape. A magic word and the bread was transformed into his gold medallion. He gave it to Christoph von Kappen as a memento of the occasion.
Isaac Fawkes, the most noted of the conjurors who had booths at the British fairs, saved £10,000—a fabulous sum then—from his earnings. A Fawkes advertisement said:
"He takes an empty bag, lays it on the Table and turns it several times inside out, then commands 100 Eggs out of it and several showers of real Gold and silver, then the Bag beginning to swell several sorts of wild fowl run out of it upon the Table. He throws up a Pack of Cards, and causes them to be living birds flying about the room. He causes living Beasts, Birds and other Creatures to appear upon the Table. He blows the spots of the Cards off and on, and changes them to any pictures."
All of this—plus the antics of a posture maker —for a mere shilling! At the height of the Bartholomew Fair season Fawkes gave as many as six shows a day. One of his most puzzling feats was to cause an apple tree to blossom and bear fruit in less than a minute (didn't Edward Norton do that in the 2006 film "The Illusionist". Oh, that's right - it was an orange tree. So much for originality!).
Christopher Pinchbeck, Sr., a Fleet Street clockmaker with a flair for the construction of unusual mechanisms, was the genius behind Fawkes's apparatus. One of his masterpieces was featured in 1727. An advertisement described it: "the Temple of Arts, with two moving pictures, the first being a Consort of Musick performed by several figures playing on various instruments with the greatest Harmoney and truth of time, the other giving a curious prospect of the City and Bay of Gibraltor, with ships of war and transports in their proper motions, as tho' in real action; likewise the Spanish troops marching thro' Old Gibraltor. Also the playing of a Duck in the river, and the Dog diving after it, as natural as tho' alive. In this curious piece there are about 100 figures, all of which show the motions they represent as perfect as the life; the like of it was never seen in the world."
When Isaac Fawkes died in 1731, his son carried on the family tradition, and a Christopher Pinchbeck, Jr., followed his father as a master craftsman. Verse of a sort drew attention to another Bartholomew Fair wizard: It will make you laugh, it will drive away gloom, To see how the egg it will dance around the room, And from another egg a bird there will fly. Which makes the company all for to cry, "O rare Lane, cockalorum for Lane! well done, Lane! You are the man." The prose on a herald was equally boastful at Peckham Fair in 1787: "Mr. Lane, first Performer to the King, will drive about 40 twelve-penny nails into any gentleman's breeches, place him in a loadstone chair, and draw them out without the least pain! He is, in short, the most wonderful of all wonderful creatures the world ever wondered Gyngell, who appeared at Bartholomew Fair early in the nineteenth century, was colorfully described by Edward Stirling: "Monsieur Gyngell, emperor of cards, arch-shuffler, wizardlike held his pack, cutting, dealing, shifting in his delicate hands sparkling with diamonds (we thought them, but which were cut glass in reality). With what a courtly air did Monsieur request the loan of a hat, merely to boil a pudding in! "Sometimes, in dulcet tones he would entice a shilling or a half-crown from a fair lady's purse, to be cut in half by his mighty magic, and then to be reunited before our very eyes. Incomparable Gyngell! Why, if you talk of attire neither Worth nor Poole ever dreamt of so much elegance. Real ostrich feathers, three in a jeweled cap—three! like a Prince of Wales; silk and satin dress, spangles, lace, pink legs, milk-white face, with a touch of rose-colour; smile bewitching, voice enchanting. ''He never asked for money, it flowed into the ample pockets of his silken jerkin willy-nilly; such were the necromancer's powers of persuasion over juvenile hoards and savings."
I have an Ingleby handbill headed "Theurgi-comination! Or, New Magical Wonders." Among the promised feats are these:
"Mr. Ingleby will break any Gentleman's Watch into twenty Pieces, and he will make it whole again at a Word of Command.
"He will take two new-laid Eggs, the Whole of the Company may examine them, and any Person in the Room may break them, and a Child shall come out of one, and a Set of Bed Linen out of the other. "He will allow any gentleman in the Room to take a Pack of Cards, and choose one, then shuffle it into any Part of the Pack, and lay them on the Floor; he will then set his Foot on them, and command the Card he drew from under his Foot to the Top of his Head. "He will allow any Gentleman in the Room to hold a Pack of Cards in his Hands and, after thinking on any particular Card, throw the Whole of the Cards at the Performer, who will catch the Card so thought on in his Mouth. "In short, Mr. Ingleby can command the Cards to do any Thing but speak."
Highman Palatine, in 1763, challenged any performer in England to match his continental conjuring. One hundred guineas were to be offered to anyone who succeeded. His bills spoke in general terms about his deceptions because "Several Pretenders to the Art of Dexterity set forth a great many things in their Bills they know little of, yet He chuses to say as little as may be, and refers the rest to those who honour him with their Company, and doubts not of giving Satisfaction." A Frenchman, M. Boulevard, accepted Palatine's challenge in September, 1788. The night's receipts, rather than the 100 guineas, were the stake. The rival wizards met at Bush Tavern in Bristol for their battle of magic. Palatine with his conjuring "A-la-mode Italiano" and Boulevard with his "most ocular Demonstrations." Boulevard was declared the victor and he gave the prize money to the Marine Society. A German, Breslaw, was another outstanding performer of the period. His program included: "New amazing deceptions with pocket-pieces, rings, sleeve buttons, purses, snuff-boxes, swords, cards, hours, dice, letters, thoughts, watches, particularly with a leg of mutton." For many years he toured the British Isles to excellent returns. Then came a lean spell. In Canterbury he advertised a benefit show for the poor of the city. The receipts from it he distributed to the members of his company, "than whom none could be poorer," as he explained to the mayor. January 16, 1749 was a night long remembered by the Londoners who jammed into the New Theatre in the Haymarket, a night much discussed in the annals of British drama. They came, the men about town, the nobility, the tourists, the sensation-seekers, to see a man squeeze himself inside an ordinary wine bottle. Ridiculous? Impossible? They were there to see for themselves. The announcements also said that the man would play the music of every instrument on a common walking stick and, after the regular performance, conjure up phantoms which would reveal secret thoughts. Interesting too. "But, imagine! a man passing himself inside a bottle!" Six-thirty, curtain time, came and went. The crowd grew restless. By seven o'clock there were catcalls, hoots and shouts from the impatient audience. Canes thumped in unison on the floor. Feet stomped. Finally—a man parted the curtain on the stage. He held up his hand for silence. If the magician didn't appear, he said, all admissions would be refunded. This triggered a shouted comment from a joker that if the crowd would pay twice the regular price the magician would put himself inside a pint bottle instead of a quart. Some laughed, some shouted remarks of their own. The hubbub grew. A man in a box threw a lighted candle on the stage. The curtains caught fire. As the flame grew in intensity, there was a rush for the exits. Those who couldn't get out broke up the boxes and benches, pulled down the scenery, and started passing the debris out to the Haymarket, where a huge bonfire was started. The theatre staff watched in helpless confusion as the elaborate trappings went up in smoke. No one ever discovered who was responsible for the "Bottle Conjurer" hoax, though Samuel Foote and the Duke of Montague were prime suspects. The episode was a natural for the comedians of the time. Skits about it appeared in theatres; lampoons, cartoons, and broadsides were peddled in the streets.
In one, a man promised to change himself into a rattle; in another it was announced that Sig. Capitello Jumpedo, a dwarf, "no taller than a common Tavern Tobacco Pipe" would "open his Mouth wide, and jump down his own Throat." On the continent, a fair performer did a brisk business by announcing that he would eat a man at every show. After a routine of more usual magic to put his audience in a receptive mood, the magician asked for a volunteer for his human supper. If no one volunteered, the showman had an easy out. If however someone did come forward, the performer covered his victim with salt and pepper, then smacked his lips and bit firmly on the volunteer's thumb. When the victim howled with pain, the showman blandly explained that naturally it was painful to be eaten alive. By the time he opened his mouth for a second bite, the man from the audience would be streaking for the nearest exit. This performer must have had a winning personality, for there is no evidence that angry audiences ever destroyed his booth or mobbed his platform.
Gonin is the earliest known name of a magician in France. At least three Gonins kept the name in the public's mind. The first appeared early in the sixteenth century. The second, said to be the son of the first, conjured a few decades later. The third, in a wide-brimmed, plumed hat and with an ornate ruffle around his neck and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exhibited the cups and balls on the Pont Neuf early in the seventeenth century. He had a handsome moustache and a flamboyant manner.
"Le Cheval Escamoteur," a little horse at the Saint-Germain Fair in 1749, was said to be able to do the cups and balls feat.
Delisle, in 1751, had a novelty. He conjured up hot omelets in borrowed hats. Chaudeur showed his finesse with the cups at the Saint-Laurent Fair in 1713. "Le Fameux Paysan de Nord-Hollande" offered a more varied program than his competitors in Paris in 1747. He had a tree which blossomed and bore fruit on command; he made selected cards rise from a pack; he decapitated birds and restored them; and he presented experiments with liquids and electricity. Many of the eighteenth-century street conjurors in Paris added to their incomes by selling books of tricks, toothache cures, and nostrums. You can imagine whether or not those tooth-ache remedies actually worked!
Pinetti, who could pull off a spectator's shirt without removing his coat, nail a chosen card to the wall with a pistol shot, and conjure a borrowed ring in a locked box into the bill of a bird, was the most important magician of the late eighteenth century.
Born in Orbitello, Tuscany, in 1750, or so he said, he claimed to be a Knight of the German Order of Merit of St. Philip, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, Pensioneer of the Court of Prussia, Aggregate of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Belles Lettres of Bordeaux and financial counselor to H. R. H. the Prince of Limburg-Holstein. It is certain that he was a shrewd showman, clever publicist, and skilled performer. The rooms in which Pinetti exhibited were richly carpeted and handsomely decorated. He wore brocaded and gold-ornamented suits which he often changed three or four times during a performance.
Once Frederick the Great, traveling in a common coach pulled by a pair of tired horses, watched in amazement as a splendid carriage drawn by four prancing stallions made his own troops snap to attention and salute. In the carriage was a man in courtly attire, with dozens of decorations emblazoned across the front of his shimmering suit. Surely, the king thought, this must be a visiting prince—or at least the ambassador of a great sovereign. He sent an emissary to investigate. When it was reported that the object of all that attention was a magician, he roared an order that Pinetti get out of his city in twenty-four hours or take the consequences. Other monarchs were more sympathetic. Pinetti appeared in the Theatre des Menus-Plaisirs du Roi in Paris in 1783 and often performed privately for the king and his intimates.
Henri Decremps, Parisian lawyer and amateur conjuror, attempted to destroy Pinetti's reputation with a series of books which purported to explain the "pilferer's" methods. The attack backfired; the volumes were translated into many languages and increased the wizard's fame. Along with his feats of sleight of hand and second sight, Pinetti exhibited ingenious mechanical devices—the figure of a Turk which struck a bell to answer questions, a rifle which fired on his command, and an artificial bird which trilled any tune the audience suggested. When Pinetti performed at the Theatre do Salitre in Lisbon in 1791 he was, as usual, the object of controversy. The majority of his spectators thought his feats were prodigious. Some, however, resented his bombast. It was rumored that he was not the great inventor he claimed to be, but took his tricks from a book published in Paris by M. Decremps. Why, the critics said, he uses the same words that are in the book and decorates his theatre exactly like the engraved frontispiece of the Decremps volume. "Ah," his supporters answered, "but Pinetti was already an established performer when the book was published in 1784. Further, his best mechanical devices are not explained in the book." As a result a Portuguese edition of Decremps' La Magie Blanche Devoilee appeared. It was translated from the English version of the French. Two pamphlets were issued the same year, "Reflexoes sobre as Habilidades do Caval-heiro Pinetti" and "Ultimas Habilidades, Despedida, e Grande Automato do Cavalheiro Pinetti." But again the Decremps attack only put the magician more in the public eye, made him more of an attraction that everyone wished to see.
In Russia Pinetti added ballooning to his experiments. There the emperor himself served as godfather for the magician's two children and there, it is said, he died in 1800. A satirical broadside, obviously inspired by Pinetti's grandiose advertisements, was printed in London in 1792. It heralded the purported arrival of "Gulielmo Pittachio." A variation of the acoustical principle used hundreds of years before in ancient temples drew Paris throngs to see, or rather hear, "La Voix Invisible." One asked questions into the large end of a curved horn. The far end was inside an obviously empty, cage-like enclosure. Back through the horn came a gentle female voice with answers. De Philipsthal, in London in 1803, exhibited an optical illusion "Phantasmagoria," which would have assured him a swift denunciation from the superstitious and perhaps a date at the stake not too many years earlier. With a wave of his wand he apparently conjured up apparitions of the "Dead or Absent." De Philips-thai was wise enough to advertise that his illusion was designed "to expose the Practices of artful Impostors...and to open the Eyes of those who still foster an absurd belief in Ghosts or Disembodied Spirits." Like Pinetti, he showed "Mechanical Pieces of Art," such as a self-impelled windmill and an artificial peacock which spread its many-hued tail, drank, or nodded its head on cue from the wizard.
Clockwork animals had their appeal, but real animals which seemed to accomplish impossible feats were much more intriguing to the average man. Many generations of Englishmen paid their shillings to see the "Learned Pig" at Bartholomew Fair. One pig looks pretty much like another so when a reigning porker became too old to perform, another could take his place in the exposition booth. The Mr. Nicholson who took a "Learned Pig" on tour through Scotland in 1787 also advertised that he had taught a turtle "to fetch," a hare to beat the drums and six turkeycocks to do a lively country dance. Many a callous showman exhibiting dancing chickens skipped the difficult training period and relied on a heated metal "stage." The tender-footed birds "danced" on the hot plate to keep from being burned. Bostonians saw their first pig pundit in January, 1798. William Frederick Pinchbeck claimed that his animal attraction had been imported from England, by way of Philadelphia, for the whopping sum of f 1,000. Realizing that canny Yankees might be leery of a prodigious porker, Pinchbeck offered a money-back guarantee if anyone could prove that his pundit was not a bonafide, in-the-flesh pig. It was a safe offer. No one ever got a refund.
Pinchbeck explained how to teach a pig to do tricks in The Expositor: or Many Mysteries Unravelled, Boston, 1805. This is the first original conjuring book known to have been published in the United States. His lessons are in the form of letters to friend. The friend writes: "An evening or since, stopping at an inn, your Pig being the topic of conversation, I could not but latet a very grave old gentleman, who, had a very affected, sage-like look, declared, performances and the effects of the that the Pig ought to be banished, as he had no doubt corresponded with the dev time and experience never I from the earth? ...At least two geese were shining stars in the "learned" category. One, in London in 1789, did the usual location of cards and counting feats by honking, and by picking out cards of selected colors. Its spectacular finish was to perform while blindfolded. "Talking" goose number two drew crowds, years later, to No. 5 Pantechnicon Arcade in the same city. "The curious may be highly gratified with a very extraordinary Performance by one of the most silly and stupid of Animals in Creation," says a herald. The second goose did most of the feats of the first, but could be seen for a single shilling, whereas the first bird merited two.
Many dog wizards surpassed their other animal competitors. A prime favorite during the 1830's was Don Carlos, "The Double Sighted Dog." This clever spaniel's most amusing bit was indicating "the loveliest lady in the audience" and then "the gentleman most partial to the ladies." King William and the British Royal Family applauded him heartily at the Brighton Pavilion. Munito's performance was instructive as well as amusing. He spelled out answers to questions relating to geography, botany, and natural history with lettered cards. Parents brought their lackadaisical youngsters to see the dog perform as an object lesson. Munito had another claim to fame. The British Humane Society awarded him a medal "for having saved the life of a lady in a most extraordinary manner." He wore it proudly, attached to an ornamental collar.
Munito's master was an Italian named Signor Castelli. Another, earlier, Castelli had performed his conjuring wonders in Italy in the late eighteenth century. Still another Castelli, "Professor of Philosophical Amusements," toured in Trinidad and Martinique in the 1820's. Among his features were: "The Invisible Father," "The Pyramids of Egypt," "The Incomprehensible Snuff Box," and "The Asiatic Dove." The Port-of-Spain Guardian reviewer was most complimentary: "His powers are certainly extraordinary, and met with all the success and approbation such a display merited." The king of eighteenth-century fire eaters at the British fairs was Robert Powell. He ate hot coals "as natural as bread," licked red-hot tobacco pipes—aflame with brimstone—
with his bare tongue, and cooked a cut of mutton using his mouth, filled with red-hot charcoal, as an oven. A spectator pumped a bellows to keep the coals blazing under his tongue. Powell finished his turn, by melting wax, alum, lead, resin, and pitch in a chafing dish. Once the mixture was bubbling, he sipped it with a spoon, calling it "his dish of soup." Chabert, the French "Incombustible Phenomenon," was later to carry the fiery arts to new extremes. In London, in 1829, he gulped down forty grains of phosphorus, drank oil heated to a temperature of 330 degrees, and stroked his tongue, face, and hair with a red-hot shovel.
With several steaks in hand, he boldly entered a blazing oven. Singing merrily in the inferno, he cooked the steaks and handed them out to be eaten. Then he himself emerged, smiling broadly, with not so much as a single singed hair.
So there you have it - the most astounding historical feats of magic through the early years of the 19th century. What? You were looking for street magic and parlor tricks? We will have to save that for another article that covers from the later 19th century until today. And we shall...
The first known magician to be born in North America never performed in his native country. His name was Jacob Meyer, born in Philadelphia August 14, 1735, and grew to be a respected Christian man, but a master magician. His reputation grew while a young man where he traveled to Europe and abroad, and performed conjuring for many, including Frederick the Great in Constantinople. One of his most famous feats is the torn and restored card. Well, Jacob actually used paper money, but the effect was the same.
During this time we have Bartolomeo Bosco, the master conjurer of cups and balls in Italy, also a Mr. Henry who was very popular in England performing the same magic but called it "Whims and Wonders", and Siger Blitz who made plates dance. (Yes, like you would see on the Johnny Carson Show on top of sticks.) Ludwig Dobler made much of artistic conjurations (move over David Copperfield), and Robert Houdin performed as an amazing card conjurer in his London theater (1848). Houdin's son also performed amazing feats of conjuring and dazzled audiences with his "Suspension Ethereenne" where he balances on a broomstick through the "action of concentrated Ether."
The wizard of the South, Professor Anderson, amazed audiences with his Magic Scrap Book where he would perform "50 illusions, producing delight, astonishment and wonder."
There were a series of brotherly acts also appearing on stage at this time. The Davenport brothers, and the Thorpe brothers were masters of "reaching into the other side" and summoning up the "most marvelous manifestations ever witness by mortal man." In this genre of "apparitions", a twist took place with the magic of Professor DeVere who introduced (popularly) the decapitated head during his "Floating Head" routine. He would seemingly cut the head off his assistance, and then make the head float up into the air.
A number of oriental magicians came on the scene at this time, including Ching Ling Foo who traveled to delight audiences in America. It was during this time that Herrmann the great rose on the scene and baffled audiences with his "novel and extraordinary performances."
America's pioneer mentalist was John Randall Brown who performed extensive acts of mental magic due to muscle reading. By lightly touching a person's wrist, he could "divine" where a pin was hidden.
John Nevil Maskelyne founded Britain's most famous dynasty of deceptionists, and performed in St. George's Hall in 1904. He worked with David Devant, known as the master performer of his time. Devant was not a master "trickster" but rather a master performer. He arranged two book that have served the conjuring community well - Magic Made Easy, and Lessons in Conjuring.
Heinrich Keller, one of America's foremost illusionists, performed a famous routine called, "The Witch, the Sailor, and the Enchanted Monkey." In the act he performs some of the most amazing conjuring: from shooting rings from a pistol into a box and then to find them all tied to a boutonniere, to making handkerchiefs disappear from his hands to find them near audience members without having moved across the stage.
The turn of the century ushered in an era of specialized conjuring in the United States. Not that the varied deceptions of the past had lost favor; rather a new and energetic army of amazers began building acts on a single theme. Howard Thurston and Harry Houdini were "Kings of Cards"; T. Nelson Downs, Allan Shaw, and Welsh Miller were "Monarchs of Money." Clement de Lion came from Denmark to win acclaim as the master billiard ball manipulator. Gus Fowler of England was the acknowledged expert with watches and clocks. Stillwell was supreme with handkerchief hocus pocus. The Great LaFayette, whose quick-change stage transformations have never been equaled, commanded $4,000 a week for his protean puzzlers. Sylvester Schaffer, Fregoli, Charles Aldrich and Hymack were brilliant contemporaries.
In the first quarter of the twentieth century magic was so popular in vaudeville that often illusionists and sleight of hand performers appeared on the same show.
William Ellsworth Robinson, who had shaved his head and surpassed the original Ching Ling Foo as Chung Ling Soo, scored an unprecedented success in the British Isles and Australia. He spoke to interviewers only through an interpreter, used Chinese assistants, and convinced even the stage crews of the theatres he played that he was from the Orient. To the basic tricks which made Ching Ling Foo's reputation, he added spectacular big scale illusions and superb staging. He conjured up not only the expected bowls of water and goldfish but also a girl from a giant oyster shell, as streams of water spurted up from the base and colored lights played on the sprays. In his "Dream of Wealth" he dropped a handful of pound notes into a flaming urn. From the cloud of smoke a giant banknote suddenly emerged, filling the stage. When he reached for it, it vanished instantly, leaving a large metallic star suspended in the center of the stage. Showers of coins shot out from the points of the star. A pretty girl appeared in its center. More coins flowed down from a cornucopia in her hands and a child with a money-streaming horn appeared in an elevated bracket at each side of the stage.
On March 23, 1918 at the Wood Green Empire Theatre in London, Chung Ling Soo approached the climax of his performance—the most dangerous feat in magic—"Defying the Bullets." Two guns were loaded with bullets marked by the audience. Two marksmen took careful aim. The magician, across the stage, held a china plate in front of his heart. Crack! Crack! The sound of the shots reverberated through the theatre. Chung Ling Soo staggered, clutched at his chest, and fell to the stage. The plate crashed by his side. The curtain closed so rapidly that many in the audience thought the dramatic scene was a part of the show. The magician, still in his Oriental costume, was rushed to the nearby Cottage Hospital. There doctors were amazed
to find that he was not Chinese, that the dark stain was just on his face, neck and hands. The next morning newspapers throughout the world carried the sad news that Chung Ling Soo was dead. Suicide? Murder? Rumors were rife. At the inquest Robert Churchill, a gun expert, proved that the shooting was an accident. The muskets used for the feat were old-fashioned muzzle loaders. Extra steel barrels had been brazed on each weapon. These the magician loaded before each performance. The screw threads that went into the barrel of one musket had worn away; gunpowder had trickled past the time-worn threads as the gun was loaded, through the years, until the fine stream reached the flash hole. The charge in the main barrel, which was never intended to project a bullet, had finally been ignited. Show by show, Chung Ling Soo, without his knowledge, had been coming closer and closer to death. The verdict was "misadventure."
Since Coulew of Lorraine caught bullets in the early seventeenth century, many magicians have been killed; or seriously injured, with the bullet-catching trick. Dr. Adam Saloman Ep-stein, who had performed for Napoleon III, Czar Alexander II, and Queen Victoria, was shot at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris in December, 1869. Michael Hatal, "The Hungarian Herrmann," was killed at an Odd Fellows benefit in New York in October, 1899. Professor Blumenfeld's career ended during an exhibition of the feat at the Cigogne Hotel in Basle, Swit¬zerland, in January, 1906. De Linsky gave the firing command to a six-man squad as rifle sights were zeroed in on his wife during a performance for Prince Schwartz-burg-Sonderhausen at his castle in Arnstadt in November, 1820. A bullet ripped through her body. She died two days later. De Line, a French wizard, pulled the trigger that accidentally sent his son to his death before a horrified audience. "The Black Wizard of the West" was killed in Deadwood, South Dakota.
H. T. Sartell died on a stage in Lynn, Massachusetts. And there were others. ... The 2006 film "The Prestige" with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman make use of this bullet trick. Jean Hugard (John Gerard Rodney Boyce, 1872-1959) was the first to do the feat with a modern high-powered rifle. "I was often shot at, but only once actually shot," the famous Australian magician once said. The opening night of his second tour of New Zealand four local riflemen brought their own weapons and ammunition to the Wellington Theatre. The bullets were marked, dipped in chalk, and loaded. At Hugard's command the rifles were fired point blank at the small cloth he held in front of his heart. The bullets hit the cloth, leaving chalk marks, and fell, still warm, to the stage. Looking down, Hugard saw several flecks of red on his dress shirt and felt stinging pain. He hurried to his dressing room, ripped open his shirt and, using a penknife, pried out several pieces of shot embedded in his flesh. One of the riflemen had not only loaded his gun with a bullet, but had also, secretly, dropped a handful of metal pellets down its barrel.
Milbourne Christopher has also done bullet-catching. In May, 1957, he arranged television's first ninety-minute magic spectacular for NBC. Magicians from the four corners of the globe were flown to New York for "The Festival of Magic." He faced a rifle champion who brought his own gun and ammunition to the studio. An estimated 33,000,-000 viewers saw him catch the bullet. Kinescopes of the show were shown in Europe, and later the same year he went to London to do the bullet-catch again on BBC-TV. He had applied for insurance, without success, before each performance. In London, on the BBC, he announced he would never do the feat again. The next morning he received a letter from a British company at the theatre where he was performing. Now that he had given up the bullet-catch, the letter said, they would be happy to have him as a client.
Illusionist Will B. Wood could cause his daughter to vanish with a pistol shot. This was only one of his many spectacular illusions. In February, 1908, news stories reported that he and his daughter were lost at sea. The ship taking them and their equipment to Mexico sank off Yucatan. He was said to have had $1,000 in cash with him. Suspicion of piracy and murder led the U.S. State Department to investigate the sinking. The trunks and apparatus were recovered but no trace was ever found of the Woods or their money.
Servais Le Roy (1865-1953) was that rare combination, a great inventor and a great performer. Among the Belgian illusionist's major innovations was a levitation with a surprise finish. His beautiful assistant, draped with a thin silk cloth, floated high above his head. Suddenly he whipped away the cloth. She was gone-evaporated into thin air. Other wizards caused doves and rabbits to appear and vanish; Le Roy conjured with ducks. He produced them from small tubs and made them vanish in boxes which were dissected without a single tell-tale feather remaining.
One of Le Roy's several "Bosco's" through the years was James William Elliott (1874-1920), a Rumford, Maine, physician who enjoyed sorcery more than surgery. When he worked alone he billed himself as "The World's Champion Card Manipulator." He had a standing offer to meet all comers who professed equal prowess with the pasteboards.
Another "M.D." was Dr. Walford Bodie, whose strange theatrical shows intrigued England for years. Some claimed the M.D., in his case, meant "Master Deceptionist." He performed illusions, demonstrated electrical effects, and was in constant friction with British medical societies because of his claims to cure with hypnosis.
A wizard with a wooden leg, great skill, and wide popularity in Holland, Eliaser Bamberg (1760-1833) was the first of the most noted European family of magicians. He was born in Leyden. David Leendert Bamberg (1786-1869) at nine became his father's assistant. In 1834 he was appointed court conjuror to King William II.
Tobias Bamberg (1812-1870), eldest son of David, also performed at the Dutch court. David Tobias Bamberg, Tobias' only son, (1843-1914) became King William Ill's court magician in 1870. He toured Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and other countries.
Theodore Bamberg (1875- ) made his first appearance before the court at the age of eleven. His father, David Tobias, introduced him during a performance on Princess Wilhelmina's birthday. Theodore was the first of the Bambergs to develop a silent act. For the purpose he wore Japanese robes and took the name Okito, a rearrangement of the letters that spell Tokio. Okito's artistic deceptions were a success around the world. For a time he toured with the Thurs-ton show in the United States, presenting his shadowgraph routine. Apparatus invented, built, and decorated by Okito is eagerly sought by collectors of choice conjuring paraphernalia. Several years after Okito established his name as a master of Oriental style magic, he changed his costumes and settings to Chinese. Though he long ago retired from the stage and now lives in Chicago, Okito occasionally dons his Chinese robes and amazes magicians with his bowl production and other perfectly executed specialties.
Okito's son, David Bamberg, took Fu Manchu for his stage name. He is the best known illusionist in South America. His winning personality and magnificently produced show have delighted audiences in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Cuba, and elsewhere.
There was an eighteenth-century alchemist named Jasper Bamberg—no relation to the famous family. Another Jasper Bamberg appeared as a magician in Chicago before the turn of the century. This was the stage name of H. J. Burlingame, a noted American writer and manufacturer of magic who had taken lessons from David Tobias Bamberg in Europe.
Carl Hertz (Leib Morgenstern, 1869-1924) once gave his show for an audience of one —King Ludwig II, sometimes called "The mad King of Bavaria." Born in San Francisco, Hertz, as a boy, saw Herrmann, Heller, Cazeneuve and other great magicians. He worked as an act in American vaudeville theatres and toured with a circus before his first trip to England at the age of twenty-five.
Two of Buatier de Kolta's creations made his reputation—the "Vanishing Birdcage" and the "Vanishing Lady." He toured Australia in 1892. In Melbourne this advertisement appeared in the newspapers: "Wanted 1,000 cats of all descriptions. Apply at Stage Door, Opera House, with cats, at 9 A.M. tomorrow. One shilling or a free seat for the evening performance will be given for each cat."
Two thousand tabbies turned up the next day, mostly in the hands of enterprising youngsters. A neckband reading "See Carl Hertz at the Opera House tonight" was fastened to each cat and the feline horde was turned loose in the streets. Hertz played to excellent business for six weeks. From Australia he went on to tour New Zealand, and later South Africa, Ceylon, India, Burma, the Philippines, China, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Russia, and the United States. A daughter of the Rajah of Borneo fell in love with the illusionist when he performed for her father. Hertz was told that she insisted he marry her. When he protested that he was already married, the princess said that didn't matter, she would treat his wife as an equal and a sister. With the aid of his "Phoenix" illusion, Hertz escaped her clutches, in his next show before the Rajah. Usually his wife was burned alive, then restored. On this night the magician entered the furnace himself. There was no restoration. Actually he was spirited away by his assistants in a basket which usually held some of his equipment. The princess, he heard later, was grief-stricken at his "passing." In August, 1921, Hertz gave a unique performance in the British House of Commons before a committee investigating alleged cruelty to performing animals. Some had charged that a canary in his vanishing birdcage was killed every time the trick was done. Hertz permitted the committee to mark the bird, then, as he had done in thousands of shows before, he made the cage and canary vanish at his fingertips. A few minutes later he offered the bird to the committee for examination. It was in fine condition, unharmed by its sudden flight from view.
Harry Rouclere (1866-1942) gave his entertainments as "The Boy Magician" when he was twelve. During a long and varied career in show business, he presented almost every phase of magic—escapes, sleight of hand, mentalism, and illusions. "Mildredism," which featured his wife, was a baffling display of thought transference. With the profits of his tours, Rouclere purchased a hotel in Ridgeway, New Jersey, and spent more time with his hobby, aviation. In 1920 the old wizard played Ridgeway's official Santa Claus, arriving in twentieth century fashion by airplane.
Long before Houdini's day magicians effected uncanny releases from ropes and handcuffs. Houdini was certainly not the inventor of these tricks, though he made them very popular in his own day. Pinetti had a rope escape in his eighteenth-century programs; Samri Baldwin, "The White Mahatma," slipped out of handcuffs during his séances. Zamora, "The Triple-jointed Wonder," was a headline attraction in New York's dime museums.
Houdini brought a remarkable drive, tremendous showmanship, and masterful publicity methods to the field of escapology and made his name a household word. His escapes under challenge from boxes, barrels, jails, and manacles of every description drew huge crowds to the theatre. His open-air straitjacket escapes, made while dangling head downwards from a rope fastened
to the roof of a tall building, his daredevil feats, such as jumping, handcuffed and chained, from a bridge into a river, or spiriting himself out of a securely nailed submerged box, captured more newspaper linage week after week than any magician's exploits before or since.
Contrary to most biographies, and even his own signed statements, which gave his birthplace as Appleton, Wisconsin, he was born March 24, 1874, in Budapest. The name on the official certificate was Erik Weisz. He was brought to Appleton as an infant. His earliest signatures spelled the name Ehrich Weiss. Not until he performed in Budapest did he learn the true facts of his birth. He discarded the family name for the more euphonious Houdini, patterned after the French magician, Robert-Houdin, whose memoirs had thrilled him as a boy. In 1893 he entertained at the Chicago World's Fair, then made the rounds of dime museums and traveling circuses. As a young man, he called himself "The King of Cards" and worked for as little as twelve dollars a week, doing eighteen or twenty shows on his platform. As a challenge handcuff escape specialist, he quickly rose to headline position on European and American variety bills. Not only did he wriggle free of handcuffs, chains, and shackles, but he slipped out of government mailbags, the interior of a locked, roller-type desk, a tightly laced container shaped like a giant football, and the inside of a dead whale.
While in Russia in 1903, Houdini kept himself in shape with a daily jog around the Moscow race track. As he trotted along he practiced the patter for his show. "I challenge any police official to handcuff me—I defy the police departments of the world to hold me." From nowhere a group of Russian police appeared and surrounded him, ready to subdue the maniac who talked to himself in the open air. Houdini had a difficult time explaining what he had been doing, but when they finally understood they even made a few suggestions to improve his phraseology. Cable dispatches from abroad told of Houdini's escape from a Siberian prison van and his jail break in Leicester, England, from a cell built by Oliver Cromwell. When the arm of a windmill broke in Holland before he could extricate himself from the ropes which bound him to it, American papers told the story.
In 1906 Houdini escaped from the Washington federal jail in which Charles Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, had been confined. Then, as a prank, he shifted two condemned murderers and six other prisoners on murderers' row from the cells in which they originally had been locked to other cells. When, in 1910, Houdini made the first successful airplane flight in Australia, he was positive future generations would remember him best as a pioneer airman. Today his aerial triumph is little known, but his name still appears more frequently in print than that of any other wonder worker. Not only do books and newspapers and magazine articles chronicle Houdini's adventures, but anyone who does something remarkable, be it a prisoner making a jail escape, a politician getting out of a tight squeeze, or a ball player stealing a base in a hotly contested game, is called a Houdini.
He took pride in proclaiming that he performed the smallest and largest stage magic ever shown. The smallest was "The East Indian Needle Mystery," in which he swallowed seventy needles and twenty yards of thread, then brought up the needles threaded. The largest was a vanishing elephant illusion in which he caused a 10,000-pound pachyderm to disappear from a box on the stage of the New York Hippodrome.
During Houdini's last years he waged a relentless crusade against fraudulent mediums. He, or members of his staff, attended séances in the cities in which his show was booked and exposed the charlatans, naming names and duplicating their psychic tricks during his stage performances. His spare time was spent in gathering books and memorabilia for his fabulous library, writing books and articles, and lecturing on fraud before college audiences and police officials. During most of Houdini's performing life he was a vaudeville headliner; then came a lecture tour and, finally, his dreams came true with a full evening show of his own. In it he performed sleight of hand, illusions which he had collected during his travels, and some which he had devised himself. The show was in three parts: magic, escapes, and revelations of spiritist trickery.
Houdini died as a result of a freak accident. A McGill student who had attended his lecture at the university came with two friends to visit him in his dressing room at the Princess Theatre in Montreal. The young man had heard that Houdini could take a blow of any force in his powerfully developed midsection. The student hit before Houdini could brace himself. There were severe pains for the next two days, but Houdini went on to Detroit to give his scheduled performance. He collapsed in the theatre after his first show and was rushed to the hospital. There, after two operations, Houdini died on October 31, 1926—Reformation Day.
Both Houdini and Howard Thurston (1869-1936) ran away from home as youngsters. Both performed in circus sideshows. Both, at one time, were specialists in card manipulation. Thurston hoped to emulate the first stage magician he ever saw—Alexander Herrmann. With the profits of a European tour as a vaudeville card magician, Thurston built an illusion show. He toured Australia and the Orient, appearing before the Emperor of China, the Emperor of Japan, the King of Siam, the Rajah of Mizam, and other notables. He returned to the United States to join Harry Kellar on his farewell tour. Kellar introduced Thurston as his successor on May 16, 1908 on the stage of Ford's Theatre in Baltimore. For twenty-eight years Thurston was an American theatrical phenomenon. Keeping only Kellar's levitation and spirit cabinet, he revamped the traditional full evening magic show. Unfortunately, this is where classic stage magic took on the "attractive women" and replaced the men Kellar had used as assistants, more humor was added, and new mysteries were presented each season. Thurston became "popular".
One of Thurston's best publicized illusions was the instant disappearance on a brightly lighted stage, of a Whippet automobile, filled with pretty illusionistes. Another was an effective version of the fabled "East Indian Rope Trick," in which a boy climbed to the top of a rope and vanished "like a fading cloud." Thurston's presentation of the floating ball was a masterpiece. His staging of the levitation permitted him not only to cause the girl to soar high on the stage, but also to float under his magic fingers as he came down the runway into the audience. The show grew to such proportions that, at one time, ten railway baggage cars were needed to transport his props and special scenery. In December, 1924, a stage was erected in the East Room of the White House so that President Coolidge and his guests could enjoy the master magician. The hit of the evening was the smashing and disappearance of the chief executive's pocket watch. It reappeared, fully restored and still keeping perfect time, in the center of a loaf of bread.
Though he made millions with his magic, Thurston left a very small estate when he died.Investments in orange groves and an unproductive Canadian gold mine made his profits vanish as mysteriously as the automobiles, girls, horses, and rabbits he conjured away on the stage.
"Sawing a Woman in Two" was the most commercially successful illusion ever invented. It was dynamite at the box office. The plot was simple: A girl in a box was sawed through the middle, then made whole again, with nary a scratch from the blade.
P. T. Selbit (Percy Thomas Tibbies) startled London with this creation in 1920. A contemporary magic magazine commented that if anyone pirated the idea the thief should be put in his own box, halved and not restored. Horace Goldin devised another method in New York. In his version, the girl's head, hands and feet extended through holes in the ends and sides of the box throughout the operation. During the 1921-22 season the illusion was such a great draw in vaudeville theatres that Goldin sent out six road companies and Selbit toured with nine units. An ambulance, with a banner on its side: "We are going to Keith's in case the saw slips," built interest wherever Goldin played. A uniformed nurse and an ominous stretcher in the theatre lobby churned up more talk. Goldin sometimes hired a number of men, dressed them as undertakers in black frock coats and top hats, and had them carry the handsaw in their white-gloved hands through city streets. The curious who followed the strange procession wound up at the theatre box office window. A Goldin press release said the wizard got the idea for the sensational feat in Poona, India, where, hidden on the back of an elephant, he saw a high priest saw a human in half during an exotic ritual. This, of course, was pure press-agentry.
Selbit also introduced "Through the Eye of a Needle," in which a girl was apparently pulled through a small hole in a metal plate about the size of a manhole cover, and almost a dozen other novel conceptions. Goldin, when the appeal of the sawing with a handsaw diminished, presented a mechanized improvement. He dispensed with the covering box and performed his bloodless surgery in full view, using a motor-driven buzz saw. Early in his career Goldin attained fame in England with a rapid-fire delivery. "Don't blink or you'll miss a trick" was one of his catchlines. The sentencing of Alfred Dreyfus to Devil's Island and the worldwide controversy the case fermented inspired Goldin's first major illusion success. Goldin, dressed in French military uniform, played the part of Dreyfus. An assistant, in costume, stripped off "Dreyfus' " epaulets and broke his sword in two. "Dreyfus" was forced into a cage. "Madame Dreyfus" pleaded for his release. Soldiers pulled her away, draped the cage with a cloth. At the signal they fired at the cage. The cloth dropped. "Dreyfus" was gone and "Madame Dreyfus" was in his place.
He stepped to the front of the stage, removed his cloak and mask. It was Goldin, who accepted the applause.
Goldin gave his first royal command performance at Sandringham Palace in 1902. The occasion was Queen Alexandra's birthday. Among the guests was Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Edward VII sent the illusionist a jeweled pin as a token of his appreciation. Later the Prince of Wales, who was to become George V, the Queen of Saxony, and the King of Siam added similar royal crest pins to his collection.
Both his father Nicoli and his brother were magicians, but neither matched The Great Nicola's global triumphs. William Mozart Nicol (1880-1946) was an executive; an illusion show with fifty tons of baggage was a big business and he ran it with precise attention to every detail. His first foreign success was at the 1900 Paris Exposition, where he enjoyed a twenty-six-week run.
In 1910, on his first world tour, 600 men built a theatre for his attraction in five days. When Nicola performed an outdoor straitjacket release to publicize his show he never bothered to get a police department license. He had sound reasons. First, metropolitan officials would refuse to issue a permit. Further, after he drew a huge crowd and snarled city traffic, he knew he would be taken to court with the attendant fanfare and news stories. He always pleaded his case so effectively that he seldom
had to pay more than a few dollars fine. The Emperor of China, the Sultan of Sulu, King Leopold of Belgium, and Theodore Roosevelt were among the notables who patronized his production. Nicola's travels took him to South America,
Africa, Australia, China, India and other remote lands. Curiously, he never presented in the United States the full show which had made him famous. In 1939, the ship carrying his production on another world tour struck a mine near Singapore. Nicola and his company were saved, but an estimated $100,000 worth of equipment vanished beneath the waves.
Dante (Harry August Jansen, 1883-1955) presented his illusions in revue form. His "Sim Sala Bim" was the most-traveled show business success of modern times. Moscow, Madrid, London, Paris, New York, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Mukden, Pekin, and Manila were only a few stops along the way. Born in Copenhagen, he came to St. Paul, Minnesota, with his family when he was six. His vaudeville billing was Herr Jansen. Thurs-ton gave him the name Dante and sent him on the road with a Thurston-produced illusion show. While Thurston played in America, Dante circled the globe. Dante spoofed the traditional. He worked with a merry twinkle in his eye, peppering the audience with a barrage of puns and asides. No contemporary came close to his flamboyant style.
A first-rate illusion builder, he was also once a partner in the Chicago firm of Halton and Jansen. Dante constructed many of Thurston's best big scale feats, including the improved Goldin version of "Sawing a Woman in Two." Prime examples of Dante's originality were his "Un-Sevilled Barber," a quick change sequence set in a barber shop; "Backstage," in which he performed with his back to the real audience, facing a painted audience on a back drop. The real audience saw, or thought it saw, how a girl was produced from a pair of empty boxes. At the last minute a boy instead of a girl made the surprise appearance. The Thurston-sponsored Dante world tour began in Puerto Rico in 1927 and lasted until World War II brought him back to America in 1940.
Most stage luminaries stop having public birthdays when they pass the thirties or remain, as Jack Benny did for so many years, thirty-nine. Dante was the exception. He enjoyed playing the part of a spry old-timer. During his run at the Morosco Theatre in New York in 1940, he was fifty-seven, but he would chuckle after a particularly deft deception: "Not bad for an old bird of seventy." You couldn't miss Dante in a crowd. He was as striking off stage as on, with his snow white hair, trim moustache and goatee, smart clothes, and jaunty manner. The Boston Traveler said he was a composite of Frank Morgan, Monty Woolley, and Frank Fay. Others described him as a sophisticated Buffalo Bill.
Dante's last public bow was made at the combined convention of the Society of American Magicians and the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians in Santa Barbara, California, a week before his death.
Blackstone is the dean of American stage illusionists. He was born Harry Bouton, September 27, 1885, in Chicago. Kellar was his inspiration. He began his career with his brother Pete, doing a vaudeville act titled "Straight and Crooked Magic." Blackstone did a trick legitimately, then his brother would add comedy with his attempts to top the wizard. Later Blackstone turned to massive magic and elaborate productions. For years he played the vaudeville houses with the largest illusion act on the road.
Eventually, he entered the legitimate theatre field. Kellar used to say that America would recognize only one great magician at a time. Blackstone became the recognized magician. He has had a series of radio shows, has appeared on television, and was the first magician to become the hero of a series of comic book adventures. Though Blackstone saws women in two, makes horses vanish, produces burros, and appears and disappears with the greatest of finesse, his best feat is the dancing handkerchief. Borrowing a kerchief from a spectator, he first stretches it, then endows it with life. It dances about the stage with the ease of a ballerina and the funny antics of a clown. Blackstone doesn't smoke. Once, while doing an underwater packing box escape, he believed the end of his career was only moments away. He vowed that if he got out alive he'd never touch tobacco again. Now seventy-seven, Blackstone seldom appears with his elaborate full evening show, but his love for magic has never diminished. He always has a pocketful of new tricks and takes the
greatest of pleasure in presenting them for his friends.
For many years before World War II Helmut Schreiber was the president of the German Magic Circle and editor of its magazine. By profession a film producer, he performed whenever the opportunity arose. Now, as Kalanag, he is Germany's most famous illusionist and with his magic revue has played in England, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, the United States, and throughout most of continental Europe.
India's greatest illusionist, P. C. Sorcar, has toured in Japan, Ceylon, Africa, Australia, the British Isles, and Europe. American viewers have seen his colorful illusions on television. More than any other magician in the history of India he has made his name synonymous with mystery. Kio, Russia's number-one mystifier, is one of the greatest attractions in the U.S.S.R. He performs in the grand manner in the center of a circus ring. Several years ago he performed in London and on the continent.
The appeal of magic has not lessened with the years. It is still the most international of the performing arts. Duval was just as baffling with his "Symphony in Silk" in Germany as in his native America. Fred Kaps, the Dutch sleight of hand performer, is a welcome feature in London night clubs. Murray, the Australian escapologist, circled the globe. Randi, the Canadian, carries on in the Houdini tradition. The ancient cups and balls feat is still a master mystery in the hands of Gali Gali, Egypt's greatest manipulator. Carl Ballantine in the States, Tommy Cooper in England and Mac Ronay in France are leaders in the field of comedy conjuring. John Calvert and Virgil have taken their American illusion shows to the British Isles, Australia and the Orient. Dr. Neff's "Spook Show" has sent shivers down the spines of audiences from coast to coast. Few of yesterday's
close-up conjurors could match the modern skill of Dai Vernon, Don Alan or Johnny Paul. Mark Wilson amazed the youngest generation with his seemingly endless bag of televised tricks. Annual conventions of The International Brotherhood of Magicians, The British Ring and The Society of American Magicians and periodic conclaves of the Federation Internationale des Societes Magiques attract hocus-pocusers from all parts of the world. There are, unfortunately, fewer legitimate theatres and variety houses as time goes by. Yet television with its sense of immediacy offers magicians an opportunity to perform both small teats, once suitable only for close-up audiences, and the great illusions, once only practical on the largest of stages.
Street Magic is taking America and the UK by storm. David Blaine and Criss ANgel have popularized street magic, as well as such websites as www.ellusionist.com, and stage magic is kept alive by many of the former greats such as David Copperfield, and Max Maven. Criss Angel and David Blaine have been recognized not only in popular magician's circles, and on the internet, but also as they continue to make television shows more popular to the generation "x" crowd.
Max Maven (born Philip Goldstein in 1950) is an American magician and mentalist. He often appears on television magic shows to perform "interactive" mind reading tricks that work for the television audience. While his public persona and performances fall squarely within the genre of mentalism, Maven's contributions to the magic community span far wider. He is respected within the industry for being a prolific author, and innovating many of the magical and mentalist effects that are used by other magicians. He has been a magic consultant for such performers as David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, Siegfried & Roy, and Doug Henning, and is a frequent contributor to industry journals such as Genii, The Linking Ring, and MUM. He has also been the featured magician at the annual conventions of both the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Maven occasionally plays a magician character (often as himself) on various television series, such as, "Magic", "The Art of Magic", "Something Strange with Max Maven", "Fresh Prince of Bel Air", and "The MAXimum Dimension". His name has been legally changed to Max Maven, but he still uses "Phil Goldstein" as a pen name for technical writings.
David Copperfield is known as the sleek American illusionist who has performed live around the world and starred in a series of well-received TV specials since the end of the 1970s. Copperfield began performing magic professionally (and teaching it at NYU) while still a teenager. He left Fordham University when he was cast in the title role of the Chicago stage musical, "The Magic Man" (1974), in which he not only performed sleight-of-hand but also acted, sang and danced. Copperfield made his TV debut in a special for ABC several years later, and shortly after that began his long-term relationship with CBS. He has produced or executive produced several of his specials, and directed or co-directed (sometimes credited under his original name, David Kotkin) most of them as well. Copperfield's carefully courted elegance and performing style has lent dash and grace to a series of exciting escapes from exploding buildings and Niagara Falls, and he has regularly made large objects ranging from elephants to jet airliners to the Statue of Liberty disappear.
David Blaine (born David Blaine White on April 4, 1973 in Brooklyn, New York City, USA) is an American magician and stunt performer. He made his name as a performer of street and close-up magic. Blaine began his career with street magic, performing card tricks and illusions such as levitation or giving the appearance of bringing dead flies back to life. He used a small camera crew to record his act live in front of everyday people which provided the basis for his television specials, David Blaine: Street Magic, David Blaine: Magic Man, and David Blaine: Mystifier. He later turned his attention to stunts and feats of endurance: Premature Burial, Frozen in Time, Vertigo, Mysterious Stranger, Above the Below, and Drowned Alive.
Criss Angel (born Christopher Sarantakos, December 19, 1967 in East Meadow, New York) is a Greek-American musician, magician, illusionist, escapologist, stunt performer, and the creator and director of the Criss Angel Mindfreak television series on A&E Network. Criss Angel is now ending his second season of Mindfreak which is filmed at the Aladdin Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as in Los Angeles, California, and Angel's hometown of East Meadow, New York. Some of Angel's levitation tricks have been explained by Criss himself, notably on a DVD which is available for purchase from his official website store. The levitation featured on the DVD was an original invention of Jacob Spinney. Angel often states that several of the levitations, teleports and demonstrations of telekinesis he performs are done through the power of mind, body and spirit attained through meditation. Some of the other methods are well known within the magic fraternity and have been performed previously by magicians such as David Copperfield, David Blaine and the Pendragons.
Magic and Card Conjuring have taken a few twists and turns. Are they for the worse? Time will tell. Its very hard to hold onto the classics. Its very difficult to keep stage magic mystifying, and card conjuring that which people would say are "card miracles." Las Vegas shows and street magic have pushed the conjuring community, and the art of magic itself, to think through where it actually stands, and what will stand the test of time. For now, we'll have to wait and see where card conjuring goes. Styles of card conjuring change with the times, so do techniques, but magic, the entertaining art of legitimate deception, continues to fascinate, delight, and intrigue people everywhere. We should hope that people are more fascinated with the miracle of the performance that includes the manipulation, instead of simply being happy with seeing a "few tricks."
