Jim Steinmeyer (2 page)

Years later, one of his most successful songs, “Mammy,” Jolson interpolated his own finale, partly sung, and then, when his voice seemed to crack, partly spoken. He used it in every performance and it appears in recorded versions.

No spectators were ever given the key to these phrases; nor did these words ever make sense within the context of the song’s lyrics. But their meaning must have been sensed, on a deeply personal level, by thousands of audiences, and the emotion behind them gave a subconscious complexity to Jolson’s performance.

There is similar evidence in accounts of Houdini. Most spectators remembered Houdini’s self-confident performances; the brassy mannerisms complimented his daring escapes and his overenunciation seemed to formalize his performances. But more perceptive spectators realized the contradictions suggested by his appearance. Houdini was small and unimpressive onstage; he was intense rather than handsome, challenging rather than commanding. He gave every impression of the Everyman, a David about to encounter society’s Goliaths: the police force, handcuffs, sealed tanks of water, straitjackets, and locksmiths.

His New York East Side mannerisms were always perceptible, just beneath the surface at each performance. Houdini’s detractors—and there were many in the magic profession—sensed his pose and interpreted it as dishonesty or arrogance. But this was also a key to success: people sensed the conflict suggested by his performances, recognizing his overreaching as appealingly human. We root for the little man who tries hard.

Howard Thurston captivated audiences with a similar dichotomy. Immaculate, artistic, and possessing a self-assured grandeur onstage, which allowed him to preside over the sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic spectacle of the world’s largest magic show, Thurston held his audiences in rapt attention. “My object is to mystify and entertain,” he told his audience in a distinctive baritone, evoking his well-publicized training for the ministry. “I wouldn’t deceive you for the world.” Ultimately, this returns to the question of why Thurston sought to mystify many people, including business associates, fellow magicians, ex-wives, and a stepdaughter.

I actually feel that it was this simple phrase, uttered at every performance—“I wouldn’t deceive you for the world”—that provided the momentary glimpse to the complexity of Thurston’s performances and his appealing humanity. In retrospect, it was an astonishing promise for a magician, an appeal for legitimacy and acceptance. It was also the statement of a man who could believe and disbelieve simultaneously. We know that it echoed a desperate plea that had once been offered by a sad, dirty young street criminal who had reached his wit’s end and realized that there was only one path left to him: honesty.

Then, once he was safe, once he had offered his promise and discovered the value of his word, he turned around and deceived them again.

The function of the magician has characteristics in common with those of the criminal, of the actor and of the priest ... and he enjoys certain special advantages impossible for these professions. Unlike the criminal, he has nothing to fear from the police; unlike the actor, he can always have the stage to himself; unlike the priest, he need not trouble about questions of faith in connection with the mysteries at which he presides.

—EDMUND WILSON

H
oudini pulled at his cardboard collar, tugged at his rumpled tweed suit, and slouched forward to avoid being seen. He felt trapped, completely, hopelessly trapped. He had always been comfortable standing in the rarefied atmosphere onstage, where each of his gestures was magnified and each expression examined by thousands of unseen eyes. On a stage, encircled by a warm halo of limelight, he had learned how to read the roars, whispers, and laughter from the mysterious darkness on the other side of the footlights. He could propel his voice across the void, emphasizing each word. But now he realized how uncomfortable he was sitting in a theater seat, anticipating a performance. Every squeal of a child seemed amplified; the laughter, catcalls, and murmurs of the arriving audience combined to form an uncomfortable buzz in his ears. As the orchestra stumbled into the pit with a clatter of bows and the squeak of chairs—finally, finally, the show was about to begin!—all Houdini could think about was how strange it was to be on the wrong side of the footlights, and how torturous it was waiting for someone else’s magic show. He thumbed the program nervously—“Thurston, The Famous Magician.” The oversized type, the grandiosity of the title rankled him.

In fact, Houdini had been scheming for years to become more than just a vaudeville escape artist, which is how he had earned his fame with the public. He was tired of putting on a bathing suit to perform water escapes, or organizing his career around publicity stunts that left him dangling upside down from buildings and escaping from straitjackets. He wanted to be a real magician, with an impressive magic show full of sophisticated wonders. Houdini went about it with his typical bravura—finding an enemy and viewing the challenge as a battle. He had fixed Thurston in the crosshairs.

Standing behind the curtain, just out of sight of the audience, Howard Thurston heard the first notes of the ragtime overture. He instinctively began hopping up and down on the balls of his feet, then stopped to swing his arms. These little exercises, he found, allowed him to “get pep” for each performance. Then he stood closely behind the curtain, with his eyes closed. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to my show tonight. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you. God bless you. God bless you,” he murmured to himself, directing his thoughts to the nameless, faceless audience members who had just paid to see his marvels. The stage manager nodded to the magician. We’re ready. Thurston adjusted his starched shirtfront and smoothed the front of his elegant black tailcoat. He looked immaculate, elegant, ministerial.

“He’s here, Governor,” said George White, peering along a crack at the edge of the curtain. Thurston stepped to the side of the curtain to look for himself. “That’s him, isn’t it?” Houdini was seated in the fifth row, on the aisle. Thurston had chosen the seat himself when he offered Houdini a complimentary pass. “Yes, that’s him. Good old Harry,” Thurston sighed.

Thurston was technically one of Houdini’s old friends, a business associate, and a fellow member of the Society of American Magicians. He was also, in Houdini’s eyes, an ever-present rival. They’d met in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, at the very first midway (literally, the “Midway Plaisance”). There, a nineteen-year-old Houdini had found work by donning dark makeup, dressing in a tattered white robe, and working as an “authentic Hindu” mystic, sitting cross-legged in front of the Algerian and Tunisian Village. His tour de force was apparently swallowing a packet of loose needles, then a long piece of thread. He regurgitated the thread, with all the needles neatly spaced along its length.

Howard Thurston, five years older, some four inches taller, wore a stylish felt hat and embroidered vest, twirled a cane, and worked as the “talker,” standing in front of the Dahomey Village, a collection of “authentic African” attractions. When the crowds thinned out, Thurston used to pull a pack of cards from his pocket, performing a little magic, flourishing the cards from hand to hand, and changing one card into another by waving his hand over the face of the deck.

In Chicago, the two young men quickly found each other, and then found each other obnoxious. Thurston was bemused by Houdini’s aggressive, boastful New York East Side personality. Houdini watched the card moves with disinterest. Yeah, he told his new acquaintance, he did all that stuff too, and better. No, the Hindu thing was just a temporary job; he actually had a sensational new act, an escape from a trunk, if only you could see it.

Houdini found Thurston’s smooth, evangelical manner condescending. Actually, Thurston purred to his young compatriot, his work as a pitchman was just something to keep him busy. He had plans for a sensational new act, with brand-new card tricks. At the Columbian Exposition, the magicians were perfectly matched because they were both perfectly miserable—two young men teetering between the brink of success or failure, who could take no pride in anything they had done, but indulged in boasts of what they might accomplish someday ... with the right show ... with the right breaks.

Now, on December 6, 1920, at the Folly Theater in Brooklyn, they were both stars, and Houdini had agreed to watch Thurston’s show once more. The timpani rolled, and the curtain was raised, showing a stage glowing with light and circled with pretty showgirls in bright silk dresses. The children seated around Houdini squealed and the audience burst into applause. Howard Thurston quickly stepped to the center of the stage, cupping the palm of one hand inside of the other hand and bowing slightly to the audience. And then he turned his eyes to Houdini’s seat—a professional greeting that was brief and distinct—acknowledging his fellow magician with a nod.

 

 

ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES
into the show—after a flurry of fishbowls and silk handkerchiefs, after Thurston had neatly plucked dozens of cards from the air at his fingertips, then hurled hundreds more into the audience, after finding a man inside an empty barrel and catching invisible pigeons in a long-handled net—his quick, colorful tricks reached a crescendo and Thurston stepped forward to introduce his feature illusion.

The music slowed and stopped. The stage was bathed in a mysterious blue light.

Orson Welles, who saw Thurston perform when he was a boy, always remembered the magician’s beautiful, hypnotic intonations. “He was the master,” according to Welles. “And I idolized him. He was the finest magician I’ve ever seen.” Thurston’s voice was a deep baritone with a slight nasal quality, which imparted a drone or hum, like the secondary notes of a musical instrument. He spoke without any of the usual tricks or affectations of actors, but a pure Midwest “accentless” accent; instead of the singsong modulation of orators, Thurston used delicate pauses to emphasize individual words or syllables.

William Lindsay Gresham, the author of
Nightmare Alley
and a biographer of Houdini, first saw Thurston perform in 1916. “I had no preconceived notions as to what a magician should be like, but from the first moment when he began to speak, I knew. I knew I was seeing greatness, and I have never changed my opinion for all of the magicians I have ever seen. Thurston was the most magical. His voice was the most musical I ever heard. It rippled. It purled. It chanted, effortless, apparently artless, so profoundly moving that a word from him was misdirection enough.”

Abdul, in an embroidered robe, white turban, and slippers with curled toes, hurried out from the wings, bowing to Thurston and kneeling obediently at one side. The curtain opened on a brightly lit stage draped with swags of Indian curtains. In the center of the stage was an upholstered sofa. The orchestra began a low, tinkling Oriental theme.

Fernanda Myro portrayed the Indian princess, entering in a white and pink harem costume. She entered from the side, walking to the center of the stage, followed by two male assistants. Thurston held a crystal ball in front of Fernanda’s eyes and paused, surveying her expression. After a moment, her long dark lashes fluttered closed. He snapped his fingers, and she fell backward, rigid as a board, into the hands of a waiting assistant. Two men supported her and placed her, horizontally, on the sofa. She was isolated in the center of the stage, some ten feet from the nearest scenery.

Abdul lowered his eyes and began praying in a quiet Hindi singsong, as Thurston continued.