Jim Steinmeyer (20 page)

The coffin was replaced and the lady slowly descended into it. Thurston’s assistants lifted her to her feet; the magician clapped his hands and she awoke.

The weird illusion of Amazement was always noticed by newspaper reviewers and earned special praise for Thurston.

 

 

IN 1903,
Thurston took the magic show back on tour through vaudeville theaters in the Midwest, and then returned to Willow Grove for another long run and experiments in the workshop. He still wasn’t satisfied with the act and enhanced it with a number of cabinet illusions. His months on the road allowed Thurston to evaluate every trick carefully. What was the audience reaction? How did each piece of apparatus hold up backstage? How long did it take to prepare in each city? Gradually, he was working out the most elaborate and temperamental lighting effects and fountain effects, pruning the show down to the best tricks.

The last addition to the show was an amazing new illusion called Dida. Contrary to Thurston’s claims of originality, Dida originated in Germany several years earlier and had worked its way to London, where it made a minor hit at the Alhambra, and then appeared in New York vaudeville. Thurston might have seen it himself, or copied the apparatus from accounts of the London show. A large, low horizontal glass tank was wheeled onto the stage and then filled with water from buckets. Thurston covered the tank with a sheet, which was pulled away seconds later, disclosing a lady assistant, wearing a bathing costume and submerged in the water. She stood and stepped out of the tank. Thurston took his bow, and then asked if the audience would like to know how he did it. Invariably the audience answered yes. He returned to the tank, repeating his motions. He covered the tank a second time and pulled the cloth away to produce a second lady. Despite Thurston’s disarming presentation, the audience still had no idea how it was accomplished.

When Houdini reminded Thurston of his loan of twenty-five dollars, Thurston responded with a cheery note. “I am delighted to hear of your continued and great success. The name Houdini will live forever in the history of magic. Now, about the five pounds you loaned me....” Thurston begged him to wait. He was still scraping together money for his new show and had been addressing debts of “over $3,400 since I returned to America.” He had been busy paying back other debts, and presumably Harry Thurston was also clamoring for his money.

 

 

IN MAY 1904,
Harry Kellar brought his show to the Grand Opera House in Philadelphia, just before Thurston reopened at Willow Grove amusement park. After Alexander Herrmann’s death, Kellar was regarded as America’s greatest magician. But in style, he couldn’t have been more distinct from Alexander or Leon Herrmann.

Kellar was tall and bald, with rounded shoulders, big, fleshy hands, and a continual twinkle in his eye. His charm consisted of his familiar, avuncular style.

His childhood had been a neat match for Thurston’s, a boyhood on the streets. He had been born Heinrich Keller in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1844, the son of German immigrants. When he was eleven, he ran away from home, first to Cleveland and then to New York City. A benefactor, Reverend Robert Harcourt, befriended the boy and offered him an education if he would pledge his life to the ministry. Magic intervened. Young Harry saw the Fakir of Ava’s magic show. The fakir was Isaiah Hughes, a Buffalo, New York, magician. The boy ran away to join the fakir as an assistant, and those years provided his education in magic.

Keller—later spelled Kellar, to avoid comparisons with the magician Robert Heller—had a rough-and-tumble education in traveling shows. He toured through the Midwest with his own magic show, then joined the Davenport Brothers as their stage manager in 1873.

The Davenports were stars, and represented a particular American phenomenon: spiritualism as entertainment. In the late 1850s, these two brothers developed a novel act in which they were tied into a large wooden cabinet, a sort of armoire, and apparently produced spirit manifestations, an actual séance onstage.

Of course, the Davenports were frauds. Kellar learned their secrets, and then set out with William Fay, another Davenport employee, with their own spirit cabinet act.

In partnership with other magicians or on his own, Kellar traveled extensively—through Europe, South America, India, and Australia. By 1885 he returned to America and took on Alexander Herrmann. By now, Kellar was a seasoned show business professional and a daunting adversary, famous for hardheaded resolve and an explosive temper. Their rivalry was genuine and acrimonious. Kellar thought that Herrmann was a ridiculous, dandified fraud, and he insisted on calling him Niemann—he believed that Alexander was not actually a member of the famous Herrmann family of magicians. Herrmann, tired of his rival’s outbursts to the press, insisted that Kellar’s name not be mentioned in his presence. Billy and Dot Robinson, working between the two magicians, just added a level of espionage.

Kellar specialized in bringing marvels to his audience, working hard to beg, borrow, or steal the greatest magic for his shows. He was neither comical, nor especially adept at sleight of hand, the way Herrmann was. Instead, he carefully memorized his patter and rehearsed several sequences of small magic, which gave the impression of manual dexterity. Many of Kellar’s finest mysteries had originated at Egyptian Hall in London. Kellar made regular pilgrimages to Maskelyne’s theater, where he examined the latest illusions. He sometimes offered to buy them, but in any case he never took no for an answer, and often went back to America and produced his own copies of them.

In spite of his determination, Harry Kellar seemed confined to Herrmann’s shadow. The public could regard only one magician at a time as “great”; perhaps this was a result of the ever-present fantasy of a magic show—that the magician on stage is a unique person with unique secrets. It wasn’t until 1896, when Alexander Herrmann died unexpectedly, that Kellar ascended to the status of America’s great magician.

Kellar’s 1904 show was a revelation to Thurston. He still included a number of his solid, late-Victorian marvels. For example, Kellar presented favorites like his Spirit Cabinet routine, inspired by the Davenports, or his popular mind-reading routine with his wife, Eva Kellar. But for the 1904 season, he was also featuring new magic like the Crystal Ladder—a large, showy coin trick taken from T. Nelson Downs—as well as the Demon Globe, a ball that rolled up a plank by itself, and the Dying Enigma, in which he colored a number of white silk handkerchiefs. These last two tricks were creations of David Devant, from London. Thurston might have been proud of himself by befriending Devant, but the wily Kellar had vaulted over him; Kellar was bringing some of Devant’s best feats to his American audiences.

The real surprise was Kellar’s latest levitation. Kellar had been performing levitation illusions for over a decade, gradually evolving and improving them from season to season. But in the 1904 version, the Levitation of Princess Karnac, a pretty Indian princess was levitated high over the stage, isolated from any scenery. American magicians were dumbfounded by the illusion and wrote glowingly of Kellar’s new invention. When Thurston watched it, he realized that the new levitation was astonishing, enchanting, and somehow strangely familiar. He’d seen it before, and he’d seen it in London. Thurston realized that Kellar’s illusion was nearly identical to John Nevil Maskelyne’s amazing levitation from Egyptian Hall.

As a magician inspired by Alexander Herrmann—his boyhood idol— Thurston had sometimes considered Kellar to be a second-rate talent. But watching him in Philadelphia, Thurston had to give the old wizard his due. Somehow, Kellar had assembled a wonderful show and had even finagled the Maskelyne levitation out of London. Thurston realized that Kellar was still a formidable competitor.

 

 

KELLAR ADDED
Paul Valadon to his cast in the fall of 1904. Valadon was the German sleight-of-hand artist that Thurston had seen at Egyptian Hall. As Kellar had worked with guest stars in the past, Valadon seemed to fit nicely into the formula. Thurston even considered working with Kellar. He wrote to him in February 1905, and Kellar responded with the fascinating information that “next season will probably be my last on the road; at least, that is my present intention.” Thurston made arrangements to meet with Kellar that summer in New York. But the meeting didn’t take place. Thurston realized that his show had grown to a scale that meant he could no longer be an act or even a costar. By the summer of 1905, Thurston already had his eye on a larger prize. He had announced that he was finished with vaudeville and would now open his own magic show, following in the footsteps of Herrmann or Kellar.

Thurston had been booked by theatrical manager H. B. Curtis for an Australian tour. In 1899, Curtis had brought another promising young American magician to Australia, Oscar Eliason, who performed under the name Dante. Eliason had a highly successful, artistic show inspired by Alexander Herrmann. Unfortunately, after one season in Australia and New Zealand, Dante was accidentally shot in a hunting accident and died. He was just twenty-eight years old.

Curtis was anxious to recapture his success with Dante and wanted Thurston in Australia. But when Thurston arrived in San Francisco, he found that Curtis, desperate for cash, had first booked him for five weeks at the Fisher Theater, a vaudeville establishment in the city. Thurston had no option but to play out the contract. He paid off Curtis, and then discovered that the actual tour had been something of a fraud. Curtis was not welcomed in Australia. Several years earlier, after bringing a minstrel troupe to Australia, the manager had skipped out on the company without paying them. The Australian authorities were waiting for him.

Thurston was determined to bring his show to Australia. He pawned his baggage with the steamship line for transportation, borrowed money from his new employees, and sent the obligatory telegram to brother Harry for some emergency funds. On June 11, 1905, he left the shores of California on the
Saratoga
, destined for Hawaii and then Australia, accompanied by George and four technicians, above a hold containing dozens of crates of scenery and magic. As Howard and George stood on the deck watching the sunset, Thurston absentmindedly reached into his pocket and took out a silver dollar to practice his sleight of hand. He intended to flip it into the air and shoot it into his sleeve. Instead, the coin caught on the edge of his sleeve and tumbled onto the deck, rolling into the water.

Thurston froze, and then instinctively reached back into his pocket, feeling for another coin. George saw the expression on his face and knew something was wrong.

“What are we going to do, Governor?” George asked. “Don’t worry, George. Never worry,” Thurston sighed. That had been Thurston’s last coin. He now had the largest magic show in the world, but he didn’t have a cent to his name.

 

 

ALSO ON BOARD
was a nineteen-year-old actress named Beatrice Foster, small and slender with alabaster skin and a great crown of brunette hair. She was one of the two ladies Thurston had brought to take part in the illusions. Foster was a stage name, her mother’s maiden name; she was born Beatrice Fleming on November 3, 1883, in New York City, but friends called her Tommy.

Beatrice came from a theatrical family; her grandfather, an English-born playwright, wrote and produced an early “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” show, and cast it with members of his family. Little Beatrice first appeared on stage when she was two, and then went on to specialize as Little Lord Fauntleroy. For five years, her family sent her to the Academy of the Holy Angels, a convent school for little girls, in Fort Lee, New Jersey. When she was sixteen, she returned to the stage, working in vaudeville plays. Thurston had first met her in 1900, when she was working in one of Edwin Milton Royle’s short plays; Royle was a Broadway leading man, playwright, and lyricist. Later Beatrice applied when Thurston advertised for assistants during the Willow Grove experiments. She was then twenty, the perfect petite size for magic, with dark eyes and a sharp profile. Beatrice quickly became the unlucky assistant who was strapped into Henry’s metal corset and turned upside down over the stage, and then propelled into the tiny, airless trunks before they were tipped, jostled, and unlocked.

She took it all in stride, as part of the job. Beatrice had relinquished her acting career, no longer dreaming of stardom. She was happy to become a magic assistant and was game for any adventure. On the
Saratoga
, she was leaving for the adventure of a lifetime.

T
hurston spent his voyage making plans. By the time the company landed in Honolulu, at the beginning of July, he had wired one of Australia’s most successful theatrical managers, George Musgrove. Musgrove had seen his show in America, and Thurston optimistically announced to Hawaiian reporters that the manager would be representing the show in Australia.