Jim Steinmeyer (28 page)

When a published exposure was imminent, early in May 1910, Carrington quickly arranged the séance for Thurston. He was sure that if the magician were impressed, his credentials would cancel out the other lesser-known magicians like Rinn. Fortunately for Carrington, Howard and Beatrice had been fooled, and fooled badly. While the Columbia exposures were running in the newspapers, Rinn challenged Palladino to a test séance, to be conducted in an office at the
New York Times
, and offered her $1,000 if she could produce phenomena under special test conditions. At Carrington’s urging, Thurston offered a counteroffer:

Thurston’s offer was silly. As Rinn pointed out, “A complete negative could never be proved. The fact that he is a magician does not mean that he may not have been fooled at the sitting which inspired his offer.” Still, Rinn seemed to appreciate Thurston’s point of view. “Magicians generally regard mediums as frauds,” he later wrote, “although Howard Thurston did lean slightly toward a belief in Spiritualism. He told me, however, when he was on my Palladino committee, that he inclined that way only tentatively because he had witnessed some phenomena that he could not explain.”

Palladino didn’t help her cause. As she negotiated the terms of the challenge, she confessed to fraud. “You see, it is like this: some people are at the table who expect tricks, in fact, they want them. I am in a trance. Nothing happens. They get impatient. They think of the tricks, nothing but tricks. I automatically respond. But it is not often. They merely will tell me to do them. That is all,” she admitted to the stunned reporters. Many of her admirers, faced with her exposures, had postulated that, as her powers waned, she had resorted to more and more fraud. “All mediums trick, all!” she said. “And it is not so easy to catch them. I say this from personal experience. All!”

The final séance was scheduled for the evening of May 24. Thurston, Rinn, and the other magicians, scientists, and reporters waited in the newspaper office. At the last moment Palladino refused to show up. The next day, she responded to reporters with “a choice array of Neapolitan expletives,” insisting that she would not go through with the test. In fact, she wouldn’t even perform for Thurston, who had supported her. She asked, “Am I a prize pig, to be made an exhibition of, to have persons bet on what I can or cannot do?” Palladino feared that, if she had been successful at the
Times
,

Thurston later clarified his point of view:

Thurston had begun a curious dance, postulating the supernatural even when the circumstances disappointed him. Palladino not only admitted that she cheated, but hinted that Thurston might be accused of cheating for her. Just like his encounter with the yogi of India, he was capable of twisting his arguments like pretzels, ultimately believing his own con.

He had also overstated his qualifications. Like most magicians, he was not an expert in all deceptions, but only knew what would work on a stage, in his own show. Palladino’s erratic séances, which proceeded in fits and starts, and her odd technique, squeezing the table while lifting it, were hardly part of a magician’s arsenal.

The quote is especially interesting as Thurston’s psychic researches predated Houdini’s; it was another three years before Harry Houdini would discover his crusade against fraudulent mediums and turn this issue into a prominent part of his career. Still, Houdini may have been in Thurston’s thoughts when he made the dismissive remark about “airships.” Just months earlier, Houdini had been grabbing headlines with his new hobby, aviation. That spring, he had become the first man to fly over the continent of Australia.

 

 

JUST FOUR DAYS
after the failed séance, on May 28, 1910, Howard and Beatrice walked to the Marble Church at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street in Manhattan and were married. During the publicity about Palladino, Beatrice had been called alternately “Mrs. Thurston” by some observers and “my assistant” by Howard. In fact she had been both since 1904, and the couple finally formalized their relationship.

It was a rare, pleasant moment of stability. No one understood that Thurston had mastered the amazing illusion of seeming to move forward, while he was actually sinking in debt. His businesses were deeply in the red, and the continual salaries kept him scrambling for money. Thanks to Harry Thurston, Howard’s new partner in the amusement company was now William H. Swanson, who ran a Chicago film exchange and had formed Rex Studios, which was later one of the small studios that would be merged into Universal Studios in 1912. In the summer of 1910, Thurston’s bills seemed endless. He needed money to file the patent for his amusement park ride, to develop new illusions, and continue a venture with scenic designer and melodrama writer Langdon McCormick. And he was still looking for cash to pay for the changes to the property at Cos Cob.

Houdini had just returned from Europe, with tales of a triumphant world tour. Thurston quickly asked for a loan of $250 to $300. Houdini turned him down, with pleasure, meticulously explaining how he’d been slighted in Chicago years earlier. Like many of Houdini’s associates, Thurston was stunned by his ability to carry a grudge. Thurston wrote to Houdini:

THE NEW FEATURE
for the 1910-1911 season was the Great Automobile Surprise. During the course of this three-minute pantomime, Howard and Beatrice arrived onstage in a two-seat roadster, an Abbott-Detroit 30. Howard got out of the car and entered the door of a café. Two robbers then appeared, dressed in long coats and masks, stealing Beatrice’s purse as she sat in the car. The robbers were distracted for a moment; when they returned to the car, they found that Beatrice had mysteriously turned into a policeman, who now attempted to arrest the robbers. Thurston returned to the stage and was overpowered and tossed offstage. When the robbers removed their disguises, they were revealed to be Thurston and Beatrice, who stepped back into their car and drove into the wings.

These exchange illusions became a fashion for magic shows, introduced by vaudeville magicians and quick-change artists Fregoli and Lafayette, and Thurston’s friend Servais Le Roy. The secret involved overdressing, with costumes that could be quickly stripped away, and then switching one actor for another at the edges of the scenery. The exchanges were designed to go unnoticed because of misdirection—other action onstage that momentarily distracted the audience. Magicians referred to these tricks as “raincoat and whiskers dramas,” indicating the shabby costumes necessary for the exchanges. One of Thurston’s critics called them “leg drop comedies,” as the characters seemed to hover around the leg drops (the vertical curtains at the sides of the stage), waiting for their chance to switch for another person.

Thurston’s auto trick was exactly the sloppy sort of magic that Kellar had feared. Spectators returning to see the show a second time would surely be able to follow the action and discern the secret; for Kellar, this was an anathema. Bamberg pointed out the flaws, but Thurston was stubborn, insisting on the big picture, the qualities the scene would bring to his show. Bamberg and Thurston spent many late-night meetings at Bamberg’s workshop in Brooklyn, plotting every sequence of action to make the illusion as effective as possible.

Theodore Bamberg had been the perfect choice to work with Thurston. He loved magic and was both grand and discerning about its fine points. Offstage, he could come across as stuffy and patrician; he was hard of hearing and spoke with a clipped German accent, making him seem remote. “Theo acted as a brake on Thurston’s impractical impulses,” his son, magician David Bamberg, later explained. “It was a hard job that required tact, as Thurston had a strong will, but Theo’s common sense and inventive genius was what Thurston needed most.”

When they were finished planning the trick, Theo was given the role of the policeman in the little scene. They had both been right. There was not much mystery, but the big picture was very effective. The entrance of the car drew applause. The scenery and action were unlike anything else in the show, earning favorable reviews. And Thurston had managed to wring out several nice commercial endorsements: Abbott-Detroit were happy to provide the car; Miller Tire paid to have Thurston’s throw-out cards imprinted with their logos. “Mr. Thurston uses Miller Standard Tires,” the program now read.

Thurston was dogged and driven in surprising ways. He never stopped fidgeting with the Spirit Cabinet and the Levitation. Perhaps it was an effort to establish these illusions as his own. Or maybe, once they were established in his show, Thurston understood that he had to keep incorporating new surprises for his audiences. He suggested to Bamberg that they conclude the Levitation by adding Servais Le Roy’s trick, in which the lady is covered with a cloth, floats in the air, and disappears. It started another long, simmering argument with Theo. “Und vhy vood you choose to take diss great illusion, und just stitch on anodder trick? Do you stitch on anodder pair of pants mitt your best trousers? Does dott make ’em look bedder?”

 

 

BEATRICE MISSED SECTIONS
of the tour, staying home in Connecticut, and friends noticed that she avoided social dinners hosted by magicians’ clubs. Thurston offered her apologies, explaining that she hadn’t been feeling well. Her absence put an extra strain on the show, and the couple’s relationship. Fortunately, a group of Italian pantomime clowns, the Monte Myro Troupe, had joined the show. In 1900, they had been featured by Siegmund Lubin, an early film producer, in a short motion picture. One of Monte’s daughters, Lucille Myro, was exactly the right size for Thurston’s illusions. She was less than five feet tall, rail thin, and pretty, with magnetic, dark eyes. She was given the stage name Fernanda, and became Beatrice’s understudy, filling in as the lighter-than-air Princess Karnac, and her odd, exotic features suggested an Oriental princess.

The name Fernanda seemed to fit the illusion as well. Thurston had vaguely referred to the assistant: “The young lady comfortably rests in mid air.” But now he gradually began to incorporate the new name; something about the sharp triple syllables made it irresistible. Thurston’s neat baritone transformed it into a poetic chant that rippled throughout his routine: “Rise, Fernanda, rest, Fernanda, dream, Fernanda. Dream of the banks of the Ganges.”

 

 

KELLAR CONTINUED
pulling strings behind the scenes. He wrote to Karl Germain, a clever Cleveland Lyceum performer, urging him to contact Dudley McAdow and “join forces with Thurston.... I do know that it would be the strongest magic show in the world.” Germain was elegant and artistic, a famous perfectionist on and off the stage, but he was a friend of Thurston’s, and he ignored Kellar’s offer, telling an associate that there was something “rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Dudley McAdow, Kellar’s longtime director, left the show in 1912, at the end of his prearranged five-year contract. Like all of the Kellar associates, he’d become used to the old system and was uncomfortable with Thurston’s business. Charles Carter instantly hired him to direct his upcoming U.S. tour. Presumably, any scrap that fell from Kellar or Thurston’s table, or could be pried away, was a delicious treasure for Carter’s magic show.

Kellar followed up with another clever recommendation for the 1912 season. Guy Ellsworth Jarrett was a thirty-one-year-old magic builder and sideshow performer who had recently arrived in New York from San Francisco. Born in Ohio, he had operated a sideshow in California, and then joined T. Nelson Downs when the coin magician briefly attempted a vaudeville illusion act. Downs wasn’t successful, but magicians noticed Jarrett’s new illusions. When Kellar met Jarrett in New York City during one of his annual visits east, he thought he’d found an ideal addition to Thurston’s show.

Jarrett was an interesting contrast to Bamberg; he had no airs about classic magic, nor did he fuss over lacquer or catches. Jarrett loved innovative secrets that challenged the audience and he loved dependable apparatus. Kellar used to have a rule about how magic apparatus had to be made: “Make each piece of apparatus twice as strong as required, and then double that strength.” Jarrett produced well-made props and had developed a knack for hiding people in impossibly small spaces.