Jim Steinmeyer (43 page)

With Houdini’s death, Thurston doubled down. His version of Buried Alive was placed into his new show about a week later. By 1926, Thurston’s renowned touring show had grown to a sumptuous production, unquestionably the largest magic show in the world. That season, the illusions were not only amazing but breathtaking, living up to Thurston’s billing of “The Wonder Show of the Universe.”

T
he Indian Rope Trick was living up to its legend; even after Thurston thought he had solved all its problems, the trick continued to confound him. For example, after costly experiments retinting the film image of the boy, Thurston found it was easier to match the color of the assistant’s body with orange-brown makeup, rather than producing an image that matched the boy. Then he had a protest from the projectionist’s union; they wanted their own man to turn the switch on and off, and their contracts insisted on his travel arrangements on the train. Thurston always tried to accommodate the unions, but this time he had to give up.

At the last moment, he scrapped the film and arranged a painted glass slide of his assistant. The still image was projected at the top of the rope and then was allowed to flop out of view in the projector. If you used your imagination, it looked as if the boy was starting to fall backward off the rope, before he disappeared completely. It wasn’t until December 1926 that the trick finally appeared before an audience and an apprehensive magician, standing at the bottom of the rope, gesturing toward the sky and doing his very best to look confident. “At last we made something of the Rope Trick,” Thurston wrote to Dante.

After these first few performances, Thurston’s staff quizzed the audience at intermission. The audience reported that there was something wrong with the boy at the top of the rope. He looked strange or suspicious, even if they couldn’t explain how the trick worked.

“We have tried it for ten days and last night was the first time it fooled the audience and I have decided to keep it in,” Thurston wrote. The collection of Indian Magic made an impressive feature for the show, but the Rope Trick, the finale of this number, cost Thurston $10,000, he admitted to Dante. In today’s money, that’s the equivalent of several hundred thousand dollars, a ridiculous investment for a magic trick, especially one with such a low batting average.

 

 

BY THEN,
Thurston had already been planning his feature for the next season, the Vanishing Automobile. The illusion was first suggested to him by Guy Jarrett, who regularly visited Thurston when the magician was in New York, teasing him with new ideas for illusions. Jarrett suggested a trick in which an automobile was driven onto a raised platform and covered with curtains for several seconds. When the curtains were pulled away, the car was gone. Jarrett’s secret was ingenious, depending on a special car that could be folded up and concealed within the platform.

Thurston kept Jarrett coming back for meeting after meeting, asking questions about the illusion and even having Jarrett provide a bid to build it. He offered to make it for $1,500. But at the same time, Thurston was moving ahead with his own version of the Vanishing Automobile. Thurston’s plan was much more practical; he would carry the special scenery required, and then make a sponsorship arrangement with an auto company—a sporty convertible Willys-Overland Whippet—so that he could secure a new car in every city.

His shop at Beechhurst built two panels with wide vertical slats, like walls of a cage. These would be pushed in front of the car; they met at a ninety-degree angle, so the audience could see the auto and its passengers between the slats. Thurston would fire a pistol, there would be a puff of smoke, and the auto would suddenly be gone. The secret relied upon an idea from the inventive British magician Charles Morritt. Vertical strips of mirror were hidden behind the slats. With the puff of smoke, these mirrors quickly slid, filling in the open spaces. These mirrors reflected scenery at the side of the stage, effectively hiding the auto.

When he introduced it in 1927, the Vanishing Whippet Automobile provided headlines for the show, and Thurston commissioned a beautiful new poster showing the automobile disappearing into a cloud of mist. Thurston experimented with different flashing lighting effects to enhance the illusion and added a raised track for the car, so the audience could appreciate that it wasn’t dropping through a trapdoor in the stage. The most important enhancement was Thurston’s line of pretty girl assistants, wearing bright silk dresses. The car rolled onto the stage loaded with girls: filling the seats, standing on the running boards, and draped over the hood. They smiled, waved at the audience, squealed their good-byes, and promptly disappeared with the Whippet.

Thurston’s pistol shots were always a subject of debate. Magicians joked about him “shooting at” his tricks. In fact, it was difficult for Thurston to find the right gesture or pronounce the proper magic words for large tricks or the fast-paced marvels of his show. Firing a blank pistol provided the right moment—like starting a race—and put him in control of the action. He fired a pistol to make a piano disappear, make his donkey or horse vanish, produce a line of girls.

At one rehearsal, Thurston was working on a new trick. A brightly lit lamp was on one side of the stage. A canary vanished, and the lightbulb went out. When Thurston removed the bulb from the lamp, the canary was found sealed within the glass bulb. When the bulb was broken with a small hammer, the bird was released and then returned to its cage. Thurston billed the trick as the Canary in the National Mazda Lamp—the commercial was appropriate, for he relied on the Edison Mazda Company to supply special empty bulbs to accomplish the trick.

When it came time for the bird to disappear, Thurston reached into his back pocket, removed his blank pistol, and fired it. Watching the new trick, his carpenter, Elmer Morris, shook his head. After the rehearsal, Morris told the magician, “That move makes you look like some Chicago hoodlum, rather than the Great Thurston.” Thurston seemed to brush off Morris’s criticism, but it had obviously bothered him.

At the next show, Morris was standing in the wings watching the new Canary Trick, when he noticed a girl assistant step over to Thurston. She held the pistol on a small silver platter. Thurston picked up the pistol, fired it, and placed it back on the platter. He turned on his heel, and his eyes locked on Morris in the wings. Thurston gave his carpenter a wink and a courtly bow.

In fact, Thurston knew plenty of Chicago hoodlums. Many were friends of his brother Harry. Several years later, Al Capone sent his son to see the Thurston show. Thurston responded to the famous gangster with a kind letter, telling him his son was “a fine boy” and inviting them both to the show the next time it played in Chicago. There’s no record that Scarface Al Capone ever attended.

 

 

THE MOST VALUABLE
addition to Thurston’s show was John Northern Hilliard, one of his oldest friends, as business manager and personal press representative. Hilliard had regularly written press stories and releases for Thurston and had produced the draft of Thurston’s autobiography. He had a long, interesting career that started as a newspaperman, included novels and Broadway shows, as well as books on magic. Acquaintances remember him as a kind bear of a man, and to Jane he was always Uncle John, regaling her with tales of early adventures and stories about his pet chicken. But close friends, like Thurston, understood that Hilliard was painfully moody and lonely. In 1926, Thurston lured him to be a part of his company.

Hilliard’s advance work for the show gave Thurston’s production a new luster. He knew what reporters wanted and how they worked; in turn, reporters respected Hilliard, who refused to indulge in “fake ballyhoo,” was honest and gregarious with them, and entertained them with interesting anecdotes from his years in the newspaper business. It was then traditional for the magician’s press releases to hew to specific formulas. They might consist of exaggerated biographical stories, like Thurston’s adventures in India, or short articles detailing his great inventions, or whimsical tales of near accidents on stage. But Hilliard expanded on these stories, managing to capture Thurston as a warm, interesting character. He also wrote glowingly of Thurston’s tie to the great history of magic—the important tradition and the great conjurers of the past. These press releases were mimeographed and stapled together in sets; the paper sheets were perforated, so that individual stories could be neatly torn out of the bundle. Sitting at a desk with a reporter, Hilliard could easily flip through the pages, pulling out features of different lengths. This also ensured that, at each city, reporters were given “exclusive” releases.

A Thurston press release—it has the typical elegance of Hilliard’s work—neatly explained Thurston’s approach to the spirit world. Thurston is quoted as saying:

Thurston turned this sentiment into a bit of poetic magic in his latest Spirit Cabinet routine. Now Kellar’s old cabinet was brought on stage, opened, and shown to be empty. Thurston placed a cane, a tambourine, and a bell inside and closed the door. “Now comes a strange, weird, wonderful part,” Thurston told his audience. The cane rapped and the tambourine rattled. “What’s that? A ghost? Are you a friendly ghost?” The bell clanged in response. “I’m so glad. I don’t like unfriendly ghosts.” The instruments continued to rattle against the interior walls of the cabinet and were finally pushed through the small windows in front, clattering onto the stage. Within seconds, the noisy, invisible ghost had seemingly reduced the show to chaos. Thurston’s assistants dashed to the cabinet and threw open the doors.

Suddenly, the music shifted to a melodic violin solo. The cabinet interior was empty except for a large, reflective silver sphere, about eight inches in diameter, hovering above the floor of the famous Spirit Cabinet. It sparkled in a deep red spotlight.

Thurston raised his hand, and the ball slowly floated out of the cabinet toward him. When the magician gestured, and seemed to push it away, the ball moved in a mysterious swoop to the stage floor. Then it levitated and slowly circled back, returning to Thurston.

Then came the incredible moment. Thurston stepped off the stage with the ball floating between the palms of his hands, walking partway up the aisle of the theater, as the audience watched in disbelief. He turned, facing the stage, and raised his hands. The ball left him, traveled over the heads of the audience and the orchestra pit, slowly gaining altitude and speed until it swept past the gaping spectators and hovered over the Spirit Cabinet. The flight of the mysterious ball earned a hushed murmur from the crowd. Thurston followed, up the steps and back onto the stage. With another gesture, the ball slowly descended into the cabinet and was swallowed into the shadowy darkness as the doors were closed.

George and Thurston’s assistants stepped to the cabinet and quickly took it apart, piece by piece, until they were left with a pile of flat wooden doors and panels. The ball had disappeared, and there was no sign of the ghost.

The illusion was accomplished with the most prosaic of secrets, including a tangle of thin black threads that were manipulated by Thurston, two assistants in the wings of the theater, and another assistant hiding inside the Spirit Cabinet. The movement of the ball was balanced between these actors, each transferring an invisible influence by picking up slack or smoothly releasing the invisible threads—a delicate dance at the fingertips.

There were many individual elements that could doom the illusion. During a 1927 performance, a spotlight operator flipped the wrong colored gel in the front of the light, temporarily exposing the network of threads that held the ball aloft. After the show, a young magician, John McKinven, was excited to go backstage and meet his idol, Thurston. Waiting there, he heard Thurston’s distinctive nasal baritone, “that voice,” on the other side of a folding screen. Thurston was cursing out the spotlight operator, using so many four-letter expletives in quick succession that young John felt the blood rush to his face. Seconds later, the majestic Thurston came around the screen, beaming with a smile. “So nice you meet you, young man.”

It was Thurston’s grandeur that made the Floating Ball so wonderful; he invested it with a haunting solemnity, creating a poetic, visual analogy of the relationship between the medium and the spirit. His cabinet and ball routine represented Thurston’s various pronouncements on ghosts, the sort of sweet and human equivocation that had riled Houdini.