I Lie for Money

by Steve Spill

  For the most part, I didn’t bother to even try to excel at school, and I spent most of my time daydreaming about tricks and jokes, talking to myself as I acted them out in my mind. This got me into a lot of trouble, and I became accustomed to it, I guess. I used to sit at my desk in class, doing card tricks. What better audience is there, than a couple dozen students who can’t leave the room for an hour? My mischievous actions were rarely condoned, which encouraged in me a strong distaste for discipline.

  To put it a bit mildly, my cards would often be confiscated or I’d deservedly be kicked out of class and sent to the Boys’ Dean for being an interruptive disturbance, although I felt more like an amusing jerk than a bad boy. Mild corporal punishment was how they dealt with misbehavior. I’d be ordered to bend over and grab my ankles. The Dean picked up a wooden paddle that had holes drilled in it to minimize wind resistance, and I’d get a swift hard swat or two. “Next time you’ll remember not to interrupt your class with card tricks.” Then I’d walk out of his office rubbing my shoulder. I couldn’t rub the place he’d swatted me in front of the other kids.

  The Dean would call home to say that I was too busy doing tricks in class to learn anything, that my attendance was poor, that I was capable of doing better, and that I had better do better because I couldn’t do worse. Next my mother would go into mild hysterics. She would look at me as if I were twinkle-eyed and naïve, telling me to keep magic as a hobby but not to let it interfere with my schoolwork, and then she’d beat me with the usual lecture on the importance of a good education.

  “But I don’t care about school. Magic is my life’s work and I need to practice every chance I get.”

  My life plan was my mother’s worst fear. Mom wanted me to have a career that would provide a secure life. All she ever wanted was for me to grow up and be comfortable. I felt proud. Magic was something I loved, it was in the arts, and not unlike what my parents were doing. Outside of my interest in trickery, I was just a know-nothing kid. She tried to reason with me, but reason never stands a chance against an obsession. I could only express myself with that old hand-me-down cliché, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

  Mom said she and my dad had endured disappointments, just as nearly everyone in showbiz does. One of the things that kept her going was the hope that things would be financially more comfortable for her children. The first time I informed my mother that I was going to be a magician, she didn’t get that I wasn’t asking for permission. Rather, I was telling her what I was going to do.

  “Think about it, Steve. Chances of big success as an actor, writer, or director are a billion to one. And there are far fewer opportunities for magicians than there are in any of those professions.”

  “I’m gonna be a magician.”

  “You need to have a safety net. Something to fall back on if your magic dream doesn’t work out.”

  “My mind is made up,” I said. “You’ll stand up and cheer when you see me on stage.”

  “No,” she said, “I’d have to sit down from the excitement.”

  Mom realized there wasn’t much she could do to change my mind. My dad didn’t encourage me to go into magic as a profession either. At this point in time magic was an almost forgotten hobby for him, until that miraculous day that changed both our lives, when my parents met Bill Larsen, his wife Irene Larsen, and brother Milt Larsen, the three force-of-nature founders of The Magic Castle. Everything really changed for me then.

  The Castle is a huge old mansion in Hollywood and a portion of it had been developed by the trio as a private club for magicians and fans of magic, complete with a piano, a bar, a tiny showroom, and a bunch of old guys showing each other card tricks. The rest, as they say, is history. And if it really isn’t history, it’s magic. Going forward my mom seemed to be okay with the fact I would never turn back. I was a magician for life—good, bad, or blah. Plus my dad’s life turned to magic. He was offered a job as a host at The Magic Castle. Not long after, he also became a manager. Later his acting skills made him the perfect candidate to play the Medium for the Castle’s Houdini Séance show. Father was a triple threat at the Magic Castle and he worked there, full time, for the next sixteen years.

  Thinking of my first days spent in the old structure, there were not too many teenagers hanging around. But that building, to a young aspiring magician in the sixties, was like the White House to a politician, or like leaving real life and walking onto a movie set. To me, it was the coolest place in Los Angeles, if not the entire universe. And I had a certain cachet at the Castle, partly because I practiced religiously (which is difficult to do when you’re not religious) and could perform many difficult card sleights, and largely because of my dad, the host/manager/séance medium. Everyone always treated me with respect because they loved my father. I felt right at home with the senior citizen magicians.

  The Castle was my home away from home; within its walls I met men who would shape and influence me throughout my life. It was the only institute of higher learning I ever graduated. Just to reassure you, I’m not saying that a college education is a complete waste of time. All the same, I certainly preferred my own personal institute of magical learning to any college or university. For the first time I was accepted as an equal among adults, people with far more experience than I had, who recognized in me abilities and helped me to nurture them. As in any craft or profession, the more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know, and I was absolutely compelled to find out.

  Every old guy carries within his own memory a special golden age. Then, when he becomes old enough to seem secure that no one will challenge him on it, he tends to make a shining legend of that time. In this case, however, it is a fact, and I feel ordained to tell you those years I spent in the mid-sixties to early seventies at the Magic Castle were a golden age. There was something in the air then, something that went away even before most of us realized it was there in the first place.

  It was a largely dormant period in terms of work for professional magicians, both the supper club and vaudeville eras were long dead, and the Castle was the place to go when there was no place to go. It was a place to find a kindred spirit willing to compare the merits of controlling cards with the overhand shuffle as opposed to the double undercut or the pass. All the greats were there, and most were resourceful enough to find a way of easy living without work. Some of these Castle regulars were magicians when there was no radio, no television, no talking movies, when showbiz consisted of live shows. Every town in America had vaudeville houses and theaters and clubs and saloons, and they all had live entertainment and some of these men were magicians who were headliners.

  These headliners I met during my wide-eyed time of questing were neither too big nor too busy to reveal to a young stumbler what was what in the world of magic.

  A newcomer like me was eager to hear the tales they had told a hundred times, and my mentors were at that stage of the game where they felt closer to the past; their minds were museums of memories and all sorts of little thoughts turned up.

  After a while I’d heard all those stories fifteen times, but the repetition was often fun. On rare occasions I’d be privy to stories that hadn’t been remembered to that moment or had never before wished to be recounted. Only the memories of those present would keep them alive; some of those stories have been immortalized in this book. I was privileged to hear the contrasting talk of older men who had been on top, and that of heady young dreamers of fame.

  The Magic Castle opened a door in my mind, and the potential for what a magician could do seemed limitless. It was a very exciting feeling. Other kids my age had heroes like Batman and Superman. I had The Man Who Fooled Houdini and The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, both real men named Dai Vernon and Kuda Bux, who I got to know very well personally along with Charlie Miller and Francis Carlyle. Each of the four was a magical icon. Many of the other early Castle members were to become well known in the trade; some were never to know the fame they deserv
ed. But to me they possessed, all of them, greater attributes than renown. They were my friends.

  Way back when, outside Bill’s office on the top floor of the Castle, was the old library. I used to sit there, in a rustic antique chair, a chair that long ago had belonged to Dante the magician at his ranch in Northridge, which legend had it also once supported the posterior of trickster Howard Thurston, not to mention the aristocratic rear of illusionist Harry Kellar. It was the best chair I ever sat in, reading and dreaming and smelling the stale cigar aroma that lingered through the day from the nightly card games Dai Vernon, Kuda Bux, Charlie Miller, and Francis Carlyle played there. Smoking was not only permitted at the time, but rather it was practically required, and most nights the club was more overcast than a Santa Monica morning.

  Aside from card-playing magicians, an endless parade of other diverse personalities drifted in and out of the Castle. I was so blessed to have watched this cast of characters. It was an incredible time. I craved their attention and by osmosis learned their lessons. Each one had his own trick, a nuance, a personal way of doing things, a lesson, a gesture, a story, a philosophy, an attitude . . . I was a sponge and absorbed something from each of them. All of it went into my mental file. Very gradually, right up until today, little bits and pieces that seemed to inherently fit me surfaced and worked their way into my performances, and the combination added to my personality gave me something new. Part of Carlyle’s delivery, but not his words; the way that Miller would look at an audience after something amazing happened; a little sly, confident half-smile like Vernon—I began to store these gestures in my mind to eventually incorporate into my own routine.

  The showroom held around twenty-five people and was called the Close-up Gallery. I had never seen anything so wonderful before, and I kept clapping long after everybody else had stopped. In that little theater I witnessed these seasoned talented performers doing sleight of hand with cards and coins and balls and ropes and handkerchiefs and silverware and I wanted to be one of them.

  At fourteen, I appeared in the Close-up Gallery doing a single, twenty-minute show, on Sunday nights. At the time, Sunday was the only night those under twenty-one were officially allowed in the Castle. A few years later they started a Sunday brunch for the under twenty-one crowd and instituted a no-one-underage-in-the-evening policy. Despite the new rules, in 1973, starting at the age of eighteen, I worked the Close-up Gallery three shows a night, seven days a week, two to four times a year. It was a great way to learn my craft.

  Leading up to my very first Sunday night show I hardly slept at night. I lay awake thinking about the excellent act I would do. All I thought of was the night of my debut. All the other days of my life, the ones that had been lived, and the ones that were to come, were just dates on the calendar waiting upon my very first show in the Close-up Gallery at the Magic Castle.

  The man who introduced the Sunday night acts was a grumpy old guy known as Senator Crandall, although he was no more a senator than I was, but merely used the title to enhance his status. I’d read about him in the magic magazines, and before he introduced me the first time, he asked if there was something I’d like him to say about me. These were the words that gushed out of my fourteen-year-old mouth, “It’s such an honor to meet you, Senator. I never thought the day would come when I’d be privileged enough to work with you.” The Senator was a very sentimental guy. “Don’t give me that crap, kid,” he told me, “you’d just better be good.”

  I was, at the very least, watchable and perhaps rose above adequate; the problem was that I was so nervous that I began working faster and faster until my twenty-minute show only lasted ten minutes. But for the first time, I really felt like a professional. My act had a number of classic tricks including variations with cards like Cutting the Aces, Color Changing Deck, Cards to Pocket, and coin tricks such as Copper Silver and Coins Through the Table. I closed with my version of the Cups & Balls trick. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, I developed a routine with a single Campbell’s Soup can and a single cherry tomato. The little tomato appeared and disappeared under the cover of the can. The climax came when two large beefsteak tomatoes appeared.

  This era also had its share of celebrities who liked having a place to see magicians do their thing. You might call them Magic Castle fans or cheerleaders. It was always a thrill to occasionally see TV personalities like Robert Lansing, Bill Bixby, and Bob Barker, or have a brief chat or show a trick to celebrities like Edgar Bergen or Buddy Ebsen.

  During one of my very first shows in the Close-up Gallery, when I was fourteen years old, there was a guy in the second row on the aisle who seemed familiar. The whole audience seemed to be aware of his presence and where he was sitting. I recognized him and said out loud, “Were you at Eddie Shlepper’s bar mitzvah?” He shook his head no and everyone laughed. After the show that dignified man came backstage to say hello. It was movie star icon Cary Grant!

  I have many pleasant memories from the Castle’s music room, where a baby grand piano is played by Irma, an invisible ghostly pianist. She plays musical requests and even answers questions with just the right song. Milt told me he adapted the invisible piano player Irma idea from an invisible harp player outlined in one of his favorite books, Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions by Professor Albert A. Hopkins.

  Both the harp and the piano require a hidden musician. The Castle’s secret pianist was, and I think occasionally still is, a talented ivory tickler named Dave Bourne. From Dave’s tiny secret workspace, he could see into the music room through a two- way mirror, and hear what songs folks requested through hidden microphones. So could I.

  I spent some very special evenings in the little room with Dave. Sometimes there were as many as a couple dozen people jabbering away, drinking cocktails, and requesting songs. Other times, there was no one at all, or a couple of folks confiding secrets to each other, maybe flirting with some new acquaintance, whispering arrangements for a love tryst, or committing treason, unaware we were spying on them.

  The most requested song was always “Happy Birthday” and when requests came for unknown tunes, Dave would slap the keys in a way that sounded just like a verbal “No.” While the human player took a break, a flip of a switch would put the instrument into player piano mode. An empty birdcage sat atop the piano and served as a tip jar. When someone threw in a buck, I was allowed to operate the lever that made the perch swing and produced a canary tweeting sound, followed by Dave playing a few bars of the song “We’re in the Money.”

  None of my friends from school were aspiring magicians. That was a peculiar profession, still is, if indeed it was a profession at all. To this day, just supporting myself by performing has always been to me major success as a professional tricky person. More than anything, the Castle made me feel like a magician. Before that, inside, I really thought of myself as just a guy who did tricks. I learned that one of the most puzzling creatures for the average person to understand is a magician. Even now, when I’m introduced to someone as a magician, they often ask, “So Steve, that’s all you do, magic tricks?”

  The first time I did a lecture for a group of professional magicians was at the Magic Castle. My opening line was, “So that’s all you do, magic tricks?” There was a big laugh. I didn’t have to tell the early part of the story. All the magicians there knew what I meant. This feeling towards magicians is not new.

  Over the years several room additions and remodel work were done and today the Magic Castle is a world famous exclusive conjuring catacomb of multiple theaters featuring stage, parlor, close-up magic, four bars, a new library, and a restaurant that together entertain thousands of magic fans per week.

  Nowadays I don’t get the opportunity to visit the Castle as often as the old days. But when I do, I sometimes see my old self in the many new young magicians obsessed with our craft. And today the club attracts a new crop of famous faces that support magic and magicians, like Johnny Depp, Jason Alexander, and recent p
ast Magic Castle prez, Neil Patrick Harris.

  Not long after Dad started his tour-of-duty at the Castle, I accompanied him to a backyard barbeque at Brookledge, the Larsen family home. Bill fondly reminisced about shows he and Milt did with their mom and dad at some resorts way back when and how that afternoon’s barbeque was part of a Larsen family tradition of hosting the magic community at their home. That tradition continues to this day at The Magic Castle. The only difference is that the Larsens moved most of their magic parties to a place where they could have a cash register. That’s not my wit—the cash register line has been an inside joke between Larsen family members since forever.

  MEN I HAVE LOVED, MY EIGHT FAVORITES

  As a young man, my love life was robust. Besides the eight men, in my promiscuous past I’ve loved many women. There was Brigitte Bardot, Ann Margret, Raquel Welch, Jacqueline Bisset, Kim Basinger, Bo Derek, and Sharon Stone. I loved them all. I never met them, but I loved them. This chapter, however, is about eight men of the era I actually met and loved. They were all remarkable magicians I knew intimately during that golden age at the Magic Castle—the mid-sixties to early seventies. If you are a magician who was hanging around the Castle during those years, you might have your own eight favorites who deserve to be mentioned, and possibly you’ll be adding them or replacing my list with those dudes.

  I wrote dudes, but there was actually one accomplished dudette magician around, Diana Zimmerman. She was married to Dick Zimmerman, also a magician, and they were both very creative individuals who played an integral part in the Castle’s advancement during those early years. Now I’m going to blab a little about Diana, then a couple other guys, before getting into my official list.