The Truth About Uri Geller

by James Randi

  But doesn’t that mean Geller actually fixed her watch? Hardly. Fran, under careful questioning, revealed that she didn’t bother to determine whether or not the watch was ticking when she gave it to Geller, nor did anyone else. And when she put it on her wrist, it did the same thing it had been doing all along—it ticked intermittently, and stopped again. It was useless as a timepiece. Mr. Siegel explained: “As long as the escapement is free, as hers was, the watch will tick whenever moved or jarred. It will run for anywhere from a few seconds to half an hour, or, if the watch spring is broken at certain positions, it may run for half a day. This just happens all the time. It’s no miracle at all.”

  The watch business posed no problem at all for Professor Juritz of Cape Town, South Africa. After the Geller episode there, he managed to do it himself. He had offered Geller a number of broken watches, as he’d been asked to, but Uri objected when he found they were really broken, and refused them. Before the test, he examined every one carefully, and finally accepted one he was satisfied with. He shook a stopped watch, and it began ticking. Then he quickly wound it a few turns and handed it over to be examined. Some less observant souls there were of the impression that he had fixed a broken watch. Not at all.

  So the old watch trick is just that—the old watch trick. And not very good, at that. Ho hum.

  Magicians can’t really get much mileage out of the watch trick, but they are using the key-bending trick everywhere. Every magic shop sells manuscripts telling how to do it, and the kids vie with one another for a new way to “do a Geller.” Ali Bongo, the English prestidigitator who has fought Geller in his country, recently came out with a bright idea that makes it a cinch for any amateur to perform key-bending as well as Uri ever did.

  It is interesting to note that, prior to the Geller phenomenon, had one of the magic fraternity published a manuscript describing “How to Bend Keys for Fun and Profit,” no one would have bothered to buy it. As a magic trick, used for performance purposes, it is a dismally bad item. The premise is bad, the whole conception is worse. It lacks all the charm and “story” of a classic illusion, and would have been laughed out of any of the conjuring periodicals as a failure.

  Yet now, since Geller has clambered to fame over the ruins of a ruptured logic and in spite of at least a residue of common sense that must be left in the world of science, conjurors all over the world have rushed to get in on the glory, and catalogs that deal with mail order wonders have been full of devices and methods of bending keys, nails, and spoons. But where even the ones “in the know” have failed is in assuming that there are “gimmicks” of a mechanical nature used by Geller to bend the metals and minds of his audiences. There are none, and even a supposed “secret chemical” (rumored to be a “metallic halide,” probably mercuric chloride or mercuric nitrate) that can effectively soften metals is said to be used by the Israeli wizard.

  There is one possible “gimmick.” Geller had a huge belt buckle made in New York’s Greenwich Village early in 1973, shortly after his arrival on this side of the ocean. It has slots at either side, suitable for inserting a key for bending purposes. It would have been excellent as a tool to assist in the key trick, but Geller seems to have given up wearing that particular buckle in recent months, perhaps because a chap at one of the television stations called attention to it off the air and made Uri a bit uncomfortable.

  Concerning the “chemical” approach, I might say that if such a compound or process existed that would soften metals without heat, it would be worth literally millions, and we’d have been spared the entire Geller episode. He would have retired a rich man. Science has sought such a process for a century now, and the preposterous claims that mercury compounds are employed for this trick are easily dismissed when it is realized that treatment with such a substance leaves the metal coated with bright mercury and in the form of an amalgam, a crumbly grayish mass of completely altered metal. Again, uninformed persons who cannot produce a single real example of the phenomenon described are responsible for such misinformation. And Geller laughs himself silly at the stupid tack the investigation has assumed.

  At the moment I write this, Geller has been reduced to only three claims to fame. One, he “fixes” “broken” watches; two, he causes things to happen in people’s houses when he appears on television and radio; three, he rants, “Let the magicians perform under scientifically controlled conditions, like I did!” Well, it’s time to come up with another set of miracles, Uri. We can fix the watches. We can make people go crazy at home. And we now know that you performed under anything but scientific conditions for the scientists. Can you still fool the journalists? Read the next chapter and find out.

  HE DIDN’T FOOL THEM IN ISRAEL!

  Many a hoax, intended to have a fleeting effect or no effect at all, has attained gigantic proportions of influence. Though exposed time and again, it has refused to die; though interred at one time, it has been exhumed at a later date with confusing results or worse. Whether the public likes to be fooled, as the great Barnum declared, or is fooled for other reasons, it always has been. And it probably always will be.

  —Curtis D. MacDougall, Hoaxes

  In the February 20, 1974, issue of Haolam Hazeh, a well-known Hebrew weekly magazine published in Tel Aviv, the cover story was one that was designed to put Uri Geller out of business in Israel for good. In English the article’s title reads: “Uri Geller Twirls the Entire World on His Little Finger; Only His Closest Acquaintances Know His Methods.” With the permission of that publication, I obtained a translation by Dr. Sarah Feinstein of Chicago, who works with the Hebrew Alliance and is quite familiar with current use of the language. What follows is perhaps a bit stilted in English, since we have made every attempt to retain the same wording where possible and the identical semantic content as far as could be done.

  How this article did not come to the attention of the Western press, I cannot tell; perhaps the fact that it appeared only in Hebrew was a good enough reason for its missing notice here. It is a shocking document, in that it reveals to just what extent Geller went in his own country to deceive his own people.

  There are a few errors here that occur when descriptions of Uri’s methods are brought up; some methods are just not possible, and others are less than likely. It is in the description of the personalities involved that the article has its greatest value.

  The last section, “Geller’s Eleven Tricks,” which deals with the basic deceptions used by Shipi and Uri in their act, has been edited a bit (for clarity). Otherwise, the phrasing is essentially the same as that given me. I don’t think Uri and Shipi are going to like this.

  Adolf Hitler had a Jew, probably the only one who merited being an exception. Hitler believed in him with a blind faith. This was the magician Hirschmann1 who changed his name to Erik Jan Hanussen. Hanussen used to perform before Hitler, the chief of police, and the nobleman Heldorff. He used to do all kinds of magic tricks and to tell them their future. He would also move objects from place to place across the room without touching them. Hitler himself was ready to vouch for these special gifts, which he considered to be supernatural. The three Nazis used to take counsel with Hanussen, and more than once he determined their courses of action.

  Jan Hanussen succeeded in fooling the magicians of Germany who claimed they had special powers, until one day he made the mistake of his life. Twenty-four hours before the burning of the Reichstag [1933], he predicted this conflagration with much theatrics. When one of his Nazi customers heard this, he remembered that he himself had told Jan Hanussen the plan to bum the building. Several days later, Hanussen’s body was found in the woods riddled with bullets; he had been executed in accordance with a personal command from Adolf Hitler. But Hitler continued to be a believer, even at the height of the war, and he ordered the performance of certain experiments in telepathy to examine the possibility of communicating with submarines in the midst of the ocean.

  A Contrived Picture from Italy

  When Uri G
eller, the young Israeli described here, was twelve years old, his mother married for the second time an Israeli who at the same time opened a hotel in Nicosia, Cyprus. Uri went there with his mother and his stepfather and one evening his stepfather told him the story of Jan Hanussen. Ten years later, Geller turned himself into an Israeli version of Hanussen. He had many astonishing feats that he performed, and everyone who saw him, or who came in contact with him, immediately developed a certain respect and awe. However, when Geller began to exaggerate, and crossed the very fine boundary between legend and rationality, he defeated himself—exactly as his model, Hanussen, had done previously.

  About three years ago, Uri Geller succeeded in dividing the Israeli people into two camps. There were detractors and believers. He saw in this tactic a very fine publicity stunt, and saw his fame increasing with every exaggeration. He also went to Italy, then sent from there to the [Israeli] newspapers a faked photograph, in which he is apparently seen in the company of the Italian motion picture actress Sophia Loren, in order to “prove” that he actually met her. This was the beginning of the end of the Uri Geller legend in Israel.

  The man who was able to fill three assembly halls to the point where there was standing room only found within one evening that he was appearing in a second-rate nightclub. His admirers and his detractors agreed that the era of Uri Geller had passed. However, an ambitious man like Geller, who had tasted the success, the publicity, and the easy profit, was not going to give up that easily.

  A Student of the Shin Beth

  Shortly after this, he left Israel for a while, and several weeks after that he again appeared in the headlines, this time in the headlines of the entire world. With this renewed fame on a very large international scale, Uri Geller returned to a prominent position in the Israeli newspapers as well. One columnist, Ephraim Kishon, a social critic for the newspaper “Ma’ariv,” expressed himself sharply against all those persons who rejected this young man. Professor Amnon Rubinstein wrote in the newspaper “Ha’aretz” a series of articles in which he analyzed the image of Uri Geller, though he did not take a personal position or opinion on the matter. It was mentioned that the Israeli Ambassador to London during Uri’s visit there prevented him from bending a fork, contending that it was the property of the State of Israel. This amusing item was covered extensively in the press.

  In Israel today, however, his friends and relatives, his girl friends and his managers, and all others who worked with him are ready to swear by all that is dear to them that Geller is a cheat and a liar; and they are able to demonstrate with their own hands all of his tricks that he used in order to create his reputation. According to them, Geller learned personal data—special obscure details and information about individuals (both true and false)—which he used to support his claims to special powers of divination.

  Uri Geller, born of a father who is an officer in the Israeli Armed Forces, told all who asked that he was born of a circus family and in one place claimed that he was born in Cyprus. But the simple truth is that he is an Israeli, and that is an indisputable fact. He traveled to Cyprus with his mother and his stepfather when he was twelve years old, and that was the first time he had left Israel.

  Itzhaak Saban, one of Uri’s close friends, has revealed that Geller used to use him as a confederate in the audience. He used to sit in the front row during Uri’s performance and gave him all kinds of signals, by means of motions, in order to make Uri succeed. On one occasion, hearing him tell so many lies about his performance, Itzhaak literally pressed him to the wall and forced him to admit that the entire performance was contrived. Uri had not bothered to tell anyone that some of these techniques he used were learned from the members of the Shin Beth,2 who had been quartered at his father’s hotel in Cyprus.

  A Book About Magicians

  Several times, Uri maintained in his interviews with the press that even as a young student in elementary school he had begun to feel his special powers and was able to read the thoughts of his teachers and his fellow students. However, the actual truth about the beginning of this process in his life is told by his very close friend Hannah Shtrang. She is today an office worker for the Motorola Company in Israel.

  “Uri was the counselor at camp of my little brother Shipi. The friendship between the two began shortly after that. My little brother always had very strange ideas, and Uri would tell him from time to time about a book which he had come across that told about magic and magicians, and the two boys decided to make a business out of it. Uri was then about twenty-one years old, and he was pretty depressed. It was only a few months after the termination of his army service. He had been thrown out of an officer’s training corps and also from the paratroopers.3 He was very deeply hurt by these defeats. He had been rejected and he took it very hard, particularly because his father was a famous soldier and his sole ambition was to prove that he could be as successful as his father.

  “My brother Shipi was at that time only fourteen years old, but Uri believed in him and my brother brought him into our home, which is where I met him.

  “There is a great deal of personal charm in him. He was a very good-looking young man. A romance started between us and has continued until this present time. When Uri left Israel to conquer the world, he took me with him. After several weeks I was forced to return to my job, which I did not want to lose.

  “Uri and Shipi performed together all forms of tricks. The basis of all these tricks was that my brother used to sit in the audience and pass signals to Uri that they had practiced beforehand. They began their performances in small living-room parties, particularly of students. They would receive forty to seventy pounds. However, when they realized that the audience was very excited and enthusiastic, they decided to change this mere cooperative relationship between the two of them and to go into business.

  “They turned to a manager, Baruch Cotni, the owner of a stage production company, and they auditioned for him. They convinced him that the entire country would be wild about the talented Uri with his ‘supernatural’ powers. Uri represented Shipi as his younger brother.”

  (Uri’s father said that he has only one son, in speaking to the reporter of this newspaper.)

  Little by little, the Uri Geller mania began to make waves with the Israeli public. As a result of publicity in a prominent newspaper, which praised him sky-high, he began to do three or four shows a day.

  One of Geller’s conditions for performances was that his “brother” would always get a seat in a front row or at least in the middle of the second row. So said Baruch Cotni. He went on to explain that once he caught Shipi making the agreed-upon signals and he pointed this out to Uri.

  The next day, in addition to Shipi, a young woman appeared who was very cute but not really a beauty. Geller made a new condition now, that this woman had to sit beside Shipi in the audience in a special seat. This woman was Hannah, Shipi’s sister, and she began to be a part of the act, passing signals to Uri on stage.

  Hannah, who was Uri’s friend and still is (she says that the other girls in Uri’s life have been mere decoys, and that he always returns to her), maintains that Uri has very special supernatural powers but that he also uses a great deal of trickery. “I used to help him with his tricks during appearances,” says Hannah.

  In the meantime, [Geller’s] chauffeur admitted to many tricks that he maintained Uri had instructed him about. He said that Uri confessed, in a heart-to-heart talk with him, that everything in the act was just bluff.

  “Uri is a good fellow. If he has driven the world crazy, then he is a very talented guy!” says his chauffeur. “I know all of his tricks very well, and I can even appear in his place if I wish to. But Uri has a very special, unique talent. When something does not succeed for him, he always manages to get out of it. He comes away clean from any situation and he controls people in a total manner.”

  Saban, Uri’s very good friend, is one of the only men to whom Uri has [ever] confided that “all” of his performanc
e was based upon fakery. “In front of all his other friends and even his parents, Uri has always maintained that he has supernormal powers. Among his very close friends, he claims that though he has supernatural powers, he sometimes uses some trickery.”

  To Explode the Balloon

  Success gave Uri a swelled head. He used to go to his manager with continual demands for much more money than the contract called for. “He would come to me two or three times a week,” says Baruch Cotni, “with demands of two or three hundred pounds for each performance. There was no end to it.”

  Uri’s demands finally caused a rift between the two, and Uri found himself without a manger. He found a new agent, Micky Feld. Cotni, angered by all this, decided to expose the Geller mess once and for all. He searched about and found a magician, an ordinary magician who worked the bar mitzvahs. His name was Ayalon.