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.
TEN
“A STREET SCENE FROM THE ORIENT”
Thurston 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.
When Thurston arrived in Sydney, his first concern was George White. At the end of the 1890s, the Australian Labour Party had championed a White Australia policy, barring any additional non-Caucasians from entering the country. On board the Saratoga, Thurston made arrangement
s with one of the officers to let George wear a uniform and join the crew on the deck, where immigrations officials might overlook him. Thurston then arranged a little signal, a sort of magic routine, to sneak George onto the dock. When the man from Australian immigration joined the ship, and Thurston had him distracted in conversation, the magician mopped his brow with his handkerchief. George took his cue and disappeared into the crowd with the stevedores—it was his usual act of accomplishing something while becoming invisible. He arranged to meet Thurston hours later outside of Tattersall’s Hotel in Sydney.
Thurston had scraped together some money and booked a grand room at Tattersall’s, which he could not afford. Then he arranged for George, the cast, and the crew to stay at nearby theatrical boardinghouses. His first priority was a special performance—not magic, just bluff—for the Australian theatrical managers. A group met him at the famous marble bar at Tattersall’s, where everyone took turns buying rounds of drinks. Thurston plied them with stories of his success, his reviews from New York and London, and his state-of-the-art apparatus. A Mr. Collins represented George Musgrove. Another manager, Edwin Geach, had been responsible for Dante the magician’s tour of Australia several years earlier.
When it was time for Thurston’s round of drinks, he ordered champagne and cigars for the group, and then tipped the waitress lavishly with a casual gesture. Pushing the extra money into the waitress’s hand pained Thurston, and at the moment of truth he almost weakened. But he noticed the raised eyebrows around the table and realized that his plan worked perfectly. They thought he was rich. Geach offered a generous contract to handle an Australian tour, and Thurston was happy to accept. He knew that Geach would be familiar with the technical requirements of a magic show.
In fact, Geach had a number of good ideas. He booked Thurston into Sydney’s Palace Theater and supplemented the show with Allan Shaw, a Canada-born coin manipulator who had traveled to Australia with Thurston, a cello soloist, and a comic singer. The final feature on the show was an Edison motion picture projector, which Thurston brought from America for the tour. He had selected several short, comic films, A Touch of Nature and The Lost Child.
Geach set the opening for July 22, 1905, and advertised it extravagantly in the newspapers: “What Irving is to drama, Melba to opera, The Great Thurston is to magicians, absolutely the greatest living exponent.” It was a nerve-racking opening, with repairs and adjustments being made throughout the day and until the curtain time. Realizing how difficult the show had been to mount, Geach was horrified to hear the orchestra repeating the overture, as the crowd stamped their feet in anticipation. He rushed backstage to find Thurston still onstage in his work clothes, adjusting a prop. The manager marched his magician into the dressing room, insisting that he put on his tuxedo and makeup for the performance. Once Thurston had been pushed onto the stage and the performance began, any of Geach’s fears were quickly dispelled. The orchestra began the “Zenda Waltzes,” and Thurston started his faultless manipulations. The audience swooned with each new marvel. Geach knew that he had a star.
Thurston appeared for four weeks in Sydney and was then held over several additional days. The company moved on to Melbourne, where they opened at the Athenaeum Hall on September 2. This theater was a particular challenge, as it had only a concert stage and needed extensive work to accommodate Thurston’s scenery, trapdoors, and electrical effects. Again, the crew worked until the show time; in fact, the audience arrived to hear hammering behind the curtain. The opening-night show was interrupted several times when the lights failed unexpectedly. Thurston patiently waited, chatting with the crowd, and when the lights flickered on again, he resumed the show.
“There isn’t so much patter,” a reviewer noted favorably. “No magician has used less in a show. He has a strong personality and holds his audience firmly.” His eloquence was admired; his rich voice with a nasal twang, combined with his neat Americanisms, were considered enchanting. An Australian magician recalled a friend who had been studying public speaking.
His instructor said, “Go and see that clever conjurer at the Athenaeum and take particular note of both his diction and his delivery.” My friend went, but unfortunately for his teacher, came away crazy to learn conjuring, and with little interest remaining for his elocutionary studies.
In Adelaide, a reviewer admired Thurston’s marvels but chafed at the conventions of a magic show:
He frequently appeals to the audience for assistance in various ways. The same old springboard is run out into the front seats and Thurston calls upon onlookers to shuffle and select cards, lend him handkerchiefs, to temporarily hold apparatus, and to go on the stage with him while he pulls a duck, baby socks and other articles out of their clothing, and eggs from their jaws. When will there appear a magician who will entertain without disturbing the peace and dignity of his paying patrons? Why would a man who boasts of having 5000 pounds worth of accessories want a cheap linen handkerchief from his audience?
HOWARD AND BEATRICE had arranged a little deception that made their travels together much easier. By the time the ship landed in Sydney, the ship log recorded her as “Mrs. Thurston,” and she was introduced this way to the press. It was an odd twist on his earliest days with Grace, when they denied they were married and insisted that they were brother and sister. Adding to the complication was the fact that Howard was still married. After their final argument in London, Grace had been anxious to leave, but she never actually filed for divorce.
Howard explained to an interviewer in Australia, “I am not a club man,” insisting that he didn’t drink and rarely socialized. “The only day I go out is Sunday, and then I take Mrs. Thurston to church. The rest of the time I work.”
Curiously, much of his appeal in Australia was to members of the opposite sex. Reviewers noted the high proportion of women in attendance, explaining that his marvels held a “strange fascination for womenfolk.” Perhaps the attraction is represented in photographs published in Australian newspapers—Thurston’s handsome, placid face and dark-lidded eyes staring out from a formal portrait; or his proud pose, gazing upward, arms crossed, in his embroidered Oriental jacket and neat turban. He embodied the dashing, romantic prince of countless fairy tales, and his movements on stage displayed a balletic elegance. “The Napoleon of Magic,” his billing proclaimed. “Thurston is a married man, and he passes all his letters on to his wife,” a Perth reporter warned his female admirers. Presumably, Beatrice had become suspicious of his fan mail, just as Grace had in London.
IN MELBOURNE, Thurston first met Servais Le Roy, who was then touring Australia with his own one-hour magic show. Le Roy’s career had neatly crisscrossed Thurston’s; he had been taught Dr. Elliott’s Back Palm in New York just before Thurston learned it, and may have been the first performer to use it on an English stage. By the 1890s, he was an established performer in London. In 1905, he was also touring through Australia with an impressive show, Le Roy, Talma and Bosco. Talma was his pretty wife, the coin manipulator, and Bosco was a fat comic sidekick.
Servais Le Roy was four years older than Thurston, born in Belgium in 1865. Le Roy always looked the part, a small, athletic, dapper man with a wave of blond hair and a long waxed mustache. On the stage he was charming and impish, an instinctive performer. He could seemingly do anything—intricate sleight of hand, split-second comedy, and physical illusions. Most of all, he was ingenious. His magic was all of his own creation, and astonishingly novel. One of his greatest feats, which he was then performing in Australia, was his version of the levitation, titled the Garden of Sleep. Talma, his wife, reclined horizontally on a table. She was covered with a large silken cloth. Then she floated into the air, high above the performer’s head. The table was removed from the stage. Le Roy passed a hoop over the floating lady—now a standard bit of business for these levitations. His surprising climax came when he gripped a corner of the cloth and pulled it away. At that moment, the lady seemed to visibly disappear in midair.
Le Roy
and Thurston pledged admiration for each other’s work. Le Roy envied Thurston’s natural grace, but he realized that few of his illusions were original. Thurston took note of Le Roy’s brilliant innovations. In fact, he was too proud to admit it, but Le Roy had fooled him with many of his effects.
But as he traveled through Australia, the magician that Thurston heard about most was Dante—the young man who had reached such renown, and then died tragically. Dante seemed to haunt the public’s memory, and reviews often compared the two magicians. Thurston even visited the magician’s grave, sending back a photo to an American magician’s magazine. Thurston realized that he’d succeeded when he read, “Dante was a marvel, and it might be thought he reached the top of his profession, but Thurston goes one better.” The reviews also document how the show was undergoing changes as he moved from city to city in Australia. Some of these were the rotating guest stars hired by Geach. For example, George Stillwell, who performed a magic act with silk handkerchiefs, replaced Allan Shaw. Then American comedians Maude Amber and Winfield Blake joined the company. They presented a fast and funny act burlesquing operas. As new motion pictures were rented, they were billed as the latest features with the Edison projector. But Thurston also improved his tricks. “Mr. Thurston is gradually adding to his program as he gets his budget of wonders unpacked and placed in position,” a newspaper explained. Two of his most successful were the small tricks called Mysterious Dice and Eggs Extraordinary.
Mysterious Dice was an import from American magic dealers. Thurston showed a large wooden block, like a large child’s block, painted with spots like a die. He had an accompanying box, a small horizontal coffer that was exactly twice the size of the die; it consisted of two compartments, side by side, and accompanying doors.
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