Fasola’s enthusiastic plans were now a ticking time bomb. Thurston had forgotten their arrangements. Dante never heard about them.
THURSTON’S MOST DANGEROUS threat materialized in September 1925. Harry Houdini finally left vaudeville and opened his new touring show, “An Entire Evening’s Entertainment,” according to his program, in which the famed escape artist and “Master Mystifier” assembled “three shows in one.”
Houdini’s show was an odd combination of his greatest hits and loftiest ambitions. After his failed experiments with a magic show in 1914, Houdini split the evening into distinct sections. The first part of the program consisted of magic. By all accounts, it was the least impressive part of Houdini’s performance. He stepped on stage in black tails and promptly pulled away his sleeves, which were attached with snap fasteners. His odd short-sleeved formal wear was supposed to create a unique distinction: other magicians used their sleeves to accomplish their magic. But those sleeves also served as metaphors for Houdini’s awkward approach to magic: ripping, tugging, and challenging the most elegant aspects of the art, so that he could stand apart from the crowd.
Many of the magic effects were historical, or as the program explained, “Mysterious effects that startled and pleased your grand and great-grandparents.” For example, one of the illusions, Paligenesia, was a comical effect in which a man seemed to be cut up; Houdini had seen it performed in the 1880s when he was a boy. Other effects, like the production and disappearance of lamps, bouquets of flowers, rabbits, and dancers dressed as flappers, came across as slapdash and trivial for the famous escape artist—trying to be something that he wasn’t. In the magic section, Houdini also included card manipulations. “Houdini was the first to perform the forward and back palm,” the program noted, an odd distinction that seemed pointed at his competition.
Houdini presents today card manipulations such as his thirty-two-card forward and back palm, which gained for him the title of “King of Cards” more than thirty years ago. Many of his original passes and sleights have been used by most all of the present-day magicians.
The entire evening was arranged around this self-congratulatory tone. For example, one of the act curtains consisted of sewn ribbons and awards that Houdini had received during his career as a vaudeville escape artist. Real illusions didn’t call for such boasts, dates, or dares. It was supposed to be magic.
The second part of the program consisted of Houdini’s famous escapes, like Metamorphosis, his instantaneous transposition with his wife after he was locked inside a trunk, and the Water Torture Cell, his upside-down escape from a tall tank of water. The third part of the program consisted of a dynamic lecture exposing spiritualism. Houdini gave demonstrations of how fake mediums wrote on slates, rang bells during a séance, and produced gauzy spirits in a darkened room. A section of this demonstration was devoted to Houdini’s recent exposure of Margery, the famous Boston medium, who had almost won the Scientific American challenge to produce genuine phenomena. Finally, Houdini answered questions from the audience and issued challenges to the local mediums. His staff had often visited the most prominent mediums of the city, which allowed him to personalize his attacks. Here Houdini’s brash style suited the performance perfectly. His spiritual exposures were a perverse sort of revival meeting. As he acted out the séance deceptions and ridiculed the foolishness of believers, like his former friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Houdini solicited cheers and laughs.
The show moved to Broadway at the end of the year. A reviewer in The Sphinx found the result overlong and self-important: “The word ‘I’ is overworked throughout…. There was too much denunciation to be palatable. The least said about his presentation of magic, the better.” But the force of Houdini’s personality had a great appeal for audiences. Dr. Wilson of The Sphinx, who had publicly picked fights with both Houdini and Thurston, privately told Houdini that his show packed in more magic than Thurston had in his entire evening. It was exactly what Houdini had been waiting to hear.
“We’re going to shove Thurston right off the boards,” Houdini boasted to a friend.
NINETEEN
“CHUNDRA, WHO IS BURIED ALIVE”
The week of Christmas 1924, Thurston was summoned to the White House for a holiday party for President Coolidge, his wife, and about twenty of his guests. A special stage was erected in the East Room, and the magician brought a handful of assistants and a truck filled with illusions, ducks, and rabbits. For the occasion he’d made special plans for a small trick.
Thurston had just read in the newspaper about the president being presented with a special pocket watch by the Massachusetts legislature. The magician made some inquiries and was able to procure a duplicate of the watch. He spent lavishly on the duplicate, but it was still a bargain, as it was filled with a bundle of worthless gears and wheels inside the pretty gold case.
During the performance, he stepped over to the president and asked to borrow a watch. “A very special watch,” he explained. Coolidge nodded and reached into his vest pocket, offering his fancy new watch. Thurston neatly switched it as he placed it atop a piece of metal on his table. He asked Mrs. Coolidge to have a fresh loaf of bread brought from the pantry. She whispered to a butler, who left the room in search of the bread.
Meanwhile, Thurston raised a hammer above the watch. “One,” he counted. “Two.” A Secret Service man, standing at the side of the stage, couldn’t quite believe what he was about to see. He stepped toward Thurston, leaning down to have a close look at the watch, then looked up at the president with a scowl. “I beg your pardon, sir,” Thurston admonished, pushing the agent aside, “this is a very delicate experiment!” The group laughed as he continued, “If anything goes wrong, I hold you responsible.” On “Three,” he brought the hammer down and smashed the watch into a dozen fragments. He glanced at Coolidge, the famous stone-faced president. Coolidge gazed back at the magician, emotionless.
Thurston gathered the pieces, wrapping them in a piece of paper and then making them disappear. By now the bread had appeared. He brought it to Mrs. Coolidge on a tray with a knife, asking her to cut the loaf in half. “Please be careful, Mrs. Coolidge,” Thurston warned. “Yes, dear, be careful,” Coolidge said. His mild instructions brought another laugh from the guests. When the bread was pulled apart, the president’s famous watch was found inside.
The Watch Trick was the sensation of the evening, earning a mention in Time magazine, and including Thurston in political cartoons the following week. The White House guests never appreciated that Thurston’s switching the watch routine—using a valuable watch and a cheap duplicate that was worthless—was one of his oldest tricks, a confidence game that had allowed him to escape from the worst circumstances.
LOYAL GEORGE WHITE knew all the secrets. Besides working with most of the illusions onstage, he was responsible for all of the magic behind the curtain. An unusual article ran in the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper, profiling George White, “chief assistant to Mr. Thurston and a member of the Race that has made good in the show world as the next man to the world’s greatest magician.” At every performance, Thurston stopped and introduced him to the audience, and George was second in command backstage. The Chicago Defender explained:
It is White that puts the biggest tricks in order before they are worked. And Thurston never examines them. He says that White always has things so they will work. There are thirty other people in the show that take orders from White.
His quiet, authoritative manner was the secret of his success. When George had something to say, everyone listened. On one occasion, Thurston had just finished the Lady and the Lion Illusion and the cage was wheeled into the wings. As he began the next illusion, there was a commotion backstage and Thurston heard George’s voice call out, “The lion’s loose! The lion’s loose!” Thurston imagined the company running for their lives and realized that his job was to remain on stage and keep the audience calm. Moments later he heard the footsteps backstage stop, and
he pictured the lion safely returned to the cage.
At intermission he dashed backstage and asked George about the lion. George seemed confused. “The lion is fine, Governor,” he reported.
“But how did it get loose?” Thurston persisted.
George smiled, realizing what had happened. “No, sir. I didn’t say the lion was loose. I said that the line’s loose. You know, the line we use in the pulleys to hold the scenery. We were changing the scenery.” Thurston and George laughed at the situation, but it made Thurston think about just such a dilemma. “George, some day that lion might get out of that cage. If that happens, what will you do?”
George had already thought about it. “If that lion really gets out, sir,” he said, “then I’m going in the cage and locking the door!”
There were other duties as well. George was Thurston’s valet. He kept a small black handkerchief that he offered to the Governor between shows, so that he could cover his eyes for a short nap; he unpacked his trunk, arranged his formal wear, and guarded the dressing room door to keep his privacy.
During the summer months, George worked at the family home at Beechhurst. When Jane was a little older and teenage boys arrived at the house to escort her out for the evening, both Thurston and George White were there to observe the young men and quiz them. George also knew of Mrs. Thurston’s nervous condition, her impatience, her persistent illnesses, and her increasing use of pills to help her sleep. And George, of course, always kept the secrets.
HOUDINI’S SHOW quickly changed his relationship with Thurston. The two struggled to keep a professional friendship while negotiating the dance of direct rivals. Houdini loved the intrigue. The skirmishes convinced him that he had gotten under Thurston’s skin.
Late in 1925, Thurston wrote a curt letter, angered that Houdini had hired one of Thurston’s former assistants for his own show, “after I had trained him and he had learned all my business and publicity methods.” The assistant had further double-crossed Thurston by trying to recruit another assistant away from Thurston’s show. Thurston reminded him that when one of Houdini’s men from his vaudeville act, S. J. Rome, had offered to work for Thurston, he was refused.
From my conversation with you over the telephone, I had the impression that we would play the game fair, and as far as I am concerned, I intend to, unless I am forced to do otherwise.
Within months, they’d called a truce. “You and I understand one another and have enough business judgment not to interfere with one another’s performances,” Thurston wrote. Houdini had informed him of a new trick that he was about to put in, the disappearance and reproduction of a number of alarm clocks, and Thurston was glad to hear of it “to prevent any confliction” in their programs.
In June 1926, the Houdinis were invited to the Thurstons’ Beechhurst home for a lavish dinner with other members of the Society of American Magicians. The atmosphere was jovial, and the party lasted until two-thirty in the morning. But a week later, Houdini fired off a letter of denunciation to Thurston. He’d just read a critique from an acerbic British magic dealer, Harry Leat, in his publication called Leat’s Leaflets. In the fourth issue, Leat condemned Houdini for his arrogant claims and crudities. Two pages later, Leat complimented Thurston for discontinuing a series of do-it-yourself tricks by noting, “the act of a gentleman, and so different from the breed who brazen it out,” in other words, Houdini. Houdini assumed that Thurston had been in some way responsible for Leat’s point of view.
Thurston responded, calmly assuring Houdini that he had never mentioned Houdini to Leat. “I have always refrained from entering into your arguments,” Thurston wrote, “or expressing any opinions thereof.”
Perhaps the best evidence of their prickly relationship was the odd game of follow-the-leader. Not only did they tussle over personnel in their shows, but Houdini quickly adopted Thurston’s long-standing technique of visiting children’s hospitals and performing charity shows to publicize his tour. Houdini had never been known as a children’s performer, and the photographs of him visiting the bedside of crippled children, or presenting them with rabbits, seem particularly incongruous for the famous escape artist.
Similarly, Thurston included a new feat called the Triple Escape, an escape from a locked trunk that had been laced with a canvas cover. It was the sort of thing that Houdini had built his reputation upon, but as if commenting on his competition, Thurston presented it with an offhand manner, using a girl assistant to make the escape and including it in the middle of a series of fast illusions.
In the summer of 1926, Houdini gave a special demonstration of Buried Alive for the press. Houdini explained that he would expose the extravagant claims of recent vaudeville star Rahman Bey, who demonstrated that he could remain “buried alive” in a coffin under sand for about eight minutes. In order to best the Indian mystic, Houdini remained in a coffin, with limited air, which had been submerged at the Shelton Hotel swimming pool in New York City. With his assistants standing in the pool, monitoring the situation, Houdini remained in the sealed coffin for more than an hour and a half, and his demonstration of Buried Alive gained worldwide publicity. Houdini had attempted several times to produce a version of Buried Alive on the stage, as an escape in his vaudeville performances. But he could never find the right formula for the mystery. It had an inherent problem: the longer that Houdini would remain inside the coffin—the less he was performing on stage—the less impact he could have on an audience.
Thurston had a way around the problem. In the fall of 1926, he quietly began to make plans to incorporate the Buried Alive Illusion into his show. One of his assistants, Chundra Bey, an Indian mystic, would be hypnotized and placed in a glass coffin. This was then lifted and submerged in an oversized tank of water through part of the show. The audience watched him through the glass and the water as Thurston proceeded with the performance. James Wobensmith, Thurston’s attorney, was recruited to draw up a patent for the apparatus.
IN THE MID-1920S, Thurston matched his expanding show with a bewildering array of businesses. His brother Harry managed a “Tropical Land” business, investing in Florida orange groves, and Howard followed suit. He also purchased lots in Beechhurst, near his own home, and land in Canada, near Niagara Falls, oil fields in Pennsylvania and Texas, and shares in a gold mine in Alberta, Canada. A Beechhurst neighbor, John Mano, convinced the Thurstons to invest in his new paint and adhesive company, X-Pando.
Each investment proved to be a disappointment. Some, like the oil field, were disasters, requiring continual investments of cash in order to test the soil or evaluate the reserves. A Buffalo attorney, Bernard Hyman, besieged Thurston with offers and sales pitches—more lots were now available, and these would be the most profitable of all; the Penngas oil fields are looking good; you should consider the new properties at Candlewood Island in Connecticut. Many of the businesses seemed to rely on Thurston’s endorsement as well as his money. John Mano wanted Thurston to represent X-Pando to Henry Ford for his manufacturing plant. Porcupine Gold Mines, a Canadian company, used Thurston’s picture and endorsement in its advertising.
His strangest investment was Thurston’s Perfect Breather. He returned to his father’s mania for simple, practical inventions for the benefit of humanity and devised a twist of wire loops that could be inserted into the nostrils, holding them open for a restful sleep, free of snoring. In 1925, Thurston arranged to have the Breather manufactured (with a deluxe model plated gold), and sold with advertisements in his program, or on the back of his special throw-out cards that he hurled into the audience or tossed to children as souvenirs. It was a difficult product to sell, as different nostrils required different sizes, and Thurston provided a cardboard nostril-measuring device, through the mail, to allow customers to find the perfect fit.
Thurston had been banking on these investments, including the Breather, to provide a relaxing retirement. When his first box of finished Breathers arrived, Thurston congratulated himself on the product by writing to Le
otha, “Sure wish I could say goodbye to the theater, and you, Jane and myself have a real rest and honeymoon.”
But the Perfect Breather was not a success; children and families that attended his show were happy to buy boxes of candy or booklets of magic tricks, but must have been surprised to find the great magician endorsing wire nostril expanders to prevent snoring.
THURSTON WAS WORKING on another invention that he planned as a feature for his show—the famous Indian Rope Trick. He had attempted to include David Devant’s version of the trick in an early show but had to abandon his plans. Thurston’s latest tour would include an extended section of Indian magic—including Buried Alive, Fire Eating, and the Basket Illusion. The jewel in the crown would be a re-creation of the famous Indian Rope Trick. According to legendary accounts, a rope is thrown toward the sky and remains suspended in space. A native boy climbs to the top, and then disappears in midair before the rope falls to the ground again.
It’s now clear that the trick was never more than a legend, and was probably manufactured in an American press account of the 1890s to enhance the marvels of the Hindu wonder-workers, and then was echoed, back and forth, between tourists in India and aggressive street fakirs, who would never quite deny that the feat could be accomplished. Thurston’s experience in India was a typical goose chase that magicians found in the early 1900s—the famous Rope Trick could never quite be seen, but tourists were teased that a man in the next village had surely seen it, or a fakir had just left town who could perform it.
Jim Steinmeyer Page 30