Backhand palm was a ridiculous name, of course. Before this time, if a magician concealed a card in his hand, he palmed it, holding it in his cupped palm with the back of his hand facing the audience. The art was in the naturalness of this motion. So it’s only logical that to palm a card, you use the palm of your hand. But Elliott’s misnomer indicates the unexpected and innovative nature of the discovery. There was no good way to describe it. It was a way of palming a card while your palm was empty.
The move hadn’t started with Elliott, but with a Mexican magician who wandered into a Bowery magic shop on June 2, 1892, and showed the proprietor, Otto Maurer, how he could make a card disappear. Maurer showed Dr. Elliott and Harry Houdini, and each of them began performing the maneuver. To Elliott goes the honor of refining it. Before Thurston saw it, Elliott’s achievement had already spread, like wildfire, to a group of top magicians: Barney Ives, Alexander Herrmann, Billy Robinson, Servais Le Roy, Lawrence Crane, and T. Nelson Downs—all professionals who were in a position to march onto the stage with it.
These magicians swooned over it, but only a few performers used the Back Palm; even then it was merely a fussy little interlude in the middle of a rarefied vaudeville routine. It had little impact with audiences and might have languished as a mere novelty. Houdini, who had tried to perform as a “King of Cards” several years before, boasted about performing the move, and even tried to take credit for inventing it. Ultimately Houdini had no use for the Back Palm—his act was now devoted to escapes.
To be successful, the Back Palm needed a champion—someone who would make it special for an audience and, in the process, make it practical. This is where Howard Thurston, the carnival worker and part-time confidence man, had the advantage.
IN CHICAGO, Howard and Harry Thurston settled on a new business plan. Thurston’s Original Oddities was a midway show, according to their letterhead, offering “Original World’s Fair Oriental Dancers... Turkish Orchestra ... Beautiful Maidens of the Orient ... Life in a Turkish Harem.” They were running a “hoochie kootch” show.
Based on the success of Little Egypt and the exotic dancers at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the kootch show (to use the sideshow slang) became a new attraction at fairgrounds. It was cheap to produce—aspiring dancers could be recruited, costumed, and enhanced with a few pennies’ worth of dark greasepaint. Besides, they didn’t really need to be good dancers. They just needed to wear abbreviated costumes and shake their hips.
The secret of the show was to promote it as vaguely cultural or exotic—to give the small-town gentlemen an excuse to queue up and pay their dimes. Once inside, the show was as efficiently lascivious as the crowd insisted or conditions allowed. Costumes could always be buttoned up, or gyrations slowed down, if there was the slightest indication of trouble from local lawmen. Of course, that was part of the con game: local lawmen could be bribed by a special audience with the exotic women.
Howard and Harry offered colored lithographs to advertise the show, promising that it would be “billed like a circus.” Howard performed as the talker out front, to “run ’em in and run ’em out,” the carnival phrase for coercing the crowd into the tent, and then efficiently ending the show and pushing them through the exit so that the new group could enter. “She’s sensational ... sen ... sa ... tion ... al!” Howard intoned from the bally platform. “She’s the world’s best Oriental dancer, brought to you direct from the midway of the Chicago World’s Fair. She twists, turns, and vibrates in ways that you never thought were possible. Let her show you! She can move every muscle, every bone, each and every part of her body!”
The show moved up through the Midwest, booked as a special attraction with fairs and carnivals. Howard insisted that his small group of dancing girls and musicians wear their makeup and exotic costumes whenever they were traveling by train, to advertise the attraction.
As Harry counted the receipts, Howard would slip into the tent and stand onstage, performing his card manipulation act. He was now adept at the Back Palm, testing each of Elliott’s moves in front of his audiences. In many ways, it was the perfect audience, for no one was there to watch card tricks. The crowd of men, shoulder to shoulder inside the tent, hooted, whistled, or impatiently stamped their feet, waiting for the girls. If Thurston could learn to impress them with his card productions, he could impress anybody. He spent every available moment, that fall of 1896, waving his hands up and down, tracing arcs around his body, twisting his wrists, and then deftly plucking playing cards from thin air. His training with Indian clubs, from his Mount Hermon days, was an inspiration—big, graceful movements of his arms concealed the smaller manipulations with the cards, and also enhanced the trick, creating a poetic flow to his motions. He was slowly becoming the world’s greatest card manipulator.
HARRY AND HOWARD overspent on their attraction, and the following season they decided to consolidate their show with the DeKreko Brothers Congress of Eastern Oddities, a traveling tent carnival—George DeKreko had been the manager of the Streets of Cairo exhibit from the Chicago World’s Fair. This left Harry without a job, so he returned to Chicago dime museums. Howard planned the new season, contracting the dancers, musicians, and canvas men. In August 1897, as Howard was getting ready to go back on the road, he traveled from a meeting with Harry to Cincinnati for a new stock of cheap jewelry.
When the train traveled through Indianapolis, a young girl boarded, carrying her tiny tin trunk. Howard struck up a conversation. She explained that she was on her way to visit her aunt and was now a trained dancer—this was an exaggeration, as she had just learned a castanet dance and won an amateur talent contest. Howard explained that he “employed a number of dancers.” Another exaggeration, for those girls only shook their hips. He convinced her to join his show.
Born in September 1881, Grace E. Butterworth was just fifteen years old, pretty and petite, with green eyes and a mass of blond curls. She was instantly in awe of Thurston, captivated by his handsome features, his commanding voice, and his amusing sleight of hand, which he used to entertain her on the train.
Grace was also sweetly naïve. When they arrived in Cincinnati and found a hotel, Thurston signed the register, “Howard Thurston and wife.” She asked him, “When is your wife going to join us, Mr. Thurston?”
In fact, Thurston was awestruck by Grace’s chaste, girlish charms, and he surprised himself by acting the perfect gentleman. He paid for her own hotel room and began introducing Grace as his sister. They traveled to Sparta, Wisconsin, where he rejoined the DeKreko Congress of Eastern Oddities.
The brother and sister act was good cover, as it prevented Grace from being recruited for the kootch show. Meanwhile, realizing that a detective was on his trail, Thurston began to arrange their marriage. It was the masterful work of a con man. On August 14, 1897, he wrote a letter to Grace’s widowed mother, Lida Butterworth, in Indianapolis—Grace had conversationally provided the details of her family. The letter started with an obvious untruth. “I suppose Grace has told you about me and spoke of our relations to each other,” and quickly moved on to, “We want to be married ... we love each other. Am awaiting most patiently for a favorable reply.”
But Thurston didn’t want a reply; he arranged to have the letter sent from another town, so Mrs. Butterworth would be unable to trace the couple. Grace, of course, knew nothing of the letter.
Over dinner several nights later, he sweetly mumbled to Grace about how he loved her, and then kissed her on the cheek. She responded indistinctly, “Oh, I like you a lot.” The next day, as they walked through town, Thurston steered her to a Seventh-day Adventist church. He interrupted the service to suddenly announce, “We want to get married!” The minister stopped his sermon and questioned the couple briefly. Thurston claimed that Grace was sixteen, the legal age to marry in Wisconsin. After a perfunctory exchange of vows, the minister pronounced them man and wife. Grace had not discussed marriage, but was now too astonished to object.
“Never the straightforward w
ay for him,” Grace later explained. “He played so many angles that he was always imagining a great many that were not there.”
THE DEKREKO SHOW folded in the next town, Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and Howard and Grace organized their own small show. Grace was a quick study and a determined performer, learning the twists and turns of a kootch dance, as well as the skillful steps of a buck-and-wing, to augment her castanet dance. He billed her as Texola—he later explained that his grandmother had once seen the strange name in a dream and always considered it a good-luck charm. Grace also played the piano to accompany his act. And, of course, she learned her part in the “selling the watch” routine, which Howard still employed, as necessary, to skip out on a hotel bill.
Grace realized that Thurston was a mass of contradictions. In Duluth, Minnesota, he was thrown in jail because of his associations with a dealer in cheap jewelry. Thurston charmed the jailer, even if he failed to talk his way out of the charge. Grace visited him daily, until other friends raised the bail and transported him safely out of town. Grace noticed that Howard never returned to Duluth.
Although they were now man and wife, Howard could be strangely solicitous or shy. Shortly after their wedding, he bought her a doll and yards of gingham to make dresses for it. He also continued their “brother and sister” act in the beer halls, reasoning that it made Grace’s dancing seem more desirable to the local men.
Of course, the pretense actually provided a world of trouble. At a honky-tonk in Minnesota, Grace was expected to “work the house” after her dance, offering drinks, and maybe much more, in the private wine rooms. Thurston solved the problem by having a local friend whom he trusted sit with Grace in the wine room, buying bottles of beer so that she reached her quota of sales. In Montana, a group of toughs threatened to hang Howard—one of them had peered through the window of their boardinghouse and had seen him in bed with his “sister.” Grace raced to their room and produced the marriage license.
Grace was awed by Howard’s magic, his hard work and self-control. Her husband rose early each morning to practice, often standing before the mirror for hours at a time, repetitively running through each movement of the card routine. He was also meticulous about his hands. After spending months together, his wife realized that the “medicine” that he applied to his hands to soften them every night was actually his own urine. Thurston would wave his hands through the air until they were dry, and then wash them off before retiring for bed. Grace didn’t comment. She found his habits and obsessions “strange and amusing.”
REDUCED TO THESE Small-town productions—in storefronts or beer halls—Thurston’s act now started with a few welcoming remarks and moved on to the back-palming routine. He would reach into the air, producing single cards or causing them to magically pass from one hand to the other. He combined the moves with traditional palming, so that it seemed as if he could effortlessly pluck cards from any direction. His hand movements were sweeping and graceful, with a dancelike quality that quieted the crowd and established his credential as an expert magician.
Thurston demonstrated card throwing, a favorite trick from the Herrmann show. He held a card at his fingertips and spun it out toward the crowd. In a small room, the card snapped against the wall with impressive and frightening force. The crowd whistled appreciatively. Thurston then delivered cards to specific spectators, or snapped them against lamps or door frames around the room.
Depending on the length of the show, he proceeded with some classic card tricks. Cards that were selected by spectators ended up in his pocket. Other cards, named by the spectators, magically changed into different cards. If the audience was a small one, Thurston might step down to the spectator to demonstrate some fancy shuffling, ending by dealing himself the four aces. Finally, three or four cards were selected by the audience and shuffled back into the deck. Thurston placed the deck upright in a goblet and waved his hand over it. One by one, the selected cards seemed to climb up and out of the deck, so he could pluck them free and toss them to the audience.
By this time, Thurston’s engaging patter and easy manner had completely charmed the audience. For his big finish, he brought up a local celebrity—it was best if it was the sheriff or mayor. Thurston looked into the man’s sleeves, deftly reaching inside to withdraw a fan of cards. More cards were pulled from his coat pocket, followed by a pair of red long johns, and ladies’ stockings and underwear. He opened the man’s coat and pulled out a wash line strung with baby clothes. Finally, Thurston grabbed his assistant’s shoulders, turning him so he was standing in profile to the audience. The magician reached straight down the man’s coat collar, withdrawing a live duck. “Why, it’s good old Socks, my pet duck! You weren’t trying to ... No, he must have taken a fancy to you and crawled into your hip pocket!” The appearance of the duck, squirming and flapping as he climbed from the coat, invariably made the victim whirl and fight, struggling to keep his coat on, then jumping from the stage and returning to his seat. Thurston could depend on gales of laughter to take him off the stage, and then bring him back for bow after bow.
When the Thurstons arrived in Belt, Montana, a boomtown next to a brand-new mine, they carried their trunks to the honky-tonk saloon. The bar had been stripped of glass, and the sheets of tin were ominously filled with bullet holes. Despite the tough clientele, Howard and Grace were a hit, and best of all the Belt audience showed their appreciation by throwing silver dollars. The next morning, over breakfast, Thurston told his wife about a new trick he’d wanted to try, an improvement on the old Rising Cards.
All day, he and Grace worked out the new routine on the Belt stage, fidgeting with the apparatus and planning every move. It was the most elaborate trick he’d attempted, relying on special preparation and Grace’s hard work.
That night, as Thurston wrapped up his card routine, he told his audience that he was about to try an especially challenging trick. He shuffled the deck in his hands, then stepped into the audience, asking for five or six cards to be selected. They were replaced inside the deck, and Thurston boldly offered the cards to one of his spectators, asking that they be shuffled.
Unlike the traditional Rising Card Trick, Thurston didn’t bother with a glass goblet. He returned to the stage and simply held the deck in his left hand, at arm’s length. He waved his other hand over the top of the deck. “What was the name of the first card?” he said, pointing to a man in the audience. “Five of hearts!”
“Fine, fine.... Let’s see the five of hearts.” There was a pause, and then the five seemed to climb out of the deck. But now, it didn’t simply push its way up; it rose, straight up in the air, levitating through the air for about afoot and a half, into Thurston’s empty hand above the deck. The magician stopped to look at the card, then scaled it out to the audience, delivering it in the lap of the man who asked for it.
There was a long pause, and then a sustained burst of applause.
Thurston stepped to a different spot on the stage and called for the second card. This one was the jack of clubs. “Well, then, let’s see if the jack is listening!” He snapped his fingers. The card soared out of the pack, straight up into his hands, and was then propelled into the audience.
Thurston breathed a sigh of relief. With the first two cards, he knew the trick was a hit. Grace, watching from the wings, clapped her hands in excitement.
For the third card, Thurston paused, waving his fingers over the deck. He was now relaxed and playful. “Up, up, up, up!” he called. It was a little verbal trill, his voice rising in inflection, that he’d heard Dwight Moody use in his sermons. “I can see him now,” Thurston later wrote, “as he raised his voice and arms in describing the ascension of Elijah to heaven in his chariot of fire.” The card sailed upward, through the air. Moody’s words were now the perfect accompaniment to his magic, a mere card trick turned into a nearly religious experience.
“By the time he had caused the other cards to rise, and had thrown them to those who had called for them,” Grace remembered,
“the audience was on its feet, cheering.” Silver dollars rained onto the plank flooring, and the audience grabbed Thurston, pulling him from the stage, lifting him to their shoulders and carrying him to the bar to offer drinks.
With the introduction of the Rising Cards on that night in 1897, Howard Thurston had achieved his boyhood dream, after more than a decade of hard work. He’d assembled the pieces of a magnificent new magic act. But the struggle had landed Howard and Grace precisely at the bottom of the entertainment ladder—in dives like Belt, Montana. “Up, up, up, up” was now Thurston’s admonition to himself. Ironically, he had lost sight of any way to rise to the top.
FIVE
“DISINTEGRATION OF A PERSON”
The Rising Card trick became mythologized by Thurston’s retelling. He claimed that he invented it in Boulder, Montana; as he was setting up the act, a fight broke out in the saloon and a bullet pierced the curtain, smashing the goblet in his hand. Thinking quickly, he improvised a new method for the Rising Cards, which didn’t need the goblet.
His fictional story was assembled from events in Belt, Montana, where the Thurstons did witness an argument and fatal gunfight in the saloon. But his new card routine had nothing to do with the gunfire, it was the result of deliberate planning and rehearsal. The key part of his fiction was the word invent. He didn’t invent it, he read it in a book.
New Era Card Tricks was a collection of the latest ideas in card tricks, compiled by August Roterberg, a respected Chicago magic dealer. Thurston bought the book when it was published that year, 1897, and poured over the contents as he and Grace traveled through the West. The book was filled with inspirations for new tricks, not just the standard sleight-of-hand routines that had been popular for decades, but fascinating descriptions of how card tricks were being brought to stage shows, using new routines and techniques. New Era contained the first written description of the Back Palm. Roterberg didn’t mention Thurston—he didn’t know him at the time—but he praised Houdini and Elliott for their handling of the amazing new maneuver. He also omitted Elliott’s technique for showing both sides of his hand; the neat bit of sleight of hand that Thurston was using, as Roterberg wrote it, was “too difficult to describe.”
The Last Greatest Magician in the World Page 7