ONE OF THURSTON’S new effects, the Spirit Paintings, was astonishing. A stack of blank canvases were shown and examined by the audience. A bright electric light was placed behind two of the canvases, held upright in a frame, and members of the audience selected a subject for a painting, or a personality for a portrait. As the audience watched the back-lit canvases, a picture seemed to slowly materialize, from misty colors to sharp, clean lines and colors. When the canvases were separated, the finished work of art—fully painted and dry—had materialized.
It was an amateur magician, David P. Abbott, who had discerned this secret from two Chicago mediums, the Bangs Sisters. The Bangses’ phenomenon was a brazen fake; the ladies manipulated the frames as they held them in front of a bright window. Abbott’s secret worked its way to England, where it became a sensation in P. T. Selbit’s music hall act. He featured it throughout America in vaudeville. Abbott showed the secret to Thurston and Bamberg when they visited him in Omaha, Nebraska. Spirit Paintings was a perfect mystery, designed to make audiences scratch their heads—the visual, puzzling sort of marvel that Bamberg loved.
Unfortunately, the next season Thurston’s new effects were just more Sturm und Drang, those monstrosities that made Theo Bamberg wince. For example, the Vanishing Piano was a Fasola inspiration. An upright piano sat on a low wooden platform. An assistant sat at the piano and began playing. She was covered with a curtain, and the piano and player were lifted high above the stage. Thurston fired a pistol. The music stopped, the curtains and their framework fell to the stage with a crash, to reveal that the piano and assistant had disappeared.
The Boy, the Girl, and the Donkey was even sillier, and more spectacular. Two assistants, a boy and girl, led a donkey down the aisle of the theater and up to the stage. There, the donkey was coaxed inside an enormous cabinet, painted with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Once the donkey was inside, the boy and girl instantly followed. The curtains were closed at the front of the cabinet and the prop was given a turn. When it was opened, all three had disappeared. The most wonderful surprise came just seconds later, when the boy, girl, and donkey instantly reentered at the back of the auditorium.
The box part wasn’t very interesting at all. The cabinet simply had a false back that was large enough to hold the human and animal assistants—the kind of “garage” that had horrified Jarrett. But Thurston had hired twin girls, twin boys, and twin donkeys.... Or nearly twin donkeys: he needed animals of a specific size to fit in the box, and in 1914 an animal broker wired him, “Nature doesn’t make mature animals according to your specifications; smallest matched pair available forty-two inches ground to top shoulder. Price, forty dollars.” Three sets of twins, a ridiculous extravagance, explained the miraculous reappearance at the back of the theater.
Thurston asked his friend Karl Germain to paint the cabinet with colorful Egyptian hieroglyphs. When the show returned to Cleveland, Germain made a habit of visiting backstage after the show and touching up the painting. One evening, he found himself alone on the stage with Thurston’s lion. As he walked by the cage, the lion’s paw shot through the bars and grabbed Germain’s sleeve, ripping it to shreds, just missing his flesh.
Thurston now had numerous reasons to look for new ideas, and reasons to be always looking over his shoulder, with an eye on his competition. Charles Carter was eagerly filling his show with magic from the Kellar and Thurston shows. He now had his own lion illusion and was touring America. Harry Houdini seemed to have tired of his escape act and toured England briefly at the end of 1913 with a magic act, including a disappearing pony. His English magic tour was a flop. Audiences weren’t interested in watching Harry Houdini, with his reputation as an escape artist, performing magic tricks. But to Thurston, who was wary of Houdini, it sounded suspiciously like the first steps toward some real competition.
When he heard that Houdini was returning to the United States with a new illusion, Walking Through a Brick Wall, Thurston hurriedly had Bamberg rebuild one of his small tricks—a neat little effect in which a pencil or a wand was pushed through a small square of fabric—into a gigantic piece of apparatus to accommodate a person instead of a pencil. Bamberg objected, pointing out that it would be a bad trick, and it was. But Thurston wanted to be ready to steal a little of Houdini’s thunder if he managed to score a hit.
One winter morning in Indianapolis, as he traveled with Thurston in 1918, Bamberg arrived at the theater and found the stage brutally cold. Thurston was onstage rehearsing in dress gloves, to keep his hands warm. Bamberg called to him, “Don’t forget to take your gloves off.” Thurston responded, “Nothing doing, Theo. I keep them on.” Bamberg was amazed to see him present the first part of his show, including his intricate card routine, wearing gloves. In this, Thurston was years ahead of the times; a generation later, it became fashionable for magicians to perform card manipulations wearing gloves.
Bamberg worked for three seasons with Thurston before returning to vaudeville. He admired Thurston as an engaging performer and a magnetic personality. But he also was mystified by Thurston’s strangely tin ear with magic; Thurston always fancied himself an inventor, but always depended on other people to lead him to a genuinely new idea.
PERHAPS IT WAS Theo Bamberg who even led him to Nina Fielding, Thurston’s third wife.
As the story was told, the show was playing in Ottawa, at the start of World War I. Howard and Theo were lounging in the hotel, feeling lonely, when Bamberg began flirting with a pretty woman and her little girl. She’d just seen the Thurston show and was anxious to meet Bamberg and Thurston, but her little girl had not seen the performance because, she told Thurston, “my mother won’t let me.” The magicians amused the little girl with pocket tricks, and the mysterious lady revealed that she was a widow and her husband had been a victim of the war.
The story can’t be even slightly true. Neither the year nor the situation was correct. So, here’s another story. Thurston was performing in Montreal; he supposedly saw a pretty lady seated in a box during his show. She loaned a monogrammed handkerchief—N.F. for Nina Fielding—and there was a mix-up in handkerchiefs as it was returned to her. The lady seemed amused, returning to the show and then inviting Thurston to perform at a children’s birthday party. That one’s not true, either.
Or there was the story that he met her in Atlantic City. Or on the steps of an Asbury Park, New Jersey, hotel....
The lady’s name was actually Nina Leotha Hawes Willadsen. She was born in 1885 to George Hawes and Ellen Fielding Hawes. It seems that this was Ellen’s second marriage, as Nina had an older half sister, Emma, who was born in Nova Scotia. Her mother was Canadian, but later claims—that Nina was the daughter, or niece, of the former premier of Nova Scotia, William Stevens Fielding—were untrue.
She had a short career in the theater, working under the name Nina Randall, playing comic supporting parts in several Broadway productions, including Florenz Ziegfeld’s musical for Anna Held, Mam’selle Napoleon. Nina had sparkling dark eyes and a pleasant smile, with broad features and a square jaw. She was too large to be a Ziegfeld showgirl, or for that matter, one of the slender waifs that Thurston pushed through trapdoors or balanced on the levitation cradle. In 1908 she was married to John R. Willadsen, an experienced theater manager, who had been responsible for running one of the most successful Broadway shows of all time, Abie’s Irish Rose. This probably signaled the end of her stage career. They lived in Weehawken, New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan, where he built his wife a three-story brick apartment house, on Oak Street near the waterfront. The couple occupied one of the five apartments, with a maid. In July 1909, Nina gave birth to a pretty, blond daughter, who was named Jane Jacqueline, and John Willadsen called their home “Villa Jane.”
Thurston knew Mrs. Willadsen from New York show business circles, where they may have attended parties together, and it’s very possible that their relationship preceded their own divorces—this might be the reason for constructing innocent fictions about how
they met. By the summer of 1914, both Nina and Howard were recently divorced. He was America’s greatest magician, a prominent figure in the theatrical world. She was a minor star of the stage, now a wealthy and attractive lady of independent means who owned an apartment building. Articles around this time refer to her as “not engaged in the theatrical profession.” As their relationship became more serious, his letters were concerned with disappointing her.
My past experiences have been so sad that I had become reconciled and had about given up hopes of ever obtaining that peace and joy to be formed only with the [union] of two souls.... You will discover so many things in me that may not please you, and I fear that those things may gradually change your feelings for me.
We can imagine the list of problems: his unpredictable temper, his criminal past, his shaky finances, failed marriages, and a tie to low-life show business that he could never quite shake—Harry Thurston was always nearby to draw him back. Thurston’s first two marriages had been with very young women who had been longing for the spotlight. He may have reasoned that the time was right to pursue one of those wealthy, independent socialites who used to visit his dressing room early in his career. If he had started the relationship with this cold, calculated business plan—a confidence game—then he fooled himself. Thurston fell head over heels in love.
There’s a strange desperation in Thurston’s love letters. He was awed by Nina’s Broadway connections and social status, and also intimidated by her worldliness. She had her own money and property and was accompanied by a young daughter, a maid, and a number of independent women. The assembled retinue seemed to not only impress Thurston but throw him off balance; he had always been ready with a deception or a brash bit of self-confidence—“Never worry, George!”—but now seemed so helpless that he could only rely on the truth. In October he wrote to Nina. He called her “Leo,” short for Leotha, or his “Love Girl”:Here are two people whose lives have been entirely different. You are giving up friends, position, family and all and everything, even your dreams of worldly comfort and luxury which are laid at your feet at every side. With only one answer. I love.
Even after they resolved to be married, at the last minute Thurston was fretting over her social status. He wrote on October 24, 1914:I know your dinner was a success.... I know you were the most beautiful lady present. I am anxious to see you in evening dress. It will probably be the last special dinner you will ever give in your old home. Things are surely changing for you. It is a complete change in your life and entirely different from what you ever expected. And I really believe you will enjoy the change of living. If it is in my power to make you do so, I am sure you will. Only twelve days more then you will belong to me and I to you.
Thurston and Leotha were married on November 5, 1914, in a simple ceremony at Niagara Falls.
LEOTHA’S INFLUENCE on the show was immediate. The famously meticulous producer, Ziegfeld, was the inspiration, and John Willadsen, her first husband, provided the example, for she now fulfilled some of the duties of a company manager. Leotha insisted on new scenery and suggested new costumes from Lenore Schulz, a seamstress and friend of Leotha’s. Thurston’s new wife offered an attention to detail that Thurston had always lacked—the complaint of Kellar, Bamberg, and Jarrett. Whenever she visited the show, Leotha watched from the front row or a box.
Thurston acknowledged her in the audience with their own special “love code,” a simple gesture of holding up his hand and crossing his first two fingers as he smiled in her direction. Leotha sat with a pad of paper balanced on her knee. She would scribble notes—a drape that had not been hung straight, a hinge that squeaked, a costume that needed pressing, or an assistant who needed a haircut. This pad was then handed backstage to Thurston at the end of the show for a formal critique. A visitor to the show recalled a typical “school session”:Thurston lined up the assistants and crew to talk over the mistakes that had been made. This was most annoying to everyone who wanted to get the hell out of the theater, but they had to go through with it ... a daily harangue and the snide side comments.
A smudge on an assistant’s pants would start a chain of finger pointing. If the assistant had brushed against a dirty prop, was it the assistant’s fault, the wardrobe department’s fault, or the property man’s? Every problem was addressed and solved for the next performance. The process was later expanded, adding pads backstage to record problems during the performance. These school sessions—reading and discussing Leotha’s notes—made everything better, and her influence gradually pushed away the last cobwebs of Kellar’s stodgy Victorian magic show. Thurston’s production was put on a trajectory where it could compete with Broadway’s touring reviews.
Bamberg noticed a new efficiency to the production. For a Detroit matinee, Thurston’s show arrived late at the theater, at one p.m. for a two-thirty matinee. As the trucks were being unloaded, there were already people in line at the box office. Theo objected that it would be impossible to have the show ready. Thurston smiled. “Watch my system, and time exactly when the curtain rises.” Thurston’s fourteen assistants worked in a sort of precise ballet: the show’s switchboard was brought backstage, backdrops were unloaded and hung, and tons of apparatus was uncrated and assembled. Thurston stepped into the dressing room just three minutes before the show, knowing that George White had unpacked his clothing and makeup. The curtain went up twenty-five minutes late; illusions in the second act of the show were still being assembled backstage during the first half. Theo was dumbfounded that this massive show could be handled so efficiently.
Like all of the magician’s friends, Theo noticed that this marriage was different. Leotha’s independence seemed to earn her special respect from her husband. Unlike his previous wives, she didn’t rely on him for friendship or her career. He listened to her advice and doted on her wishes.
And then there was the little girl, Jane, whom Howard formally adopted. He was delighted to suddenly become a father. He wrote letters to his “Jane Girl” nightly, sent trifling gifts back from the road, or, failing that, enclosed dollar bills or funny poems. On stage, he increasingly found opportunities to mention her during the show. “What is your name?” he’d ask a little girl from the audience. “I have a daughter named Jane. She’s a little younger than you are. She takes after her dad. I suppose you take after your dad. All nice girls take after their dad.” And then Thurston would glance over the footlights at the little girl’s father. “Don’t they, Dad?”
The audience laughed. If Jane was in the audience, she giggled with delight at being mentioned from the stage. Thurston intended it as a simple joke, of course, and never realized just how much little Jane would take after her dad.
FIFTEEN
“BIRDS OF THE AIR”
When Fredrick Keating was a teenager, he ran away from home to join a magic show. He’d studied card tricks and fancied himself a card manipulator, and of course, Thurston was his idol.
Thurston rejected the boy several times, instructing his company manager to put him on a train and send him back to his mother. But when Keating left Peekskill Military Academy and arrived backstage in Bridgeport, Connecticut, dirty, hungry, and still in his military uniform, Thurston tried another tact. “Give him a dollar a day,” he told his company manager, “and see that he damn well earns it!”
Keating earned it by painting props, distributing playbills, cleaning Thurston’s shoes, and catching Fernanda as she fell through a trapdoor beneath the stage, so that seconds later, he could close her into a trunk that was shoved back through a different trapdoor. This was the understage action of the Triple Mystery, and it earned bruises for both Fernanda and Keating. He also washed the ducks—Thurston used a bit of Hindustani, calling him the keeper of the ducks, “my duck-wallah.”
One of Thurston’s opening tricks was called Birds of the Air. Thurston would stand on the stage and swing a long-handled butterfly net; a white pigeon would appear in the net, as if it became visible the moment it was caught. Th
e bird was dropped into a small cage that George was holding in his hands. This was repeated, producing two more birds.
Birds of the Air was an ingenious mechanical trick using a trick net and trick cages. Thurston had devised a special finale to punctuate the mystery. He would step down into the audience, as if spotting an invisible bird over the audience’s head. Standing in the aisle, he swung the net. His stooge, sitting next to him in a theater seat, had a pigeon concealed in his cap, holding it in his lap. When Thurston swung his net in a low arc, the stooge would drop the bird inside, so that the audience saw the bird as the net reached the top of the swing and was illuminated by the spotlight. One of Keating’s jobs was to be that stooge, with a pigeon in his cap, sitting in his seat at the start of the show.
One evening, it all went wrong. Keating left the stage door with a bird in his cap and hit a patch of ice on the pavement. The cap flew from his hands, and the dove skidded on the ice. Luckily, its wings were clipped. He chased the bird around the ice, tumbling head over heels as he lunged for it. By the time he had the exhausted bird back in his clutches, the boy was scratched and panting. He dashed for the entrance of the theater, but Thurston’s manager wasn’t there to let him in. The local house manager didn’t recognize him and wanted a ticket. The boy gave him a shove and careened through the lobby.
As Keating reached the back of the aisle, his heart sank. He was too late. The show had started. Thurston was standing in the auditorium, waving the net helplessly. “Anyone but him would have simply gone on with the next trick,” Keating later wrote. “But not Howard Thurston.”
The Last Greatest Magician in the World Page 23