Jim Steinmeyer

by The Last Greatest Magician in the World

  When he introduced it in 1927, the Vanishing Whippet Automobile provided headlines for the show, and Thurston commissioned a beautiful new poster showing the automobile disappearing into a cloud of mist. Thurston experimented with different flashing lighting effects to enhance the illusion and added a raised track for the car, so the audience could appreciate that it wasn’t dropping through a trapdoor in the stage. The most important enhancement was Thurston’s line of pretty girl assistants, wearing bright silk dresses. The car rolled onto the stage loaded with girls: filling the seats, standing on the running boards, and draped over the hood. They smiled, waved at the audience, squealed their good-byes, and promptly disappeared with the Whippet.

  Thurston’s pistol shots were always a subject of debate. Magicians joked about him “shooting at” his tricks. In fact, it was difficult for Thurston to find the right gesture or pronounce the proper magic words for large tricks or the fast-paced marvels of his show. Firing a blank pistol provided the right moment—like starting a race—and put him in control of the action. He fired a pistol to make a piano disappear, make his donkey or horse vanish, produce a line of girls.

  At one rehearsal, Thurston was working on a new trick. A brightly lit lamp was on one side of the stage. A canary vanished, and the lightbulb went out. When Thurston removed the bulb from the lamp, the canary was found sealed within the glass bulb. When the bulb was broken with a small hammer, the bird was released and then returned to its cage. Thurston billed the trick as the Canary in the National Mazda Lamp—the commercial was appropriate, for he relied on the Edison Mazda Company to supply special empty bulbs to accomplish the trick.

  When it came time for the bird to disappear, Thurston reached into his back pocket, removed his blank pistol, and fired it. Watching the new trick, his carpenter, Elmer Morris, shook his head. After the rehearsal, Morris told the magician, “That move makes you look like some Chicago hoodlum, rather than the Great Thurston.” Thurston seemed to brush off Morris’s criticism, but it had obviously bothered him.

  At the next show, Morris was standing in the wings watching the new Canary Trick, when he noticed a girl assistant step over to Thurston. She held the pistol on a small silver platter. Thurston picked up the pistol, fired it, and placed it back on the platter. He turned on his heel, and his eyes locked on Morris in the wings. Thurston gave his carpenter a wink and a courtly bow.

  In fact, Thurston knew plenty of Chicago hoodlums. Many were friends of his brother Harry. Several years later, Al Capone sent his son to see the Thurston show. Thurston responded to the famous gangster with a kind letter, telling him his son was “a fine boy” and inviting them both to the show the next time it played in Chicago. There’s no record that Scarface Al Capone ever attended.

  THE MOST VALUABLE addition to Thurston’s show was John Northern Hilliard, one of his oldest friends, as business manager and personal press representative. Hilliard had regularly written press stories and releases for Thurston and had produced the draft of Thurston’s autobiography. He had a long, interesting career that started as a newspaperman, included novels and Broadway shows, as well as books on magic. Acquaintances remember him as a kind bear of a man, and to Jane he was always Uncle John, regaling her with tales of early adventures and stories about his pet chicken. But close friends, like Thurston, understood that Hilliard was painfully moody and lonely. In 1926, Thurston lured him to be a part of his company.

  Hilliard’s advance work for the show gave Thurston’s production a new luster. He knew what reporters wanted and how they worked; in turn, reporters respected Hilliard, who refused to indulge in “fake ballyhoo,” was honest and gregarious with them, and entertained them with interesting anecdotes from his years in the newspaper business. It was then traditional for the magician’s press releases to hew to specific formulas. They might consist of exaggerated biographical stories, like Thurston’s adventures in India, or short articles detailing his great inventions, or whimsical tales of near accidents on stage. But Hilliard expanded on these stories, managing to capture Thurston as a warm, interesting character. He also wrote glowingly of Thurston’s tie to the great history of magic—the important tradition and the great conjurers of the past. These press releases were mimeographed and stapled together in sets; the paper sheets were perforated, so that individual stories could be neatly torn out of the bundle. Sitting at a desk with a reporter, Hilliard could easily flip through the pages, pulling out features of different lengths. This also ensured that, at each city, reporters were given “exclusive” releases.

  A Thurston press release—it has the typical elegance of Hilliard’s work—neatly explained Thurston’s approach to the spirit world. Thurston is quoted as saying:

  If every man, woman and child were honest with themselves ghosts would be as plentiful as cowards. Each of us at some time in our lives has experienced strange manifestations of the psychic forces either in dreams, visions or actualities. Deep in our hearts we believe in the power of the dead to manifest themselves. We have felt the presence of ghostly visitors, we have had strange but true premonitions. In spite of ourselves and our dogmas, we acknowledge in a secret corner of our hearts that the departed still live and at times we feel their presence. To our friends we laugh at the idea of spirits, but in the darkness of our solitude, we unconsciously expect to see a ghost.

  Thurston turned this sentiment into a bit of poetic magic in his latest Spirit Cabinet routine. Now Kellar’s old cabinet was brought on stage, opened, and shown to be empty. Thurston placed a cane, a tambourine, and a bell inside and closed the door. “Now comes a strange, weird, wonderful part,” Thurston told his audience. The cane rapped and the tambourine rattled. “What’s that? A ghost? Are you a friendly ghost?” The bell clanged in response. “I’m so glad. I don’t like unfriendly ghosts.” The instruments continued to rattle against the interior walls of the cabinet and were finally pushed through the small windows in front, clattering onto the stage. Within seconds, the noisy, invisible ghost had seemingly reduced the show to chaos. Thurston’s assistants dashed to the cabinet and threw open the doors.

  Suddenly, the music shifted to a melodic violin solo. The cabinet interior was empty except for a large, reflective silver sphere, about eight inches in diameter, hovering above the floor of the famous Spirit Cabinet. It sparkled in a deep red spotlight.

  Thurston raised his hand, and the ball slowly floated out of the cabinet toward him. When the magician gestured, and seemed to push it away, the ball moved in a mysterious swoop to the stage floor. Then it levitated and slowly circled back, returning to Thurston.

  Then came the incredible moment. Thurston stepped off the stage with the ball floating between the palms of his hands, walking partway up the aisle of the theater, as the audience watched in disbelief. He turned, facing the stage, and raised his hands. The ball left him, traveled over the heads of the audience and the orchestra pit, slowly gaining altitude and speed until it swept past the gaping spectators and hovered over the Spirit Cabinet. The flight of the mysterious ball earned a hushed murmur from the crowd. Thurston followed, up the steps and back onto the stage. With another gesture, the ball slowly descended into the cabinet and was swallowed into the shadowy darkness as the doors were closed.

  George and Thurston’s assistants stepped to the cabinet and quickly took it apart, piece by piece, until they were left with a pile of flat wooden doors and panels. The ball had disappeared, and there was no sign of the ghost.

  The illusion was accomplished with the most prosaic of secrets, including a tangle of thin black threads that were manipulated by Thurston, two assistants in the wings of the theater, and another assistant hiding inside the Spirit Cabinet. The movement of the ball was balanced between these actors, each transferring an invisible influence by picking up slack or smoothly releasing the invisible threads—a delicate dance at the fingertips.

  There were many individual elements that could doom the illusion. During a 1927 performance, a spotlight operator flip
ped the wrong colored gel in the front of the light, temporarily exposing the network of threads that held the ball aloft. After the show, a young magician, John McKinven, was excited to go backstage and meet his idol, Thurston. Waiting there, he heard Thurston’s distinctive nasal baritone, “that voice,” on the other side of a folding screen. Thurston was cursing out the spotlight operator, using so many four-letter expletives in quick succession that young John felt the blood rush to his face. Seconds later, the majestic Thurston came around the screen, beaming with a smile. “So nice you meet you, young man.”

  It was Thurston’s grandeur that made the Floating Ball so wonderful; he invested it with a haunting solemnity, creating a poetic, visual analogy of the relationship between the medium and the spirit. His cabinet and ball routine represented Thurston’s various pronouncements on ghosts, the sort of sweet and human equivocation that had riled Houdini.

  Thurston’s refusal to be dogmatic about the supernatural was explained in interviews:

  Taking everything into consideration, the most interesting things I have learned about people are their love of mystery, their desire to show their cleverness by claiming to know how it is done, the vanity of little minds, the lack of self-consciousness in big people, the instinct of women, the chivalry of men, and most striking of all, the wish to believe the supernatural, especially in some evidence of life after death.

  In other words, he saw the supernatural as a human condition. If Houdini and the mediums had argued that the occult might or might not exist, Thurston insisted that it always existed—as a purely human need. It was an enlightened point of view, but it didn’t make him many friends.

  THURSTON TOOK UP Houdini’s battle with false spiritualists late in 1927. His intention may well have been sheer publicity, or perhaps his motivation was a function of his position in the Society of American Magicians. Houdini had promoted the cause within the SAM, and his death left the subject unchallenged in the press. Thurston had always doubted any phenomena in a formal séance room, and sensibly warned the public of fraud. But in October, he gave an interview for United Press that consisted of the usual denunciations, with facts and anecdotes. The interview seemed unexpectedly strident, like a man on a mission. “Thurston Will Wage Fight on Psychic Fakes,” the headline announced, proclaiming that he would “take up where late Houdini left off.” The article quoted him as saying:

  Any performances in the supposedly supernatural, which are done regularly for money, are done by trickery…. I have had long conversations with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I find that Doyle has been badly duped. He is one of the easiest men I have met to mystify…. Fortune telling and mind reading are all rot. Why read a palm for a dollar when you can forecast the stock market tomorrow?

  These insights were hardly remarkable, and Doyle’s gullibility was discussed after it dissolved his friendship with Houdini. But Thurston continued with additional exposures, designed to fascinate the public:

  The most common form of ghosts used by the fraudulent spiritualists is contained in a small watch. It is blown up by a collapsible rod, which appears to be an ordinary lead pencil. This ghost can be made to do any of the stunts used by the mediums. It can be deflated quickly by use of the same rod.

  Reverend Arthur Ford was the president of the First Spiritualist Church of New York, a canny, funny, and quick-witted southerner who didn’t indulge in ghosts. He sat in séances, contacted his spirit guide, a French-Canadian named Fletcher, and offered quiet revelations and advice. He had just returned from London, where he had earned Conan Doyle’s endorsement. Perhaps this is why he first noticed Thurston’s interview, but more than likely, it was the promise to take up Houdini’s battle that had raised Ford’s hackles—the threat that after Houdini’s death, a long string of magicians were ready to continue the attacks. Ford responded to the newspapers, disagreeing with Thurston’s remarks by claiming that the magician was “a publicity-seeking showman.”

  Again, this insight was hardly remarkable. But Ford was smart enough to know that Thurston was an ineffective skeptic, and clever enough to use Houdini’s standard technique, a challenge, before any challenge was issued to Ford. He offered Thurston $10,000 if he could produce one of his watchcase ghosts, and then use it to duplicate the phenomena of Margery, the controversial medium who had sparred with Houdini. “I hope Thurston will not follow the example of Houdini and evade the issue by a counter-challenge. He has made charges. I demand that he prove them,” Ford explained.

  Thurston was trapped. He agreed to join Ford for a lecture at the Chapter Room in Carnegie Hall on October 9. Thurston counted on his oratory, his ability to charm an audience, and his rational, open-minded views on the subject—a believer but a skeptic. He hadn’t anticipated Ford’s clever jujitsu-like abilities to exploit the believer. That evening, the room was packed with three hundred spectators, including members of the Society of American Magicians, to cheer on their new hero.

  Ford was smooth, funny, and excitable. Thurston was cautious and sedate. To many he appeared as stodgy and unprepared. They traded barbs. “You’ve insulted me,” Ford claimed, trying to pick a fight. He described Thurston’s inflatable spirit, pointing out the ridiculous nature of this sort of invention. In fact, Ford was right. The watchcase ghost was something Thurston had invented to sound more interesting than the usual crude deceptions of a séance room. Ford challenged Thurston to reproduce séance phenomena. Thurston demurred and challenged Ford to have the spirits tell him his mother’s maiden name.

  Thurston scored a surprising point when the discussion turned to Conan Doyle and Lady Doyle. He insisted that Lady Doyle attempted to contact Houdini’s mother but gave the wrong message to him. He dramatically turned to a small, dark-haired lady sitting in the front row. “Is this so, Mrs. Houdini?” Bess Houdini stood up and agreed, explaining that Lady Doyle was a failure as a medium. The SAM magicians cheered.

  But the discussion devolved from black and white to a muddy mess of gray. Thurston, as Ford anticipated, ended the evening by tempering his views:

  It is true that in 35 years of knowing magicians and mediums I’ve never seen anything done regularly for money in the way of Spiritualism that was not done by trickery. But, while I’ve never had any experience with Margery, I’ve been to her house and I consider her a lady. I have spent 35 years making friends and I have no wish at my time of life to begin making enemies. I am inclined to believe Margery has some psychic force, and I have come to believe there exists an intelligent psychic force.

  Newspapers reported that as he spoke these words, he was both hissed and applauded.

  When the meeting proceeded with a hymn and the passing of a collection plate, a spectator stood to loudly object. “You invite us here and then take up a collection!” There was a brief scuffle and the police were called, but by then the evening was finished.

  The meeting played itself out in the press, but Thurston’s appearance at Carnegie Hall ended his battle with spiritualists. Overall, he made many sensible, inarguable points about fraud, but his most important observation was the closing remark, “I have no wish to begin making enemies.” This is what would always prevent him from adopting Houdini’s crusade.

  The most significant event of the evening was Ford’s first meeting with Mrs. Harry Houdini, who had surprised him with her presence. Ford took the opportunity to introduce himself, and then formed a friendship with the magician’s widow. The following year, they would both be tangled in a series of séances, in which the ghost of Houdini apparently returned to give Bess a coded message. The Ford and Houdini séances were reduced to a number of silly claims and denials, proving nothing. Both Mrs. Houdini and Arthur Ford were branded as opportunists, or, perhaps, “publicity seeking showmen.”

  In May 1928, Thurston was invited to present a special address at St. Mark’s Methodist Church in Detroit. It was an unusual opportunity to realize his dream of speaking from the pulpit. Thurston explained to the congregation that he found spiritualism “a
serious thing, a psychic force that manifests itself unto certain people under certain conditions. I have seen some things I cannot explain, but that is a long story.” He cautioned the listeners. “I want to say that everything done for public, for money, is accomplished by trickery.”

  At St. Mark’s, Thurston also presented a rambling recollection of his travels, his experience with different religions, and his view of prayer. “I do not ask God for a new suit of clothes, to pay the mortgage, or do a lot of other things for me. I am ashamed to pray and ask God for some of the things I hear preachers pray for,” he explained. “I never leave the door of my room without stopping for a moment, just a prayer of thankfulness. I never go on stage without that prayer of thankfulness, and also to ask for help.”

  JANE THURSTON had spent her childhood in boarding schools, and then in singing and dancing classes, including the dance schools of Ned Wayburn, Theodora Irvine, and Alveine. When the 1928 season began, she was given her own spots in her father’s show. Jane was now was seventeen years old, with curly dark blond hair. Jane remembered being overwhelmed by her early performances, terrified by the thought of disappointing her mother or father.

  Jane was never a magician’s assistant, or “box jumper,” to use the backstage slang. Instead, Jane was a costar: a singing, dancing magician. Thurston hired the British illusionist Cyril Yettmah, who had his own successful career a decade before, to create new illusions for the show and supervise Jane’s special numbers.

  Jane rehearsed the tricks over and over again, and Thurston listened to her singing and speaking parts by pacing in the back of the balcony, cupping a hand to his ear, and shouting, “Louder! I can’t hear you!” Hilliard supervised the press stories about her training, and Jane was posed in various publicity pictures.