Tag: magician

Calendar: September 27

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of September

Flesh and Silver Claws

September 27, 1885 was the birthdate of magician Harry Blackstone, Sr.

Born Harry Bouton in Chicago, Illinois, Harry Blackstone was a famed magician and illusionist. He was in the model of courtly, elegant predecessors such as Howard Thurston and Harry Keller, and the last of that group in America. Blackstone customarily wore white tie and tails while performing, and traveled with a sizable cast of assistants and large-scale illusions. His stage show was presented to the accompaniment of a pit orchestra.

One of Blackstone Senior’s especially effective illusions was called the Kellar Levitation billed as “The Dream of Princess Karnac”. A woman would lay on a couch, uncovered unlike other magicians’ versions, and rise up in the air. In another illusion,  a woman stepped into a cabinet in front of many tubular incandescent bulbs. Blackstone would suddenly push the perforated front of the cabinet backwood so the bulbs protruded through the holes in the front of the box. The cabinet was then revolved, revealing the woman impaled by the blinding filaments.

His “Sawing a Woman in Half” illusion involved an electric circular saw some three to four feet in diameter mounted in an open frame. Blackstone demonstrated the efficacy of the device by sawing noisily through a piece of lumber. Then a female assistant was placed on the saw table in full view, as wide metal restraints were clamped upon her midsection. The saw table was pulled by a motor through the saw blade.The blade whirred and appeared to pass through her body. As ripping sounds were heard, the woman shrieked, and particles were scattered by the whirring blade. When the blade stopped she, of course, rose unharmed.

“The Floating Light Bulb”, was perhaps Blackstone’s signature piece. In a darkened theatre, Blackstone would take a lighted bulb from a lamp and float it, still glowing, through a small hoop. He would then come down from the stage and the lamp would float out over the heads of the audience. This illusion was passed to Blackstone’s son, also Harry Blackstone, and then after his son’s death to the Dutch illusionist Hans Klok.

Harry Blackstone Sr. spent the last years of his life performing at the Magic Castle, a magical attraction in Hollywood, California. He died at the age of 80 in Hollywood on November 16, 1965. Blackstone was interred In Colon, Michigan where the main street was renamed Blackstone Avenue in his honor.

In 1985, on the 100th anniversary of his father’s birth, Harry Blackstone Jr. donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. the original floating light bulb, which Thomas Edison designed and built, and the original Casadega Cabinet, used in the “Dancing Handkerchief” illusion. This was the first ever donation accepted by the Smithsonian in the field of magic.

Chung Ling Soo

Artist Unknown, “Chung Ling Soo”, 1908 Advertising Poster

This rare 1908 poster advertised a tour of the talented magician Chung Ling Soo. It is one of eight different known posters of the magician’s tours.

Born William Ellsworth Robinson in Westchester County, New York in 1861,Chung Ling Soo was a behind-the-scenes designer of magic tricks for headliners Harry Keller and Alexander Herrmann before he struck out on his own. Around 1900, while in Europe, he adopted the Chung Ling Soo persona.

Robinson went to great lengths to preserve the illusion, limiting his speech on stage to the occasional bit of broken English and relying on an interpreter to talk to journalists. Robinson in his persona of Chung Ling Soo performed a bullet catch trick at a show in London, England in 1918; it was one of the big theatrical showpieces of his performances. Instead of catching the bullet on a plate, the bullet hit his chest. Robinson died a few days later at the age of 56.

Kellar the Magician

Keller the Magician Poster, “Levitation”, 1900-1909

Harry Kellar was an American magician, a predecessor of Harry Houdini and a successor of Robert Heller and Isaiah Hughes, under whom he apprenticed. Referred to as the “Dean of American Magicians”, he is shown here performing one his most memorable stage illusions, the “Levitation of Princess Karnac”.

Calendar: March 14

Year: Day to Day Men: March 14

Aries the Ram

The fourteenth of March in 1878 marks the birth date of Louis Nikola, a British magician, actor, director and author. Born Walter James Obree Smith in Southampton, he performed under the stage name of Louis Nikola, a persona he found in Australian novelist Guy Newell Boothby’s series of occultist criminal mastermind Dr. Nikola, an early Victorian forerunner to Fu Manchu.

Louis Nikola began his career as a professional magician in 1901. Known for his painstaking perfection and inventive illusions, he performed throughout the world. Nikola’s “Card Castle” was one of the many highlights in his performances. After spreading a deck of cards on a tray, he would cover it with a silk scarf and slowly raise the scarf. At its height, the scarf would be removed to reveal a standing castle built from the cards. He would deliberately jog the tray and the castle would collapse due to its delicate construction. 

Nikola published some of his magic through a series entitled “The B.O.P. Magician” that appeared in the 1898-1899 Volume XXI of “The Boy’s Own Paper”, a British story-paper run by the Religious Tract Society to provide young male readers with a positive moral influence. In 1927, Nikola published “The Nikola Card System: A New Power for Magicians”, a card system for magic tricks more advanced than the previous “Si Stebbins” or “Eight Kings” stack systems. Even on close examination, the pre-arrangement of cards was seemingly impossible to detect. 

In 1934, Louis Nikola published a compendium of articles on fifty magic illusions entitled “Magical Masterpieces” in a collaboration with magic historian Will Goldston. Among the illusions in the volume were “The Incorrigible Cigars”, “A Message from Mars”, and “The Topsy Turvy Tea Table”. Nikola is credited with the invention of two major magic illusions: the “Magic Melding” in the early 1930s and, in collaboration with magician Roy Enoc, the “Milk Pitcher” circa 1917. 

In addition to his magic illusions, Louis Nikola was also an entertainer proficient in the art of hand shadows. Using a light source and his two hands, he would create shadow representations of  animals as well as historic and fictional characters. In 1913, Nikola published a small volume entitled “Hand Shadows: The Complete Art of Shadowgraphy” that contained, along with the illustrations of fifty hand shadows, instructions on lighting and hand exercises. A second edition was printed in 1921.

Beginning in 1913, Nikola was discovered by the British film industry who cast him in several films as a magician and a spiritualist. He was an actor in director Charles Raymond’s short 1913 “The Seer of Bond Street”, a six character story of a fake medium attempting to steal money from an heiress. Nikola was screenwriter, director and actor for the 1914 “Magic Squares”, an animation of paper squares and hand shadows.

Walter James Obree Smith died at the age of fifty-eight in South Harrow, London on the eleventh of November in 1936.