Magic, My Old Friend

Magic, My Old Friend





I’ve always loved magic, as far back as I can remember. I don’t remember who the first magician I saw was but I do remember watching Mark Wilson on “Magic Circus” when I was a kid. It wasn’t on a lot, only a few Saturdays in the early seventies, but I remember how I sat amazed, watching Mark and Nana Wilson perform illusions and wishing I knew how they were done. I was even a bit jealous of their son Greg, because he was up there with them and knew first-hand how each one was done. I remember one particular illusion where the TV audience was supposedly shown what actually went on backstage when an illusion was performed. I watched as Greg hid behind a box and supposedly sneaked into it for a magical appearance, only to be flabbergasted when someone else popped up. I had been hoodwinked. Oh well. It was still fun. A couple of years later I watched Bill Bixby as “The Magician” on NBC. Bill starred as Anthony Dorian in the pilot, (later changed to Anthony Blake for the TV series) a magician who used his considerable talents of magic and illusion to fight crime and save damsels in distress. He even had a cool Boeing 747 Jet that he flew in. In the second season he apparently sold the jet and moved into the Magic Castle. In some of the later episodes, Bixby/Blake would teach someone a cool magic trick. I was amazed when I saw Mark Wilson’s name in the closing credits as a “Magic Consultant” or “Magical Advisor”. I knew that meant that Mark was teaching Bill Bixby all the sleight-of-hand for the show. I used to go to school, wearing a black corduroy vest I had that I thought made me look like a magician, and do tricks for the kids at school. Sometimes they found out the secret but other times they were amazed. Later, when the show was cancelled and was shown in summer reruns late at night, I had arranged for my mom to wake me up a few minutes before it aired, which was usually around 1:00 a.m., so I could watch it. This was before Tivo and even VCRs were invented. I spent many early mornings watching that show, a bit groggy but happy I could still watch it.


There were other shows too. I remember another show that ran Thanksgiving Day one year called “Magic Man”. (I know, it’s corny but I didn’t name it.) Bill Bixby and Mark Wilson were there (again) and so were a few more magicians. I seem to remember Norm Nielsen, Shimada, Peter Pitt and his dancing cane, and a guy named Slydini, who amazed and amused as he made balls of tissue paper vanish before the eyes of a volunteer. What the TV audience and the viewers at home saw, but the volunteer couldn’t, was Slydini tossing the wadded up balls of tissue paper over the shoulders of the spectator. And I remember Doug Henning and Siegfried and Roy appearing on the Merv Griffin Show. The thing I remember about Siegfried and Roy, other than the animals and the 1970’s hair, was the apparent on-air goof involving one of the tigers. As the pair concluded the illusion, one of them, and I don’t recall which, giggled like a schoolboy, looking at his partner and I distinctly heard him say twice, “he (urinated) on me”, referring to the tiger. Merv looked a bit miffed and gestured with one hand and they cut to a commercial. I don’t know if it was live or not but if it was taped, someone forgot to edit that part out.

As I grew older, magic took a backseat to other interests, i.e. girls, movies, and girls. I forgot about it for a few years and then a resurgence in magic specials on TV in the nineties revived my interest. Aside from the David Copperfield specials on CBS, there was the World’s Greatest Magic special in November 1994. I was once again riveted as I watched The Pendragons, Lance Burton, Greg Frewin, Brett Daniels, Jeff McBride, Max Maven, and others perform feats of prestidigitation. There were five WGM specials in all, the last one airing in 1998. The fourth one featured two magicians I had never seen before; Lennart Green, from Sweden, and Carl Cloutier, from Canada. Green did card magic, and one particular effect called the Laser Deal, made me wonder if my eyesight was going bad. He dealt a small packet of cards onto the table which actually vanished as he did so. Since I had the foresight to record all the magic specials, I was able to go back later and watch it again in slow motion. Even frame-by-frame, I was unable to figure out how he did it. Only recently I ordered his booklet on the Snap Deal which explains the secret in detail. Later in the show, Carl Cloutier produced a kiwi out of thin air, and promptly vanished it. He also did the same with a marker, and a deck of cards. I think Carl’s act stuck with me more than anyone else. I recently purchased one of his tapes in which he explains how to do most of the effects he performed on WGM IV, and I was very impressed. The man is a pro. His movements are so fluid and so effortless that even now, knowing how the tricks are done, I am still amazed. Mr. Cloutier knows his craft well and is an excellent teacher.


During the late nineties, while NBC ran a number of their own magic-themed shows, such as Hidden Secrets of Magic, World’s Wildest Magic, and Lance Burton: Master Magician, as well as all the World’s Greatest Magic specials, Fox Television was airing the notorious Magic Secrets Revealed specials, which understandably riled many in the magic circle. The latter starred a guy calling himself The Masked Magician and were always hosted/narrated by Mitch Pileggi, also known as Assistant Director Walter Skinner from The X-Files. While I liked Pileggi as Skinner, whoever wrote his dialogue for the Magic Revealed specials should be taken out and beaten repeatedly with a large hardback copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. It has to rank near the top of the list of the corniest, cheesiest, lamest dialogue ever spoken on television. There were about four specials in all before the Masked Magician decided to unmask himself, so we were subjected to quite a bit of cheese, along with the secrets. Some of the tricks and illusions were pretty good, but some of them I had never seen before. And some didn’t really seem to make sense. When the Masked Magician “exposed” the secret of levitating a woman as a board supported by a forklift backstage, many magicians scoffed and claimed that was not the method they used, and when you watch Brett Daniels, Lance Burton, David Copperfield, or Siegfried and Roy levitate someone, it’s obvious that a forklift is not practical and cannot be the technique they use.


Magic continues to evolve and grow, as it should. David Blaine, who looks more like your sister’s cool boyfriend than a magician, performs his own style of “street magic”, employing average people and passersby off the street, rather than glitzy costumes, synthesized percussion music and drop-dead gorgeous lady assistants. Blaine, dressed in a T-shirt and dark pants with sneakers, and sporting chin stubble, takes a bite out of a quarter, apparently twists his own arm in a bone-crunching display that will make you grimace in pain, revives a “dead” fly, levitates coins, and himself, and most recently has had himself frozen in a block of ice, and buried alive. Other magicians have also abandoned the black tie and top hat look for the more relaxed, casual, yet in-your-face “extreme” style. Still, I have to admit I do miss the old days with Mark Wilson in his ruffled shirts, zipping around the stage, jumping through the two halves of a miniature train that contained the apparently separated halves of his wife and assistant Nani. I miss the formal look made famous by Cardini, with top hat and tails, plucking cards from mid air. Lance Burton, Joseph Gabriel, and James Dimmare are among a few who still use this look in their act. On his first NBC special which aired a few years back, Burton, dressed in a black tuxedo, performed the act that won him the Grand Prix Award in Switzerland in 1982. Producing candles and doves from thin air, Burton was the epitome of the classic, elegant magician with his top hat and cane.


I know I will never be a famous magician, and that’s okay. In my younger days I would have loved to be just that, but now I just enjoy it as a simple hobby. I can do tricks for my children and family, and maybe a few friends, and the reward of seeing the astonishment on their faces is the same. I don’t have to levitate a woman, make a tiger or elephant vanish, or change a colored ball into a dove to gain pleasure from the art of magic. It’s an art, and art is supposed to entertain, right? I may not get a standing ovation for making an airplane appear from nowhere on stage, but the look on my youngest daughter’s face when Dad pulls a coin from her little ear is all the thanks I need. That’s the real magic in life; giving pleasure and happiness to other people.