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What Was Happening in Magic — September 1926
What Was Happening in Magic — September 1926
In September 1926, one of magic’s greatest performers watched a lifetime of theatrical history go up in flames. Magicians were still waging war against the spiritualists, Frank Van Hoven was remembering the days when he performed 18 shows a day for $12 a week, and a new correspondence course from Harlan Tarbell was beginning to change the way magicians would learn their craft for generations.
All of this was happening while vaudeville was still very much alive and Harry Houdini was once again finding ways to get his name onto the front pages. It is easy to look back at the 1920s as the romantic age of great stage magicians and packed vaudeville theaters, but the pages of the September 1926 Sphinx show a much more complicated world. There was tragedy, controversy, hard work, relentless self-promotion and a profession beginning to change in ways its performers probably could not yet fully appreciate.
The Tarbell System Begins to Change How Magic Is Taught
The Tarbell System Begins to Change How Magic Is Taught
One of the most important developments taking place in magic during 1926 was the introduction and promotion of Dr. Harlan Tarbell's correspondence course in magic. Today, almost every serious magician knows the name Tarbell, and the Tarbell Course in Magic eventually became one of the foundations of modern magical education. In 1926, however, this was something new and represented a very different approach to learning the craft.
Before courses like Tarbell's, learning magic could be a frustrating process. There were books, manuscripts and dealers' instructions, of course, but the information was scattered. A young magician might learn a card move from one source, a coin sleight from another and an illusion from somewhere else. Much depended upon who you knew, what books you could locate and what material you could get your hands on.
Tarbell approached the subject differently. He wasn't simply teaching tricks; his lessons attempted to teach magic as a complete performing art. Sleight of hand, misdirection, psychology, presentation and the mechanics behind the apparatus were all part of the education. Tarbell was also an accomplished illustrator, and that became one of the great strengths of the course. His drawings could show the exact position of a hand or finger in a way that pages of written description sometimes could not.
For a magician living hundreds of miles from a magic shop or an experienced performer, the idea was remarkable. Professional-quality magic instruction could arrive right in the mailbox, and the student could work through the material lesson by lesson. Looking back a century later, it is difficult to overstate Tarbell's influence. Generations of magicians learned from those lessons, and much of what we now think of as the basic curriculum of magic can be traced directly to Tarbell. In many ways, 1926 marked the beginning of a new era in learning magic.
Stage magician Adelaide Herrmann - 1905 - J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs
Tragedy for Adelaide Herrmann
Tragedy for Adelaide Herrmann
One of the saddest stories in the September issue concerned Madame Adelaide Herrmann. Following the sudden death of her husband, Alexander Herrmann — the famous "Herrmann the Great" — in 1896, Adelaide did something extraordinary for the time. Rather than allowing the show to disappear, she continued performing and eventually became a major attraction in her own right. She was often called the Queen of Magic, and the title was well deserved.
Her productions included large illusions, elaborate costumes and trained animals and birds. She even became famous for performing the dangerous bullet catch. By 1926, Adelaide represented a direct connection to the great theatrical magic shows of the late nineteenth century, but in the summer of that year disaster struck when a fire destroyed the New York warehouse where she stored much of the equipment and property accumulated during the long history of the Herrmann show.
The loss was enormous. More than 200 animals and birds reportedly perished in the fire, along with a caretaker. Adelaide was able to save only a few animals, including two small dogs and her white kitten, appropriately named Magic. According to accounts at the time, the kitten somehow survived a leap from the burning building.
The fire also destroyed far more than stage equipment. Inside the warehouse were items connected with decades of theatrical history — apparatus, costumes, correspondence, medals, personal memorabilia and property associated with Alexander Herrmann and the great Herrmann touring shows. Some of it could never be replaced.
We often think about the history of magic in terms of books, posters, apparatus and photographs that survive in collections today. The Herrmann fire is a reminder of how much history has simply disappeared. In only a few hours, an enormous piece of the physical history of one of magic's greatest performing families was gone.
The Battle Over "Margery" Continues
The Battle Over "Margery" Continues
Another subject that dominated the magic world during this period was spiritualism. The debate was not simply an academic argument between believers and skeptics. Many of the leading magicians of the day were actively involved in investigating mediums, séances and claims of communication with the dead, and one of the most famous cases involved Boston medium Mina Crandon, better known as Margery.
Margery's séances attracted scientists, journalists and prominent members of society. During the sessions, strange events supposedly occurred through the assistance of her deceased brother Walter. Tables moved, bells rang, voices appeared in darkened rooms and objects seemed to move without anyone touching them. To believers, Margery offered possible evidence of life after death. To many magicians, however, she was simply doing tricks.
Oscar S. Teale took up the subject forcefully in The Sphinx. Teale examined the conditions surrounding Margery's séances and argued that there was nothing supernatural about what was happening. From a magician's point of view, the séance room offered nearly perfect working conditions. Darkness made observation difficult, sitters were often required to hold hands or maintain certain positions, and attention could be directed away from important areas. Under those conditions, Teale argued, many of the supposed manifestations could be accomplished through ordinary physical methods, misdirection and mechanical devices.
This was part of a much larger battle being fought by magicians during the 1920s, most famously by Harry Houdini. There was also an important distinction being made. Magicians openly admitted that they were creating illusions and the audience knew it was entertainment. A fraudulent medium, however, might use very similar techniques while claiming that the manifestations came from the dead. For magicians such as Houdini and Teale, that crossed a very different line.
The Medium Margery, Mina Crandon, posed with Harry Houdini, J. Malcom Bird, and O.D. Munn, members of the committee which investigated her Boston seances
Frank Van Hoven
Frank Van Hoven Remembers the Vaudeville Grind
Frank Van Hoven Remembers the Vaudeville Grind
One of the most entertaining pieces in the issue came from comedy magician Frank Van Hoven. Van Hoven was one of the great comedy magicians of vaudeville, and his letter to The Sphinx editor Dr. A. M. Wilson reads less like formal correspondence and more like listening to an old performer telling stories after a show.
At the time, Van Hoven had secured an impressive 41-week booking on the B. F. Keith circuit, but rather than simply bragging about his success, he looked back at some of the less glamorous jobs that came before it. Some of those jobs were brutal. Van Hoven remembered working as many as 18 shows a day in cheap five-cent theaters along Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, and for all that work the salary was around $12 a week. Eighteen shows a day is difficult to imagine by modern standards, but for performers working the lower end of vaudeville, those kinds of schedules were part of paying their dues.
Van Hoven recalled working alongside Marian Czajkowski, better known as The Great Lester, one of the most influential ventriloquists of the period. Lester would later become especially important as a mentor to Edgar Bergen. According to Van Hoven, Lester sometimes worked the aisle between shows, using his voice and patter to help keep things moving and give the performers a little breathing room.
There was another interesting name connected with those early theaters. The manager was Carl Laemmle, who would eventually become one of the founders of Universal Pictures and one of the most important men in the early motion picture industry. Van Hoven joked about how far Laemmle had come since those nickel-show days, describing him in his own phonetic style as a Hollywood "million air." That kind of line was typical Van Hoven.
Performing at Sing Sing
Performing at Sing Sing
Van Hoven also remembered performing at Sing Sing Prison with magician and magic dealer Frank Ducrot. Ducrot was well known in New York magic circles and was associated with the Hornmann Magic Company. Van Hoven joked that prisoners serving 20-year sentences became nervous whenever they heard Ducrot was coming back to perform because they were afraid his act might last longer than their sentences.
It was a joke between performers, but Van Hoven followed it with genuine praise. He admired Ducrot's ability to take very ordinary objects and keep an audience entertained, and that observation says something about the magic culture of the time. The professionals understood that the real secret was not necessarily the apparatus. It was the performer and what he could do with it.
Frank Ducrot
"Who Deen Knee"
"Who Deen Knee"
Van Hoven couldn't resist taking a friendly shot at the most famous magician in the world, Harry Houdini. He referred to him phonetically as "Who Deen Knee" and called him a "DADDY" when it came to getting front-page publicity.
There was certainly some truth in that. Houdini understood publicity perhaps better than any magician before him, and in 1926 he was still finding ways to dominate newspaper headlines. One of his recent headline-grabbing feats involved remaining sealed inside an underwater coffin for roughly an hour and a half, another example of Houdini's ability to turn almost anything into a public event. Whether he was escaping from handcuffs, challenging spiritualists, performing a dangerous stunt or simply announcing something dramatic, newspapers paid attention.
His fellow performers noticed as well. Van Hoven's little jab was funny because everyone in magic knew exactly what he meant.
A Remarkable Moment in Magic History
A Remarkable Moment in Magic History
Taken together, the September 1926 Sphinx paints a remarkably complete picture of the magic world during the final years of the great vaudeville era. Tarbell was helping create a new way to teach magic, Adelaide Herrmann was dealing with the devastating destruction of a lifetime of theatrical history, magicians were still deeply involved in the public battle over spiritualism and fraudulent mediums, and performers like Frank Van Hoven were remembering the long hours, terrible salaries and strange theaters where many of them had learned their trade.
There was glamour in magic during the 1920s, but there was also hard work, tragedy, competition and controversy. Perhaps that is what makes reading these old issues of The Sphinx so interesting. We already know the famous names and how many of their stories eventually turned out, but the readers opening the September 1926 issue did not. For them, this wasn't magic history. It was simply what was happening in magic that month.
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