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On stage @ Last Speakeasy party

This Friday, December 1st is the annual Last Speakeasy party at the Chicago History Museum. I will be the host & magician of the Last Speakeasy Vaudeville show. I’ll be joined on stage with the “hot jazz” piano playing of Charles Kim and the dancing sensation —The Galaxie Girls.

Tickets are still available for a night of “Jazz Age” fun with a big band orchestra, dancing, gaming tables and vaudeville.

Get your tickets, put on your bow tie, fold up your pocket square, flapper girls will be in pearls and satin. Outrageous is encouraged!

The Galaxie Girls

Novelty gambling tables

Alan Gresik Swing Era band

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Magic at CHM last night of prohibition party

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Max Malini at the Edgewater Beach Hotel

Great magic is daring — a surreptitious bit of sleight-of-hand executed right under a spectator’s nose, and no magician had more chutzpah then Max Malini. Malini performed his original close-up magic for Presidents McKinley, Harding, Collidge and Roosevelt, The King of Siam, several English Kings as well as the Rockefellers, Morgans and Vanderbilts. He was a star amongst the well connected and the well to do.

He lived for a number of years at the Congress Hotel on Michigan Ave. and often hung out at The Edgewater Beach Hotel rubbing elbows with Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Charlie Chaplin, Nat King Cole, and many baseball players, including Babe Ruth, who appreciated the proximity to Wrigley. The bands played under both the sun and moon for dancers on the open air marble dance floor.

Malini imigrated from Poland as a small child and learned magic from “Professor Seiden” a magician-saloon keeper in the Bowery. As a young man he earned his living performing in saloons. He was bold and brash. “He loved to be the center of attraction. He was anything but suave, but he was likable" commented a friend.

At the Edgewater Beach Hotel bar Malini drank with friends and performed his astounding sleight-of-hand magic such as biting the button of a gentleman’s coat and restoring it, stabbing eight previously selected cards from a deck spread upon the table while blindfolded, and, his finale, lifting his hat off the table to reveal an enormous block of ice.

David Bamberg who had met all of the great magicians from the beginning for the 20th century, asserted that: “Unquestionably, Malini was the king. Beside him Houdini was a shrinking violet. I have never seen a man in show business with such colossal crust.”

Malini died in 1942 in Honolulu where he was performing for the troops. He’s buried in an unmarked grave at the Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park. Bibliography:Bamberg, David. Illusion show: a life in magic. D. Meyer, Magic Books, 1991. Vernon, Dai, et al. Malini and his magic. L & L Pub., 1999. Kaplan, George G. “WE KNEW MAX MALINI.” Hugard's Magic Monthly, vol. 9, June 1951, p. 800.

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Magic at Tre Kronor restaurant

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The ever determined Harry Kellar

Harry Kellar was one of America’s greatest magicians. He was famous for his Levitation of Princess Karnac considered a “marvel of the 20th century.” According to his contemporaries, Kellar got to the top of our profession not because he was considered a great magical talent but due mostly to his dogged resolve.

 His tenaciousness appeared early. At 18 years old Harry arrived in South Bend, Indiana with a his prop filled suitcase. There he met a man named Baily who offered to “manage” Harry’s budding career. Together they booked a hall and Harry packed the house and made a killing. Unfortunately, before the final performance ended, Baily skipped town with the entire receipts.

Penniless, Kellar boarded a freight train to Chicago. Once there, he hopped aboard a Chicago and Northwestern train bound for Milwaukee on a cold and snowy evening. He was hoping that he could "work" the conductor for a free ride. The conductor wasn't interested and kicked Kellar off the train right in front of The Rose Hill Cemetery just north of Andersonville. Stranded, broke and cold, the ever determined Kellar trudged along the snowy tracks on foot 40 miles to Waukegan.

Kellar recounts this story in his autobiography and notes that being dumped off right in front of the cemetery had a most depressing effect but that he had no intention of laying his magical ambition in the grave just then. This past winter while I was performing at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, I visited Todd Karr who took me down the street to the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery where we paid our respects at Kellar’s grave.

Harry Kellar was one of America’s greatest magicians.

Rosehill Cemetry (located on Rowe’s hill a local tavern owner).

Chicago & Northwestern Train Depot.

the ever determined Kellar trudged along the snowy tracks on foot 40 miles to Waukegan.

Rosehill Cemetery opened in 1864.

Chicago & Northwestern train station

Chicago & Northwestern Train.

Frances Pearce and child 1864 Rosehill Cemetery.

Kellar was famous for his Levitation of Princess Karnac considered a “marvel of the 20th century.” 

At the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery with Todd Karr.

Kellar recounts that being dumped off right in front of the cemetery had a most depressing effect.

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Timeless Magic’s “Palace intrigue”

“The palace intrigue behind Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition is alive and well in this tidy 60-minute act from magician Sean Masterson. The narrative revolves around a cryptic coin dating back to the World's Fair, acquired by Masterson when he was a boy.”

—The Chicago Reader reviewing Timeless Magic at Theater Wit

The solid silver commemorative coin from the Columbian Exposition belonged to my great Uncle Ed. He passed it on to his younger brother, my grandfather.

The Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893 has always loomed as a magical place in my imagination. I’m not the only one. Chicago resident Frank L. Baum took his inspiration for the Land of Oz from the “White City”.

What fascinates me is how the fair brought together many of the notable players of the following century. Nikola Tesla beat out Thomas Edison to generate the fair’s electricity with his alternating current (Edison won the 20th century with his direct current). George Ferris constructed the very first Ferris Wheel on the fairgrounds to compete with the visual wonder of the Eiffel Tower from the 1889 Paris fair. The Yerkes telescope was built for the fair as the world’s largest refracting telescope (It’s still the largest and you can still visit it today). Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination ten years later would kick off a series of events leading to World War I, also visited the fair.

My main fascination is the magicians who performed and passed through the fair including Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston. I include both of these magicians in my show Timeless Magic now playing at Theater Wit. Much has been written about Houdini. But, in the beginning of the 20th century Thurston’s name was far more synonymous with magic. An extraordinarily adept manipulator of playing cards, Thurston went on to command one the great illusion shows of the 20th century. For 35 years he crisscrossed the entire country with his full-evening show. The sets and illusions for his lavish spectacle filled eight railroad cars.

Billy Robinson is another magician who came to Chicago for the fair and is the main character in my show at The Wit. In 1893, like Houdini and Thurston, he was also an unknown prestidigitateur who would later skyrocket to fame.

The show “functions as a historical anthology, highlighting the performers and the tricks... that informed much of magic’s golden era.”

—The Chicago Reader reviewing Timeless Magic at Theater Wit

Bibliography:

Steinmeyer, Jim (2011). "The Last Great Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the battles of the American wizards". New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin

My ever-dapper great Uncle Ed (center) from whom I inherited a silver commemorative coin from the Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Much has been written about Houdini. But, in the beginning of the 20th century Thurston’s name was far more synonymous with magic. 

Nikola Tesla beat out Thomas Edison to generate the fair’s electricity with his alternating current (Edison won the 20th century with his direct current).

Chicago resident Frank L. Baum took his inspiration for the Land of Oz from the “White City”

The Yerkes telescope was built for the fair as the world’s largest refracting telescope (It’s still the largest and you can still visit it today).