“Howdinis? You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. That’s one reason so much advertising from that era harps on establishing identity: ‘the one and only.’ The genuine! The real! The authentic! There was room for all these competitors because magic was flourishing. But then the movies really started to come on, and vaudeville began to die out. And a lot of magic acts went down with the ship.”
“How come?”
“Magic couldn’t make the transition to film. It just doesn’t play on the screen. Not the big screen, and later down the road – not on TV, either.”
“Hunh.”
“So then the epicenter of magic relocated to Chicago. This was in the twenties and Chicago was where all the rail lines met, the home away from home for fleets of traveling salesmen. You had the merchandise mart, and all that. Magicians got a kind of second wind working trade shows – still probably the biggest employers of magicians.”
“Trade shows? You’re kidding.”
“Oh, no. Because trade shows are essentially live entertainment. Say you’re trying to attract attention to your booth. Nothing like a magician. People will stop and watch.”
“Where else do magicians work these days – besides Vegas and trade shows?”
“Cruise ships – there’s quite a bit of work there. Birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, adult residences.” He taps his fingers on the table.
I start taking notes. There must be associations for cruise ships, for trade shows, for magicians. I could paper them all with the Piper sketch.
“And Ren fests,” Karl adds. “They hire a good many magicians.”
“Ren fests? What’s that?”
“Renaissance festivals. Pretty popular.”
Renaissance festivals. It’s one of those moments when the past crashes in on me. My head fills with vignettes of the day at the fair: the look on Sean’s face as he bore down on his brass rubbing, Kevin’s slightly alarmed expression as he stared at the falcon perched on the leather-gloved arm of its handler…
I concentrate on writing in my notebook.
Karl must see something on my face, because he asks if I’m okay. I mutter about jet lag and the moment passes and he’s talking again about magic’s geographical journey. “So, magicians congregated in Chicago for a while, say 1930 to 1962, then the whole scene moved to L.A.”
“Why L.A.?”
Leo shrugs. “A well-known magician bought an old mansion there and opened a club. Called it the Magic Castle. Eventually, the Castle drew more and more magicians out to the West Coast. And L.A. became the new epicenter of magic.”
“Who was this magician?”
“Mark Mitchell – probably doesn’t mean anything to you.”
I shook my head.
“That really points up the decline of the art,” Karl says, with a sad shake of the head. “I mean to me, as a student of magic, the deterioration of its status is quite remarkable.”
“It’s changed? Magic shows seem quite popular here.”
“Maybe so, but that’s an anomaly. Going back into history, though, magic was once the highest of all the arts, its performers famous the world over. Back in the day, attending the performance of a magician inspired awe and wonder. That, alas, is gone. Today, the word magic retains its elevated status only when used as an adjective to describe something else.”
“What do you mean?”
“If a performance is sheer magic, a work of art magical, a meal so memorable the chef is called a magician, this is still high praise indeed. But magic itself, as a performing art, is no longer even considered an art, but a series of cheap tricks – or more expensively staged illusions.”
“You’re right.”
“And its leading lights from the past are all but forgotten. Like Mark Mitchell, of the Magic Castle. I know you’ve never heard of him, but how about Dai Vernon?”
I shake my head.
“Just as a test: Apart from Houdini and the guys working Vegas today like Copperfield, give me the names of a few famous magicians from the past.”
“Let’s see.” I frown, concentrate, look up at him. “Mark Mitchell and… Karl Kavanaugh!”
Karl laughs, a big happy sound that makes me like him.
“Well, not that you really care about all this, but I’m close to the end now,” he says. “New York, Chicago, L.A.” He ticks them off on his elegant fingers. “And then in eighty-five or so, when Vegas started to take off, magic relocated here.”
“Why Vegas?”
“Because magic is at its best live and in person, and the oddity of Vegas is that it’s the one place in the country where stage acts flourish. Not just theater, but music, dancing, stand-up, and… magic. That’s why I said the popularity of magic here was an anomaly.”
I thought about what he said, about live acts being so popular in Vegas, about all those gigantic billboards advertising the shows of shopworn stars and celebrities I’d never heard of. “Why is that?”
The waitress takes our orders. Kavanaugh orders lemonade. I order a club sandwich and coffee. “Watch out,” he says. “That sandwich will be the size of an aircraft carrier.”
“Mr. Kavanaugh,” the waitress scolds, “maybe your friend has a better appetite than you.”
“I warned you,” Kavanaugh says. “So where were we?”
“You were telling me why magic is so popular here.”
“Right. Well, it’s not just magic, it’s all live acts. People can’t gamble all the time, and just as no one comes to Vegas to buy a lottery ticket, no one comes to Vegas to go to the multiplex, either. It’s a unique place. Look at the big hotels. They don’t even need signs. They are signs. They’re like Hollywood sets, backdrops for the tourists and conventioneers to play against. The old guy from Scranton, the couple from Huntsville, they come to Vegas and suddenly they’re starring in their own movie. The glitz is everywhere and so are they. Because they aren’t just in Vegas, they’re also in Cairo, Paris, Venice, and New York New York – only with showgirls, slots, and free drinks. They pay to see live shows because that’s what you do in Vegas. You take in a show.” He opens his hands in an expansive gesture. “The ladies like it. And magic is popular because it works so well on stage.” He leans toward me with a shy smile. “In fact, I have a theory about it.”
I make a gesture. “Please.”
“We’re all so jaded by filmed special effects that almost nothing can really break through and startle us anymore. We look at something really mind-blowing, some stunt or effect that was actually quite difficult to pull off – but it doesn’t blow our minds. Not anymore. We don’t even care how it’s done.”
“It was done with computers, with stuntmen, whatever.”
“Exactly. That’s why magic doesn’t play well on television, because anything can be done on film. I mean in a way, what is a movie but an extended magic effect? We’re seeing a reality that we know is not real. When we see something on film, we know it’s fake. But when you see something in real time, with your own eyes, you still trust your senses. So even the simplest trick provokes amazement. I can do a card effect and watch mouths fall open. Magic is still magic in other words, when people see it up close. It still provokes wonder. It still gets that response every magician is after: ‘How’d you do that?’ And by the way – I never tell.”
“Never?”
“Almost never. It’s too disappointing. Some very complex devices and mechanisms enable certain magical illusions, don’t get me wrong. And back in the day, magicians were on the cutting edge of technology and mechanical invention. There are some amazing automata from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, just wonderful stuff. So I don’t want to minimize the role of ingenious devices. But pretty often the secret to the most amazing effect is something simple, even crude. Some wax, a string, a magnet. You hate to pull the curtains aside like that. That’s not why people come to magic shows.”