The Last Greatest MAgician in the World
By William Pack | Magician, Historian, and Educator, https://libraryprogramming.com/
Otis Lithograph Co. Thurston the Great Magician the Wonder Show of the Universe. , 1914. [Cleveland, O.: Otis Lithograph Co., approximately] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2014636959/.Howard Thurston
B. July 20, 1869 - D. April 13, 1936)
Thurston had a difficult, abusive home life in Columbus, Ohio. Around the age of ten, he ran away from home. Howard spent years living the life of a hobo, jumping freight trains. He earned money working odd jobs and as a petty criminal. Joining a criminal gang, he was nicknamed "The Nim Kid" because he was so small and nimble. He would be shoved through a transom (a window over a door) to open the door from the inside. Later, he learned to pickpocket. Thurston was arrested in New York and should have gone to jail, but he had a literal (and convenient) "come to Jesus" moment in front of the head of the New York Prisons, a devout Christian man named William Round. Round took Thurston under his wing, educated him, and set him on a reformed path.
During those days and inspired by seeing Alexander Herrmann's show, a young Thurston acquired a copy of Professor Hoffmann's Modern Magic. This is one of the few texts at the time in which an amateur could learn professional quality magic. With a well-worn deck of cards and obsessive practice, Thurston was quite adept at sleight of hand at a young age.
He bounced around for a while after his schooling ended, always at risk of falling into old criminal ways, but then he found himself in Albany, NY. There, he saw a poster advertising a Herrmann the Great performance at Beeker Hall. He bought a ticket to the show. It was more marvelous than in his childhood memories. Thurston waited by the stage door but lacked the courage to speak to the great magician. He followed the troupe to their next stop in Syracuse and watched the show again. This was the moment he decided to be a magician.
Thurston's early show business career couldn't have been rougher. He worked as an "outside talker" (barker, in layman's terms) in front of an exhibit in the African Dahomey Village at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He managed touring "kootch" (girlie) shows. These shows pushed the boundaries of decency with their exotic dancing. Many of these shows crossed the line into prostitution. Thurston developed his playing card act and traveled across the western United States in buckboard wagons, presenting a rough-and-tumble review show.
Howard brought on his younger brother, Harry, to help manage the show. Harry was Howard without refinement. Harry was coarse, always looking for an angle to make a quick buck. He ran dime museums and nickelodeons in the seediest part of Chicago. He was well connected to Chicago's criminal elements. Harry was always there reminding Howard of his unsavory past, loaning him money, suggesting investments, or much worse.
In 1897, traveling at the lowest end of show business, 28-year-old Howard met 15-year-old Grace Butterworth and made her his first wife. Grace became part of the show, learning several dances and playing the piano for Howard's magic. Grace was awed at Howard's magic and hard work. He rose early every morning to practice, spending hours in front of the mirror running through his card routine. Grace would become a tough professional on and off the stage, an essential part of their eventual successes.
For the moment, they worked in the western states, mining towns, outposts, the roughest county. Just beneath Howard's gentlemanly demeanor lay a conman, and he used those skills to survive. Howard and Grace used an old con game to take care of their hotel bills. Since he had no cash, Howard offered an expensive gold watch as payment. When the deal was agreed to, he switched it for a worthless duplicate. Once, they were so impoverished that they ate their co-star, Socrates, the duck.
Once, they were so impoverished
that they ate their co-star,
Socrates, the duck.
When he was 30, Howard Thurston sat on a park bench in Union Square, New York, hopeless and destitute. His show business aspirations had made him a hardened professional, but he was virtually unemployable. He was about to change that.
Thurston couldn't get a meeting with vaudeville agent Walter Plimmer, so he forced his way into Plimmer's office and locked the door behind him. The startled agent watched the impromptu show. Plimmer smiled and sent them to see Tony Pastor, the legendary king of vaudeville.
Thurston got his booking. Grace was booked separately for her blackface dance act, leaving Thurston without an assistant. He borrowed eighty cents from his landlady and placed a small newspaper ad for a young "colored" assistant.
Only one boy responded to the ad, 12-year-old George Davis White. George had no hesitation about getting to work or learning the details of the act. Thurston offered the boy room and board and fifty cents a week. Grace stitched a costume for him and showed him how to handle each prop and stand on stage.
George's first performance on Tony Pastor's stage was flawless. Howard's first performance was . . . not good. He struggled through the act, fumbling his lines and breaking out in flop sweat. Grace reassured him, "It's fine. It's just all new. You'll have them jumping on the table tonight." Grace was right. By the evening show, there were peals of laughter and loud applause. George White, his new lucky charm, was alongside him onstage—his principal assistant—in every performance for the rest of his life. Offstage, George would become second in command. When he talked, people listened.
Thurston was in the right place at the right time and became a vaudeville star. Then, in November of 1900, he went to conquer England. After his first night, he rose to the top of the bill, co-starring with W.C. Fields, who was presenting his comedy tramp juggling act. Edward, the Prince of Wales, was a magic fan and visited Howard and Grace backstage several times.
Outwardly, things were good, but Howard had dark moods and several flirtations with other women. His marriage with Grace was crumbling. There was some violence.
By 1902, Thurston dreamed of leaving vaudeville's short turns (10-20 minutes) and building a full evening show (90 minutes). The $10,000 he set aside wasn't enough. He borrowed from fellow performers, like Houdini, and got a much larger loan from his brother Harry. Howard engaged the Princess Theater in London for a trial performance. Thurston's new lavish act was a hit with the agents.
A few days later, Grace asked for a divorce. The abuse had to end. She was now 20 years old, a hardened show business professional, and on her own.
In 1905, still tinkering with his big show and performing his card act in vaudeville to make ends meet, he decided to take his show to Australia. He left with the largest show in the world and without a cent to his name. On the trip, he and one of his assistants, 19-year-old Beatrice Foster, kindled a romance. By the time they arrived, he was calling her Mrs. Thurston. They married in 1910 and divorced four years later. The Australian tour expanded to Japan, China, and India. Finally, it was time to come home. When he got there, Harry Kellar was waiting.
The wily businessman Kellar had been looking for a successor, someone to whom he could sell his act and name. Thurston had the ambition and money to do it. For the next year, the two magicians would travel and perform together. America's most beloved magician, Kellar, introducing his heir, the next great magician Howard Thurston. The tour ended with one final show with the official passing of "The Mantle of Magic."
With Thurston in full control, he threw out much of Kellar's old Victorian magic repertoire. Thurston wanted spectacle. He added bigger, flashier illusions. But they weren't always better. Kellar couldn't let go. He had "spies" in Thurston's cast. He tried to influence, directly and indirectly, the form of the show. Thurston had his own ideas. Kellar was unaware of the real problem. Thurston was heavily in debt. In August 1912, he mortgaged the entire show to a loan shark for $1000. Thurston always believed he'd figure out something. Unexpectedly, his third marriage would be that something.
The wily businessman Kellar had been looking for a successor,
someone to whom he could sell his act and name.
Thurston had the ambition
and money to do it.
It took Thurston only three months to remarry after his divorce from Beatrice, this time to Nina Leotha Fielding Allison. Leotha was a showgirl, a dancer, and a comedian, but she did not become part of the onstage show. According to an article in the 1925 Buffalo Courier, she acted as "manager, director, costumer, critic and companion." Leotha exhibited an attention to detail that Thurston lacked. She would watch the show, scribbling notes on a pad of paper. After the show and with notepad in hand, Thurston would line up his cast and crew for a formal critique.
Thurston adopted Leotha's daughter, the five-year-old Jane, after they were married. He was a doting father. At age 16, Jane performed her own magic act as a featured attraction in the 1928 Thurston show. Much to her shock, she saw that the marquee read "Thurston, The World's Greatest Magician – Co-Starring His Daughter Jane." She continued to work in various capacities on the Thurston shows until his demise in 1935. She inherited the show. She planned to mount her own illusion show and learned the intricate choreography of her father's famous Floating Ball and Spirit Cabinet routines. Eventually, she gave up on the project, opting to appear in nightclubs as a magician, singer, and dancer until World War II.
Thurston and Leotha built an extravaganza with more than forty tons of apparatus and costumes. The show became an institution and, in its day, it had the same sort of trademark prestige as a Ziegfeld revue or the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Later in Thurston's career, when the theater shows were difficult to book, he found success in motion picture presentation houses, enormous movie palaces, that offered shortened stage shows as special attractions. The work was grueling, but there was no question that Thurston the Magician was still a great draw, packing these theaters and earning the magician an enviable salary.
On April 8, 1934, Leotha died from either an accidental or intentional barbiturate overdose.
At the close of the 1935 season, Thurston married Paula Clark. She was 27 and a former assistant on the show. Howard was 66.
On October 6, Thurston suffered a stroke. It paralyzed his left arm. He never performed again. On March 30, there was a second stroke. He died on April 13, 1936, at 1:39 PM.
William Lindsay Gresham, the author of Nightmare Alley and a biographer of Houdini, first saw Thurston perform in 1916. "I had no preconceived notions as to what a magician should be like, but from the first moment when he began to speak, I knew. I knew I was seeing greatness, and I have never changed my opinion for all the magicians I have ever seen. Thurston was the most magical. His voice was the most musical I ever heard. It rippled. It purled. It chanted, effortless, apparently artless, so profoundly moving that a word from him was misdirection enough."
Author's note: Credit to Jim Steinmeyer for this quote and other biographical information. I highly recommend his book, The Last Greatest Magician in the World. It is a fantastic look at Thurston and the magic world in that era. It is well worth your time.
