Kirkham Magic: Linking Ring Photo Quiz from May 2011

Welcome to the Calvacade of Magic Presented By Kirk Kirkham

My Father was the Magician known professionally as Kirk Kirkham, his real name was Charles and many folks called him Chuck. He lived from 1926 to 2001. He was an active professional performer from the time he was sixteen years old. Magic was the only living he ever had. He toured with the USO after World War II, did the spook show circuit and television extensively in the 1950's, did thousands of club dates, school shows, and more television in the 60's, continued performing in the 70's but also became a well regarded prop maker who produced equipment for other magicians and attractions around the country.

Currently, David Copperfield has the largest private collection of illusions in the world, but prior to his success and collection, my father may very well have been the previous holder of that title. He owned parts of Thurston's Wonder Show of the Universe and Mysteries of India. He acquired much of the core of his collection from Will Rock back in the early 50's but continued to add to it the rest of his life. He knew and worked with Harry Blackstone Sr., Percy Abbot was a mentor to him. Dante was a personal friend, and he owned famous illusions that belonged to all of them.

My goal is to keep his legacy alive here in cyber space, and provide some historical context to the Southern California Magic scene in the 60's and 70's. I have had virtually no contact with the Magic world since my Mother passed away in 1994. My Dad suffered from Alzheimer's in his last years and he could not write the book that he always said he would get to someday. I don't know enough about magic to write competently concerning history, practice and technique. I can however provide an historical context for my Father, a man who knew almost everything about magic during the 20th Century. He had a huge library, subscribed to dozens of magazines, and had met every important magician of the second half of the century. He was consulted by many of the experts that now make up the intelligentsia of the magic community. He was also a mentor to many fine magicians and scholars of magic. I hope to hear from some of those people as a result of this blog.

Welcome to the Magical World of Kirk Kirkham.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Linking Ring Photo Quiz from May 2011

This is the cover of the Linking Ring Magazine from earlier this year. Linking Ring is published by the I.B.M., International Brotherhood of Magicians. It is one of the many organizations that my father was a member of. He was not really a political kind of guy when it came to Magic Hierarchies. He was not a snob about magic, but he did see that there was a difference between professional and amateur organizations. He did not want to immerse himself in the bureaucracy that comes from running a professional organization. He was a working performer and did not always have the time to devote to such energies. He was heavily involved with the Hollywood Chapter of I.B.M. Ring 21, the Carl Fleyming Ring.

This was a feature in the current years May edition, placed by my good friend Gary Frank. Gary was a friend of my fathers in his later years. Gary has been of incalculable assistance in helping me sort through all of my Dad's materials and also brokering sales of much of his remaining equipment. He is as much as anyone, helping to keep my Dad's name alive in Magic circles. Let's face it, the new generation does not want to be weighed down by the history and battles of old timers. There are new mountains to climb, but long before Criss Angel, David Blaine and the other well known performers of today came to prominence, the magic world was dominated by vaudeville performers and the generation of magicians that followed them.

Gary is a magic historian, who has written books on some of the early twentieth century magicians. He is currently working on a article for MAGIC Magazine on my father. I can never repay him for the kindness he has shown us by his friendship. The work of digging through literally tons of materials that may have worth or may be junk is thankless. He arranged this little photo quizzes appearance in the Linking Ring Magazine. The write up is very nice.

We saw Penn and Teller in Vegas a few years ago and they have a clever act, I do think however that they play a little fast and loose with the way they see themselves. They are Magicians, not a couple of guys who just know some cool stuff. I remember how they went to pains to separate themselves from some guy in a greasy tuxedo, pulling rabbits out of a hat. Many of the same tricks they do have been done by those who came before them. I know one way to be seen as hip is to diss those that younger people see as old fashioned, but I don't think old fashioned is uncool. It always felt cool to me to tell my friends what it was that my dad did for a living. My Dad has been dead for nearly ten years now, and he was not all there for almost ten years before that, but I still remember him and the way he loved working an audience. Look at the picture featured in the magazine, that dude and those girls were cool. Thanks Gary for keeping this part of Magic History alive.

3 comments:

Benjamin.November 16, 2011 at 4:41 PM
Hey Richard,

I am enjoying reading this blog, (just started to, in fact.) Just looked to me like there weren't many comments, and thought I'd let you know I was reading.

-Benjamin
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Richard KirkhamNovember 16, 2011 at 10:35 PM
Thanks, I'm just getting started. Are you a Magician, or did you just happen by? I haven't really been promoting the site yet, but as soon as that article gets published, I will try to get some more readers. Hope you enjoy and keep coming back.--Richard
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Benjamin.November 17, 2011 at 12:26 AM
I would call myself an amateur magician.
I am interested in magic, and now some stage magic and its history.

Good luck,

-Benjamin
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A Life in Magic: Here in Southern California

As a kid, I’d imagined myself following in my father’s footsteps and becoming a performer. I had magic kits, and puppets and a variety of equipment readily available. What I lacked was discipline. Someone once told me that the difference between your current status and expertise in a field was 10,000 hours of hard work. When I got to high school I discovered girls and debate, and suddenly, spending time on the technical craft of performing magic seemed less desirable to me. My father was never disappointed in my choice. He allowed me to stay a part of his world even though that part was on the sidelines. He was one of those people who understood the level of dedication that was required to be really good at your craft.

From the time he was a kid he wanted to be a magician, and that is what he worked his whole life at doing. He practiced and performed and read and dreamed. He talked with everyone who was interested in magic about everything connected to performing. When I was young my friends thought it was strange that my dad would still be asleep at ten or eleven in the morning. They did not understand that some people simply thrive at night. When he came home from a show or an evening with his friends in magic my father did not sit in front of the television; he read. He was a sponge when it came to magical knowledge. He listened to friends like Percy Abbott, Harry Blackstone, Bill Larsen Sr., and Dante tell stories and share secrets. He sought out magicians of all stripes to answer questions and to ask them. He acquired books and articles and lectures and blueprints and anything else he could lay his hands on, that dealt with magic and performing. When we needed funds to provide for his care in his last years it pained me to have to sell his library: I knew it was one of the most unique in the world.

He was more than just a fountain of knowledge though; he was a performer. Being on stage is where he came to life and made his mark. While he was an accomplished illusionist and a talented close-up performer, my father’s greatest strength lay in interacting with an audience. He loved having the little kids come up from the audience to do the hats and pants routine – just playing a silly, wonderful game. When they laughed and smiled, he was in his element. Lots of magicians do a guillotine trick, but Kirkham did ten minutes of audience participation, comedy and drama. The trick was the climax of the segment but it was hardly the highlight. His byplay with the two brave boys who volunteered to be onstage was where most of the fun was. When the curtain opened and an illusion was performed, my dad was as good as anyone else. In front of the curtain, setting up the scene or doing a small effect with patter he was better than everyone else.

We worked all kinds of shows and venues. Club dates at nightspots, corporate picnics in parks, high school auditoriums and legitimate theaters for full evening extravaganzas. When he did TV, I always felt special and made sure to tell my friends to watch ABC on Saturday night or CBS Wednesday afternoon. My older brother worked on my father’s show, along with my mother, for years before I was much help.

From 1965 to 1975, I went on all the state fair shows and company Christmas parties. My younger brother was in the act as well but by the time he was able to do some of the things I got to do my dad had slowed down a bit, so I can safely say that I was the only reason he could offer $10,000 to anyone who could prove he used two girls in the Thurston sawing a woman in half act. And so I got to discover that the smell of sawdust did a lot to minimize any claustrophobia I might have experienced as a kid. Speaking of sawdust, one year my Dad and my older brother, Chris, ran away with the circus; when it came to town, my younger brother, Kirk, and I joined for a couple of days – Kirk sold programs alongside the kid in the circus who was a fantastic juggler – so Kirk and I got the experience but did not have to caravan in a trailer for six months like Chris and Dad did.

In the fifties Dad and Mom worked in Vegas with Orson Welles. In the sixties Phyllis Diller asked Dad to come to Vegas and work with her. He had lots of chances to be a pioneer in sin city prestidigitation, but after all the issues he had with my troubled older brother Dad thought that relocating to Vegas, which was not the corporate tourist friendly spot it is today, was not a good idea. With two young boys at home, he sought a more traditional upbringing. We were kids of the suburbs, but show business and Hollywood were the office that Ward Cleaver went to each day instead of the insurance company. We got to meet movie stars and eat in fancy restaurants. We saw the eccentrics on Hollywood Boulevard before it filled up with drug users and homeless people. And then aside from the mundane Hollywood insanity, there were all my parents friends.

We had close friends who practically lived with us and helped out with the shows Dad was putting together. There were young performers from the Long Beach Mystics who came and milked my Dad’s brain for information and exchanged time working in the show for all of the encouragement they got. We had old timers from vaudeville sit down at the dining room table and regale us with stories of the past. Business associates visited, ate and became our friends as well as our parents friends. We had the star of the Moscow circus, at the height of the Cold War, sharing secrets even though he spoke little English. One time my Dad got into a fistfight with another magician in Baja California while we were down there to see a magic show. My mother had to go out and pay off the cops in the middle of the night to get him out of custody, leaving my younger brother and I at the hotel. Later, he and the other magician became friends again and did business together on several occasions. So while we had the trappings of a fifties family, the reality was often far different.

My Dad was always up for a confrontation, so his relations with some of the other elements of the magic world in Southern California were terse at times. I don’t know what feuds and rivalries were important and which were minor. I just know he loved the life he led in good times and tough ones. When my Mother passed away in 1994, we lost all connection to the magic world because my Dad needed her to keep track of his memory. His decline was accelerated by her absence. Those of you who knew my parents know how much that was true. Those of you out there who are meeting them for the first time through this article, welcome to the real history of magic in Southern California. My family would like to thank everyone involved in putting this material together. It is good to have a legacy, but it is better to have friends who remember you fondly.