Kirkham Magic: Tihany Crystal Casket

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.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Tihany Crystal Casket

Back in 1971, we moved out of a great house we had lived in for two years in the Mid-Wick track of Alhambra. My Dad had built quite a bit of equipment for himself and for others in the driveway because the neighbor called the cops if he used the garage. It was a strange attempt to use a zoning code to keep work from being done there. It may have been one of the reasons my parents decided to leave, although they had done much to repair the house after the previous renters had trashed it. If they had bought the house then, there would have been a huge windfall because it was a great property and in the 70s and 80s, the value appreciated substantially. Anyway, we ended up in the apartment building that my folks lived in for most of the rest of their lives. There was very little room when we first got there but over time we acquired access to storage and basement rooms that proved very helpful. Still needing a place to work, my father leased a garage that was on a big vacant lot just four blocks from the apartment.

Les Smith, the owner of Owen Brothers magic, also in Alhambra, and just a few blocks south of where we were living, was a friend of my Dad's at the time. He let my father store some of our furniture and appliances at the warehouse where the factory was located. We did not expect to be in the apartment long and it was a nice gesture on his part. This was around March 1971. A few weeks later, a magician named Tihany, visited Owen Brothers and was conducting some sort of business when Les Smith blew his stack over something. Apparently he was pretty cantankerous. He threw Tihany out of his place and told him to take his business elsewhere. My Dad knew Tihany and he came to see us. We had gone down to Mexico several years before to see Tihany's big show. He toured in a giant tent with a very nice Vegas style theater inside. There were circus acts and animals but most of the show was Tihany and his illusions. Anyway, Tihany needed an illusion and Les Smith did not want to make it the way Tihany had requested. He asked my father if he would build it for him. Well, this was the end of my Dad's friendship with Les Smith. He explained to Mr. Smith that Tihany had come to him, after he had been rudely thrown out by Mr. Smith. My Dad needed the work and took on the assignment, figuring he was not stepping on anyone's toes, but failing to recognize that reason does not always rule in these situations, and that business does frequently interfere with friendship.

Not only did Les Smith end his friendship with my Dad, he sold our appliances and furniture. This began a bitter professional rivalry. Any time my Dad could take a job away from Owen Brothers, he was happy to do so. He had been close to Carl Owen and frequented the business when he was alive, but after Smith took over and we had this nasty bit of business, that company was also dead to him. I think a lot of our business in those years consisted of magicians who had similar run ins with Les Smith. I know that my Dad was short tempered as well, and he knew how to carry a grudge, but I also know he was quick to forgive and forget if given a chance.

The prop that Mr. Tihany wanted was a crystal casket to be used for a production box lifted off the stage. I don't know what it was that Les Smith didn't like about the request, but my Dad built a very nice prop in the dilapidated garage on the corner of Fourth and Linda Vista. I remember the orange and yellow plexiglass that we used, it was not nearly as classy as the clear glass that we had used on a similar prop a couple of years before. However, it was the seventies and anyone who lived in those times knows how those orange tints crept into all kinds of places. I have seen some ugly furniture and wallpaper with the same orange and yellow colors. It screams 1973.

That is my brother Kirk in the glass box that would be lifted off the base on stage for the girl to appear in. I may very well have taken the picture of my Dad in front of the garage where he built this, I don't quite remember. I do remember that Tihany was quite pleased with it and he and my father remained friends. We did build some other props for him in later years as well. I also have Tihany to thank for my first rifle. He was with my father when he was shopping for a birthday gift for me. I think Tihany talked my Dad into it and may even have paid for part of it. I still have the lever action .22, and I think of my Dad and Tihany, every time I see it in the closet.

This is a page from the program for the Tihany show. It was an impressive presentation. I don't think we built the cage illusion pictured here, but we might have. I know that we constructed at least two of these in the early seventies.

1 comment:

UnknownMarch 8, 2016 at 12:50 PM
Rest in peace Mr.Tihany
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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.