Kirkham Magic: Giant Guilliotine

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, January 8, 2012

Giant Guilliotine

This is a performance of the Giant Guillotine by Kirk Kirkham on the "You Asked For It" series, some time in the early 1950s. Again, I think the camera placement is a little problematic for this illusion and it loses some of it's effect as a consequence. My Dad sold the original Giant Guillotine some time in the late sixties or early seventies. He first acquired it in the 1950s. Since he bought the Will Rock show and the Thurston illusions that came with it in 1954, I assume this clip came right after that, so probably 1955.

This is a shot of it in my Grandparents backyard. That would be my mother's parents. While my folks lived out here in Southern California with my Dad's folks in the 1950s for long stretches of time; when they were not on the road, they stored equipment they had purchased at the house in Battle Creek. I remember as a kid going back to Michigan each summer and while we were there, digging out crates and having them shipped back and forth across the country.

I don't have any memory of my parents ever using this prop on stage. For the nightclub act they had, they used a Lester Lake style head chopper that I still own. That would probably explain why he was able to part with this piece of equipment. I do know that the prop came with the Will Rock equipment, what I am not sure of is whether it was a Rock original or if it had been part of the Thurston show. When looking on line I found some intriguing material that explains only a little about it's history.

I had always believed that the prop was sold and then after we had owned it, it moved on and was ultimately used in the Alice Cooper shows in the 1970's. My Dad was not a big rock fan (except for Elvis), so I was surprised when he went to see Cooper at the Forum in Los Angeles in 1973. I think I remember him saying he went at the invitation of the magician that had provided the guillotine that Alice was using. I know he thought the rock concert was basically a big "Spook" show like he had done back in the 1950s.

The shot on the right here is with some other props he was storing in Michigan. That is either Ed Deland , a friend of my Dad's or my Uncle Dick who was married to my mom's sister Betty. (Hey, any of my cousins who can tell let me know). Anyway, I was always under the impression that the prop we had once owned was now owned by Rock star Alice Cooper. While I was doing research, I found this exchange with James Randi, who is a magician and is credited with obtaining the prop for Cooper. This comes from a Web site devoted to Alice Cooper and other shock musicians.

He says it was built based on the Will Rock model. That suggests that it was an entirely new prop. Again I am not sure what to believe, I have heard contradicting claims on this for years. Another exchange I found came from a magician named David Alexander. I knew David, he and my Dad had been good friends, and then had some issues and then were friends again. He called me ten years ago right after my dad had died and we spoke for about ninety minutes about all things Kirk Kirkham. He had some great stories to tell. Here is the post on a magic forum that I found from him.

I tried to e-mail him and then I sadly discovered that he died just a year ago. So I can't elaborate on the story he must have heard at some point. Again, one of the reasons I am putting this blog together is so that If others have stories or information or corrections, they can post them so I can be clearer.

Here, Randi seems to be saying that it is indeed the original Rock Guillotine, and that he never built other illusions that had been talked about with the Alice Cooper production. Regardless, I think it is all interesting as a show business story with some intrigue and a lot of fun.

I'm going to finish off this post with one more photograph. This is another one that was taken in Michigan, If the above picture is Ed Deland, then I am guessing that the girl in this picture is Carol Deland his daughter. On the other hand, it could be one of my cousins. It is not a very clear shot, so if anyone recognizes yourself, please step up and confess.

I just found one more shot on the set with Art Baker so I will add it here at the end.

Addendum: I have been contacted again by an old friend of my Dad, he says that my father sold the illusion to Ed Smith, and that it was probably after Ed was murdered in Hollywood that the prop probably moved on to it's eventual place in the Alice Cooper Show. Ed Smith was a collector of Magic Illusions and a good friend of my Dad. I remember him quite well, he was over at the house in East L.A. quite a bit when I was a little guy about nine or ten. He teased me about something one time and I remember making a Vac-u-form sign with a skull and cross bones and his name on it to give to him. I also remember him taking my Dad and I to a Chicken Dinner Restaurant that he wanted to invest in, it was a broiler based franchise that I don't think ever took off. He bought several illusions from my Dad, and then sold them back to him and then would buy something else. They were a little bit like kids with trading cards. Ed was killed by two robbers in Hollywood right outside his apartment building. I thought I remembered where he lived, and I was sure I saw the building again in the movie "Pretty Woman", of course that could just be the years playing tricks on me. My Dad's friend says that he last saw the Guillotine in 1970 when Ed Smith tried to sell it to him. I am also told that it appeared in the movie "The Stripper" with Joanne Woodward.

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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.

Welcome to the Calvacade of Magic Presented By Kirk Kirkham

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Giant Guilliotine

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