Kirkham Magic: The Amazing Phyllis Kirkham

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.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

The Amazing Phyllis Kirkham

Those of you who knew my parents, know that my father's common sense came from the woman he was married to for 47 years. They were High School Sweethearts at Battle Creek Central High. She worked with him in his entire professional career. My Father could be impulsive and short-tempered at times. He was also pig headed about a lot of things, yet if it was needed, my mother was there to calm him down, point out something that he was unwilling to see before, or back him up like a tiger. They were a team. Most professional magicians have the spotlight while their spouse moves in the background. It always seemed to me that my Mom got as much attention as she ever wanted from us, but she did step out front and center on occasion.

Houdini did a straight-jacket escape from tall buildings to draw attention to his upcoming appearances. My Dad must have thought it was a great idea, but he was an innovator and somehow managed to get my Mother to do the escape bit when they were touring around. I can't say for sure how many places they must have done this but in the early years before my older brother was born, they traveled extensively in the Western U.S. and this probably was featured in any town that was of sufficient size.

Here she is at street level, this may have been in Battle Creek because the older woman here looks a lot like my father's Grandmother. I can't say for sure, and I don't know who the little girl would be. They may simply be bystanders who stopped to pose with the daredevil woman.

In the late forties and early fifties there may not have been enough tall buildings in small towns to have the dramatic effect that Houdini would get from hanging off a skyscraper, so the next best thing appears to have been a hook and ladder from the local fire department. I can't imagine the red tape you would have to go through these days to pull a stunt like this. Back then, you might only have needed to ask at the fire house and get the chief on board.

If you watch the video above, you will hear some very dramatic music being played to heighten the sense of danger. From my point of view, hanging upside down fifty feet above the asphalt of the street intersection would be plenty dangerous enough. I wonder if there was ever a band or recorded music used at these events. Now a days, there are so many graceful performers working in places like Vegas, high above the stage and audience, we may get a little jaded as to how truly dangerous this stuff could be.

This shot gives me just a bit of vertigo by looking at it. You can see that there is some dramatic flare in the presentation with her arms outstretched once released from the jacket. My Mother must really have loved my Dad to do this kind of stuff. She comes from a family of five sisters who were all amazing in their own ways. The oldest sister, my Aunt Reba, in in her late eighties and still plugging along. She is the last in the series of Lines sisters to be with us, but I have multiple cousins and second cousins that I have never met, who will know how my Mom could do something like this because they have met Aunt Reba. The Lines sisters were not shrinking violets.

Somewhere else in my dozens of boxes, I have a photo of my Mom standing with several other Magicians, getting ready to escape from straight jackets as part of a Hollywood promotion of the movie "Houdini " starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. When I find it I will add it to this post. The producers of "You Asked For It", which my parents appeared on several times, might have been horrified to learn that my Mother was pregnant with my older brother Chris when she did this stunt on their show. How is that for being a trooper?

2 comments:

UnknownAugust 1, 2012 at 5:57 PM
Stalwart resident of 834 South Garfield for more than a decade. The Kirkhams were fabulous. I was only a child, but one day Mr. Kirkham decided to pour 86 pennies out of my nose. Before that, I didn't know his immense legacy. I knew them both as people. I love them still. Rest in peace. -- Matt Slimp
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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.