Kirkham Magic: Stretching a Woman

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.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Stretching a Woman

This was an illusion that was a signature part of my Father's illusion show. He performed it on most of the convention shows we did, and he did it on television several times as well. This was one of the props that he acquired from the Thurston show via Will Rock. In it's original form it had a large spider on the facade and it looked quite old fashioned. When he did the illusion on the Hollywood Palace, he reconditioned it and gave it a contemporary look, featuring a black background and purple infused silver piping that gave the appearance of a series of infinity lines stretching out to the sides of the stage.

I know that many magicians are proprietary toward the illusions that they perform. Some of them created the effects and then saw others copy it and perform it under a different name. There were several times in the 1960s that my Father had attorneys send cease and desist letters to magicians that were doing an illusion like this. I suspect that one of the reasons he was on the outside of a few magic circles had to do with his confrontational style in pursuing such claims. In the 1970's, a magician from Atlanta I believe, had purchased one of the several versions of the Thurston prop that my Dad owned. Dad probably tried to obtain every version that had been associated with Thurston as a way of protecting his claim. So if Tampa or Dante had had a version of the stretching a woman, my father probably owned it at one time. Anyway, my Father's agreement with the magician from down south had been that he would not perform it in the Western region where my Dad still hoped to keep it exclusive to his own show. This performer was invited to be a part of the annual "It's Magic" and he wanted to bring the prop and do it as part of the show. Once again, lawyers were invoked, but I seem to remember that it was all handled quite amicably in the end, with the acceptance by both parties that this would be a one off booking and that the previous agreement would continue. Of course I was not in on all the wrangling so maybe I have this wrong. (The magician from the south was Abb Dickson).

There is a nice shot of the illusion featured in the Magic Magazine article that came out last month. In that performance my Mother was the woman who was stretched to incredible lengths. She was usually the victim or partner that was used in the presentation of this trick, but she was not the only person who took part. The performance on the Hollywood Palace show featured Phyllis, but not Phyllis Kirkham, instead it was Phyllis Diller. She was of course the groundbreaking female comedian, who had the wild hair and cackling voice. In the presentation on national television, she improvised a lot of lines and prompted some improvisation from my Dad as well. She was a good sport and apparently really enjoyed working with my Dad. She invited him to work with her in Vegas but he turned down the opportunity. He had done Vegas with Orson Welles back in the 1950s and I guess did not want to get dragged into a similar situation. My older brother Chris was 15 when they did the Hollywood Palace, I was eight and my younger brother was four. Dad did not think living in Vegas for several months at a time or permanently was a good idea for a family like ours. It must not have offended her, in the DVD documentary that came out about her a few years ago, this presentation with my Father was included.

The English Invasion band Herman's Hermits was also on the show that week and my Brother Chris got to meet them at the height of their career. I have a pictures of him backstage with the band and when I lay my hands on it I will add it to this post. He got to work the prop on TV and that is pretty neat. If you watch the video of the performance, you will see him pretty clearly. The Hollywood Palace was a West Coast version of the Ed Sullivan show, it featured singers, dancers, comedians and assorted variety acts. It was produced by Bing Crosby's company and rather than having a single host, The Hollywood Palace had rotating hosts, some of whom hosted once and others hosted several times. The show aired on Saturdays and it was on the ABC network. The stairs that are seen in the video are at the end of our bed right now, to allow the dachshunds access.

In December of 1971, I had my turn to be in the act with this prop on stage at Magic Mountain. We did the main stage for two weeks during the Christmas season. The stage where we worked was called the Showcase Theater, and I think that the idea was that Magic Mountain would try to have Celebrity performers on a regular basis. The marque of the theater is featured in "This is Spinal Tap" where the band is listed as supporting the puppet show. The park was brand new at the time, opened only for about six months. Since the admission policy was unlike Disney, once you were in the park you had access to all of the attractions. I had a great time riding the roller-coaster and the log ride as much as I wanted between shows. I remember that my Dad tracked the exact mileage to the park everyday and that it was fifty four miles one way.

We worked with three celebrities during the run of the show. Shari Lewis was the first, she had Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse doing their bits and then came out and was the woman who was Elasticized by my Dad in his part of the show. The second week we worked, the celebrity act was Tim Conway and McLean Stevenson. They did a comedy routine. I knew who Tim Conway was but this was right before Stevenson was cast in the TV version of M*A*S*H. I can't remember anything about their act except that it was funny. Tim came out and he became the Elastic Man for the rest of our run in the show. In order to make it funny and to keep his feet clear on the prop, he wore a pair of florescent orange socks. Of course I had a pair as well and I always referred to them afterwards as my Tim Conway socks.

1 comment:

jaybyrdskynyrdMarch 5, 2012 at 5:53 PM
I think this was 1966, if memory serves me well... I had to go something with my Dad which is the reason I didn''t get to go...
But i sure remember your Dad...
Jim Stratton...
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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.