Kirk Kirkham Tribute Poster

I will be doing a post down the road about the fantastic poster collection my Dad once had. His old friend Norm Nielson, has a terrific business in posters and many other copies of those posters we that we once owned are available on his site. I just happened to notice a bump in visitors to this blog, and when I followed the links, I ended up on Norm's site. He has put together a beautiful commemorative poster of my Dad's magic career. Norm offered some very warm memories and some sad ones in the recent article about my Dad in "Magic Magazine". I was told he wanted to put a poster together, but I did not know it was done. I must say that it is far beyond any expectation that I had. I want to thank Mr. Nielson again for his friendship, and I would encourage any of you who read this page to visit his site. I have linked the page here.

Orson Wells and Kirkham Magic

In response to the last post, featuring what turns out to be the Nicola Throne Chair, as once owned by Blackstone Sr. and Kirk Kirkham, I received an e-mail note that one of the readers seems to recall seeing this illusion performed by Orson Wells on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, sometime in the early 1980s. I went in search of a video for such a performance and came up empty handed. If Wells did present it, there is a good chance he rented it from my Dad, I don't think Wells kept a collection of large illusions.I was reminded however that we had a couple of contacts with the Great Orson Wells during his lifetime.

At the time that was mentioned in the email, I remember my Dad digging out some props that Mr. Wells was interested in using. One was a large wooden barrel that had some kind of gimmick to it that I was not familiar with. The barrel had warped in storage, and my Dad put it in the swimming pool at the apartment building to try to get in back in shape. I don't think it worked, and the attempt to get a large water soaked oak barrel out of the pool was something for a Laurel and Hardy movie. I remember that Wells came to the apartment but I don't think he even got out of the car. He and my dad had their meeting in the parking area in front of the building.

My Father had history with Orson Wells and that was probably one of the reasons we were contacted. Back in 1956 or 57, Wells did a Magic act at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. My Father was the technical adviser, which meant he supplied a lot of the props, played the role of assistant and did general show work for the run of the performance. I don't think that they worked more than a few weeks in the nascent gambling mecca. I do know that my Mom was with them because of the following physical evidence.

I originally saw this picture in Magic Magazine, shortly after my Mom passes away in 1994. She was given a nice obituary and this photo was featured at the end of the magazine. I have misplaced the copy I have, but when I was looking for the Orson Wells Video on the Carson show, I ran across this photo. Wells looks a little worse for wear, but Mom always seemed great on stage.

Blackstone Illusion

Harry Blackstone Magic From Fantasma Magic - Funny video clips are a click away

So I found this clip on line one day, and it seemed to me very familiar. I was too young to remember meeting Harry Blackstone Sr., but my Dad told me that he did bring me to see the great man when I was little. The prop here is what looked familiar. I was sure I had moved it a few times in the years when my Dad stored equipment at rented garages around town. I remember that every time he needed something for a show, it was usually at the back of the garage and we would get covered in "Illusion Dust" and I'd sneeze for hours after. Both my Dad and I developed a distaste for black widow spiders at this time as well. They seemed to like to make their home in the storage areas near the props. We never found one in a prop, if we had I would probably have never gotten into the Dollhouse, tip-over box, death basket, Thurston sawing or a dozen other props again.

Any way, as I said this prop looked familiar. I remembered a photo of my Mom sitting in it when she was relatively young. I don't ever remember doing a show with the prop, but that is not a surprise since my Dad often collected illusions not for the purpose of performing them, but for studying, owning and ultimately re-selling. I finally found the photo I remembered and you can see it is indeed the same illusion that Blackstone performed in the above clip. I don't have a name for it, if you are reading this and know what it was properly called, please leave a message and I will post the information and be happy to give you credit. Someone out there probably still has this in their own collection.

Sometimes videos don't load properly, so here are a couple of screen shots of the video clip for comparison.

I received this info since I posted the comments originally. I have edited the author for his privacy, but the comments are very applicable....

the Blackstone illusion: it was originally owned by Nicola, and we called it the Nicola throne chair illusion. Nicola sold it to Harry Blackstone,Sr., after that your father bought it. I am not sure if your father bought it from Blackstone or George Hippissly, as Hippissly owned a number of Blackstone props. I had corresponded with Hippissly during the early 70's so I know this to be a fact. Hippissly also told me he had a "trap" cut in his living room to do a vanishing lady. As to what happened to the throne chair performed by Blackstone in the video...