In the US during the 1800s and into the 20th Century, a popular form of entertainment was the traveling magic show. These were much more than just a lone magician with a top hat an a rabbit; they had a whole cast of assistants, roadies, and large stage illusions. Some of the magicians were nearly household names, like Howard Thurston (Thurston the Great), Harry Kellar (Kellar), and of course Harry Houdini (Houdini). The last one standing was Harry Blackstone, Sr. (The Great Blackstone), who performed well into the 20th Century. He was born September 27, 1885.
Blackstone’s shows were a big event in the small towns and cities his entourage visited. He would perform in a local theatre or movie projection house along with music (at least an organist; sometimes a whole orchestra) and a number of famous illusions — sawing a woman in half, levitating an assistant, pretty much the same things magicians are still performing. But Blackstone was the inventor of some of them. In particular, his sawing a woman in half didn’t involve a box containing the woman — she was just lying on a table in the open. Some modern magicians have performed that version of the trick too — occasionally with simulated blood and gore.
Blackstone, like the other touring magicians, performed in fancy dress, wearing a tuxedo and, of course, a top hat (containing rabbits, among other things). He performed throughout the 1940s, and during WWII his show entertained allied troops in Europe. He was also the main character in Super-Magician Comics, where his character travelled the world performing magic and defeating bad guys. The comics led to a 1948 radio show, Blackstone, the Magic Detective, that presented weekly episodes for about a year.
In real life Blackstone was not a detective at all. He did live on his own island, though, called Blackstone Island (he was actually the only one who called it that). It’s on a lake in Michigan. By the 1950s the touring magic show had become a relic of the past and Blackstone mostly performed at The Magic Castle, a nightclub in Hollywood, California. It’s still open, and is both a performance venue and an actual clubhouse for working magicians. Whether you need to know a magic word to get into the private entrance has not been revealed.
Also, since it’s September 27:
#!/usr/bin/perl -e “BEGIN{print ‘Happy’} UNITCHECK{print ‘Birthday ‘} CHECK{print ‘to
‘} INIT{print ‘Larry ‘} END{print ‘Wall’}”
