Jan. 13, 1978 Gusto cover story: Magic and magicians

 

Back then you saw them. Now you don’t. 

Jan. 13, 1978 Gusto cover story

Magic: Tricks & Tradition 

          “I’m no more superstitious than any other person,” says Howard Eldridge as he pours another cup of coffee in the rear of his shop, Howard’s House of Hocus Pocus, 1677 Hertel Ave., next door to Mulligan’s Café. That’s not to say he’s unaware of the aura surrounding Friday the 13th.

          “Sure,” he continues, vanishing the glass coffeepot to an open but not-easily-noticed niche behind the counter, “if you knock over salt or break a mirror, you think, oh-oh, bad luck, but it’s more a habit than anything. How could you say what belief you have in it? If you come across a ladder over a sidewalk, you hesitate before you walk under it. Three on a match? If you don’t say something about it, somebody else does.”

          Eldridge himself works on that same edge between credibility and marvel that wizards have manipulated since prehistoric humankind started worshipping fire. Eldridge doesn’t summon up demons, though. He’s an entertainer, safe as milk. The distinction between witchcraft (black magic) and conjuring (white magic) is an old one, although in the Middle Ages people were burned at the stake simply for rejoining torn handkerchiefs.

          “Tricks don’t get old,” he’ll tell you. “People do. There’s only seven principles of magic. There may be new deliveries, but the basic principles are the same. It’s like this year there were Christmas songs in disco. It’s the same old song, but there’s a little beat to it.”

          For $1.75, Eldridge will place in your possession a nifty device called Professor’s Nightmare, the World’s Greatest Rope Trick. It’s an old trick in new clothes.

          “I developed the patter that went with it,” he says. “The magic is simple. Any trick is basically simple. Presentation is what makes the trick. That’s why you don’t tell people how the trick works, because they’ll forget how easily they’re fooled.”

          Consider the presentation by the first known magician, the legendary Egyptian Teta. Called before Pharaoh Khufu, who needed a consultant to work out the magical specifications for the Great Pyramid, he proceeded to execute the oldest trick in the books – cutting off a head and putting it back on the body.

          The Pharaoh offered the head and body of a condemned prisoner, but the magician declined. Magic shouldn’t be worked on a person, he exclaimed. Instead, he used a goose. The Pharaoh evidently didn’t realize geese can hide their heads under their wings. Or that false heads can be substituted. Teta followed it up with a pelican and an ox. Magicians are still doing that one.

          For less that the price of the Professor’s Nightmare, Eldridge will introduce you to the wonders of a trick that dates back at least as far as Teta. It’s the old cup and ball. Now you see it, now you don’t. A real ball and a false ball. A child can do it. So can mothers and fathers, salesmen and executives, doctors and dentists.

          They can join a fraternity which 13th century Franciscan priest and philosopher Roger Bacon described like this: “There are men who create illusions by the rapidity of their hands’ movements, by assumption of various voices, by ingenious apparatus or by means of confederates so that they show to men wonderful things which do not exist.”

          As it has through the ages, magic takes a bit of practice, a little cleverness and perhaps an invention or two. The ancient Egyptian priests, summoning their gods to open huge doors, helped them along with steam power produced by sacred fires. Magicians employed gunpowder and optic lenses long before they came into general use. The modern magic of movies can be traced to the Egyptians too. They used mirrors to project images onto smoke.

          Movies killed the vaudeville circuit which sustained magicians in the early 20th century, but the conjuring art has been making a comeback in the ‘70s. Although there are only about two dozen full-time professional magicians in the U.S., the ranks of talented amateurs and part-time pros have grown in recent years, partly due to the success of 30-year-old David Henning, who came to prominence in the 1974 Broadway hit, “The Magic Show.”

          While magicians won’t divulge their tricks to the public, they no longer jealously guard them all from each other. The International Brotherhood of Magicians was started by Buffalo’s Gene Gordon in 1922 as a correspondence club to exchange tricks. Eldridge, a former president of the brotherhood’s Buffalo Ring 12, is happy to share his knowledge with any interested up-and-coming conjurer. The best audience for a trick, he says, is another magician.

          Drinking coffee with Eldridge in the back of his store are two aspirants in their 20s – one of them a bartender, the other a night watchman at the Erie County Juvenile Detention Center.

          When he isn’t behind the bar, Joe Makowski is a ventriloquist. He picks up a furry hand puppet and it says hello. He’s been working in public for the last year or so, doing shows in schools and an occasional nightclub appearance. Now he wants to make more of a profession of it. He’s adding to his characters and he’s looking forward to doing children’s birthday parties and business meetings.

          “I’ve got a frog, my mynah bird and a chicken,” he says.

          “I’ve got chicken jokes,” says Don Zanghi.

          “You got them written down?”

          “I’ve got them here,” Zanghi points to his forehead.

          “Write them down for me, OK?”

          Zanghi says he put on magic shows when he was a kid and revived his interest last winter when he was out of work. He had no ambitions to turn pro. He just wanted a couple things to carry around in his pocket. But he decided he was onto something one night at a party when he burned a borrowed dollar bill and it showed up in his host’s underwear.

          “I wrote down the serial number, got a lighter and burned it, right down to the ashes,” he says. “I put the ashes under a cup, said a prayer, invoked the spirit of Howard and took away the cup. The dollar wasn’t there. The people at the party started giving me a hard time until the host reached back behind his belt and said he felt something funny. Then they all went nuts.”

          “When I first told him how to do that,” Eldridge remarks, “he went: ‘What?’ I’ll tell you my pet peeve, though. It’s when you’re invited to a party and the second sentence is: ‘Bring your tricks.’ You’re going to have them along anyway, but you never know if they’re inviting you because they want you or because they want your tricks.”

          In walks another prestidigitator, Tony Nigro, a former pizza shop owner who now runs a small tavern near Hertel and Delaware avenues. The Ace of Clubs is as intimate as a magician’s sleeve, but those dropping in on a slow night may see one of Nigro’s amazing feats or meet someone like Jay Malbrough, a magic pro who’s back in town between tours. Nigro turns four aces into four kings and says he never plays cards, only does tricks with them.

          “You’ve got to pick up the cards every day to stay sharp,” he remarks. “If you miss one day, you know it. If you miss two days, your magician friends know it. If you miss three days, your customers know it.

          “Here’s two cards with one cut. When I got that down, I took that out to the Forks Hotel to show Eddie Fechter. He loves that kind of stuff. He’ll pour a drink, go down to the other end of the bar, putter around and come back two hours later and ask you: ‘What was that?’ He started with a ball and vase too.

          “Come down some time,” he tells Zanghi, “and I’ll show you a few moves you can work on. Sometimes you get kids who want to learn it from the top down – I won’t take them. You’ve got to have some experience. You’ve got to know what’s going on.

          “Here’s the Invisible Palm,” he says, demonstrating. “It KILLS magicians, just KILLS them. In Rochester, this guy offered me $100 just to show it to him. I practiced three years to learn the one-hand palm. Eddie Fechter taught me. He’s got such big hands himself he could palm cabbages. Name a jack. Jack of hearts?” he laughs and produces it. “Ha, ha. That’s another magician killer.”

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IN THE PHOTOS: Howard Eldridge demonstrates the rope trick.

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FOOTNOTE: The Forks Hotel stood at the corner of Union Road and Broadway in Cheektowaga and became a mecca for magic after Eddie Fechter, a former wrestler, bought it in 1958. Fechter died in 1979 and new owners kept it going until it was sold at auction in 1991. After the building was heavily damaged by fire in 1998, it was torn down replaced by a credit union office. Jay Malbrough, who has authored several books on magic, has memorialized the Forks in a self-published pamphlet called “The Magic of the Forks Hotel.”

          Howard Eldridge died in 2000. So did Doug Henning. Henning told former Buffalo News TV columnist Mary Ann Lauricella in 1980 that he used to hitchhike here from Toronto to buy props for his show. “I’ll bet my magic shop friends in Buffalo are surprised at how far I’ve come,” he said. He noted that Gene Gordon and Howard Eldridge helped him out.