The Great Kellar
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The Great Kellar
By Silent Mora
ON the last day of my several weeks' visit to the home of The Great
Kellar, he walked to the car-line with me. We had spent so many
happy hours together talking about Bob Ingersol, Clarence Darrow,
W. J. Bryan, as well as the magicians, Thurston, Herrmann and
Madam, Frank Hewes, the "White Yogi" and a great inventor of
Magical apparatus ("Shooting thru a Woman" is his). He warmly
praised "Blackstone," but I think he had a good word for all the
Magicians, except the little trouble he had with "Herrmann" the Great,
and that was only friendly rivalry. For business reasons, they kept it up
for both were in the big show business of the time and had to keep up
the public interest.
It was simply "Good Business" principles.
I believe we discussed every magician and Ventriloquist in the
business at that time. We would dissect each of them, not with enmity
or envy, but as a couple of Doctors discuss a perplexing "case."
Just before the down-town car came into view, Mr. Kellar, putting his
arm about my shoulder, said:
"Mora, I wish I had seen your performance before, instead of taking
Paul Valadon's word in praise of it; it might have changed the whole
course of your life.
"You say you are going back East, but will be back again in six
months. If you are, that will be good, but I know you won't be back in
six months, and when you come back, I won't be here. Good-bye,
Mora."
Those were the last words The Great Kellar spoke to me--then the
memory of years took me back to my very first meeting with Kellar as
I approached his chair, a bit timidly; for he was the first great man I
had ever met. I was still a "kid" not out of Grade School, but I wanted
to show Kellar what I had accomplished with billiard ball routines, but
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evidently he was used to "kids" trying to talk to him, and I didn't get
very far into conversation with him. He seemed to be a little impatient,
so I hurried away, without showing him anything I could do with
sleight-of-hand.
That was the first mistake I ever made. I should have remained there
until he had a chance to see me at the work I loved, even as a child. I
didn't even tell him I had watched his every show all week.
As he sat in that lobby chair in the Anderson Hotel, 6th and Penn,
Pittsburgh, Pa., he seemed to be so aloof and alone, and there was
something on his mind.
I believe that was why he was impatient with me at that time, but if I
had told him the entire run, or routine of his show at the time, I think
he might have given me a moment or two. These boys and girls that
call on you at any time, certainly are admirers of you and your work.
Never forget that--and really, you can never tell who they may be, or
who they may become. Children have made history, in magic as well
as in many other lines of endeavor. Listen to them.
You may learn something, from a child's viewpoint.
As I had seen his every performance that week at The Alvin Theatre, I
knew the entire "routine" and it was just as interesting to me at the last
show as it had been at the first performance.
I had spent the savings of several weeks to be able to see the Kellar
Show, every day and Matinees, and while I was able only to get the
seats in the "Gallery of the Gods" at two-bits a throw, and saw the
show from such a distant view, I followed his every move, and by the
end of the week, I knew a great deal more than a casual onlooker. I
was a magician(?) then, or thought I was. Whatever I thought, I went
to my home and got my "Sach's Sleight-of-Hand" and went over that,
just as Sach's described the many tricks.
The next day would see me back early at The Alvin so as not to miss
even the music "Kellar" used, and always in "The Gallery of the
Gods." Seeing the show from "up there" did not lessen its
attractiveness to me and no matter how many times I would see it,
there was ever an appeal to the entire show and especially to that part
of it that had a bit of "hand-work."
Even to this day, I can remember the routine with his silk production,
which he introduced in the early part of the show, and after
manipulating them for some time he made one red one vanish and
found it in the back of a man's collar (coat collar) and pulled it out, but
there were a string of handkerchiefs tied to the red one and enough of
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them to walk all the way up the "run-way" to the stage. That was only
one trick.
The Coffee, Milk and Sugar trick was a mystery at the first show, but I
got some books and found just how it was done and looked for that
method when Kellar did it. Sometimes I was right. Often wrong.
The "Flower Growth" with the pots and the tapered cones was a
masterful piece of magic, the coin catching, using real dollars,
sometimes $20 gold pieces, struck me as being the height of
prosperity. At that time I had only seen $20 gold pieces (I haven't seen
any lately). I saw the Canary Cage trick for the first time, in the Kellar
Show, not the Vanishing cage, but the one which Horace Goldin used
in later years.
The effect of this: Take a bird out of the cage, place it in a paper bag.
Shoot the bag to pieces. Canary is back in the cage. That was beyond
my comprehension, at that time.
Kellar's "Casadaga Propaganda" was a small light weight cabinet, with
a Spirit Manifestation in that small thing. (I didn't know that "Shorty"
was on the back of it and the little(?) cabinet had wires up and over
silent pulleys, to weights as counter-balance.)
Kellar carried this Cabinet out alone and set it on a sheet of plate glass
(plate glass is easy to get in Pittsburgh) and being so light in weight,
nobody ever suspected there might be a man in back of it.
This effect has been described in many books on Magic and Illusion,
so I will not go into details.
So, you young magicians-get busy.
Kellar's "Simla Seance" was one of the finest pieces of co-ordinated
"timing" I have ever seen). It, too, was a "Seance" but on a larger
scale. It was a big cabinet, hauled out in a flat condition and built up in
view of the audience. Chairs, canes, tambourines, guitars, etc., were
placed in the cabinet. and with no one inside (apparently), all these
instruments played some part.
And finally after a bell had been placed in, you could see it in the
curtained apertures at the top of each door, and it was dropped from
there onto the stage floor outside. Kellar and assistant, one at each
door, opened them both at once and the chairs fell out on the stage
floor. There had been continuous racket up to the time the doors
opened and the chairs fell out.
It was a great seance, nothing like it since then.
It was, I thought, the perfect trick for me to do, but when I saw Kellar
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come quietly forward and announce his "Levitation of Princess
Karnac," I thought he looked and acted the High Priest, and to this day
I still consider him to be the High Priest of Magic.
The Blue Room Mystery was absolutely beyond me at that time, as I
watched him do the trick he called, "The Growth of the Orange Tree,"
and do you know, he actually grew Oranges on that tree. There had
been not a thing but an empty pot as he placed it in the "Blue Room"
and then right before your eyes, the greens commenced to come out of
that pot and grew to 4 feet in height-and then the Oranges started to
appear visually. When the tree had fully matured, he stepped in the
"Blue Room" and cut the oranges from the tree, throwing them out
into the audience, for them to eat, and proving they were real oranges.
What a trick.
I'm telling you kids; you haven't seen anything.
After producing the oranges, he again "Plants" some "Rose seed" in
the pot; the greens came up, the rose bush grew and the roses appeared
on the branches.
He cut them off and gave them to the ladies in the audience. Ah, those
were the kind of tricks we saw.
Then came the grand climax to the show, as "Kellar" sitting in a chair
in the "Blue Room" waved his hands and arms about his face and
slowly the body of "Kellar" disintegrated and a skeleton remained in
the chair, still waving the arms and hands. The skull left the top of the
back-bone and stayed suspended a moment about 4 feet in the air and
came back again, settling down on the back-bone, where it should be.
The arms and hands became disjointed and the bones of the legs also
and separated themselves far from the part of the skeleton that still
remained on the chair. They finally re-assembled and the arms
continued their gyrations.
This went on for a few seconds and suddenly you began to realize that
the flesh was coming back on the bones and the same Mr. Kellar was
sitting in the chair, and he rose from it and walked towards the front of
the stage. There was absolute quiet as he calmly announced, "That,
Ladies and Gentlemen, is how we will all look one hundred years
from now."
All these thoughts came to me as I left "Kellar" waving a last
good-bye to me, as I rode down to "Los."
We had both been studying Roth's Memory System all that day and
many other days, when suddenly one day "Kellar" said: "Mora, what
is there in my show you might like to use some day?" I replied: "There
are two things I would like to know more about, Mr. Kellar; they are
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the "Levitation of Princess Karnac" and the "Blue Room Mystery."
"Alright, said he, come out to the Garage, I have a better Levitation
out there than Thurston ever dreamed of. I'll show it to you. That one
Thurston has weighs a ton, this one is better and is light in weight."
In the garage, "Kellar" opened a crate that had one part of the
mechanism in it and worked it for me, I noticed it was as silent as a
wrist watch (the mechanism was designed entirely by "Kellar"). There
was a "raising windlass" operated, not by a handle, but by a wheel,
resembling a steering wheel of an automobile. There was no
"Grinding" to this marvelous bit of machinery. You just turned a
"balance wheel" slowly and the "drum" (for the lift) operated without
noise. It reminded me of some of Joseffy's finest workmanship.
Opening up a long trunk, specially made, revealed the "Levitation"
couch, on which the Princess rests.
He had cut up a beautiful expensive Oriental Rug for a covering for
the couch. The parts which he could not show me, he explained. There
were, at that time, some parts yet incomplete. it was the finest "Levi"
(pet name) I have ever seen.
All of this equipment now belongs to "Blackstone" who purchased it
from Mrs. Buck (Kellar's niece).
if you ever have a chance, look at the "lift" of this great trick when.
"Blackstone" comes to your city, and on the front of it (toward
audience, but they never see it) you will find the name "Kellar" about
3 feet up on the main casting, which is bolted to the stage floor.
"Now, Mora, that you have seen 'Levi,' I will give you all the 'dope' on
the 'Blue Room Mystery,'" and we went back into that large dining
room, and on the great round oak table, leather-topped and studded
edges (several studs being tricked for various purposes), "Kellar" drew
rough sketches and wrote descriptions of all I would ever need to
know about "The Blue Room Mystery" and every bit of it on
"Kellar's" own stationery.
That valuable bit of paper is amongst my "papers" in my "Scrap Book
of Magic"--even to this day.
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