Mark Wilson, R.I.P.

We've lost another great magician…and a personal boyhood hero of mine. Mark Wilson, the Master Magician of The Magic Land of Allakazam, died last Tuesday afternoon. His son Greg, who followed in his old man's footsteps, posted this on a magician's forum…

Whether you know him from his TV appearances, his Live productions, the Mark Wilson Complete Course in Magic book, or one of his many in-person Magic University classes at the Magic Castle, or through one of his many other achievements…Mom and Mike and I are so proud that he brought "Happy Magic" into not only your life, but the lives of more people around the world than he could possibly meet.

Mike is another brother. Mom is Nani Darnell, aka Mrs. Mark Wilson and maybe the loveliest assistant who ever got levitated, sawed-in-two and vanished from an endless series of boxes. To Greg's list of his father's achievements, I would add that I think Mark Wilson has the world's record for inspiring young people to take up magic and also perfecting and popularizing the presentation of magic on television.

The Magic Land of Allakazam was on CBS and later ABC Saturday mornings from 1960 to 1964. Most professional magicians have enough tricks in their repertoire to fill thirty minutes…a few can do an hour…but Mark Wilson somehow managed to fill 98 half-hours over those years. To do that, he had to be an expert at every kind of magic there is — close-up, sleight-of-hand, grand illusion, parlor magic, the works. And almost every week, he also taught home viewers a trick they could do at home with everyday objects.

That's where I learned my first feeble feats of prestidigitation. That's where an awful lot of kids learned their first tricks and a hefty number of them went on to do that professionally. I cannot tell you how important this man was to the Art Form. One of the great perks of being a member at the Magic Castle was that you occasionally got to talk with Mark and sometimes even see him perform.

One evening when I was there with friends, we went into one of the small showrooms to see a magician perform. The scheduled gentleman had a sudden emergency and had to run so, to everyone's delight, Mark Wilson walked and did a completely-unplanned half-hour show. He hadn't gone there that evening to perform. He didn't even have any props with him but it isn't hard at The Castle to scrounge up a deck of cards and a couple of hankies…which was all he needed.

He was in his early eighties at the time but he was just as skilled and charming as the star I watched on Saturday morning when I was eight. And like everyone else in the room, I was just as entertained…and well aware we were in the presence of one of the world's great entertainers.

Bev Bergeron, R.I.P.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was The Magic Land of Allakazam, a Saturday morn sensation and the reason I first got interested in magic.  It starred Master Magician Mark Wilson (he's the guy in the blue tux above) and his lovely assistant/wife Nani Darnell.  She's the lady at left.  An awful lot of guys who got interested in magic then did so because Nani was so adorable and if pulling rabbits outta hats could get you a woman like that…

The gent in the center is Bev Bergeron, better known as Rebo the Clown, co-star of that show and also, when out of make-up, one of the cleverer, funnier magicians around.  He was also Ronald McDonald for a time and spent fifteen years performing in the Diamond Horseshoe Review at Walt Disney World in Florida.

He died two days ago, capping off a lifetime of performing and delighting young and old alike.  I had the pleasure (and believe me, it was one…and an honor too) of meeting and talking with Bev a few years ago.  Rebo never spoke but he made up for it as Bev, telling jokes, talking about magic and telling stories of an amazing career.  I'm ordinarily not a fan of the circus kind of clown but in both identities, he was so full of wit and personality and a real love of making people happy, you had to love both of them.

And starting in 1943 when he was fourteen years old, right up until last Thursday, that's what he did: Make people happy.  Thank you for doing so much of that, Rebo.

Magic To Do

Here's a flashback to 1/24/01 on this site. I never aspired for one moment to make it my profession but when I was younger, I was quite interested in magic. Mark Wilson's TV show was the primary motivation and the gift I demanded and got one year — the gift that this story is about — was the other.

But this is only a partial encore. After the little divider line below, I have a few new paragraphs to add…

Let's talk about Sneaky Pete's Magic Show, a Remco toy that was among the favored Christmas/Hanukkah (we celebrated everything) gifts of my youth.  I'm guessing I was eight the year I got mine and I loved it, though I can't recall ever using it to put on a show for anyone.  It was just knowing how to do the tricks — knowing I could do them — that mattered, though I was never quite able to master the cups-and-balls.  There was no gimmick to the cups-and-balls, apart from the fact that you actually had one more ball than an onlooker might think.  The cups-and-balls required practice and dexterity and at that age, I was looking for more immediate gratification and easier answers to the mysteries of the world.

There was also the disappointment of the sawing-a-lady-in-half trick promised on the box and in the commercials.  The set came with a little plastic harem girl, a rack on which you'd place her, and a special sword.  The figure was made with some kind of internal wheel that allowed the sword to actually pass through the stomach seam without damaging the doll.  It was surely the greatest feat of engineering managed by the Remco folks (the other tricks were pretty basic ones) but it was the least satisfying to me.  It didn't relate to the way I saw Mark Wilson sawing women in half on his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, didn't show me how he bisected his wife/assistant, Nani Darnell.  She didn't have one of those little wheels inside her.

Believe it or not, that's just about my most painful Christmas memory.  I had it pretty good.  I wish the same for you.


Okay, that was the divider line. Here's the new, 2017 add-on…

I'm not sure what year it was but when my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas/Hanukkah that year, I told them I wanted a Sneaky Pete Magic Set. A day or two later, my father went to a store and bought one and I think my mother gift-wrapped it one night after I went to bed. Then they hid it under their bed because there was still a week to go before whatever day they'd give it to me. We usually did not have presents on Hanukkah. I'd put on a yarmulke and light a candle on the menorah each night but that was about the extent of it. Presents were unwrapped the morning of December 25.

I knew (or course) they were getting me the gift I wanted. That was the kind of parents I had. I also knew every square inch of our house and thus all possible hiding places. It did not take me a whole lotta time to find the hidden gift and through the wrapping paper, I could make out enough of the box design to know it was what I craved. But it was December 18 or so. I was in agony, waiting for my opportunity to get my little hands on my big gift.

I was probably about seven or so at the time and I was a good-enough, smart-enough kid that my folks would occasionally leave me home alone while they went to the market or ran errands. The next second they did, I raced to where the present was. I had another toy in a box that was about the same size and shape as the Sneaky Pete Magic Set so with great care and a roll of Scotch Tape, I made a swap. I eased the magic set out of its wrapper and inserted the other toy and taped things up. Then I returned the gift to its hiding place, took the Sneaky Pete set to my room and had the time of my life with it.

I kept it hidden when they were around most of the time but whenever they left the house, I was in my room, mastering some (not all) of it. Or if they seemed busy in the living room, I might slide it out of its new hiding place, master a card trick or two, then put it back. I was a pretty honest kid most of the time but it somehow didn't feel wrong to engage in sneakiness and trickery about a Sneaky Pete Magic Set full of tricks.

There was one point of frustration, though. Once you learn a magic trick, you have to — simply have to — perform it for someone and fool them. It drove me a little nuts that I would have to wait until Christmas Day to do that.

The afternoon of December 24, my folks went somewhere and I seized on the opportunity to swap the toys back. I told my new Magic Set, "I'll see you tomorrow morning" and put it back into the package my mother had wrapped, which by now was among the presents under the Christmas tree in our living room. The next morn when I unwrapped it, I made a point of faking delightful surprise and also of tearing up the wrapping pretty good lest my mother examine it closely and notice the re-taping.

I needn't have bothered. She knew.

I don't know how she knew but she knew. Maybe when she took the gift out from under the bed to place it 'neath the tree, she noticed the surgery. Maybe I gave it away with the amount of time I spent in my room then with the door closed. Maybe it was my rotten acting when I opened the present or maybe it was because, ten minutes after I'd supposedly gotten my hands on it for the first time, I was performing tricks from it for them.

However she figured it out, she figured it out. I forget what my main gift was the following year but when she wrapped it, she put it immediately under the tree, told me what it was and asked that I not open it until Christmas morning.

As I'm sure I must have said at least a few times on this blog, I never could fool my mother. But we got along great because I don't think she could fool me, either. At least, I don't think she ever did. I'm pretty sure that wonderful man she called her husband was my father — so sure that I even grew up to look like him.


Okay, there's one more divider line and now I'll close with this: I wrote above about the Cut-the-Lady-In-Half trick that came in the magic set. Here's a video of it. And don't you just love that they put in the little head and feet pieces that prevent the lady from running away? Someone should bring this thing on Penn & Teller: Fool Us and see if they can figure out how it works…

Today's Video Link

The show we now know as Saturday Night Live was actually called NBC Saturday Night when it first debuted. As I explained here, they couldn't use the former name because there was then, in 1975, a prime-time ABC series called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. It was an attempt to replicate the appeal of The Ed Sullivan Show, turning the verbose sportscaster into a variety host — or trying to. Three things, I thought, went wrong with the program…

  1. They didn't get very thrilling acts. Or at least they didn't seem thrilling in that context.
  2. The show aired on the wrong night. Ed's show was perfect for Sunday evening when a lot of families gathered for dinner. After the dishes were cleared away, the whole clan could retire to the living room and watch The Ed Sullivan Show, configured as it was with performers for every age — a bear act for the kids, an old pro singer for the adults, Alan King and/or Myron Cohen for any Jews who might be watching, a teen heartthrob singer for the teens, etc. Families weren't congregating much in front of the TV together by '75 — that's a big reason why Ed went off in '71 — and they never did that on Saturday.
  3. And Howard Cosell really only did two things well. He was a pretty decent sportscaster. He could be "the man you love to hate" with his obnoxious, snotty remarks and gin up controversy. This show called on him to do neither of those things he did well.

One of these days, I'll relate the tale of an encounter I had with Mr. Cosell. Right now, you just need to know that his Saturday Night Live went on in September of 1975 and it was gone before the end of the following January. This clip from it features one of my heroes…the master magician, Mark Wilson, performing here with his wife and son. A lot of guys my age got interested in magic in the sixties because Wilson made it seem to so cool. And even more got into it because they yearned for a wife/assistant who looked as good as the lovely Nani Darnell…

A Magic Evening

allakzam01

I really should have posted this Friday night but I got home too late. Friday was the 50th anniversary to the day of the debut of The Magic Land of Allakazam on the CBS Saturday morning schedule. October 1, 1960, the show hosted by master magician Mark Wilson premiered…and it would be tough to overstate its importance to the world of magic. There had been magic on TV before that but never in such large doses, never in such a prominent way. Before Allakazam, magic was a filler…a novelty spot included in some shows and not a lot of others. There were a lot of producers and network-type people who believed magic could not "work" on television; that home audiences would just assume the impossible thing they were witnessing was accomplished by camera trickery. Mark Wilson proved otherwise.

All this week, the Magic Castle up in Hollywood has been transformed into an Allakazam Museum. The place is full of pictures and props and costumes from the show. The programming is themed towards the show, as well. In the big showroom, Mark's son Greg is performing…with a little help from his Dad. And present also is Greg's mother, Mark's spouse and the most famous of all magician's assistants, the enchanting Nani Darnell. The assistants in Greg's act were even wearing some of Nani's old costumes from 50 years ago.

I wanted to get there this week but one thing after another seemed to be preventing me…until my friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee half-dragged me there. That they did it on the night that marked the 50th anniversary was a special bonus. I saw The Magic Land of Allakazam that first morning it debuted a half-century ago. To be sitting there, three feet from Mark Wilson (age 81) as he did a card trick was very, very special. (Though I may have spoiled something for Paul. They were showing a film clip of a joke involving magic from the show and I couldn't help but turn to him and whisper the punchline before they showed it. Well, why shouldn't I remember it? It's only been fifty years since I've seen it.)

That's all I wanted to say…just that I was there and I was very glad I was there. Thanks, Paul and Misty.

Today's Video Link

magiclandofallakazam

We're only a few weeks from the 50th anniversary of The Magic Land of Allakazam. One of my favorite TV shows when I was a young'un debuted on CBS on Saturday morning, October 1 of 1960. I may have only tuned in initially because each episode included one cartoon from the Huckleberry Hound show…but I soon became fascinated with what surrounded it; so much so that I wasn't bothered one bit the second season when the cartoons were eliminated. Master magician Mark Wilson would perform amazing feats and — maybe the best part — each week, he'd teach viewers a simple trick that they could do at home. Naturally, I tried every one of them out on my parents and I recall at least a couple times when I managed to actually fool my father. He always acted as if he had no idea how I'd done it but once or twice, it was different. Once or twice, I could tell he actually was baffled. Knowing something your parents don't know is a big deal when you're eight.

At that age, I was already a bit interested in magic, and watching Mark Wilson make things appear and disappear and float fired up that interest. Oddly enough, I was never much into performing in front of people…and when I did, it was for one or two people, never a large group. If I mastered a trick well enough to do it in the mirror, that was enough for me. The few times I assembled a little magic act and did things for a crowd, I didn't particularly enjoy it…but I certainly respected those who did and did it well. I became more of a historian/appreciator of magic than a practitioner and joined the Academy of Magical Arts, aka The Magic Castle. In a piece here some time ago, I wrote the following…

Mark Wilson, by the way, continues to perform magic but is mainly a teacher and consultant. His spouse — "the lovely Nani Darnell," who you'll see in our video clip — handles a lot of his business dealings. Last year, I took a card manipulation class at The Magic Castle. It was not taught by Mr. Wilson but Nani handled the sign-ups and tuition collection and such. Now, you'll have to imagine the following…

We're all in the classroom — guys about my age, all wearing jackets and ties because you have to wear a jacket and tie when you go to the Castle in the evening. Nani comes in and handles the last of the paperwork, then leaves…still looking quite lovely, almost a half-century after the filming of the video below. As soon as she's out of the room, our instructor (a very famous, important magician) admits that he started doing magic decades ago because he had a crush on her and thought that that was the way to get women who looked like that…

…and every guy in the room, myself included, nods in understanding and agreement.

When you hear magicians say that they were inspired by Dai Vernon or Blackstone or even Houdini…well, that may be true in many ways. But I'll bet Nani Darnell caused more young men in the early sixties to become magicians than any of those guys.

The Magic Land of Allakazam was the first regular network series to feature magic tricks. In the video, they say it's been the only one and I sure can't think of another. Don Alan, a fine magician I got to meet and work with before he passed away, had a syndicated show called Magic Ranch for 13 episodes in '61, obviously produced in light of Mark Wilson's success. There have been oodles of magic specials but that's about it for series.

I came to appreciate how difficult that show must have been for Mr. Wilson. Your average experienced magician has a repertoire of maybe an hour's worth of tricks. Some have a lot less. It takes time to develop and learn most of the good magic feats and it costs a lot of money for the hardware to perform the big ones. Mark Wilson had to fill a half-hour every week. That's a helluva lot of magic to conceive, build, rehearse, etc. He also had to work out ways to make the magic credible on a series that was shot on film and obviously edited. The tricks weren't edited but the show itself was and that always reminds you that you're not seeing a live performance.

Thanks to every magic book that I was able to check out from the library, I could figure out how many of Mark Wilson's tricks were done, and that caused my young mind to occasionally wrestle with ethical issues. Wilson would proclaim every week that the magic was done without the aid of any camera tricks — and apart from the opening of the show and some bits in commercials, that seemed to be true. But then in the midst of an illusion, he'd say, "Nani is inside the box," and I knew darn well Nani was no longer in that box. When he said, "I'm putting the three of hearts in my pocket," I knew he actually had it in his other hand. So I'd wonder, at least with regard to the tricks I couldn't figure out: If he'd lie about Nani being in the box and about the three of hearts going into his pocket, is he lying about there being no camera trickery? I'm now sure he wasn't but there is kind of an odd moral standard at work in some magic.

The Magic Land of Allakazam was sponsored by Kellogg's cereal and the show was loaded with Kellogg's promotion. It was on CBS from 1960 to 1962 and then on ABC for a few more years before it disappeared. Wilson sells old episodes on DVD and has a whole website about the show and its history here. He also sells some pretty decent books and videos on how to do magic. Here's a little video that they built out of the show's opening titles. The odd edits whenever Rebo the Clown looks into the Magic Wishing Hat are because they've cut out little clips of Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Mr. Jinks and Pixie and Dixie that used to be in there. I bought some DVDs of the old shows (which alas, lack the Hanna-Barbera elements) and the whole episodes still have that old — the word is unavoidable — magic…

Today's Video Link

A week or three ago here, we showed you a couple of approaches to the classic illusion, "Metamorphosis." I should have tossed this one in because it's in some ways, the most impressive.

The magician is Mark Wilson, a real champion of his art form. An awful lot of guys my age got interested in magic because of a TV show he had on from 1960 to 1964 called The Magic Land of Allakazam. I'm not sure if we were more impressed by how amazing his tricks were, how clever he was about teaching the essentials of magic to us, or by his lovely assistant (and spouse), Nani Darnell. I see Mark and Nani around the Magic Castle when I'm up there. He's still a legend and she's still lovely.

This is from one of the first HBO specials back in the early eighties…a thing called Mumbo Jumbo, It's Magic! It's one of those tricks that's impressive even if you know how it's done.

Today's Video Link

Since we seem to be having a kidvid festival here, I'll toss in one more…a short one. Among my favorite non-cartoon shows when I was younger was The Magic Land of Allakazam, a filmed show starring magician Mark Wilson. It debuted on CBS in October of 1960, ran two years on that network and then switched to ABC. I was eight when it began and — of course — it instantly got me hooked on magic.

I tuned in initially because between tricks, they showed Huckleberry Hound cartoons. But by then, I knew all those cartoons by heart and the magic was new and exciting, so I was actually happy when they eventually got rid of Huck and just did more magic in each show. By then, I'd cleaned out the local public library of every book they had on magic and had learned how to do a batch of mystical feats…including one card trick that is still, I'm embarrassed to report, part of my repertoire.

Mark Wilson, by the way, continues to perform magic but is mainly a teacher and consultant. His spouse — "the lovely Nani Darnell," who you'll see in our video clip — handles a lot of his business dealings. Last year, I took a card manipulation class at The Magic Castle. It was not taught by Mr. Wilson but Nani handled the sign-ups and tuition collection and such. Now, you'll have to imagine the following…

We're all in the classroom — guys about my age, all wearing jackets and ties because you have to wear a jacket and tie when you go to the Castle in the evening. Nani comes in and handles the last of the paperwork, then leaves…still looking quite lovely, almost a half-century after the filming of the video below. As soon as she's out of the room, our instructor (a very famous, important magician) admits that he started doing magic decades ago because he had a crush on her and thought that that was the way to get women who looked like that…

…and every guy in the room, myself included, nods in understanding and agreement.

When you hear magicians say that they were inspired by Dai Vernon or Blackstone or even Houdini…well, that may be true in many ways. But I'll bet Nani Darnell caused more young men in the early sixties to become magicians than any of those guys. Wilson had his son, who was about my age, perform a trick on each episode and I guess that was because they thought it would motivate young viewers to take up magic. Well, they were wrong. We were all motivated by the cute blonde lady.

I should mention that you can buy DVDs of the old Magic Land of Allakazam shows over on Mark Wilson's website and I've just placed an order for some, myself. Our link today is to a one minute commercial for the series from when it aired on ABC…

VIDEO MISSING

Magic To Do

Let's talk about Sneaky Pete's Magic Show, a Remco toy that was among the favored Christmas/Hanukkah (we celebrated everything) gifts of my youth.  I'm guessing I was eight the year I got mine and I loved it, though I can't recall ever using it to put on a show for anyone.  It was just knowing how to do the tricks — knowing I could do them — that mattered, though I was never quite able to master the cups-and-balls.  There was no gimmick to the cups-and-balls, apart from the fact that you actually had one more ball than an onlooker might think.  The cups-and-balls required practice and dexterity and at that age, I was looking for more immediate gratification and easier answers to the mysteries of the world.

There was also the disappointment of the sawing-a-lady-in-half trick promised on the box and in the commercials.  The set came with a little plastic harem girl, a rack on which you'd place her, and a special sword.  The figure was made with some kind of internal wheel that allowed the sword to actually pass through the stomach seam without damaging the doll.  It was surely the greatest feat of engineering managed by the Remco folks (the other tricks were pretty basic ones) but it was the least satisfying to me.  It didn't relate to the way I saw Mark Wilson sawing women in half on his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, didn't show me how he bisected his wife/assistant, Nani Darnell.  She didn't have one of those little wheels inside her.

Believe it or not, that's just about my most painful Christmas memory.  I had it pretty good.  I wish the same for you.