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SHOWMANSHIP
For
MAGICIANS
CHAPTER TEN
Surprise is always an effective expedient in the show business as it always compels a new or renewed interest in the routine. Almost invariably it results in a response on the part of the spectators. Surprise stresses the unexpected. Surprise is accentuated by emphasizing the conventional normal expectation until the last moment.
Surprise was one of the basic results of the doll house presentation detailed previously. You will note in that routine that while the unexpected appearance of the second girl is a definite surprise, yet it is not an illogical development.
Most effective surprise is based on this idea of logical but unexpected development. Because surprise is so radically removed from the normal course of events, it must be pointed and timed very carefully. Almost invariably the momentary pause just before the denouement is mandatory in order to allow the spectator to collect his wits for the impact. Otherwise, he might miss the point altogether.
Surprise is the basis of most short stories, a type that has become increasingly popular within the past few years.
Almost invariably surprise carries with it PUNCH.
Tricks incorporating surprise are those such as the vanishing cane to silk, the production of a cigar or pipe after repeated cigarette productions and like effects. The cane to silk trick would be a better surprise if something more in character with a cane could be substituted for the silk, just as the pipe or cigar is in character with the previous productions.
By keeping the surprise in character with that which has preceded it, unity is maintained. A connecting thread of unity is a valuable asset. No first-class success in any type of entertainment, whether it be in the form of a motion picture, a stage attraction, a novel, a short story or any other type of diversion , can be achieved without endowing the undertaking with some degree of unity, no matter how fragile the connecting thread may be.
Now what is this unity?
It is the maintaining of a single idea from beginning to end. It is the stressing of this idea to the subordination of any other suggestion, although minor ideas may intrude occasionally.
Cardini's act is an outstanding illustration of unity. The idea of a slightly tipsy Englishman being plagued by his tricks dominates throughout his whole routine. Slyter's drunk act also maintains unity to a superlative degree. Like Cardini's routine it is based on befuddlement through liquor. But whereas Cardini's character is only slightly spiffed, Slyter's conception is plastered to the eyes.
One way unity may be achieved, then, is by keeping the whole routine in character. The character emphasis need not be on the performer's condition. It may also be on the character's type-such as Spaniard, Englishman, Mexican, Chinese and so on.
Other character conditions might be, in addition to a condition of being under the influence of liquor, a condition of stupidity, or uncertainty, or like Peter Godfrey's priceless character of a shy, apologetic and somewhat uncertain Cockney. There is a limitless field from which to select an entertaining character. Any of the innumerable character qualities people demonstrate may be combined to evolve an entirely original angle of approach.
At random I can think of many: The loud, raucous, quarrelsome drunk. The ill-prepared, worried and awkward amateur magician attempting his first performance. Or the pompous, bluff, bewbiskered "professor" of magic. A Latin character, friendly, affable but totally unable to master the intricacies of the language. Caryl Fleming liked to perform as a good-natured but thick-tongued Dutchman.
Take a combination of characteristics, add them to a definite type of person, and flavor this with a bit of nationality. This will create character. The character and his qualities will bring definite strengths and weaknesses. These are the pegs upon which you should hang your presentation and lines. The nationality referred to need not be necessarily foreign. There are many types of Americans from various localities, south, west, north and east.
Another way of maintaining unity is by doing a series of tricks with different objects but all with the same result. As an example:
Everything the performer picks up vanishes. Or he is constantly being bothered with things appearing in his hands. No sooner does he put one thing down than another appears, to his consternation. Or he might have a destructive complex. Everything in sight is broken or cut or otherwise destroyed, but eventually all is made whole again.
The mental act is a good demonstration of unity. All of the effects are of a mental nature. Another type of act might be based on a character who is invulnerable to the ordinary hazards. He can handle fire with his bare hands, eat safety razor blades, stick needles through his thumbs and plunge blades through his wrist or neck. Some years a go one prominent vaudeville performer featured an abnormal appetite. He ate flowers, his shirt front, cigarette butts, cigars, stole a piece of music from the orchestra and contentedly munched that. He built that up tremendously so that no matter what he reached for-the bass fiddle, a chair or even an enticing blonde-they expected him to begin chewing on it.
Unity may also be maintained by doing all of the tricks with the same materials, like Ade Duval with silks. or a routine entirely with ropes, or water, or milk, or golf balls, or eggs, or watches, or coins, or cigarettes, or anything else under the sun.
Or unity may be achieved by transforming an object with which a trick is done into another object with which another trick is done, and so on throughout the routine. Or with related objects like needles, thread, thimbles, cloth, sewing hoops, et cetera. Or with cooking utensils, tin cans, or pen and ink and paper and blotters. Listing all such possibilities is impossible.
If the same object is used for all tricks, do different effects with it. In this way a handkerchief taken from the pocket may be burned and restored, stretched, dyed, produced, vanished, multiplied, penetrated and so on.
If different objects are used, you might try doing the same trick with all, as in the previous illustrations of repeated vanishes or productions.
To achieve unity, somewhere, in some manner a connecting thread, whether based on similar objects, an idea, on character work, or the attitude of the performer, or on effects, must tie the whole act together from beginning to end, like a clothes line with the family wash hanging from it. In this case the clothesline would be the unifying idea. It holds the whole together.
I can't stress this idea of some type of unity too strongly. It is a fundamental, if you are to register an outstanding success. It is not true of a magic entertainment alone. Nor is it exclusively true of the entertainment field. Unity is essential to any type of creation from the building of a house to the planning out of a city. From the creation of a musical composition to the painting of a picture. From the assembly of a rude sled to the planning of an airplane.
Nothing becomes an individual entity, a separately identifiable entire thing in itself, unless it is bound together as a unit. With unity it becomes a specific something. Without unity you have a nondescript miscellany.
This unifying idea may be bird, beast or fish. It may be physical-tied together with color, or a common type of construction of the props, or a common material, or a common shape. It may be mental-connected with a common moral, or a common theme, or a common outcome, a common attitude, or a common condition. It may be character-tied with a character flavoring from the same bottle, whether it is nationality, dialect, behaviorism, ambition, prejudice, weakness or what not. It may be unified through sentiment, romance, comedy, futility, nostalgia or any of the many atmospheric and emotional conditions. The ways in which an act may be given unity are truly limitless.
The more ways in which this unity may be strengthened, the better. One method of unifying the act is good. Many ways, all consistently binding the whole together is superlative.
Almost the same may be said of character. No chef would prepare a dish without seasoning. Character is the seasoning that makes your entertainment dish palatable. Everything has character, even though the character is weak and uninteresting. Your job is to develop a quality of character in your routine that makes it tasty to the spectator. Otherwise you will have a mere assembly of ingredients-tasteless, unsavory, unappetizing, lacking zest.
Throughout the entire routine this character must be maintained. Everything you do must be influenced and shaped by this character.
It might be a case of playing an actual character in a specific dialect-broad or subtle. Yet it need not be this. Character may also be achieved by a lusty, devil-may-care attack on everything you may essay. Or it might be like the Cardini, or Slyter, or Peter Godfrey attacks cited before. Yet Ballantine, the comedy magician, burlesquing the serious magician, horsing all over the stage in a mock-serious attempt to sell the audience on his tag line, "the world's greatest magician," yet flopping on practically everything he attempts, achieves character in a different way.
People are interested in people. People differ from one another by differences in character. This difference is of superlative interest to other people. It is a fascinating, intriguing, irresistible attraction, impossible to ignore.
Character shows up in mannerisms, dress, conduct, beliefs, attitudes, manner of talking, manner of walking, grooming, personal appearance, reaction under stress and in many other ways. Consider the pictures you instantly receive with the mere utterance of character-revealing words. Languid. Stumble. Fumble. Listless. Prissy. Sulky. Jovial. Robust. Melancholy. Hilarious. Cheerful. There are so many of these words that bring a picture.
Character is revealed best, of course, by an individual's reactions to impediments, obstacles, stresses, emotions and the like.
But the things a person owns also reveal character, as well as by what they are, how they look, what kind of care they receive, the type of coloring, etc.
What a person says is particularly illuminating, and how he says it. Consider: "Says you!" "The mater will be displeased." "Really!" "You're the guy I'm lookin' for." "I hain't gonna quit." "Stick 'em up." . . .
The tone and character of voice counts: He grumbled. She shrieked. He growled harshly. She mumbled. His voice rasped. She cooed archly. His words were deliberate, slow, menacing. Her voice had a lilt. There was laughter behind his words. He said dryly . . .
Mannerisms: He kept brushing imaginary specks from his clothes. She fussed with her purse. He chewed his cigar. She tapped her foot impatiently. She idly scribbled as she talked.
Dress: A loose-draped suit, festooning from his frame. Her dress drooped. Shapeless shoes with untied strings. His ears supported a too-large hat. A necktie so tight one more pull would have caused his tongue to pop out. Soup-streaked vest. Unpressed dress suit of greenly doubtful vintage. He wore a loud-checked suit, across the squared-off vest of which draped a heavy gold chain . . . .
Conduct: He grabbed a handful of cigars. He carefully pinched a single penny from his purse. With a flourish he produced a thick roll of bills and licked his thumb. He expectorated loudly. She belched, then giggled. He kicked the puppy viciously. He stuck out his tongue and gave a lusty Bronx cheer . . . .
Manner of walking: He ambled. She minced. He stumbled awkwardly. She dragged her feet after her. Prancing like a colt. Shuffling gait. Tip-toeing. He pounded after her. She danced towards him. . . .
Reaction under stress: At his laugh, tears welled into her eyes. At the slap in his face, momentarily his eyes flared, then he flushed and drew back. He saw the body, shrugged, then said, "That's the first time I ever saw him with his mouth shut." . . .
Consider the numerous pictures of people that any of the above illustrations suggest. Of course, these are by no means complete lists of such suggestions. Millions of ways of showing character are available to the entertainer, if he puts his own mind and ingenuity to the task.
But character-revealing ideas must be IN KEEPING WITH THE CHARACTER YOU DESIRE TO PORTRAY, whether the character is simple or complex. This is an important matter that should be given careful consideration.
Mention has been made of another important fundamental in attractive entertainment. We called it "situation." By this I mean predicament. Any set of circumstances in which a character may find himself, either through some action of his own or because of an action taken by another, deliberately or accidentally, from which it will take action on the part of that character to extricate himself, is a predicament. We call it being "in a jam."
Situations of this character, taxing the powers of the character involved, are extremely interesting to others. And, depending upon the seriousness of the predicament, to the character himself, of course.
Obviously it appeals, as does any other conflict. It is conflict, conflict between the character and a situation. And the outcome will be either a victory or defeat for the one involved. The seriousness of the situation governs the seriousness of the outcome.
Magicians are familiar with many situations, the pull that breaks during a performance, the piece of apparatus that refuses to work. The spectator who lies about the card he selected. The old lady who stands up and insists she saw you put the ball up your sleeve. These are all situations. All of them are of great interest to magicians. It has been proven time and time again at magicians' conventions when some hapless performance is suddenly enlivened in interest for the other magicians as they discover the performer to be really in a jam.
These situations are interesting to magicians because they are situations in which magicians have found themselves and could conceivably find themselves again. They represent disaster. The magician subconsciously places himself in the same predicament. His chief interest is to see how the performer will overcome the difficulty, if he can overcome it. Or what he will do, if the difficulty is too much for him.
This is the meat of situation. The only difference in entertaining the public is that the predicament should be one that the spectators could understand, could appreciate and in which they could conceivably find themselves. With that condition, the heightened interest is certain.
A surefire situation for a magician is to lead the spectators to think that something has gone wrong. Other situations are the little boy with his arms piled high with eggs. Or the bashful little boy being introduced to the giggling little girl, or the man watching his cherished watch being smashed up, or a cake being mixed in his best hat. For years magicians have been utilizing situations of all kinds to heighten their performances.
Russell Swann makes excellent use of it in his performance when he has a hat brought from the checkroom, identifies it and then goes over to the owner's table to give him a better view, while he stirs up a batch of batter in it. During the mixing of the mess, he also contrives to throw flour all over the hapless spectator, keeping his temperature just below the boiling point by assuring him, "It'll brush right off." All of this is much to the heightened delight of the spectators. The "flour" does brush right off, because it isn't flour. But none of the spectators believe that.
We used situation at the close of the opening of the second act in the International Magicians show. The scene was laid in a modiste shop and a lovely young lady comes in to buy a bathing suit. She is in a great rush, and must try it on immediately. The flustered pansy floorwalker tells her that all of the fitting rooms are occupied. But at the urging of the girl, he finally suggests that the other girls can pile hat boxes around her. She may undress behind that.
During the floorwalker's absence the girl gets behind the hat boxes, which have been piled up in front of her, and proceeds to disrobe, throwing her clothing over the top of the boxes-the shoes, the frock, the petticoat, the stockings, the brassiere and finally the panties.
Upon his return the floorwalker shows great interest in the bare-shouldered girl behind the boxes. He seems reluctant to hand her the suit, in spite of the more and more insistent demands on her part.
He leans over towards one of the girls and asks, "Are those boxes glued together?"
The girl replies, "Certainly not."
A light comes in the floorwalker's eyes and he yells, "That's all I want to know." And with that he bits the stacked-up boxes a lusty wallop. The nude girl screams. But as the boxes tumble down the girl is seen to have disappeared.
Parenthetically I might add: When we did this number at the Headliner's Show at the national S. A. M. convention in Chicago a great many of my rakish pals who are also camera enthusiasts took photographs of a perfectly empty space, which fact was ruefully admitted to me the next morning by several otherwise respectable members of that august body.
Do I need any other illustrations to prove how situation, properly handled, can take the puzzle curse from a magician's trick? The situation was so strong that nobody cared how the trick was worked. I venture to say that the great majority of spectators never even considered that angle of it.
Truly of all of the situations of potential strength there is one made to order for the magician. If there were anything that delights an audience more than catching a smart-aleck magician in a jam, I'd like to know what it is. This is a suggestion that can be used, with profit, not more than once during a program. But it is surefire.
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