The floating princess

In the early 1840s, an English magician, mentalist and musician named Henry Palmer abandoned his studies at Royal Academy of music after becoming fascinated with the stage magic of French performer Robert-Houdin.

The young Henry was so impressed that he changed his name to emulate that of his idol. He didn’t take the ‘Houdin’ part though (another young and impressionable magician would do that years later). He changed his first name to Robert and adopted Heller as his last.

Arriving in New York City with the aim of starting a career in magic, he took to the stage emulating Houdin in a dark wig and French accent. The act was such a failure that he left for Washington DC and a more stable job as a music teacher.

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When one of his music pupils became his wife, she persuaded him to take up magic again, without the phony stage persona. This more natural presentation was a success.

With an act consisting of easy-to-travel illusions relying on the sleight-of-hand techniques of coin and card palming and 'spiritual' Séance, Heller toured the US, UK, Europe and Asia for six years before retiring magic for musical performance back in DC.

Those six short years though established Heller as the King of Magic and won him a place in the minds and hearts of an adoring audience.

His reputation and name, much like Houdin’s, would go on to have lasting impact on the lives of stage magicians to come.

In the late 1850s, a young Harry Keller played dangerous games on the streets and train tracks of Pennsylvania.

This was a boy unafraid of taking risks.

At only 10 years of age he took an apprenticeship with a druggist, where at times he had unsupervised access to a range of chemicals. On one such occasion he reportedly blew a hole in the floor of his employer's drugstore, and fearing the wrath of his parents, stowed away on a train and became a vagabond.

A British-born minister befriended the 10 year old homeless boy, adopted him and paid for his education on condition that Keller would study to also become a minister. The deal didn’t last. One evening Kellar saw the performance of a traveling magician, "The Fakir of Ava" and immediately got the urge to go on the stage. He bought books on magic and finally left the minister behind.

After working as a magician’s assistant for a year, at the age of sixteen he gave his first solo performance. It was a disaster, and Kellar went back to assisting and learning the craft with a number of travelling showmen.

In 1873, now 23 years old, Keller was confident enough in his skills to embark on a tour of Central and South America. He and his partner made the equivalent of $212,000 in Mexico and performed for the Emperor in Brazil. Flush with cash and a burgeoning reputation, they set sail for a tour of England.

The boat sank, along with a cargo of gold, silver and an entire cache of stage-magic equipment.

Keller was far from home with nothing to his name other than the wet clothes on his back and the ring on his finger. With the ring pawned he had enough to buy some simple props and earn his way into a boarding house before seeking a little entertainment.

That entertainment was the “Egyptian Hall”, a permanent playhouse in London to a troupe of magicians managed by John Nevil Maskelyne and George Alfred Cooke.

Keller became entranced by the Egyptian Hall and the idea that a magician could have a permanent home rather than have the need to continually tour. He also became fascinated with one of their acts. It involved the story of an Indian mystic somehow being able to float a young princess.

He could not discern the secret.

He returned.

He managed to obtain funds from a bank transfer delayed from his performances in South America.

He offered to purchase the secret of the floating princess from Maskelyne but was rejected.

So he saw the show again.

And again.

Having witnessed the performance from multiple vantage points and still clueless, during one performance he simply stormed on to the stage, saw what he needed to see, and left, boarding the next boat back to the US.

There, in Philadelphia in 1884 he opened a theatre. In a stroke of enlightenment, he named it “The Egyptian Hall”. With the assistance of the Otis Elevator Company, he produced the mechanisms required to perform a routine he named “The Levitation of Princess Karnac”.

His return and new show weren’t met with instant acclaim. While he had been in England, Heller had died and the press decried Kellar’s return to the US scene as a shamelessly profiteering from Heller's reputation and violating his personality rights, saying that "Heller is scarcely dead before we read of 'Kellar the Wizard'. Of course 'Kellar' aims to profit by the reputation that Heller left, by adopting a close imitation of Heller's name.” Kellar’s protestations that he had changed the spelling of his name so as to specifically NOT be confused with Heller fell on a deaf audience.

Within seven months Kellar closed the theatre and it soon after burned to the ground. He returned to touring Brazil.

One young attendee of Hermann’s shows in Columbus, Ohio, was Howard Thurston.

In the 1870s as a young teen with an unhappy childhood he ran away from home (are we all sensing a theme here?) to join the circus: somewhat ironically, the very circus in which Harry Kellar had earlier performed.

It was seeing Hermann’s show that drove Thurston to strive to one day be his equal. So he studied sleight of hand, particularly with playing cards, making cards disappear, one by one, at his fingertips.

Thurston arranged an impromptu audition with Leon Herrmann, Alexander’s nephew. His performance fooled Leon. From that point on he called himself "The man that fooled Herrmann" and used the publicity to get booked into top vaudeville houses in the U.S. and Europe, billing himself as the King of Cards.

Of course, “The man that fooled Hermann” was a title that caught the attention of Harry Kellar who perhaps was still looking for one last chance to take a dig at Alexander Hermann himself.

Kellar’s plan became to manage the career of a successor : someone to whom he could pass not just his knowledge, but also the substantial equipment he had been lugging around the world.

Thurston became that successor and eventually the most famous magician of his time, well surpassing the career heights of Hermann.

His traveling magic show was the biggest one of all; it was so large that it needed eight train cars to transport.

Among all that new and inherited equipment was a trunk containing “the levi” : a collection of weights, wires, counter balances and levers made in part by the Otis Elevator Company.

Despite being made famous by Kellar, it was said that in Thurston's hands, the Levitation of Princess Karnac became a masterpiece.