(Hank) Moorehouse 1934 – 2011 - The Society of American Magicians

32 M-U-M Magazine
The Nielsen Gallery
Thurston Iasia – Vanished in the Theatre’s Dome
Dimensions: One-sheet: 27” x 41” • Lithographer: Otis Lithograph Co., Cleveland, Ohio
Date:1920s • Nielsen Rating: Limited Availability
As the Roaring Twenties came to a close, Howard
Thurston desperately needed a new and exciting illusion
for his Wonder Show of the Universe. Imagine his excitement
when a forty-five-year old Englishman told him he
could create an illusion in which a flesh and blood woman,
suspended from the dome of the theater, vanished over the
heads of the audience. That illusion, Iasia, is the subject of
this month’s poster.
The man who created Iasia was Cyril Yettmah, an
illusion builder for The Great Raymond and The Great
Lafayette, and who, from 1928 to 1930, perfected a wide
range of illusions for Thurston. In the program, Iasia was
described as, “The unattainable attained. The impossible
realized.” And for audiences, it must have seemed so.
Michael Edwards, writing in the December 1999 issue of
Genii, described the illusion:
The illusion began with a girl dressed in long flowing
robes entering a “Hindu prayer cage” – in reality, an
upright, four-sided skeleton cabinet. Its framework was
open on all sides; the thinness of its bottom and the narrowness
of its ornamental top were readily apparent. Slowly,
the cage with the girl standing inside was hoisted into the
air and pulled up and out over the heads of the spectators.
Once above the footlights, there would be a pause in
its upward journey. At that moment Thurston would intone,
“Salaam, Iasia – swing forth the old Hindu prayer cage.”
Again the cage would continue its ascent. The girl would
lower curtains on all four sides of the cabinet, proving she
was still inside.
As the cage traveled over the audience to the theater’s
top, she would toss Thurston good-luck cards through
the slits in the curtains to the spectators below. When the
cabinet finally reached the ceiling, it would come to a halt,
suspended from the auditorium’s dome with no visible means
of escape. Thurston, with pistol in hand, would command,
“One, seven, Iasia, Garawallah go!” A shot would ring out,
the curtains would drop, and the hinged bottom of the cage
would fall open. The girl had vanished.
“She is gone,” Thurston would announce. “Those above
may look down on the top of the cage. Those below may look
through the bottom, which is open. She is gone…just gone…
Every performance I stand here in amazement, wondering
where she has gone and if she will ever come back.” He’d
pause and then add wryly, “She always does come back…
on payday.”
To vanish a girl on stage is one thing. When a girl disappears
in the dome of the theater directly above the heads of
the audience, it’s another matter. The illusion remained in
Thurston’s repertoire for the rest of his life.
So, where did she go? She hid in the narrow, decorated
roof of the illusion. Here’s how it happened. The illusion
contained a pull-down ladder that allowed the girl to climb
up into the roof. As she hid herself, the floor of the cage
slid upward assisted by counterweights concealed in the
hollow posts of the cage. When Thurston fired his pistol,
the curtains dropped, the bottom fell open, and the girl was
gone.
Thurston thought the illusion was so strong that for a
time he closed his show with it. However, the disappearance
was so startling that the audience was frequently too
amazed to applaud. He later moved it to the penultimate
spot in the show and closed instead with The Mystery of the
Water Fountain.
Not only was this a dangerous illusion, dangling many
hundreds of pounds of wooden cage over the heads of the
audience, it was also very difficult to set. Herman Hanson,
who traveled with the show, recalled that this was the job of
George White, Thurston’s number one assistant. It involved
him climbing the catwalks above the theater ceiling
searching for a girder with a painter’s hole beneath it from
which to secure the rigging. “The life of the girl assistant
depended upon it, as well as that of the audience directly
below, as the cage traveled over their heads. Imagine what
would happen if the rigging gave way.”
This happened, in fact, in Youngstown, Ohio, during a
test performance. The cage with a boy assistant inside fell
shortly after it swung out over the footlights, smashing the
orchestra railing and three chairs. The boy was not injured.
As is so frequently the case, this was not a comfortable
illusion for the girl. At the end of the trick she had to
remain crouched inside the thin top until everyone in the
audience had left the theater. In fact, in Jim Steinmeyer’s
new biography of Thurston, The Last Greatest Magician in
the World, he writes that the “girl” who vanished was Thurston’s
stage manager George Townsend, who donned a wig
and oriental robe to play the role of the lovely Iasia.
The original Iasia cabinet was among the ruins of
Thurston’s show that collectors and historians Mike
Caveney, Bill Self, and Robert Self found in Gerald Heaney’s
Berlin, Wisconsin, barn in 1988. Heaney had acquired much
of Thurston’s illusions, but after years of neglect the cage
was nothing more than a rusted steel frame.
Although quite pricey these days, Iasia posters could be
had cheaply at one time. In the early 1950s Claude D. Nobel
was offering readers of Genii, The Sphinx, and other magic
publications single copies of Iasia posters for one dollar,
two posters for two dollars; three posters or more, seventyfive
cents each. The same deal was offered for seven other
now rare lithographs. Who wouldn’t buy them today at that
price? �