WHEN I GO TO THE MAGIC CASTLE
and I’m picked to assist the magician in his trick…
A before-and-after photo set of our museum.
The first is what it looked like in the early 60s, the second is what it looks like today, almost 50 years later.
Especially during the weekends, you’ll find several of our magician members performing impromptu sets in the small close-up performance space pictured.
We’re looking forward to a magical How I Met Your Mother finale episode entitled “The Magician’s Code”!
It’s always fun to watch our president Neil Patrick Harris be brilliant and, in this episode, we’re pretty excited for a cameo from magician and two-time Academy of Magical Arts awardee Ed Alonzo!
How I Met Your Mother is on CBS at 8/7c TONIGHT!
(Neil Patrick Harris Photo via Jonathan Alcorn for The New York Times)
(Ed Alonzo photo via www.edalonzo.com)
A Chat with Suzanne
Suzanne is one of the foremost close-up magicians in the world who just so happens to be female. In 2011, she became the first female magician to win the prestigious Academy of Magical Arts’ Close-Up Magician of the Year Award. She was one of our many amazing performers last week during “Women of Magic” week at the Magic Castle and we sat down to ask her a few questions about that very subject.
How has “Women of Magic Week” been at the Castle? Is there a different “vibe” to the week from other weeks you’ve performed here?
I have totally enjoyed this week!! I love working the Castle anyway but this week, being the “Women of Magic Week” has been even more special. To have the energy of all the women performers… Wow! I love that women are recognized in the field of magic.
Liberty Larsen and Peterkin with the portrait of Geri Larsen and Peterkin. Liberty is wearing her great-grandmother’s original dress.
The dress is on loan from the Society of American Magicians Hall of Fame and Museum whose original home in Los Angeles was damaged by a fire in 2004. Since then, the collection has been stored as they look to find a new home in Los Angeles.
Consider visiting their web page and donating so remarkable items, like this gown, can be displayed once again to the public: www.samhalloffame.com
Program for Women in Magic week at the Magic Castle
For “Women of Magic” week at the Magic Castle, Geri Larsen’s great-granddaughter, Liberty Larsen has convinced Geri’s old friend and co-star Peterkin to come out of retirement for the first time in 50 years!
The World Famous Hollywood Magic Castle Proudly Presents “Women of Magic” Week!
Where would we be without Geri Larsen (and William W. Larsen, Sr.)? We’d be nowhere! We’d have no founders, no Genii Magazine and no Magic Castle.
From May 7th until May 13th, as a tribute to Geri and all women in magic, producer Dale Hindman along with Geri’s son and Magic Castle co-founder Milt Larsen have put together the first ever female magic week at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, California. Every single showroom will be comprised solely of the finest female magicians.
Included among those who have successfully conquered the male dominated industry of illusion are Luna Shimada (daughter of longtime magic legend Shimada), Suzanne (first female recipient of the Close Up Magician of the Year award), and 9 other female magicians.
Pictured: The show schedule for “Women in Magic” week starting tonight at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, California.
We have a great schedule of some of the top female magicians in the world.
Not a member of the Magic Castle? Check out our Open Sesame memberships at www.magiccastle.com/opensesame .
Geri Larsen: The Magic Lady
by Joan Lawton, Secretary, Board of Trustees
(Source: Academy of Magical Arts Newsletter, May 2012)
Magic has always been a way to delight and bring people together. The art sure did its job in the 1920s when Occidental College coed Geraldine Conrad was watching her very first magic performance. The dashing magician, William W. Larsen, Sr, asked her to take the linking rings apart and, instantly, she was linked to him for a lifetime. It was love at first sight for both of them!
Married in 1923, Bill and Geri became a force in magic. Bill was in law school and later, of course, an attorney, but magic was always at the front of his mind. From being around it so much, it eventually permeated Geri’s mind, too – so much so that it became the primary focus of their life together. Of course, having two small boys who had also been bitten by the magic bug didn’t hurt!
Independently, Geri received plenty of magical notice, too. She co-founded Magigals, an organization for women magicians and/or wives of magicians, in 1936 – the same year that Bill, Sr. founded Genii Magazine. In 1939, she was the first woman to perform magic on television. That was at the Golden Gate International Exposition inSan Francisco. Years later, she was “The Magic Lady” on KTLA-TV, a local Los Angeles channel. And after that, she had a syndicated television show that also appeared on ABC-TV. After Bill died in 1953, Geri became the publisher of Genii and the matriarch of the Larsen Family of Magic.
I remember Geri as a lovely, white-haired lady with sparkling eyes. She was always immaculately attired, frequently in pastel colors. She was charming. I always thought that she’d be a perfect hostess and that she’d always make her guests feel welcome and comfortable.
That charm drew men to her as though she were a magnet! Several years after Bill passed, Geri was wooed by and eventually married TV host Art Baker. Three years after Art passed (1966), she met and married another suitor, a retired candy maker named Rubin Jaffee who swept her off to live in Montecito, CA.
To say that Geri Conrad Larsen Baker Jaffee knew the greats in magic is an understatement. Some her friends (especially while married to Bill) included T. Page Wright, Max Holden, Al Flosso, the Thayers, Max Terhune, Dante, Alan Wakeling, Marvyn Roy, Ray Muse, Richard Himber, Jack Gynne … The list goes on and on.
Geri Larsen attended the final Houdini Séance on the roof of the Knockerbocker Hotel. She said of that night, “We went up to the séance up on the roof…That was quite a thrill for me, to go there. I sat in the ‘inner circle.’”
During WW II, Orson Welles rehearsed at Brookledge (The Larsen Family Home) for the Mercury Wonder Show. If you go to Brookledge, who knows? You might sit in a chair that Rita Hayworth once used!
Asked once if she had ever thought that the Magic Castle would become world-famous, Geri replied, “No, I had no idea. I just thought it would be a lovely place for magicians. That had always been Bill’s (Sr.) wish.” His wish certainly came through!
