Volume 47 - No. 36
September 14, 2017
By Friedrich Gomez
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is one of the most wellknown lines in all of literature, penned by England’s greatest Victorian novelist, Charles Dickens. What is not wellknown is that Charles Dickens, the brilliant author who gave the world “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Great Expectations,” and the timeless classic, “A Christmas Carol” was, well . . . a professional magician. And a damned good one, according to contemporary sources at the time.
Billed as “The Unparalleled Necromancer,” Charles Dickens, under the exotic stage name of Rhia Rhama Rhoos, traveled to a coastal resort on the Isle of Wight and magically made simple playing cards suddenly explode into flames for captivated audiences. On another occasion, the mysterious Charles Dickens (again traveling incognito as Rhia Rhama Rhoos) stunned crowds by borrowing a woman’s watch, placing it into a small wooden box – then magically transported it into the middle of a loaf of bread! Not long after publishing his famous “The Pickwick Papers” in 1837, Charles Dickens’ mysterious alter-ego would again manifest as a most highlyskilled magician. Some said the best they had ever seen. The genius of Charles Dickens was like a Gatling gun, not only firing literary pearls like “Great Expectations” and “Oliver Twist” but also scoring a bull’s eye in the wizarding world. Simply put, he was the most under-rated professional magician of his time. A most shocking revelation for many Charles Dickens fans, today.
Traveling under his pseudonym, Rhia Rhama Rhoos, the great literary genius once left his audience spellbound when he magically cooked a steaming hot plum pudding in a borrowed gentleman’s top hat! Famous contemporary, Jayne Carlyle (wife of famous Scottish philosopher and historian, Thomas Carlyle) gushed over seeing a performance by magician, Charles Dickens: “Only think of it, that excellent Dickens playing the conjuror for one whole hour – the best conjuror I ever saw – and I have paid money to see several!” (In a December 1843 letter to Jayne Carlyle’s cousin.)
Magic seems to have a universal appeal and it’s no secret that countless kids had a magic set at one time or another in their growing-up-years. It was a simple passing phase many of us went through, moments reminiscent of boys fantasizing over being a super hero, or girls singing into a hairbrush at slumber parties and doing their most glamourous impressions of Lady Gaga. However, these lofty aspirations are a
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rite-of-passage, brief moments of transient childhood, not something that would full-blossom in our more earnest, adult years. Heaven forbid if you were to walk into your boss’ office, unannounced, only to see him in Superman tights, arms on hips, staring dramatically out of his high-office window, eyes focused somewhere beyond the horizon.
Yet, as with Charles Dickens, the magic bug sometimes bites a child and the mark stays on through the ensuing years, refusing to evaporate, and thus magic shapes the adult-to-come.
It happened to Johnny Carson.
It’s no secret that television’s most famous talk show host, Johnny Carson, performed as “The Great Carsoni” when he was a small Nebraska boy, knee-high to a grasshopper. (Johnny was born in Iowa, but his parents
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moved to Norfolk, Nebraska when he was only 8.)
Carson’s first paying gig as a professional magician was at the local Kiwanis Club at Norfolk, Nebraska where he was paid the handsome fee of $3 a show. That translates to about $52 in today’s 2017 currency and is not bad wages for a 14-year-old, postDepression-era teenager.
Unlike most boys, Carson was not just temporarily smitten by the conjuring arts during his boyhood years. Far from it. His love-affair with magic would stay-on during his entire adulthood, even unto the grave. During his late-night reign on The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson often tickled the audience with on-camera feats of sleight-of-hand. Once, after making a coin vanish for a little boy on the set of The Tonight Show, the
stunned child asked in disbelief: “How . . . can I make money disappear too?”
Johnny’s unscripted reply to the little boy: “Get married!”
But even when Johnny sat as host of NBC’s Tonight Show, he also sat as an illustrious member of the Board of Directors at the world-famous Magic Castle, a private members-only elegant restaurant and posh nightclub – complete with secret panels and magical doorways where guests disappear through, and amidst ghostly happenings which take place nightly in underground areas like the Haunted Wine Cellar beneath the mysterious Victorian-style Magic Castle edifice.
Like the mysterious Sphinx in ancient Egyptian mythology, the Magic Castle still sits today, nestled up in the famed Hollywood Hills. It was there, at the private, upscale
Famous People Who were Magicians Continued on Page 2