Looking Back - Reminiscing with Jack Lebo
Magician John Calvert Still Wowing Audiences After Eight Decades
I was 13 years of age at the time, and a student at Jay Cooke Jr. High School in Philadelphia, when I wrote the following story for The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin:
“Strange Experience - There’s one evening that I will recall for a long, long time. It’s the night that I lost my head at the Earle Theatre in Philadelphia.” Perhaps I’d better start at the beginning. At the time, John Calvert, the prominent magician/actor, was appearing, and being a guy who likes to be fooled, I went to see him with my late kid brother, Marvin.
After performing several astounding feats, Mr. Calvert announced, “For the next exhibition, I will need the assistance of...” and before he could finish, four boys were on stage, including yours truly. The magician eyed us all, felt my head, and mumbled, ‘Lovely!’ then shooed the other boys off of the stage.”
Before I knew what happened, I found myself lying on a table, my head covered with a black sack, and heard the deafening roar of a buzz-saw close to my ear. There were hysterical shrieks from the audience, then silence, then more violent screams, caused, I learned later, when the black sack apparently containing my head was carried through the audience.
When I was carried to the front of the stage, and Mr. Calvert yanked the sack off of my head, to show that my head was still where it should be, the first thing I saw was Marvin, sitting on the edge of his seat in the front row, his face white and his eyes popping. It was worth the price of admission to see the relieved expression on his face as I hopped off the stage, all in one piece. It was fun helping a magician, but believe me, I wouldn’t make a habit of it!
I was surprised to discover that John Calvert, at age 100, is still with us.
About John Calvert
In the famous and beloved film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey, (Jimmy Stewart), through divine intervention, discovers that he is living a wonderful life. Likewise, in real life, magician/actor John Calvert, now at age 100, has truly lived and continues to live an amazing life.
Born in 1911, Calvert still tours and performs his elaborate stage magic show that is reminiscent of the touring shows of the 1930s at the height of Thurston and Blackstone. In fact, Calvert’s show is not just reminiscent, he actually toured during that era. And magic is only a portion of this intriguing magician’s rich and wide-spanning career.
John Calvert has performed magic for an astounding 80 years, which includes Broadway and countries around the world. For a time, he piloted his own plane that carried his props and crew and was a active yachtsman, who sometimes toured the country in his motor home.
With his dashing good looks and natural acting abilities, Calvert had roles in some 40 movies in the 1940s with Danny Kaye, Gary Cooper and more. Most notably, Calvert starred in three films as “The Falcon,” a noted detective series. A documentary, “John Calvert: His Magic and Adventures,” which is available on DVD, presents the magician’s life and shows entertaining excerpts from his theatrical magic act.
The film is well-organized and offers interesting interviews with Calvert and his wife and assistant Tammy and some footage of Calvert today, touring and setting up his show in theatres and working with crews.
Calvert’s cumulative experiences are awe-inspiring and he’s a fantastic and entertaining magician. We highly recommend his documentary. Of note, Calvert was booked to play at the Palladium in London on Aug. 5, 2011, on his 100th birthday.
*
World War II veteran Erwin “Mickey” Green, of Bryn Mawr, PA, sends along the burning question of the day regarding that evasive character, Kilroy. Mickey asks, “That bald-headed cartoon guy that myself and others have drawn peeking over a wall for years... what is the deal with him, who invented him, etc.? I think he has something to do with the Second World War.”
I believe we have the answer here, Mickey....
Ah, Kilroy. The little cartoon bald head, peering over a fence that hid everything except his eyes and his long U-shaped nose...and sometimes his fingers, gripping the top of the fence. And his proclamation, “Kilroy was here!”
“Kilroy was here” emerged during World War II, appearing at truck stops, city restaurants, and in military boardrooms. However, the first appearances seem to have been on military docks and ships in late 1939.
According to author Charles Panati: “The mischievous face and the phrase became a national joke.” In theory, he was a soldier, probably American, who traveled all over the world scrawling his immortal phrase. Clearly, the graffiti was scrawled by thousands of different soldiers, not a single one named Kilroy.
During the 1940s, Kilroy was everywhere. Panati comments, “The outrageousness of the graffiti was not so much what it said, but where it turned up.” He cites the torch of the Statue of Liberty, The Arc de Triomphe in Paris, The Marco Polo Bridge in China, huts in Polynesia, and a girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York. There were contests in the Air Force to beat Kilroy to isolated and uninhabited places around the globe.
The appearance wasn’t always of GI origin, although it was largely tied to the military services. More than once, newspapers reported on pregnant women wheeled into the delivery room, with the hospital staff finding “Kilroy was here” written across their stomachs. Panati says: “The most daring appearance occurred during the meeting of the Big Three in Potsdam, Germany, in July 1945. Truman, Attlee, and Stalin had exclusive use of an opulent marble bathroom, off limits to everyone else. On the second day of the summit, an excited Stalin emerged from the bathroom sputtering something in Russian to one of his aides. A translator overheard Stalin demand ‘who is Kilroy?’”
There has been much written about the origin and proliferation of Kilroy. In December 1946, The New York Times credited James J. Kilroy, a welding inspector at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, with starting the craze. Usually, inspectors used a small chalk mark, but welders were erasing those to get double-paid for their work. To prevent this, Mr. Kilroy marked his welding work with the long crayoned phrase (“Kilroy was here”) on the items he inspected. The graffiti became a common sight around the shipyard and was imitated by workers when they were drafted and sent around the world. As the war progressed, people began opening void spaces on ships to repair, and the mysterious Mr. Kilroy’s name would be found there, in sealed compartments “where no one had been before.”
There are other origin stories, but they are less credible. The cartoon part of the graffiti has a different origin. According to Dave Wilton, it is originally British, named Mr. Chad, and apparently predates Kilroy by a few years. It commonly appeared with the phrase, “What, no ——-?” underneath, with the blank filed in by whatever was in short supply in Britain at the time — i.e., cigarettes, Spam, etc. The Oxford English Dictionary lists Chad’s origin as “obscure” but it may have been created by British cartoonist George Edward Chatterton.
Sometime during the war, Chad and Kilroy met and merged, the American phrase appearing under the British drawing. The combined logo acquired momentum, appearing wherever servicemen traveled, and quickly infected the civilian population. The mania peaked during the war, lingered into the 1950s, then pretty much died out, the joke as memories of World War faded.
There have been recurrences and imitators. There was a Canadian version named Clem. In the late 1960s, there was a version in Los Angeles called Overby. But none of these approached the popularity and ubiquitousness of the original.
*
Thanks to our Secane, PA connection, Babs Daniels, who refreshed our dim memories of those early television sitcoms, AKA Situation Comedies.
In the early 1950s, we were so fascinated by the new entertainment media called a television set, that we were suddenly bombarded with various comedy shows. One of the first was a sitcom called, “The Great Gildersleeve,” about a blowhard uncle and his comedic exploitations.
This show was a spin-off from the radio show “Fibber McGee and Molly,” a husband and wife team similar to George Burns and Gracie Allen. “I Remember Mama,” was a touching look into the life of a struggling Scandinavian family in America. Another popular show was “The Rise of the Goldbergs,” that showcased a Jewish family in Brooklyn whose mom reported life by leaning out of her kitchen window and gathering gossip about the neighbors.
“The Bickersons,” starring Don Ameche and Francis Langford was a show about a husband and wife who were constantly “bickering” and annoying each other. Another accomplished actor, William Bendix, was hilarious in “The Life of Riley,” which featured a blue collar worker’s daily life, portrayed by Rosemary DeCamp.
Among the favorite TV serials in 1950 was “Flash Gordon,” the first space hero, starring Buster Crabbe, the Olympic swimmer who at one timed played “Tarzan of the Apes,” “Billy the Kid,” and “Buck Rogers” in his early movie career. He later starred in the TV show “Captain Gallant in the Foreign Legion,” from 1955 to 1957.
*
Reader Jim Sayre reminded us that during the 1950s there was a toy that captured the imagination and attention of the entire nation. It was called Slinky and it disappeared as quickly as it came on the scene.
The Slinky toy was an elegant invention; it was a long, tightly-wound spring, about two and a half or three inches in diameter and about eight inches high, of copper wire that had been wound into a few hundred even-sized coils.
When given a small push, it would fall over and then go neatly down a flight of stairs, end over end. It made a sort of metallic (naturally) hissing sound when it moved.
Said Sayre, “I don’t remember how we came to have one, whether it was a Christmas present or a birthday present, or whether it just showed up one day. Fortunately, we had a nice long staircase for it to climb down.”
*
Looking Back appears each month. Do you have a memory you’d like to share? Drop a line to: Jack Lebo, Looking Back, 37 Locust Lane, Levittown, PA 19054, or call (215) 943-8870, email: jacklebo@verizon.net.
I was 13 years of age at the time, and a student at Jay Cooke Jr. High School in Philadelphia, when I wrote the following story for The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin:
“Strange Experience - There’s one evening that I will recall for a long, long time. It’s the night that I lost my head at the Earle Theatre in Philadelphia.” Perhaps I’d better start at the beginning. At the time, John Calvert, the prominent magician/actor, was appearing, and being a guy who likes to be fooled, I went to see him with my late kid brother, Marvin.
After performing several astounding feats, Mr. Calvert announced, “For the next exhibition, I will need the assistance of...” and before he could finish, four boys were on stage, including yours truly. The magician eyed us all, felt my head, and mumbled, ‘Lovely!’ then shooed the other boys off of the stage.”
Before I knew what happened, I found myself lying on a table, my head covered with a black sack, and heard the deafening roar of a buzz-saw close to my ear. There were hysterical shrieks from the audience, then silence, then more violent screams, caused, I learned later, when the black sack apparently containing my head was carried through the audience.
When I was carried to the front of the stage, and Mr. Calvert yanked the sack off of my head, to show that my head was still where it should be, the first thing I saw was Marvin, sitting on the edge of his seat in the front row, his face white and his eyes popping. It was worth the price of admission to see the relieved expression on his face as I hopped off the stage, all in one piece. It was fun helping a magician, but believe me, I wouldn’t make a habit of it!
I was surprised to discover that John Calvert, at age 100, is still with us.
About John Calvert
In the famous and beloved film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey, (Jimmy Stewart), through divine intervention, discovers that he is living a wonderful life. Likewise, in real life, magician/actor John Calvert, now at age 100, has truly lived and continues to live an amazing life.
Born in 1911, Calvert still tours and performs his elaborate stage magic show that is reminiscent of the touring shows of the 1930s at the height of Thurston and Blackstone. In fact, Calvert’s show is not just reminiscent, he actually toured during that era. And magic is only a portion of this intriguing magician’s rich and wide-spanning career.
John Calvert has performed magic for an astounding 80 years, which includes Broadway and countries around the world. For a time, he piloted his own plane that carried his props and crew and was a active yachtsman, who sometimes toured the country in his motor home.
With his dashing good looks and natural acting abilities, Calvert had roles in some 40 movies in the 1940s with Danny Kaye, Gary Cooper and more. Most notably, Calvert starred in three films as “The Falcon,” a noted detective series. A documentary, “John Calvert: His Magic and Adventures,” which is available on DVD, presents the magician’s life and shows entertaining excerpts from his theatrical magic act.
The film is well-organized and offers interesting interviews with Calvert and his wife and assistant Tammy and some footage of Calvert today, touring and setting up his show in theatres and working with crews.
Calvert’s cumulative experiences are awe-inspiring and he’s a fantastic and entertaining magician. We highly recommend his documentary. Of note, Calvert was booked to play at the Palladium in London on Aug. 5, 2011, on his 100th birthday.
*
World War II veteran Erwin “Mickey” Green, of Bryn Mawr, PA, sends along the burning question of the day regarding that evasive character, Kilroy. Mickey asks, “That bald-headed cartoon guy that myself and others have drawn peeking over a wall for years... what is the deal with him, who invented him, etc.? I think he has something to do with the Second World War.”
I believe we have the answer here, Mickey....
Ah, Kilroy. The little cartoon bald head, peering over a fence that hid everything except his eyes and his long U-shaped nose...and sometimes his fingers, gripping the top of the fence. And his proclamation, “Kilroy was here!”
“Kilroy was here” emerged during World War II, appearing at truck stops, city restaurants, and in military boardrooms. However, the first appearances seem to have been on military docks and ships in late 1939.
According to author Charles Panati: “The mischievous face and the phrase became a national joke.” In theory, he was a soldier, probably American, who traveled all over the world scrawling his immortal phrase. Clearly, the graffiti was scrawled by thousands of different soldiers, not a single one named Kilroy.
During the 1940s, Kilroy was everywhere. Panati comments, “The outrageousness of the graffiti was not so much what it said, but where it turned up.” He cites the torch of the Statue of Liberty, The Arc de Triomphe in Paris, The Marco Polo Bridge in China, huts in Polynesia, and a girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York. There were contests in the Air Force to beat Kilroy to isolated and uninhabited places around the globe.
The appearance wasn’t always of GI origin, although it was largely tied to the military services. More than once, newspapers reported on pregnant women wheeled into the delivery room, with the hospital staff finding “Kilroy was here” written across their stomachs. Panati says: “The most daring appearance occurred during the meeting of the Big Three in Potsdam, Germany, in July 1945. Truman, Attlee, and Stalin had exclusive use of an opulent marble bathroom, off limits to everyone else. On the second day of the summit, an excited Stalin emerged from the bathroom sputtering something in Russian to one of his aides. A translator overheard Stalin demand ‘who is Kilroy?’”
There has been much written about the origin and proliferation of Kilroy. In December 1946, The New York Times credited James J. Kilroy, a welding inspector at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, with starting the craze. Usually, inspectors used a small chalk mark, but welders were erasing those to get double-paid for their work. To prevent this, Mr. Kilroy marked his welding work with the long crayoned phrase (“Kilroy was here”) on the items he inspected. The graffiti became a common sight around the shipyard and was imitated by workers when they were drafted and sent around the world. As the war progressed, people began opening void spaces on ships to repair, and the mysterious Mr. Kilroy’s name would be found there, in sealed compartments “where no one had been before.”
There are other origin stories, but they are less credible. The cartoon part of the graffiti has a different origin. According to Dave Wilton, it is originally British, named Mr. Chad, and apparently predates Kilroy by a few years. It commonly appeared with the phrase, “What, no ——-?” underneath, with the blank filed in by whatever was in short supply in Britain at the time — i.e., cigarettes, Spam, etc. The Oxford English Dictionary lists Chad’s origin as “obscure” but it may have been created by British cartoonist George Edward Chatterton.
Sometime during the war, Chad and Kilroy met and merged, the American phrase appearing under the British drawing. The combined logo acquired momentum, appearing wherever servicemen traveled, and quickly infected the civilian population. The mania peaked during the war, lingered into the 1950s, then pretty much died out, the joke as memories of World War faded.
There have been recurrences and imitators. There was a Canadian version named Clem. In the late 1960s, there was a version in Los Angeles called Overby. But none of these approached the popularity and ubiquitousness of the original.
*
Thanks to our Secane, PA connection, Babs Daniels, who refreshed our dim memories of those early television sitcoms, AKA Situation Comedies.
In the early 1950s, we were so fascinated by the new entertainment media called a television set, that we were suddenly bombarded with various comedy shows. One of the first was a sitcom called, “The Great Gildersleeve,” about a blowhard uncle and his comedic exploitations.
This show was a spin-off from the radio show “Fibber McGee and Molly,” a husband and wife team similar to George Burns and Gracie Allen. “I Remember Mama,” was a touching look into the life of a struggling Scandinavian family in America. Another popular show was “The Rise of the Goldbergs,” that showcased a Jewish family in Brooklyn whose mom reported life by leaning out of her kitchen window and gathering gossip about the neighbors.
“The Bickersons,” starring Don Ameche and Francis Langford was a show about a husband and wife who were constantly “bickering” and annoying each other. Another accomplished actor, William Bendix, was hilarious in “The Life of Riley,” which featured a blue collar worker’s daily life, portrayed by Rosemary DeCamp.
Among the favorite TV serials in 1950 was “Flash Gordon,” the first space hero, starring Buster Crabbe, the Olympic swimmer who at one timed played “Tarzan of the Apes,” “Billy the Kid,” and “Buck Rogers” in his early movie career. He later starred in the TV show “Captain Gallant in the Foreign Legion,” from 1955 to 1957.
*
Reader Jim Sayre reminded us that during the 1950s there was a toy that captured the imagination and attention of the entire nation. It was called Slinky and it disappeared as quickly as it came on the scene.
The Slinky toy was an elegant invention; it was a long, tightly-wound spring, about two and a half or three inches in diameter and about eight inches high, of copper wire that had been wound into a few hundred even-sized coils.
When given a small push, it would fall over and then go neatly down a flight of stairs, end over end. It made a sort of metallic (naturally) hissing sound when it moved.
Said Sayre, “I don’t remember how we came to have one, whether it was a Christmas present or a birthday present, or whether it just showed up one day. Fortunately, we had a nice long staircase for it to climb down.”
*
Looking Back appears each month. Do you have a memory you’d like to share? Drop a line to: Jack Lebo, Looking Back, 37 Locust Lane, Levittown, PA 19054, or call (215) 943-8870, email: jacklebo@verizon.net.
