"The World's Great Magician"

An adieu to Carl Ballantine (1922-2009)

As Orson Welles wisely stated: "every magician is the greatest magician in the world".
The Great Ballantine (born Meyer Kessler) presented himself as such at the beginning at his act. Just to follow seven minutes of the worst possible exits for a magician's act. And in doing that, he consecrated a star on the stages of dying vaudeville and rising television: the rubber chicken.
As a zen priest, he dedicated 60 years of his life doing every day the same act: until his fictionary character sculpted himself on his face, body and voice, becoming more believable than truth. Until every smile and laugh from the audience became a sure-fire turning point of a little piece of art through the minimalist craft of the repetition in front of the most unpredictable audiences. Of his generation, only giants as Mac Ronay and George Carl can be compared to him.



When a magicians passes away, a wand is traditionally broken by colleagues on his grave.
What is broken here is not just the prestige of a glorious magic wand. It is also another link to an era and style of perfection in performing arts that never will be back again.

Battling Magicians

"FISM" in Beijng

The venerable ancient art of magic is still alive: yesterday in Beijing ended the FISM, the world magic championship. Few events in the world are as surreal as witnessing, every three years, hundred of the most unpredictable magic acts from the five continents, for an audience of thousand of other magicians. It is an experience spanning from the most grotesque parochial flavour to few sublime exemple of a great art.

This year's Grand Prix of magic was awarded to magician Soma from Hungary.
Next FISM will be in Blackpool, UK, July 2012.

Here is Soma's winning act:

More on Blacaman

A further (and not final) glimpse on the man who died twice.

In the mid-20, the vaudeville and music-hall was fighting the movies, eager for new sensations: physical, mysterious, primal emotions. These mainly came from the poorest and oldest of street performances. Hypnotists were dignified as theatre stars among velvets and limelights; magicians turned to the macabre side of torture with half-sawn women, nurses on stage and stage blood; or into the heroism of impossible escapes with ambulances on the marquee; and the fakirism reached the glory of the stage. More and more european performers plunged into the repertory of the miserable oriental street worker to became the most mysterious kings of the stage.

One of those was Blacaman.
He suddenly appeared on the European stages in the mid-20s, nobody knowing from where. Said at once indian, brazilian, or from some savage unknown race, he was the most talked fakir of the time. As shown in our past gallery, he displayed the now standard repertory of the fakirs, being one of the firsts to popularize with great emphasis the walk on the ladder of swords, on top of which he hanged few seconds with his throat: to clean at the end the traces of blood, demonstrating nightly the victory on his modern guillotine.

He amazed from the Berlin Wintergarten to Paris Empire, with long tours in South America and a lot of success in Spain, in variety temples such Barcelona’s Olympia or Madrid’s Price. But his piéce de resistance was the “buried alive” stunt, in the full epic of houdinesque dramaturgy.

Is because that stunt, that we like to call him “the man who died twice”. In fact, being sure that Blacaman left this world in 1949 (his career is fully demonstrated into the 40s), with surprise we recently discovered a cutting from the respectable Billboard Magazine (Sept.14, 1929), announcing the death of the celebrated self-thaumaturge in Argentina, where the “hindu” happened to struggle under the earth without dominate the death. It was a journalist’s mistake, a clever publicity stunt or a true resurrection miracle?

Unable to solve the mistery, we can at least guarantee you about the identity of the fakir: he was the italian Pietro Blacaman, from the region of Calabria, born here in 1902. And in the times we are describing he still had a lot to do in his career, as we will demonstrate soon to you. But, for now, thank you to be patient once more...