[This coming weekend marks Harry Houdini’s 150th birthday! So this week on the blog I’ll perform some AmericanStudying magic of my own, leading up to a special post on that legendary prestidigitator.]
On three
telling influences on one of the most famous
magic acts of the last half-century.
1)
Wier
Chrisemer: That enjoyable 1989 Calvin Trillin New Yorker profile of the duo makes clear the debt that Penn Fraser
Jillette & Raymond Joseph Teller owed to Wier
Chrisemer, a friend of Teller’s from his undergraduate days at Amherst
College whose scholarly and professional interest in music was their first entrée
into the world of performance and whose talents as an amateur magician led the
three men to form a trio known as “The
Asparagus Valley Cultural Society.” A couple months back I wrote in
this post about how The Three Stooges were originally part of a comedy
troupe led by Ted Healy, but ended up achieving their lasting fame without him;
similarly, it was after Chrisemer retired from show business in the early 1980s
that Penn & Teller truly took off as a magical act. I don’t know exactly
what to make of this pattern, but at the very least it’s a reminder that there’s
usually more to any artistic success story—including more individuals to
remember—than meets the eye.
2)
James
Randi: Most successful artists have both personal mentors and influences
and other professionals on whom they model aspects of their career, and for Penn
& Teller the
Amazing Randi was an example of the latter. Randi made his fame as both a magician
and a skeptic, performing his own tricks but debunking those of paranormal con
artists and the like (all of which he discussed in his 1980 book Flim-Flam!
Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions). Not long after their
magic career began to take off Penn & Teller crossed over into the realm of
professional skeptics as well, as illustrated for example by their long-running
television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
(I like to think the exclamation point was at least in part a nod to Randi’s
book title). It’s a complicated lane to occupy, making a main living performing
tricks that require folks to suspend their disbelief (or at least refuse to be
explained) yet turning a disbelieving eye toward many other cultural forms and
narratives. But Penn & Teller have successfully occupied it for decades,
inspired to be sure by prior figures like the Amazing Randi.
3)
Television: Bullshit! is one of a few shows of their own that Penn & Teller
have had over the years, but it was their countless appearances on other
television shows in the 1980s and 1990s that really established the pair’s reputation
and prominence. That included not only performances on late-night shows like Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show, but also and even more
tellingly both acting roles and cameos as themselves on a huge range of other
shows, from Miami Vice to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, The Drew Carey Show to Babylon 5, and many
many more. The trend has even continued in recent years, with a 2022 appearance
for example on the reality performance show The Masked Singer. Penn
& Teller were far from the first magicians for whom TV was instrumental to
their success, but none have better utilized that defining late 20th
and early 21st century medium than did this pair.
Last
MagicStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Magicians or magic histories or contexts you’d highlight?
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