It's Magic

Franz harary knows all the benefits of being a magician. At the age of 23, not only has he made a top hat full of money (allowing him to maintain homes in both a fashionable part of Los Angeles and his home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan) but magic has put him center stage--center field, in some cases--doing massive illusions for sporting events (such as the Rose Bowl and the White Sox opener) and rock shows. When Michael Jackson floated off into nothingness during the Victory tour, that was Harary behind the scenes, designing and operating the illusion. He and Jackson are still close friends, and the Victory tour's success has given Harary even more work in the lucrative concert field.

Harary knows about one of the other pluses of being a master magician: the magician's assistant. "My work is 75 percent completed by the time you see it," he says. "Assistants do 90 percent of the work on stage. I just point my finger and take all the credit."

Of course, Harary is being modest--he does, after all, design and build some of the most complex illusions in America--but it is hard to imagine a magic act without a comely assistant. Whom would magicians levitate? Saw in half? Turn into a tiger? Make disappear? Somehow, the idea of a man in that role makes the business of hocus-pocus less appealing. Saw a man in half? Who cares? Watch a man float through the air without any visible means of support? Yawn.

It doesn't hurt that magicians' assistants are, by and large, and attractive lot. "They've got to look great," Harary points out. "That's showbiz."

Mark Kalin, 26, a magician who has become one of the major draws in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, knows the value of the right assistant. "People don't realize how important an assistant is," he says. "She's not the stereotypical dumb blonde who carries the tray out on stage, wiggles her butt and walks off. It takes weeks of rehearsals, a knowledge of magic and knowing how to move."

In fact, Kalin's appreciation of assistants runs so deep that it caused him not only to suggest this pictorial but to recruit singlehandedly other magicians and assistants and serve as a technical advisor. He even developed a new illusion for Playboy, a variation on an old standard.

"For years," he explains, "magicians have been turning girls into tigers. But Playboy wanted the reverse--the editors asked if I could turn a tiger into a girl. It's a much more difficult illusion, since it's easier to make a tiger appear than it is to try to hide one. That presented me with a great challenge, and it took me five weeks of design and thought, studying old principles of magic, to make it work."

Finally, Kalin mastered the illusion, which he now intends to incorporate into his act. When it came time for the photo session, he turned to a trusted longtime assistant, 20-year-old Jubie Rich, for help.

Kalin met Rich when she stopped by to admire his cat in a Las Vegas bar. It was no ordinary cat but a baby cougar--one of several animals he raises to work in his show--and no ordinary bar but Ellis Island, a legendary magicians' hangout. And it was no accident that Rich stopped by. Her father, Gil E. Gilly, performed for years in Vegas as a mentalist--"he breaks glass and bends metal with his mind, and he's also a psychic," she says--and Rich had often worked as his assistant. Kalin immediately hired her.

"Jubie's a natural," he says. "I remember that even the first time she was on stage with us, she was so professional that we were all able to relax."

Most magicians spend weeks--sometimes longer--looking for the proper assistant. "I look for that person who has a spark of enthusiasm in her eyes that will translate to the stage," says Marshall Magoon, 28, who has impaled a woman in a light box for Playboy. That woman, Kimberly March, is a 26-year-old pro who has worked with several magicians, including Kalin and Magoon.

"For me, this is the best thing I could do," says March. "I love theater, I love drama and I love acting."

Harary first met his assistant, Karen Cady, 22, in college, when they both appeared in a production of Kiss Me, Kate. Harary, who like all the other magicians in this pictorial had started his prestidigitation as a teenager, coaxed Cady off the stage and into the air for his levitation act. She has worked with him in most of his major shows. "He makes me appear, disappear, cuts me in half, shoots bullets through me," She laughs. "I let him abuse me. I love magic, and I love the way being Franz's assistant has opened doors. I have met agents and been sent on auditions, all because people have seen me in his act."

Not surprisingly, most magicians' assistant see their work as a steppingstone to bigger and better show-business roles. Both Cady and March, for instance, have their eyes on the daytime soaps, thinking of them as on-the-job training for full-time acting careers. Rich, too, talks about expanding her horizons beyond her work as an assistant.

Magoon remembers one assistant who was able to achieve minor stardom without finding a new job. "She developed a special stage persona," he explains. "She acted as if she were totally bored with the act and got a lot of laughs in the process. We'd even have her come out when she wasn't needed, just to yawn or look uninterested. It was very successful, and the press picked up on it, making her a local celebrity."

Of course, not all women in magic are assistants. Tricia Brown and Lynn Chase tour the country with their own act, called Two Hot to Handle. Brown and Chase are fire-eaters and more. "We swallow it, we wear it, we spit it and we throw it," says Chase, 23. And while the other women in this pictorial usually appear on stage in elaborate costumes, Two Hot to Handle does its act topless. "When you're playing with fire," explains Brown, "you don't want a lot of clothes that might burn.

"I started out as a magician's assistant," says Brown, 38. "But I've been fascinated by fire ever since I was a little kid. Fire has a very sexual connotation, especially when you're exposing it to your bare skin. It's a pleasure to be warm, but it's painful if you get too close."

Their act is one of the most erotic on the circuit. "Fire is sexual," says Brown. "Two women are sexual. Our act is too nude for Las Vegas." And it's also dangerous. Both Brown and Chase have suffered burns of varying degrees. Chase, while working as a solo under the name Venus De Light, once caught her hand on fire and was unable to fan it out. Finally, in desperation, she stuck it into her mouth, and then sensuously drew it down to her breasts. The audience thought it was part of the act; only Chase knew how close she had come to serious injury.

Injuries are not uncommon for all the assistants. "We bruise ourselves terribly, jumping in and out of little boxes, dodging fire and large animals," says March. The light box, for instance, has occasionally burned holes in an assistant's costume, says Magoon.

Nor is the work all that steady. Most of the women have other jobs on which to fall back. Karen Cady leases executive jets for a division of the Chrysler Corporation. Kimberly March trains race horses and works as a dental assistant during slow times. Jubie Rich works for her brother's asphalt company. Tricia Brown served as the late Ruth Gordon's stunt double in three movies and currently produces wrestling videos.

There are other drawbacks as well. Once someone finds out that a woman is a magician's assistant, she's fair game for a friendly interrogation. "It happens all the time," reports Cady. "Just this morning, I was trying on clothes and the saleswoman said, 'Now that I have you in the dressing room all to myself, why don't you tell me how it's all done?' I asked her, 'Can you keep a secret?' She got very excited and said, 'Of course; I promise I can keep a secret.' So I told her, 'Well, so can I.'"