Andre Kole Has Passed

 Robert Gurtler Jr., known professionally as Andre Kole has passed away. He died October 17th, 2022. There was a time when if you wanted to find the best new illusions for your show, you went to Andre Kole because he had all the latest and best creations. He supplied illusions to Doug Henning, David Copperfield, Siegried and Roy and more. On his own, he was a Christian Illusionist, touring on behalf of Campus Crusade for Christ. He would go to church and theaters and other venues with his show. 

Andre's performance was split into two parts. The first part was pure magic and fun. Looking back, I think everything in his show was his own creation and WOW, were there ever some amazing pieces. He created a portable version of Vanishing The Statue of Liberty. His statue was about 8ft tall and vanished from the bottom up!!! He created a clever piece called No Feet, where he would step into a 4 sided box, lift it up to show both is feet and legs. And then one by one they'd vanish. In other words, both feet/legs would be there, next one foot and leg was there, the other was not. And then amazingly, the one that had vanished would return and the other leg/foot would vanish! Of course the audience laughed. Then he would lift the box again and sure enough, both feet and legs were gone!!!! That particular illusion was featured by Doug Henning for years. One of David Copperfield's favorite illusions and one he still does today was created by Andre Kole called The Squeezebox, it's a shrinking man illusion and quite visually deceptive!

The second half of Andre's show was his Christian Ministry Magic. He would use a couple magic tricks to illustrate parts of the gospel and the teachings of Jesus and then in coordination with a local church or churches, would do a prayer. The churches were there to help any new believers on the road to Christianity. He always gave folks a chance to step out if they were not interested in hearing the message. In that way you could never accuse him of forcing a message on you that you might now want to hear. I saw the show many times. I never recall anyone ever leaving.

Andre had been retired from the stage for a number of years, and recently, David Sandy & Lance Rich purchased Andre Kole's show, or a least a great deal of the illusions. 

I understand Andre had been suffering from alzheimer's. He died at home in his sleep on Monday Oct 17th 2022.

Radio Interview with The Magic Detective

 Back in 2019, I did an interview with host John Michael Marty for his afternoon show on WSMI-FM radio in Mid-Illinois. I knew John through our mutual friend Steve Baker, so we thought it would be fun to do an interview talking about Steve, Houdini, magic history and also my career as well. The interview ran about 40 minutes and was a great deal of fun. I shared a lot of Steve Baker stories. For those unaware, Steve was known as Mr. Escape, and had a very successful career in the 1970s and 80s doing thrilling escapes on TV. Unlike a lot of performers who would do 'escape illusions', Steve would do the real thing. Sometimes those real things turned bad and I shared a couple of those stories.

Mr. Escape

One of those thrilling escapes took place in Venezuela in the mid 1970s. Steve was to be chained to a post. Then he would be covered with a make-shift T-Pee sort of thing. That covering was then dowsed with a flammable chemical and Steve had to escape before being burned alive. The escape was frightening and real and left Steve with major burns.

There were other stories I shared that were not so dangerous, but instead rather funny. So I'm sure those who knew Steve, got a big kick out of that portion of the broadcast.

We also spoke of Houdini because, well HOUDINI! You can't really talk magic history without talking about Houdini. John was kind enough to plug the blog and the podcast during the interview, though listening back, I realized he gave the blog address wrong, lol. It is  TheMagicDetective.com, not MagicDetective.com. But that's not a big deal. If you googled it, I'm sure you could find it.

Anyway, I bring this up because I got permission from John Michael Marty to use the interview for an episode of my podcast. Below is the link to listen to the interview. AND, sometime in mid October, I'll be doing another interview with John, so look forward to hearing that one fairly soon.

Maro's Magic Found

 

In the upcoming Oct 2022 Potter & Potter Auction, there are two items that belonged to and were used by The Great Maro. One of them is listed as being Maro's prop, that is Lot#80, Maro's Tri-Color Plume Trick.  The actual apparatus is up for auction, and it appears to be a unique take on a Color Changing Plume.

But the real gem is actually Lot#57, which is listed as "Germain's Meteoric Ribbons and Parasol Production". First let me state, that yes, Germain did own this item. But he received it from Maro's Widow Allie Best after Maro had passed away from Typhoid Fever.  The poster above, shows Maro presenting the Meteoric Ribbon's on the right side of the poster, with the giant parasol in his hands. This was one of his signature tricks. The auction listing says the parasol cover has been restored, but all else is original.  This mystery was also featured in a second Maro poster, where it is the only thing depicted in the poster. That poster is far more scarce than the one above.

*UPDATE: I just came across my notes from the Maro Lecture I did for the Yankee Gathering a few years back. And I had included a photo of the item below in my lecture with the comment, "I saw this in the Klosterman collection, and though I didn't ask him about it at the time, I believe this to be the Meteoric Ribbon and Parasol Production". Turns out I was correct, lol. 

To download and/or purchase a catalog for the upcoming Potter Auction go to: https://potterauctions.com and click the link for the Oct 29th, 2022 auction. And to learn more about The Great Maro, listen to my podcast Ep 11 on his life. http://magicdetectivepodcast.com/e/the-magic-detective-podcast-ep-11-the-great-maro/