In my little tribute piece about Mark Wilson here, I wrote mainly about his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, which ran on Saturday mornings for four years. It was, as you'll see in this clip of the opening, sponsored by Kellogg's cereals. Kellogg's also was backing Hanna-Barbera's second TV series — their first for syndication — Huckleberry Hound. So every episode of Allakazam the first season contained a cartoon from my other favorite show. (The cartoons were eliminated after the first season and they remade the opening to omit Huck, Yogi and the others.)
I started watching this show when I was eight, way back in the days when you had to be in front of the TV when your favorite shows were on. You couldn't pause the show. You couldn't slow-mo it or replay a scene. If something distracted you and you took your eyes off the screen for a moment, you missed whatever you missed…possibly forever but at least until reruns months later. Oh, if we'd had TiVo back then, I would have studied each and every trick in obsessive detail.
By that age, I was reading books…from the children's section of the Public Library. My parents were big on libraries and they went at least once a week, sometimes more often, to take books out and take books back. They also took me along and I had my very own library card.
One day, I asked the librarian if they had any books on magic tricks. They did but, alas, they were in the adult section for which my card was not authorized. I got my father to check out a few of those books on his card and this led to me, at around that age, getting a special one that let me check out books from both ends of the library. I believe we had to get a letter from the principal of my school saying that I was mature enough or smart enough or something enough…but it was arranged.
I studied them backwards, forwards and inside-out. None of Mark Wilson's tricks were revealed in them exactly but some of the tricks taught in the book were based on similar principles so they helped me figure out a few of the feats from The Magic Land. I was proud that I could do that and even prouder that I was able to perform a few for my friends and relatives.
At the same time I was imitating Mark Wilson, I was also shadowing another magical guy on TV — Paul Winchell — trying to learn ventriloquism with my very own Jerry Mahoney figure. I don't recall ever thinking I might someday follow in either profession or even become a performer of any sort. But I do recall wanting to be able to do something that was kinda/sorta like what those two men did. And I recall how happy I was each week when this theme song played as I could spend a half-hour in The Magic Land of Allakazam…