Surgeon Unwinds in a Magical Manner

After a hard day in the operating room at Century City Hospital, Dr. Jeff Berman sometimes relaxes by putting on a tux and heading for the Magic Castle in Hollywood.

There, to the delight of guests assembled at the private club devoted to the art of magic, Berman performs dazzling feats of legerdemain. He makes coins disappear, reassembles a rope cut into pieces and performs seeming impossibilities with playing cards.

It’s all in the hands, says the surgeon-by-day, magician-by-night.

Intricate Operations

“I think being an orthopedic surgeon has made it easier for me to learn magic,” said Berman, 36. “I’m used to performing intricate operations with my hands.”

Berman said he has been intrigued by the mysteries of magic since childhood. After completing his education at UCLA and the USC School of Medicine and a residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, he started taking instruction in magic from a friend who was a professional magician, he said. He has been performing at the Magic Castle for the past five years.

Berman said the manual dexterity that has served him well in his medical practice has made him a quick study in the fine points of magic.

“Both activities require exquisite attention to detail,” said Berman, who in addition to his medical library has assembled a collection of books on magic techniques.

He practices his magic tricks at home, first by himself and with his wife, Nancy, and 19-month-old daughter, Samantha, as the audience. “I show a coin” to the baby “and then make it disappear. I just love to watch her face as she tries to figure it out.”

Berman has concentrated on the sleight-of-hand maneuvers that magicians call “close-up magic.”

Magicians usually specialize because the skills for each kind of magic are intricate and require constant practice, Berman said. While he has made close-up tricks with cards and other everyday objects his specialty, other branches of magic include “mentalism,” in which the magician seems to read a subject’s mind, and large-scale stage illusions, such as sawing a person in half.

Berman said his hospital schedule as chief of orthopedics and director of sports medicine precludes regular appearances at the Magic Castle, so he occasionally appears, at least once a month, as an unpaid performer.

“It’s not the kind of thing I could do carrying a beeper,” he said. Regular performers are booked for three shows a night at the Magic Castle, he said. Spokesman Peter Pit said the Magic Castle hires seven magicians a week to put on shows at the 25-year-old nonprofit social club, located in an atmospheric, Victorian-Gothic mansion on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood.

Others Mix Magic

Berman is not the only one of the club’s magicians who combines magic with another profession, Pit said. Among the club’s paid performers are a Catholic priest, a speech therapist and a police officer, he said.

About half of the club’s 5,500 members are magicians, including hobbyists such as Berman, while the rest are magic enthusiasts, Pit said. General members pay an $800 fee and $220 a year in dues, officials said, while members in the magician category pay less. Club members may attend performances, entertain guests at the Magic Castle and use the club’s dining facilities.

“Practicing magic is my way of relaxing from my work at the hospital,” said Berman.