Harry Blackstone Jr.; Star of Lavish Magic Shows

Harry Blackstone Jr., who carried on his father’s pre-television tradition of theatrical magic shows on a grand scale, died Wednesday at Loma Linda University Medical Center, officials said. He was 62.

Blackstone, who entered the hospital April 21, apparently died of complications from pancreatic cancer, the San Bernardino County coroner’s office said.

His father, the late Harry Blackstone Sr.--often billed simply as “the Great Blackstone”--was a contemporary of the legendary Harry Houdini, thrilling audiences around the world with such signature tricks as “The Dancing Handkerchief” and “The Frightening Buzz Saw.”

Entertainer Woody Allen named his 1987 play, “The Floating Lightbulb,” after another of the Great Blackstone’s best-known illusions.

Harry Blackstone Jr. joined the act at an early age, appearing and disappearing in some of his father’s tricks when he was 6 months old.

The younger Blackstone, who was born in Three Rivers, Mich., studied at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania before earning his bachelor’s degree at USC in 1958.

After a stint in the Army Security Agency--a supersecret branch of the service that specialized in monitoring foreign radio transmissions--Blackstone went into the magic business on his own, performing and polishing some of his father’s best-loved tricks.

Presented on stage, his shows featured lavish sets, meticulously prepared props and a large entourage that included musicians, technicians and costumed assistants.

“Deep in their hearts, people want to believe in magic, and that is why they respond to it when it is entertainingly presented in theatrical form,” he wrote in “The Blackstone Book of Magic and Illusion.”

He created one of the longest-running magic shows on Broadway and produced special effects for the bands Earth, Wind and Fire and New Kids on the Block. In the early 1990s, he served as the Society of American Magicians’ international ambassador of magic, performing in Europe, Asia, Australia and throughout the United States.

Blackstone was twice named magician of the year by the Academy of Magical Arts, and was awarded the academy’s Star of Magic, an honor he shared with only 11 other magicians, among them his father.

Borrowing a phrase from the English poet Samuel T. Coleridge, Blackstone told a Times reporter in 1992 that it is “the willing suspension of belief” that makes magic work in its best form.

The enjoyment of magic, he said, is “as natural as breathing,” rooted in “mankind’s quest for what is real and what is not.”

Blackstone told the reporter that history’s first recorded account of a magic trick might be one that was written on papyrus in about 1700 B.C. Performing before a pharaoh, illusionist Dedi of Dedsnefru was said to have cut off and switched the heads of a goose and a pelican, both of which then flew away.

“Magicians still do that trick today,” Blackstone said.

He was asked if he could explain how it is done.

“I could,” he said. “But I won’t.”

Married twice, Blackstone is survived by his wife, Gay, and several children from his first marriage.

Funeral services are pending.