An Enchanting Place, Reserved for Magicians

It looks like an illusion of grandeur on a hilltop overlooking Hollywood. But at the Magic Castle, the illusions are mostly inside.

For more than four decades, this 1908 Edwardian-style landmark has beckoned wizards and prestidigitators the world over. David Copperfield, Siegfried & Roy, Harry Blackstone, Doug Henning, Lance Burton, Harry Blackstone Jr. and Darren Romeo -- the newest singing illusionist -- are among its hundreds of alumni.

As enchanting as it looks, though, the castle isn’t open to the public: It’s a 5,000-member club for the Academy of Magical Arts. Milt Larsen and his brother, Bill Larsen Jr., opened it at the end of Orange Drive, above the hubbub of Franklin Avenue, on June 2, 1963, and fulfilled their father’s dream.

“I was just a kid when I went in there and really opened the castle with nothing but a hammer and saw,” recalled Milt Larsen, 71.

The Larsen family story begins in the late 1930s with Milt and Bill’s father, William W. Larsen Sr., who was a Pasadena criminal attorney and a skilled magician. Disillusioned with law, he created the Larsen Family of Magicians, an act that toured resort hotels in San Diego, Carmel and Palm Springs. In 1936 he also began publishing the Genii, a magazine for magicians that is still published today.

As a magician, mentalist and attorney for Beatrice Houdini, the widow of the fabled Harry Houdini, the senior Larsen attended one of the most noted mystical events in Los Angeles: a seance, in 1936, at which Bess tried to make contact with her late husband on the 10th anniversary of his death.

Held on Halloween night atop the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood, the seance was an apparent failure -- Harry didn’t make his presence known -- although some saw significance in a lightning storm that broke out over the hotel as the ritual ended.

In 1942, the Larsens traded their Pasadena home for the former mid-Wilshire estate of magic “craftsman” Floyd Thayer.

Thayer’s Spanish-style home, named Brookledge for the natural stream that flows behind it on Longwood Avenue, featured a 100-plus-seat theater where magicians from around the world performed. It was also where Orson Welles rehearsed for his “Mercury Wonder Show” with Marlene Dietrich and Welles’ wife, Rita Hayworth.

The home was both the family residence and an unofficial magicians’ clubhouse, and it is still owned by the Larsen family.

“I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store with this huge inventory of props and tricks,” Milt Larsen said. “This is where I got my love of carpentry, watching Mr. Thayer and my grandfather, Sam Conrad, build things. My dad invented tricks and my grandfather” made the props.

In 1955, when William Larsen Sr. died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 48, Milt and Bill promised each other that they would fulfill their father’s dream and create a real clubhouse for magicians.

That dream was put on hold as television grew in popularity and the Larsen family got into the act. Geraldine Larsen Jaffe, Bill and Milt’s mother, starred in her own series as “The Magic Lady.” Bill became an assistant producer at CBS, and Milt latched onto NBC, writing gags for a number of game and variety shows, including “Truth or Consequences,” where he spent 18 years.

In 1956, Milt produced and starred in the “It’s Magic!” revue, first at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, then at the Variety Arts Center in Los Angeles, a venerable downtown theater and monument to vaudeville. The show remained an annual event until 1984. It was revived a decade later at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, where it is to open again in November.

Sitting in his TV business office at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in 1960, Milt began eyeing an abandoned, dilapidated fairy-tale castle on a hill. It had been built by Redlands financier and orange grower Rollin Lane and his wife, Katherine, and designed by the architectural team of Dennis & Farwell.

Milt Larsen approached developer and owner Thomas O. Glover, who also owned the property 300 feet above the castle. In 1911, two millionaire brothers had transformed it into a Japanese temple villa and tourist attraction. Glover bought it and restored the gardens and villa in 1948, turning it into the landmark Yamashiro restaurant and hotel.

Glover liked the idea of restoring the timeworn landmark house below. He leased it to the Larsens for a small fee in 1961.

Milt’s “carpentry sleight-of-hand” and Bill’s magic touch with money soon turned the castle into a paradise of antiques, Tiffany glass, vaudevillian trinkets and show-biz memorabilia, including Jimmy Durante’s “break-apart” piano.

Stained-glass windows that had graced a 200-year-old pub in Scotland found refuge from the wrecking ball there. Maple flooring from Hollywood High School’s original administration building was salvaged, baptized in varnish and reborn as a bar.

Milt’s handiwork is evident in the hand-carved gargoyles that leer from the banisters and in the watchful owl that peers at patrons from its perch on a bookshelf in the lobby. Whenever a guest says “open sesame,” the bookcase slides open to admit the visitor into an otherworldly place of darkened parlors and slick professional sorcerers.

The gimmick-laden castle has a nonhuman cast that includes a piano-playing ghost named Irma; a telephone booth that flashes a skeleton when the door is closed; a sinking barstool; secret doorways; and the Great Alibi Machine, a pay phone with taped sound effects (airport, car mechanic shop and outdated office typewriters) to fool a boss or spouse into thinking the person is calling from elsewhere.

The men’s room includes talkative urinals that play “It’s a Small World” and hurl off-color insults.

In 1963, magician Dai Vernon, a master of card tricks who was known as “The Professor,” moved to L.A. and helped make the castle a success. He held court for fellow magicians and celebrity magic enthusiasts such as Cary Grant, Dick Cavett, Marlene Dietrich, Muhammad Ali and Johnny Carson. Vernon was a castle institution until his death in 1992 at age 98.

But the magicians’ enchanted spot almost became mere illusion in 1993, when Bill Larsen died. The castle faced $500,000 in debts and slumping business.

Mere wizardry needed a little help to keep the clubhouse afloat. The castle raised its annual dues and appealed for a one-time voluntary assessment of $100 from all members.

But any member will say that it was really Milt Larsen’s sense of wonder and his tutelage of several generations of younger performers that saved the castle.

Nowadays, Milt and his wife, Arlene, often pull their own disappearing act, spending long weekends at their home in Montecito.

Milt spent years tirelessly restoring the Mayfair Music Hall in Santa Monica. More recently, he put together the $35-million Caesar’s Magical Empire -- which opened in 1996 and closed last November -- at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Although the Magic Castle looks like a tourist attraction -- and many tourists do try to get in -- it’s not an easy ticket to get. One needn’t pull a bunny out of a hat, but it helps.

An aspiring associate member -- that is, a non-magician -- must be over 21 and must pay a $1,010 initiation fee, along with $450 annual dues. Magicians pay a one-time fee of $600 and annual dues of $380.

The key to wangling a guest invitation, Larsen said, “is to stand up in your office and ask if anyone knows a member, and see if you can’t get a guest card. And if that fails, visit our Web site, www.magiccastle.com.”

But for the millions who have navigated the Hollywood Hills for the last 40 years, just driving by the mysterious and illuminated castle is magic enough.