On August 5, John Calvert will turn 100 years old.  In the last few years, he has semi retired, cutting appearances down to small performances, lectures and guest appearances for magic clubs and conventions around the world.  But his 80 years on tour make his act twice as long as the second longest running act in magic and the longest running stage act of any kind.  During his career he performed in every major theater in the world, made some 40 movies during Hollywood’s golden age and lived through exploits on land and sea that are the stuff of legends.  His vast career and adventures lead the nation’s largest manufacturer of magic tricks and kits to recently bestow upon him the title Magician of the Century.

For a long time after John Calvert started performing magic tricks, he believed he was faking what real musicians could really do.  Today, the Bowling Green resident, understands magic is the art of illusion and 80 years of performance have taught him that for success, even more important than the trick is the connection to the audience. 

Born Madren Elbern Calvert in New Trenton Indiana on August 5, 1911, Calvert attended his first magic performance at the age of 8 when his father took him to Cincinatti to see Howard Thurston.  Without ever having read a magic book, he began to create tricks, the first, making an egg appear from under a boy’s coat for his Sunday school class.  By 18 he was on tour around Kentucky towns with his assistant Gyp the Wonder Dog and had made his first profit, $2.65.

Throughout the depression into the 1940’s his show grew as did his notoriety through daredevil publicity stunts. Calvert told Chris Britt, President of The John Calvert Society Of Young Magicians in 1998, “I had the heaviest show, I carried more props than anybody else in America. I had the biggest, but not the best show. It wasn’t until I went out to California and I cut my show down into a smaller show, got rid of a lot of worthless props. I was a demonstrator of illusions, in other words if you didn’t like this one, maybe you’ll like the next one. But when, I cut the show down to where I had to go out and sell John Calvert and present the illusions and entertain the audience, that’s when I became a success.”

But even his slimed down version was a large show.  As it grew and the tour expanded he changed his mode of transportation: first traveling by car, then adding a trailer, then a truck, then a seimi-trailer truck.  Soon he had moved to an airplane, then a DC-3 and eventually a fleet of a dozen planes.  Eventually he would purchase a yacht from Henry Ford that was built for Ford’s son Edsel.  Calvert sailed the 100 foot vessell to Hawaii, Japan, Singapore, the Phillipines and Australia.  In the years since yachts remained his favored mode of transport and by 1998 he had a “pure triple crew world crusing yacht with a crusing range of three thousand miles”  and claimed to have performed magic in every country with a theater in the world except Russia.

His stage show opened with a fast routine of many tricks he calls “variety magic” for about three minutes.  This was followed by shooting a woman out of a cannon into a space capsule and cutting a man’s head of with a buzz saw.  Calvert says he was the  originator of sawing off heads with a buzz saw.  In the Hollywood years, it was Danny Kaye’s head he sawed.  The comedian would come out dressed as Hitler and crew dressed as marines would grab him and put him in the buzz saw, then put his head in a sausage grinder producing German Wieners. Another signature trick he says he originated is having his wife since 1982, Tammy, play an organ as they float above the stage and then the audience.  Tammy joined Calvert some fifty years ago in Singapore and immediately joined the act, shortly afterward, the two married.

But Tammy was not his first wife.  His previous marriage began when he played the Capitol Arts Theater.  The ticket salesperson, flattered by his attentions said “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” To which he replied “Maybe you’ll ge a chance someday!”  He goes on to explain that he’s “only been sorry once ever since”, as in Kentucky once you kiss a girl, you marry her.  His daughter continued to live in Bowling Green, and thus he choose it when he was finally ready to settle down a bit.

In the forties Calvert got his big break in Hollywood as Clark Gable’s hand double, performing slight of hand movements Gable was unble to learn for Honky Tonk.  The film lead to a contract with Columbia where he acted in and directed many films, most notably playing the Falcon in three pictures.  But he cites his most memorable times during the period as when he directed Paul Newman in his first film, starring opposite John Carradine in his last film and all the good times cohosting parties with his next door neighbor, Errol Flynn. 

Calvert’s biographer, William V. Rauscher refers to him as “a real life Indiana Jones” because of the dangers he has survived in his travels.  He’s survived hurricanes and attacks at sea and also performed in Nashville the same evening he crash landed his plane. 

It is rumored that Calvert once proclaimed there wasn’t a port in the world where he didn’t know someone at the dock when he pulled in.  Bowling Green is lucky that this amazing talent chose it as the place to drop anchor.

The John Calvert Magic Club:

The John Calvert Magic Club was formed in 2010 by Calvert’s friend Ricky Childress and a group of fellow performers from the area who hope to someday become a charter club of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

Childress, who performs magic and clowns as Noodles says that the club is open to related artist as well such as ventriloquists and balloon animal sculptors.  They currently meet the 4th Monday each month at the First Christian Church 1106 State St. at 6:30 p.m.  The current focus is on fellowship, but Childress hopes to begin having teaching and showing sessions as well as speakers once the club has been established.