Tina Lenert and Mike Caveney of His Illusions
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DECEMBER 2005 $5 Mike and Tina: Power Couple G Stinett Dai Vernon Back at The Castle Mark Wilson in China—Barehanded Mac King’s Suitcase-O-Magic “Triangulation” in Magicana Genii Marco Tempest’s i-Magic Mix-Up in Santaland G Osborne THE CONJURORS’ MAGAZINE Halloween Mindfreak Mike Caveney TinaT&ina LenerLenertt TTheina Magic Landenert Memories of 40 Genii & The Egyptian Hall Museum. From left, Thurston’s OH! Chair, T. Nelson Downs’ Coin Ladder, Thurston’s Through the Eye of a Needle Barrel, Alexander Herrmann poster on the floor, on wooden cabinet Thomas Worthington’s magic wand collection, Charles Carter’s Million Dollar Mystery cabinet. PHOTO BY BILL TAYLOR By Dustin Stinett Mike Caveney December 2005 41 Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I am a collector of memories. Tina Lenert Consistency is the spice of life. Mike Caveney assion and performing: Consistency and logic. class coin manipulator, she also acted as LeRoy’s assistant in many These are words that Tina Lenert and Mike Caveney of his illusions. What makes Tina and Mike so unique is that they use often when speaking about their magic, themselves, are both magicians with vastly different acts. More often than not and their life together. Couples in magic are hardly a unique they are found performing at different times, usually in different occurrence. There are many examples of husband and wife countries, sometimes in the same show, but never on stage togeth- teams in the art: unknown and well-known; past and present. But er. “Let’s face it; there can only be one point of focus in an act,” virtually all of these examples are a magician and his (or her) assis- says Mike. “We were already solo performers when we met.” tant: The few that are not, such as Servais LeRoy and Mercedes Mike Caveney decided early on he was going to be a magician. Talma, still performed together. And while Talma was a world- “It’s a lot easier to become a magician when you make that deci- P sion at nine years of age,” he says. “At every crossroad in my life, the road I chose was the one that kept me on track to become a magician.” As a boy he would ride his bicycle eight miles each way to Owen Magic Supreme. “I thought that all magic shops looked like Owen. I thought all magic tricks were made out of hand-rubbed mahogany or finished with multiple coats of lac- quer.” His relentless loitering eventually led to his working odd jobs in the shop for which he was paid in apparatus. One of his first tasks was as a metal polisher. “I’ll never forget the first time I tried to polish a zombie ball. I stood in front of the polishing wheel and Les Smith dumped a big pile of sawdust at my feet. I thought, ‘This must be some kind of weird hazing ritual.’ Then I got to work and pressed that ball into the polishing wheel. It shot out of my hands and buried itself in the sawdust. I sheepishly retrieved the undented ball from the sawdust to the sound of Les Smith and Carl Owen’s laughter.” His well-chronicled affiliation with the Long Beach Mystics began what is an ongoing process of development through the scrutiny of his peers, a process that he (and now Tina) still depends on today. The closest thing he had to a “real” job was a stint as a clerk in a drug store during college. “They asked me if I wanted to go through their training to become an assistant man- ager. I practically went screaming out the door.” After college, he thought about joining the fire department and even took their physical agility test. The next step, the oral examination, was on a day that he had a magic show scheduled. He tried to get them Everybody needs a gimmick. This was Mike’s hook. 42 Genii to change the day but he was told that if he wanted to be a fireman, he would attend the examination on the scheduled day at the scheduled time. “I chose the magic show that paid me $35 and never regret- ted it.” Upon turning 21, bolstered by his Mystics reputation, he was quickly booked to work at The Magic Castle and just as quickly became a regular performer there. The nightly grind of working the main room of The Magic Castle, which at the time was in the basement, proved to be a graduate course in performance magic. “I would be sitting in my lit- tle dressing room backstage, just steps away from center stage, watching guys like Shimada or Marvyn Roy performing. You can learn a lot about magic watching pros like that doing four shows a night.” The daughter of a geologist employed by a U.S. oil company, Tina Lenert spent her first 12 years in Caracas, Venezuela. Even as a small child she felt the need to express herself in some artistic manner, as long as it didn’t involve her speaking. “I was quiet and extremely shy, but I was always searching for an out- let; a performing art that would let me show what I was feeling,” she says. “I thought I wanted to be a dancer; I wanted to play the harp. But I didn’t get around to studying either one until much later in life.” She and her family returned to the United States and settled in Malibu, California. She learned to play the electric guitar and that led to her being part of an all-girl rock band. This lasted less than a year, but the band’s performance at the high school talent show gave her a taste of being onstage. “I was petri- fied but I loved it!” Then she saw a performance of classical guitar, which changed her focus and she began studying in earnest. However, upon finishing high school she decided to pursue a reliable career, so she attended secretarial school. She had been working at a mortgage company for less than a year when it hit her: “I walked into the ladies room and looked in the mirror. I was 19 years old, my hair was up and I was wearing a business suit and I asked myself, ‘Is this going to be me for the next 30 years? I don’t think so.’” She went to the personnel office and gave her two-weeks notice. Fortunately her par- ents agreed to help, ensuring that she could study and practice the guitar fulltime. She was attending Los Angeles City College when her life suddenly changed. “I went to the Renaissance Faire and saw Robert Shields (of Shields and Yarnell fame) per- forming mime. I was transfixed. I had no idea why, but I knew that’s what I had to do.” She continued Photo by Ron Charles her guitar studies at California State University at Two years after seeing Robert Shields, Tina was a mime Northridge, but less enthusiastically. After doing her working at the Renaissance Faire. senior recital, she put her guitar back in its case for the last time. Mime was now her outlet and her pas- sion; a passion that has yet to fade. “I had actually seen Marcel also working for Johnson Products making gimmicked coins. He Marceau when I was still living in Venezuela, but seeing Robert was the only magician on staff, so his expertise in the art became Shields flipped a switch in my head,” she says. Tina later attend- an asset to the burgeoning company. “I asked owner Sam LaPorte ed a performance of Marcel Marceau’s at Caltech in Pasadena. if I could attend one of the national magic conventions as a deal- Years later she discovered that in Marceau’s audience that night er. He wasn’t sure what a magic convention was, but when I came was a young local magician named Mike Caveney. home with a shoebox full of money he told me I could go to all the As Mike was making a name for himself as a performer, he was magic conventions I wanted. That was my ticket to the world and December 2005 43 soon I was traveling through Europe, Japan, and all over the U.S.” formance in the close-up room by Judy Carter and was fascinated. Now living in Hollywood, Tina had created a Raggedy-Ann She tried to meet Judy backstage, but was unable to find her. She character and was performing her mime on the streets. Of the couldn’t stop thinking about the Castle, so the next day she called experience, Tina says, “Talk about beating the odds: Making a liv- The Magic Castle in an attempt to get booked there. “Bill Larsen ing as a mime! And it was far more interesting and fun—and prof- told me that I had to do magic. So that was that.” The very next itable—than the classical guitar.” Her career began to grow, with weekend, while performing at the local Renaissance Faire, Tina television and movie projects coming her way. She and four oth- spotted Judy Carter in her audience. “So we met and quickly ers, including her teacher, Tom McLoughlin, formed the L.A. became friends. One day she called me because she had been Mime Company, “Mike had the Mystics, I had the L.A. Mime Co.” booked to work on the stage at The Magic Castle.