Gloria Dea (pronounced Day), the first magician ever to perform on the Las Vegas strip, back in 1941, died last month in Las Vegas, at the age of 100. When her dad returned from fighting in WWI, he worked as a paint salesman, and was a magician on the side. Gloria joined him in his act and soon grew good enough to take the spotlight herself — at age 7, amazingly. In addition to her magic act, she later worked as a model and dancer, and had roles in a few movies, including the famously bad film, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” I’m sure it didn’t hurt that she was quite attractive.
She had to work harder to find a good man than she did on her magic tricks. After three failed marriages, she hit the jackpot with her marriage to Sam Anzalone in 1975; they remained together until his death just last year.
In September 1944, she was working on the musical “Delightfully Dangerous” when the producer paused production long enough for her to marry Jack Statham, the orchestra leader. A judge performed the ceremony during a brief interval between shooting scenes in which Gloria danced in a clown number.
It was good that she wore a clown suit and not an expensive gown, because the marriage only lasted a few months. Dea, who was 22 at the time, complained that Statham kept finding excuses to avoid kissing her. “Either he was smoking a cigarette or his pants were just pressed,” she told the press. [You tell ’em, Glo — you deserve better!]
So she made him disappear (via divorce).
She was living a quiet life in an assisted living facility when two things happened. Lance Rich, a “magic historian” who was doing research for a talk on the history of magic in Vegas, came across her name and learned that she was still living. At the same time, AnnaRose Einarsen, a hypnotist and magician, was browsing at a vintage clothing store in Las Vegas when she came across one of Dea’s old outfits and assorted mementos that were being sold on consignment. She also learned that Gloria was still among us.
Word began to spread in the magicians’ community about the “history-making centenarian.” By the time of her 100th birthday last August, David Copperfield had proclaimed a Gloria Dea Day, a Clark County commissioner had given her a “Key to the Las Vegas Strip,” and magicians of all stripes turned up for her birthday party.
“Magic should be about taking audiences on journeys,” Mr. Copperfield said. “This whole journey of discovering Gloria, this hidden treasure, has been wondrous, thrilling, and very gratifying.”
Dea was tickled at being “found.” “I don’t deserve the attention, but I’ll take it,” she said. She loved being surrounded by new magicians, young magicians. She enjoyed seeing magic too.
For her 100th birthday party, she said, “Don’t bring gifts, but if any magicians want to bring magic, that would be great.”
No relatives outside of her magicians family survive her. Rest in peace, Gloria.
Sometimes you just can’t help but go after the low-hanging fruit. How else to explain Frank Bruni dwelling on the fruity Marjorie Taylor Greene in his newsletter this week? Here’s Frank:
“I don’t keep up with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s tweets, having decided long ago that there were more pleasant and constructive uses of time, like lighting fire to my eyelashes. But she tweeted a doozy the other day. Actually, she routinely tweets doozies, which I realized when I caught up with her Twitter account, bingeing on it the way I would an overlooked HBO Max series, if the series were an endless sequence of garish sights and ghastly sounds that robbed me of my will to live.”
What set Frank off was Greene’s defense of Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old idiot who leaked defense secrets to show off to his friends: “Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar,” she tweeted, capitalizing on her professed faith without properly capitalizing it. “Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine?”
Ask yourself.
April is Poetry month. In a comment yesterday, Carola shared this poem by Ada Limon, the current U.S. Poet Laureate.
The Raincoat
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
Didja know this about SUDAFED (39A)? It used to be an over-the-counter decongestant that many Scuba divers used to open up the eustachian tube to make it easier to equalize inner and outer ear pressure while diving. Then people started using the active ingredient, pseudoephedrine, to make methamphetamine, so in 2005 the FDA banned OTC sales and a prescription was required.
[Warning to Owl Chatter readers: It is a violation of Federal and state law to print the photo of the medication pictured above and ingest it.]
“Antique tools for pressing clothes” was SAD IRONS, at 39D. New to me. It means “solid” or “heavy” iron. We sent Owl Chatter photographer Phil out to Gochsheim Castle, near Karlsruhe, Germany, which contains the world’s largest collection of irons: 1,300 from all over. Unfortunately, Philly forget to pack his camera! No problem, Buddy — it happens! We still love you! Fortunately, I was able to snare a nice photo of one online.
Another neat word today was SCUDS, at 1D, clued as “moves quickly, as a cloud.” The dictionary also defines it as a noun: “clouds driven swiftly by the wind,” and here’s one of the images that pops up for it.
But we’re way overdue for a picture of a starlet, no? I think we can squeeze one out of Blair Tindall’s obit. The oboist? Yes. She’s the musician/journalist who blew the lid off the world of classical music with her sex- and drug-filled expose, Mozart in the Jungle, which Amazon turned into a series that ran for four seasons.
“I got hired for most of my gigs in bed,” she wrote. “People always seem shocked that musicians would have sex,” she said. “I mean, where do little musicians come from?”
Her story is not a very happy one. She married the science guy Bill Nye on Feb. 3, 2006, with Yo-Yo Ma providing the music. But seven weeks later, the State of California declared the marriage invalid for reasons that have never been revealed. Then, in 2007, Tindall broke into Nye’s house and stole several items including his laptop, which she used to send defamatory emails impersonating him, and damaged his garden with herbicide. In response, Nye obtained a restraining order against her. After violating the order in 2009, Tindall was ordered to pay $57,000 of Nye’s legal expenses. In 2012, Nye sued Tindall for the money, saying she had still not paid.
Blair Tindall was 63 when she died last week from arteriosclerosis, with chronic alcohol consumption a contributing factor. The actress who played the oboist in the series was Lola Kirke. Here’s Tindall and then Lola.
Gotta grade those papers. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 