Anton Zamloch, also known as “Professor Zamloch” and “Zamloch the Great,” was an American magician who toured with his magic act from 1869 through 1912. Zamloch performed at mining camp “opera houses” in the wild west, New York theaters and locations in Mexico, Hawaii, Canada and across the United States. His act grew to a large size, and he traveled with three assistants and “over a ton of baggage.” Some newspaper accounts described him as “the greatest magician of the age.”
Early years touring the west In the early years of his career, Zamloch toured mining towns and other locales in the western United States.
The first press report found on Zamloch was a review in the Morning Oregonian on November 11, 1874, reporting that “Prof. Zamloch, the clever magician, made his professional appearance for the first time in Portland, and gave a number of good tricks.” In October 1879, the Oakland Tribune reported on Zamloch's performances at the Dietz Opera House: “The continued success which Zamloch the magician has met with at Dietz Opera House this week is almost unprecedented in the history of public entertainments given in Oakland. . . . . His extravaganzas of magic were so swiftly executed and so mysteriously subtle that two centuries ago he could have been richly deserved being burned at the stake as a necromancer of the blackest arts and disciple of his satanic majesty. But at this advanced age in anno domini 1879 he is a pleasant gentleman and harmless entertainer. The world does move.”
In 1881, he visited southern Utah. To secure publicity for his shows, he went to the office of the local newspaper, The Silver Reef Miner. Supposing it would amuse the editorial staff, he made three unopened quarts of whiskey and a large box of cigars vanish. Zamloch later recalled that the editors were not amused, accused him of banditry, and he was nearly shot. The incident ended with the return of the whiskey and cigars, and the paper ran an account Zamloch's hoax. Zamloch kept a clipping from The Silver Reef Miner in his scrapbook. He once traveled with a sixteen-mule freight operation from Silver City, New Mexico, to Winnemucca, Nevada – a ten-day journey of “continual dust.”
When Zamloch appeared in Tombstone, Arizona, site of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the local paper reported: “Professor Anton Zamloch returned to Tombstone, on November 19, fortified with more experience and the plaudits of other communities. . . . ’His spirit rapping, taking three cages and as many canaries from a hat of one of the audience, shooting doves out of an omelet, and hundreds of other amusing deceptions kept the audience in good humor."
Tours of Mexico He made tours of Mexico in 1905 and 1906. While traveling to Mexico, he was robbed by customs agents before being allowed to take his magical contraptions into Mexico. In Mexico City, he was accompanied by performing bullfighters, who were killed off one by one. Zamloch was surprised to learn that most Mexican theaters he appeared in did not have seats. Instead, it was customary for spectators to bring chairs from home or rent them from furniture stores.
Zamloch also learned that the most effective form of advertising in Mexico was to hold a street parade promoting the show. Musicians were hired, and local boys were paid to pass out programs along the parade route. During the parade, business would stop as the people of the town came to watch the parade. In Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, Zamloch's parade passed the palace, where the governor was sitting on his veranda. Zamloch stopped in front of the governor, bowed, and pulled from his top hat a green, white and red bird – the colors of the Mexican flag. The governor bowed back at Zamloch, who then waved a program which turned into a silk Mexican flag. The governor saluted, and Zamloch pulled from his hat cigarettes, combs, and five or six pounds of green, white and red candy, which he gave to the locals. Finally, he pulled a pint of champagne from the top-hat, which he shared with the governor.
Tours of Hawaii
He made four tours of Hawaii in 1880, 1882, 1895, and 1904. Zamloch recalled that superstitious Hawaiians would lower their voices whenever they spoke of “Kahuna” (black arts). Zamloch said he was known in Hawaii as “Zamaloka Kahuna”. He met King David Kalakaua at Iolani Palace in January 1880 and kept an autographed letter from the king and an autographed invitation card from Queen Kapiolani to attend an afternoon luau on the palace grounds.
The act Zamloch's act changed over his 40-plus years as an entertainer and included communication with the deceased through spiritualism, sleight of hand tricks using Zamloch's skills of prestidigitation, illusions, card tricks, conjuring, vanishing tricks, burlesque, and humor.
The spirit-rapping table and goblin drum One of Zamloch's trademark routines involved his spirit-rapping table and drum. An 1890 newspaper article described the trick this way: “The rapping table is placed in the main aisle in the auditorium and has a wooden dish which tilts against the top of the table and raps out answers to questions posed by the audience. The drum held in the hands of the magician raps answers also.”
In 1896, the Hawaiian Gazette described the routine this way: “The most mysterious of the twelve numbers on the program was the mystic bouquet, in which spirit rapping table and the goblin drum were introduced. On an ordinary table was placed a wooden disc higher in the center than on the edge – this was placed in the aisle within plain view of persons sitting near. Without any visible connections the disc rapped on the table at the call of the professor. Then a drum suspended from uprights was placed in the aisle, nearer the stage, and was made to beat roll call, marches and knock in answer to questions regarding cards selected by persons in the audience from a pack which the professor held in his hand.”
Zamloch later recalled that the Eastern cities were “daffy about spiritualism” in the 1880s and 1890s. After a tour of the East, vaudeville king Tony Pastor said, “No one has been able to solve the mystery of how a drum and table can be made to talk; yet they do – at command of Zamloch.”
In retirement, Zamloch kept the talking drum and table in his basement and proudly boasted that, “No performer ever has had my magic table and drum act. That is, nobody except the baby of our family, Carl Zamloch; he made them talk during the few months he was in vaudeville; he could be a clever magician, if he didn’t prefer baseball.” (Zamloch's son, Carl Zamloch, played baseball with Ty Cobb on the Detroit Tigers and was the head coach of the University of California's baseball team from 1916–1929.)
Making an omelet in a top-hat
One of Zamloch's most popular conjuring tricks was to beat eggs in a top hat borrowed from a man in the audience. He would mix eggs and other ingredients in the hat and, when he was done, serve an omelet on a platter to a woman in the audience. He would then brush off the top hat and return it to the owner—undamaged.
The bumbling assistant reveals the illusion In the 1880s, Zamloch met a young man named Charlie Irving, who sang parodies on the songs of the day. Zamloch hired him as his assistant to sing comic songs, dress as a stage clown, and burlesque some of Zamloch's lesser tricks. Zamloch had a running gag with Irving in which the assistant's “accidental” buffoonery would expose how one of Zamloch's tricks had been done. At times, Irving would do a comic version of the omelet in the hat trick in which he would take the hat from a confederate in the audience, wipe his egg-dripped hand on the outside of the top hat. Irving would then return the badly damaged hat to its “owner” and say, “Excuse me, but I have forgotten the rest of this trick.” Once in Canada, Irving used the hat of the local governor instead of the hat of a confederate. When Irving returned the governor's hat “filled with goo”, the audience “broke loose and some laughed until they lay down in the aisles”. Zamloch ran from the wings and offered to pay for the hat.
In 1881, the bumbling assistant routine resulted in articles published across the country, including Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The articles typically reported that Zamloch had hired an assistant named Higgins who revealed to Zamloch shortly before the curtain went up for a big show that he so near-sighted he could not see ten feet in front of him. The near-sighted assistant was positioned below a trap door in the stage, and when the signal came to make a boy disappear, the assistant inadvertently shoved a “two dollar ladder” up through the trap door knocking over Zamloch's props and exposing the illusion. Zamloch acted bedeviled, and the audience laughed at the mishap. The articles reported that Zamloch concluded his show with an illusion in which he rammed the near-sighted assistant into a double-barrel shotgun and shot him at a mark. The articles ended by noting that the assistant had not been seen since the show, “and the janitor who found a large wart on the stage, which he said he could identify, thinks that there has been foul play somewhere.”
The enchanted horse trough Another popular Zamloch trick was the “Enchanted Horse Trough”. In this routine, buckets of water were poured into a trough on stage. Zamloch would then fish with rod and line and catch live and wet carp from the trough. His assistant would also fish from the trough and pull out, dripping wet, a rubber boot, a dead cat and finally a live devil, which was pushed back into the trough with much splashing. Then, Zamloch would tip over the trough and reveal it to be empty and dry. Zamloch later recalled that the enchanted trough was a big hit in Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City.
Accusation of stealing a wedding ring So powerful were Zamloch's skills that an audience member following a show in 1897 complained to the local police that Zamloch had bewitched her wedding ring from her gloved hand. Zamloch kept a letter he received from a California constable that said: “I take pleasure to write you that the lady, Mrs. Crossman, who claimed last night that you, by your magic and bewitching power, had stolen her wedding ring from her gloved hand during your last night’s performance, is feeling much better this morning. She says she found that you had reconsidered the matter and by your great spirit power had returned the ring to her. In other words, she found the darn ring in her trunk, which she had packed yesterday for a trip to Montana.”
The Indian basket trick Zamloch also had a trick in which he would close himself in a large Indian basket on stage and then re-appear in the audience or at the back of the theater. In 1890, a Fresno, California, newspaper described the trick this way: “One of the most surprising things in the performance is the Indian basket trick. A large basket is placed on four chairs on the stage in full view of the spectators. Zamloch gets into the basket and the cover is shut down. In less than two minutes he was seen in the middle of the dress circle and the cover is taken off the basket, showing that it is empty.” In a variation on the basket trick, Zamloch shut himself up in an oversized champagne basket on center stage. He would stick his hand out of the basket and fire a pistol and then a moment later greeting the audience by saying, “Hello” from the main entrance.
Dancing skeletons One of his most popular routines was the skeleton dance, in which he “could make two skeletons do a buck-and-wing dance (a form of tap-dancing used in 19th century minstrel shows) to ragtime music.” Another article reported favorably on “the graveyard scene of the dancing skeletons.” Spectators in Hawaii were “disappointed at the non-performance of the ‘dancing skeletons.’”
Severed nose