On the road with travel films.
Filmmaker, Magician
John Nichols Booth
Is Dead at 97
Dr.John Nichols Booth, 97, one the most unusually talented travel filmmakers to take stage center and say, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” has died. He had been in a failing health for months before his death last November. He is survived by a daughter, Barbara Christie.
A man of many talents, he had been a top magician, journalist, author and Unitarian minister. The last story he wrote for the printed Travel Adventure Cinema magazine, Nightmare in Sikkim, appeared in the Fall 2006 printed issue. It was reprinted last fall in TAC online.
John, born in Maine, was the eldest son of English-born parents. His father, also a Unitarian minister, did a little moonlighting in his younger days, turning out several movie scenarios for the fledgling Thomas A. Edison Studios, such as The Minister’s Temptation. The family later moved to Canada where Booth attended McMaster University.
He began his magic career in high school and college, which paid for much of his education. After graduation, his magic act was booked into nightclubs and hotels here and in Canada. Based on this experience, “I wrote two books, Forging ahead in Magic, and Marvels of Mystery,” he said.
At age 27, he abandoned his professional magician’s life to enter the Unitarian Church, a move that made front-page news and a column in Newsweek.
“Through all those years my vision of becoming a minister haunted me,” he wrote. “Only an uneasiness that my temperament might not be suitable for an effective ministry held me back. Finally, in 1940, my misgivings evaporated. I closed a two-week engagement as a magician in the Schroeder Hotel in Milwaukee (now the Hilton) and went directly to the Meadville Theological School now located in Chicago, the seminary of my father 30 years earlier.” John would remain in the church for the next 33 years.
During his conjuring days, he met his wife, Edith Kriger, aboard a cruise ship where he was presenting his magic shows. They were married 41 years until her death.
He also appeared on the national celebrity lecture circuit as a lecturer and magician. During a church sabbatical in 1948-49 he became an Asian correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times, interviewing and photographing the prime ministers of China, Thailand and India and the governors of Hong Kong and Singapore. He had several news beats during his sabbatical, including one anticipating the collapse of the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China and another reporting that Prime Minister Nehru planned to eschew both West and Communist blocs to head a third, neutral bloc of countries.
For over a quarter of a century, the popular Booth produced a variety of travel films for showing on our circuit. They included the South Seas, Britain, Indonesia, the Amazon & Peru, Spain and the Golden Kingdoms of the Orient. He would often include a little magic. He was with the Wayne Short agency. (See following tribute to John by Edwin Fitchett .)
John would often relate a favorite anecdote about visiting India and offering—through the media—$10,000 to any fakir who could prove the famed Indian Rope Trick was real and not a trick. (In this feat, a rope is thrown into the air and it hangs there rigid while a boy climbs up and disappears. Or the fakir climbs and disappears. Or both climb and disappear.)
“There were no takers,” a smiling Booth would say.
Although retired from the magician’s life, he always kept the world of magic in his thoughts by writing a column, Memoirs of a Magician’s Ghost, for a professional magicians’ publication from 1963 until 2000.
He also would tell friends he wanted to be buried beside his wife in the small Michigan town of Colon, .
Why Colon? Early in the last century the renowned magician Harry Blackstone and crew started to spend their off-seasons there perfecting their tricks for the next tour. The Abbotts Magic Manufacturing Co. also set up shop in Colon and the town became a hangout for the slight-of-hand-crowd, billing itself as the Magic Capital of the World
One section of the town’s tranquil Lakeside Cemetery has a section called the Magicians’ Area where a score of magicians are already interred, including Blackstone Senior and his almost as famous son, Harry Blackstone Jr.
John will be in great company.
A Remembrance of John Nichols Booth
By Edwin E. Fitchett, Vassar Bros. Institute, Poughkeepsie, NY
It was Jan. 23, 1980, when Dr. John Booth brought us his film entitled South Seas Saga. He was a distinguished gentleman whom I was thrilled to meet. I knew him not only as a skilful cinematographer but also as a Unitarian Minister, an author of many books, a public speaker and, in particular, a professional magician.
Magic was my hobby and here I was with a celebrity from the world of magic!
He was the author of the longest running column in the International Brotherhood of Magicians magazine, The Linking Ring. Memoirs of a Magician’s Ghost started in May 1963 and didn’t conclude until January 2000, 435 monthly installments. I looked forward to these articles as they were always such an informative description of famous magicians both past and present.
John Booth’s travel films always showed a touch of magic. In South Seas Saga I remember seeing a group of wide-eyed native children watching him make something appear and disappear right in front of them.
After that 1980 travelogue I was privileged to drive him around Poughkeepsie, showing him the Unitarian Church and other sites before I left him off at his motel. We had talked about movies and magic.
It was an evening I’ll never forget.
Tags: Abbots Magic Co. · China · Colon MI · Dr. John Nichols Booth · Hong Kong · India · Magic · Thailand · Thomas A. Edison Studios · Unitarian Church
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John Nicholls Booth was a remarkable “Renaissance Man” with his spiritual journey, his love of magic, his role with the Adventurers’ Club, and his appearances on the travelogue circuit. I spent a delightful couple of days with him in 1984 as speaker for the Adventurers’ Club. The earlyday filmmaker/presentors were generally telling their personal stories of adventure…rather than reading a prepared script derived from guidebooks and/or from the internet. Like Nicol Smith (no relation), John was unique in his day and time.