Kirby the Magician Tried to Kill My Career

The year is 1984. Madonna is singing Material Girl, and I’m alone on the road in the neon-glitz era of the ’80s, booked at the Pulsations Nightclub in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania—home of painter Andrew Wyeth and, apparently, bad decisions.

This pulsating version of Studio 54 sat ninety minutes outside Philly, a towering neon monolith in the middle of one of those barren fields Wyeth loved to paint.

The place was 15,000 square feet spread across ten levels, with eleven bars, and was proudly dubbed “the greatest nightclub ever built.” Because apparently no one had been to New York.

To get onstage, I had to climb three stories of backstage scaffolding and crawl into a four-ton, 27-foot “spaceship” that descended from the ceiling on rails, surrounded by lasers and fog, then lowered me to the stage like I was either a star... or livestock.

And livestock mattered there, because the headliner was Kirby the Magician.

His specialty? Making tigers and lions appear and disappear. I later learned he was infamous for once producing a dead lion onstage at the MGM Grand. At the time,
I didn’t yet realize how dangerous he was.

I was about to get an education. I just didn’t know the course was called Survival Skills for Female Comics.

Opening night, the audience loved me. Then the reviews came out, and they raved about the hilarious female magician who sawed men in half and did a death-defying escape from her grandmother’s girdle. Great news, since I was booked there for two months. Or was it?

This was long before iPhones, so I traveled with a massive Sony Portapak video camera the size of a dishwasher. I wanted to document life on the road, so backstage I started filming Kirby’s exotic animals in cages.

Suddenly, he stepped in front of me, furious.

“Turn that camera off! You’re trying to steal my act!”

This was absurd. At the time, I didn’t own any tigers. I barely owned matching towels.

“Kirby, relax. I’m just filming for myself.”

“Oh yeah?” he yelled. “First, I’m getting your camera… then… I’m getting you.”

That was the first time anyone had ever threatened my life, and honestly, it took the sparkle off show business.

Later that night, I hung out with the dancers who stripped between acts—a sentence that really captures the glamour of the pre-comedy-club road circuit.

They told me they’d overheard Kirby ranting about the reviews.

Mine said “Incredible.”

His said, essentially, “Meh.”

“Stupid bitch,” they heard him say.

That was the problem for women comics back then: if you killed, you threatened the men. If you bombed, you proved women weren’t funny.

Apparently, Kirby stayed furious, because when I got back to my condo, my giant case of camera equipment was gone.

I’d been robbed.

The next day I called the police. A large officer came over, listened to my story, then said:

“Is he your boyfriend? You two have a little spat?”

“No. He threatened me, then stole my camera.”

“Maybe he’s seeing someone else and you’re jealous?”

Sir, I am many things, but jealous of a man with tigers is not one of them.

I pointed to the dusty TV set that looked as if it had the imprint of a hand on it.
“Maybe he left fingerprints.”

He told me to calm down and not get hysterical. It’s amazing that in the 80’s a woman making a request qualifies for hysteria. Oh wait, decades later nothing has changed.

That night I lay awake terrified and furious as I didn’t want him to get away with this.
I was young, alone, and too proud to admit I was scared. I needed revenge.

Then I remembered hearing that if you shove a potato into someone’s tailpipe, their car won’t start.

At 4 a.m., I snuck into the parking lot carrying a potato and a shot glass. Don’t ask why the shot glass. It felt like the right tool for the job.

I hammered that potato into his tailpipe.

At first, I felt triumphant.

Then I thought: What if he dies of carbon monoxide poisoning and my prison nickname becomes Spud?

So at 5 a.m., I was back outside trying to remove the potato.

Night after night, I couldn’t sleep as I was frightened. If Kirby could make a tiger disappear, making an opening act disappear would be light work. After all, he was a master of misdirection.

Finally, I told the show manager I needed to quit.

He leaned in and said in a heavy Italian accent:

“You want out of your contract? The people I work for won’t like that. You’re the hit of the show. Capisce?”

And just like that, I realized I was working in a mafia-run magic revue.

So I spent the rest of the engagement sleeping on chorus girls’ couches and staying far, far away from him when he walked his lions and tigers.

Ten years later, another magician called to tell me Kirby had been bragging for years about stealing my camera.

Recently I looked him up online.

Banned from Vegas, he moved his show to Branson, Missouri — the variety show capital of America. Or as performers call it, assisted living with a spotlight. But PETA shut down his act for animal abuse. Then he’d fallen off a two-story balcony, landed on his head, and gone into a coma. Later he was attacked by an angry pit bull that tore up his arm.

He was broke and asking for donations on gofundme.

I sent one dollar.

Not because I’m petty.

Because I like to support karma.