Coffins and Boxes
Van Buren went on to present his own shows but in the early days he also had a "proper job", he become an apprentice cabinet maker and French polisher as well as doing his own shows and pantomimes. He was often employed in making vehicle bodies for ERF and Foden, coffins for local undertakers, and boxes for local businesses. It turned out to be a useful grounding for the making of magical apparatus in later years.
Towards the end of the Second World War the family began holidaying in Blackpool and it was here that the magic flame really ignited, thanks to a visit to Paul Clive’s Magic Shop on the North Pier. Every year, Van Buren would visit the beautifully opulent Blackpool Tower Circus, which from that young age he always wanted to appear in.
Another great influence on Van Buren’s career occurred when he saw a performance by Ali Bey in Blackpool in 1948. Ali Bey did much of this performance on ice but for some illusions he retired to a theatrical backdrop because the particular items could not be performed surrounded. It was then that Fred decided that the future lay in illusions that could be performed anywhere, with the audience on all sides and with no possibility of effects being accomplished by the aid of trapdoors.
Read more about this topic: Fred Van Buren
Famous quotes containing the words coffins and, coffins and/or boxes:
“I was
the girl of the chain letter,
the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes,
the one of the telephone bills,
the wrinkled photo and the lost connections....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
—Eleonora Duse (1859–1924)