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55
The Magic Castle
We pick up our story in 1961; Milt Larsen, who never attended
college, was a reasonably successful young man. At the tender age of 30 he
had already been a full-time writer for
Truth or Consequences
for five years.
The program was a Ralph Edwards production, its host was Bob Barker,
and the show was one of television’s most-watched and most successful.
In the fall of that year – 1961 – maybe because he had too much time on
his hands, maybe because of his background growing up as part of a magic
family traveling act, or perhaps as a delayed reaction to the untimely death
of his father at the age of 48, Milt concluded a handshake lease to take
possession of what would become the world-renowned Magic Castle. The
“lease” required Milt to fix the place up in exchange for free rent.
The other part of the handshake deal was that the building’s owner,
Tom Glover, was to receive a percentage of the gross of the food and drink
served if they ever got an operating business going in the building, an
old Victorian structure on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. Milt, along
with his brother, Bill Larsen, and a fellow TV business associate, Don
Gotschall, formed Golar (Gotschall/Larsen) Enterprises with the intention
of living up to their sweetheart lease by fixing up the decrepit mansion
and turning it into a private club for magicians. “I was always handy with
a hammer,” Milt says; he had already built a livable cabin in the country
outside Palm Springs.
The idea of launching a private club devoted to magic was Milt’s
father’s idea. William Larsen, Sr. had been a successful criminal defense
lawyer before giving up the practice of law after a particularly painful case
to take his family on the road as “The Larsens – A Family of Magicians.”
Mr. Larsen, Sr. was also editor-publisher of
Genii, The Conjurors’
Magazine,
launched in 1936. So, it was not a stretch for Milt to conjure
his own “Gentlemen’s Club” with a membership restricted to friends and
prestidigitators of all kinds.
Conversations
Milt’s father, William Larsen, gave up the practice of law after representing a client he knew
was guilty and saving him from a death sentence, and went on the road with his family (from
the bottom left : Milt, his mom Geraldine, and older brother Bill) as a traveling magic act
The dapper attorney-at-law William W. Larsen, Sr.