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Inside the Magic Castle is a Victorian-style bar, a high-end restaurant
(with moderate prices), sleight-of-hand performers on side tables, several
small theaters where magician members ply their trade in front of live
audiences, a ghostly piano room, secret passageways, and so much more.
Remember though, it is a Members Only club (but if you are a friend
of Milt’s or a friend of a friend of Milt’s you can probably get in).
The Montecito Manse
We are sitting on the back patio of Milt and Arlene Larsen’s single-story
house overlooking Santa Barbara Harbor and the Channel Islands; views
to the south go as far as Rincon and north towards Goleta. A three-masted
sailboat drifts off in the near distance.
The following is the gist of our leisurely conversation.
Before they purchased this house the Larsens had owned 200 feet of
Montecito oceanfront adjacent to Miramar Beach on nearly an acre of
land that had such spectacular views it had been featured on the cover of a
number of Verne Langdon music albums. For those unfamiliar with Santa
Barbara’s location, it is situated on a stretch of land than runs east to west
under the watchful eye of the San Rafael Mountains. Which means that
Milt and Arlene could then and can now get up in the morning and watch
the sunrise from their patio; they can also watch the sunset from the same
location.
It’s almost like, well, like magic.
Milt says he “began to make ends meet” when he was only 25 years
old, and knew he wanted to own something close to the water. At first, he
says he found “a very nice little house in Newport on Balboa Island.” It
was just a cabin, “a simple little house,” on a 30x50 lot; his payments were
a mere $50 a month to keep it. A few years later, he bought another, “just
off the beach, but close enough.” He named his two properties “Baltic” and
“Mediterranean” after the two low-rent properties featured in the board
game
Monopoly.
He never really lived in either house (one of his grandmothers did reside
in one), but he rented them out.
Milt’s mother’s third husband, Rubin Jaffe, owned a property on
Edgecliff Lane in Montecito that he’d bought in 1948. Milt’s father passed
away at a very early age, and his mother re-married. Her second husband
was Art Baker, host of another extremely popular (and successful)
television show:
You Asked For It!
“They had a wonderful life for
ten years,” Milt recounts. When Mr. Baker passed away, his mother
married Rubin. He was a candy manufacturer and had nothing to do
Conversati
ons
TV’s Truth Or Consequences was one of the most popular shows on the air in the late
1950s and early ‘60s; the show, in which its writers often doubled up as actors, featured
elaborate sets, costumes, complicated skits, and above all, audience participation
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