I never talk much about my family, but my grandfather was friendly with these guys, with magicians and ventriloquists on the highest levels, and I was just... interested.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was the youngest member of the New York International Brotherhood of Magicians. It was me and a bunch of 60-year-old Jewish men.
My interest was magic, believe it or not. I became an amateur magician and did something like 400 magic shows through my teen years.
Indeed, most magicians catch the bug as kids. My first audience was my family in Long Island. My first 'assistant' was my mother, whom I levitated on a broom in our living room.
My grandparents - both of my mother's parents - were actors, and they ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company, through the town of Reading, where I come from.
Strangely enough, among my dad's things, I found the diary of an ancestor who was born in 1797 and became a ventriloquist in London. That was quite chilling. It described exactly how I was as a child but 150 years earlier - doing voices, pretending to be a ventriloquist.
I grew up in a crazy, gypsy-like household of actors, dancers and loony Broadway people. It was their way of life, and I didn't know anything else.
My family is very theatrical.
All my momma's people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.
Both my grandfathers and my mother's brother were musicians.
I came from a huge extended family of musicians.