Magic at the Stage Door Canteen
On the 2 March 1942, less than three months after the United States entered the Second World War, the Stage Door Canteen opened beneath New York’s 44th Street Theatre. Run by the American Theatre Wing, it offered Allied servicemen free food, dancing and entertainment, much of it provided by volunteers from the theatrical profession.
Producer Lee Shubert provided the basement without rent and theatrical unions helped convert it. The room measured only forty by eighty feet and could accommodate about 500 people at a time, so servicemen were admitted in shifts. On busy nights more than 2,000 passed through. Actors waited tables, hostesses danced with the men and performers appeared on stage without fee. Among the famous faces involved were Katharine Hepburn, who danced with servicemen, and the young Lauren Bacall, who volunteered as a hostess before becoming one of Hollywood’s best-known stars. For men accustomed to seeing such people only on a cinema screen, the informality was part of the attraction.
Stage Door Canteen, New York
(Source: stagedoorcanteen.co.uk)
Admission was limited principally to enlisted men and non-commissioned officers. By February 1944 the New York Canteen had welcomed its two-millionth visitor. The idea spread to other American cities and later across the Atlantic. By November 1945 Stage Door Canteens were operating in eight American cities as well as London and Paris; together they had fed and entertained an estimated eleven million Allied servicemen.
Among the singers, comedians, musicians and actors were magicians.
Magic below Broadway
The original Canteen was somewhere servicemen could spend an evening away from barracks, camps, ships and military routine. Its entertainment programme therefore had to be continuous, varied and flexible. Magic fitted comfortably into that environment: most acts required comparatively little equipment and could be inserted easily into a mixed bill.
One of the New York regulars was Bill Williston, an established comedy magician whose professional career pre-dated the war. His name appears among performers who gave their time to the American Theatre Wing’s wartime activities, and one contemporary report noted that he had, by that point, played the Stage Door Canteen for the sixty-second time.
New York magician, Bill Williston
(Source: The Tops)
Another New York magician was William Arenholz, a telephone-company executive who performed as Foo Ling Yu. Arenholz presented a silent pseudo-Chinese magical character in costume and make-up and became particularly associated in magical circles with the snake-basket trick.
Post-war image of William Arenholz performing as Foo Ling Yu
(Source: Museum of Chinese in America)
His Canteen appearance is unusually well documented. The Canteen’s own newspaper carried an item on 6 April 1944 entitled “Foo Ling Yu, Fooled Him!”, describing a Chinese serviceman encountering Arenholz after the performance and seeing the supposedly Chinese magician remove his disguise. The racial impersonation sits less comfortably today. Shortly after the war, he was one of the founding members of the Long Island Mystics.
Next door to the White House
The Washington Stage Door Canteen occupied the former Belasco Theatre, close to the White House. Here one of its recurring magicians had a rather different day job.
Fritz Garland Lanham had represented Texas in the House of Representatives since 1919. He was also a lifelong amateur magician of considerable ability, active in the American magical fraternity and a former president of the Washington Society of Magicians.
Congressman Fritz Garland Lanham
(Source: National Library of Congress)
A contemporary Associated Press report from June 1944 described his wife volunteering at the Canteen every Tuesday evening. She made a particular effort to talk with servicemen who appeared depressed or homesick, and some subsequently wrote to her after returning to their ships or going overseas. Every few weeks, the report continued, Congressman Lanham himself put on a show, performing tricks from his lifelong hobby. The correspondent added that Lanham could perform on a level with good professionals.
His appearances were remembered after the war. When Congress commemorated Lanham following his death in 1965, colleagues recalled both his enthusiasm for magic and his performances at Stage Door Canteen entertainments for servicemen.
Another established magician, Commander Charles Churchill Slayton, also appeared at the Washington Canteen. Slayton combined a career in the United States Navy with serious involvement in magic. His effects appeared in The Sphinx and after the war he became national president of the Society of American Magicians. A surviving collection of his wartime papers records performances at both the Washington Stage Door Canteen and Walter Reed Hospital, where he entertained wounded and recovering servicemen.
Charles Slayton on the cover of Genii magazine (July 1948)
(Source: Genii)
Philadelphia also had a magical contribution. In July 1944 Billboard reported that Charles Rubens, then holding a civilian position with the US Navy Department in Washington, had performed his magic at the Philadelphia Stage Door Canteen. Rubens was already an established member of the American magical community and had published magical material before the war.
The Canteen comes to London
The idea also crossed the Atlantic. The London Stage Door Canteen, at 201 Piccadilly, opened on 31 August 1944, less than three months after D-Day. London was crowded with Allied servicemen: some awaiting movement to the Continent, some on leave and others returning from operations.
Stage Door Canteen, London
(Source: stagedoorcanteen.co.uk)
The opening attracted major stars. A US Army Signal Corps photograph shows Bing Crosby singing to a packed audience of Allied servicemen on the opening day. Fred Astaire was among the other prominent entertainers associated with the new Canteen, alongside a much larger body of working performers.
Bing Crosby performing at the Stage Door Canteen
(Source: vintagewings.ca)
One of the magicians was Sirdani.
Born Sid Daniels in London’s East End in 1899, Sirdani had already served during the First World War before becoming a professional magician. He developed a comic pseudo-Egyptian character based around the “gilly-gilly” man and became particularly familiar to wartime audiences through BBC radio.
Sirdani (1945)
(Source: British Film Institute)
His best-known broadcasts included Navy Mixture. Magic might appear ill-suited to radio, but Sirdani adapted his act around comedy, malapropisms, audience interaction and simple tricks which could be described to listeners. His repeated instruction, “Don’t be fright!”, became a familiar catchphrase.
Sirdani was also a regular performer at the London Stage Door Canteen, where entertainers gave their services without fee. For servicemen who knew him from the wireless, Piccadilly offered the chance to see the magician behind the voice.
Stage Door Canteen (London) brochure
(Author’s collection)
Another was Erikson, the stage name of Eric Ferguson. Contemporary accounts show him as a polished professional magician. One wartime performance included billiard-ball manipulation, the production of glasses of wine from silk handkerchiefs, a borrowed treasury note found inside a selected card which had itself appeared in a cigarette, the cups and balls and an egg effect.
Video of Erikson performing manipulation magic (1936)
(Source: British Pathe)
Val Andrews, then working under the name Vanson, also later recalled entertaining troops at the Stage Door Canteen. His repertoire mixed conjuring, ventriloquism and other variety material. He had moved to London in 1943 and, although turned down for military service on medical grounds, found another outlet for entertaining servicemen.
The London Canteen continued after VE Day and VJ Day. A programme for 29 June 1946 included magician Peter Waring alongside other entertainers. Waring was an established conjurer whose wartime repertoire included comedy magic, card and rope effects and penetration effects.
In December that year Parliament was told that the Canteen was still providing free entertainment seven nights a week for about 10,000 servicemen a week, shortly before the Piccadilly premises closed after being let to the BBC.
The Canteen on screen
By the time the London branch opened, the Stage Door Canteen had already become part of wartime popular culture.
The 1943 film Stage Door Canteen gathered dozens of American entertainers into a fictional story based around the New York establishment. Magic appeared through Edgar Bergen and his dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Bergen’s comic routine drew heavily on the stock imagery of the magician and mentalist: a crystal ball, occult powers, trance, mind-reading and hypnotism.
Bergen was principally famous as a ventriloquist, although magic had formed part of his earlier performing career. His sequence was parody rather than a conventional conjuring act, but it reflected the wider variety world from which the real Canteens drew their entertainers.
Poster for the Stage Door Canteen movie (1943)
(Credit: Sol Lesser)
Paris and the wider Canteen network
The Stage Door Canteen movement also reached continental Europe. A Paris Stage Door Canteen opened in the spring of 1945, with Marlene Dietrich among the performers at its opening. Her wartime act was more than singing: alongside The Boys in the Back Room, Lili Marlene and her musical saw, Dietrich performed a comic mind-reading routine with servicemen. The magical connection was genuine. Orson Welles had taught her the routine for his 1943 Mercury Wonder Show for Service Men, the large-scale magic and variety show he created for American troops, in which Dietrich replaced Rita Hayworth as one of his assistants.
Marlene Dietrich
(Source: Pinterest)
Stage Door Canteen, Paris
(Source: Pinterest)
Entertainment as war work
The importance of magic at the Stage Door Canteen should not be overstated. It was only one component of a much larger programme of music, dancing, comedy and hospitality.
Nevertheless, morale was a real military concern. Wartime service involved long periods of waiting, separation from family, unfamiliar surroundings and, for many men, the anticipation or recent experience of combat.
Magic had practical advantages in that setting. A conjurer could travel with comparatively little equipment, work on a stage or at close quarters and involve servicemen directly in an effect.
For magicians, the Stage Door Canteens provided another way of contributing their professional skills to the war effort. Their part was modest, but practical and sustained: turning up, performing and helping to provide a few hours of entertainment for servicemen temporarily away from the demands of military life.
Plaque commemorating the Stage Door Canteen, Times Square, New York
(Source: Pinterest)
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Key sources
The National WWII Museum, “The Original Stage Door Canteen” — history, operation and scale of the New York Canteen and wider network.
American Theatre Wing, institutional history of the Stage Door Canteen and wartime entertainment programme.
Tex Easley, “Mrs. Lanham Doing Her Bit For Soldiers”, Associated Press, 16 June 1944 — contemporary account of Fritz and Mrs Lanham at the Washington Stage Door Canteen.
Canteen News, 6 April 1944, “Foo Ling Yu, Fooled Him!”, Emeline Roche Collection, box 1, folder 15 — contemporary evidence for William Arenholz/Foo Ling Yu at the New York Canteen.
Billboard, wartime issues, 1943–44 — including material on Bill Williston, American Theatre Wing performers and Charles Rubens at the Philadelphia Stage Door Canteen.
US National Archives, Record Group 111, photograph 111-SC-193249 / NAID 531210, 31 August 1944 — Bing Crosby performing at the opening of the London Stage Door Canteen.
London Stage Door Canteen commemorative programme, author’s collection — evidence for Sirdani and other performers at the Piccadilly Canteen.
The Magic Circular, wartime issues — contemporary material on British magicians including Erikson and Peter Waring.
Magic at War, “‘Don’t be fright!’: radio magician’s catchphrase helps reassure the nation”, 1 December 2019 — Sirdani’s wartime career and Stage Door Canteen appearances.
American Film Institute Catalog, Stage Door Canteen (1943) — film cast and production information.
Hansard, 18 December 1946, “Stage Door Canteen” — evidence for the continuing scale of the London operation shortly before its closure.
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