Meet Mark Wilson

Without question, Mark Wilson was, by far, the most widely recognized magician of the last half of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1955 at WFAA in Dallas, through his early television series, millions of young people became enthralled with  magic. His tuxedoed formal attire became the iconic image of what a magician should look like, and his beautiful young wife--the "lovely Nani Darnell," every young magician's ideal of the professional assistant. 

Today, these styles, for many 21st-century performers, have been relegated to the magical archives, but the standard of professionalism that Mark and Nani achieved and maintained has continued to set a very high bar for professional theatricality in magical entertainment.

Behind the starlit imagery and wide public appeal, however, Mark and Nani worked hard at building and maintaining their business, "Mark Wilson Enterprises." Throughout the years, they  always surrounded themselves with the very best talents and built a team of skilled craftspeople, performing artists, writers, and marketing specialists to meet the high demands of professional productions. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Magic Land of AllaKazam, their landmark nationally-broadcast magical television series, Mark acknowledged the great, talented team that it takes to realize every good idea. What they achieved early on as a team epitomizes the meaning of "business" in the term "show business."

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]

Mark grew up as the son of a traveling salesman and his wife who eventually settled during his childhood in what was then Oak Cliff, Texas, (later incorporated as the southwest section of Dallas). He had seen his first magic show and discovered his first magic store in Indianapolis, an experience which sparked his lifetime passion and commitment to magical entertainment, and it wasn't long before he discovered a similar source of magical inspirations in Dallas.

By the time he entered Oak Cliff's Sunset High School, he was already impressing his friends with his developing talent. On weekends he took the interurban streetcar across the Trinity River to 409 North Ervay Street in downtown Dallas to Douglas Magicland, what was to become his Saturday hangout week after week.  He finally landed his first regular paid gig as a Saturday demonstrator for the sterling salary of $2.00 a day--which, of course, he invested in more magic. However, he sold so much merchandise the first week that it wasn't long before the shop raised his salary to $5.00 a day, a princely and enviable sum to  his small coterie of magical buddies. 

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]

While many of his high school friends, upon graduation, entered the booming workforce in the days following World War II, Mark chose to go to college. His practiced artistry as a skilled magical manipulator, his good looks, and his infectious sunny personality got him a growing number of private parties and a contract with Morton Foods that helped him pay his way through Southern Methodist University.

At SMU, he did the right thing: when he wasn't performing or practicing his art, Mark hunkered down into his studies, taking a double major in marketing and advertising. That knowledge would be an indispensable foundation that he invested immediately in establishing his own entertainment company, Mark Wilson Enterprises.

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]

It was at a New Year's Eve Party where Mark first met the lady who would become his lifetime partner for the next 67 years. Nancy Louise was a young dancer, but at the time of their meeting, she was a flight attendant for American Airlines.  A fellow fraternity brother knew some of the flight attendants, and Nancy Louise came to the party with them but with another date. She quickly caught the eye of the handsome president of the fraternity, and at midnight, it was Mark whom she kissed and not her date. Within weeks after they met, Mark and she were married, and it wasn't too long after that the "first team's" second assistant, their son little Mike, was born. 

Nancy Louise settled on the show name of "Nani Darnell," her moniker that became as famous and familiar as that of her husband, Mark. Together, as business partners, they were doing everything they could to get bookings when they decided to risk approaching the local CBS affiliate, WFAA in Dallas, with the idea of a regular live weekly thirty-minute television show. With sponsorships from Dr Pepper, 3M, and Morton Foods, the station managers were willing to take the risks, and the Wilsons' dream of bringing live magic to a television audience suddenly become a reality.

In 1954 Time for Magic  first aired in Dallas, becoming one of the most popular family shows in the limited broadcast region. Its success in Dallas, however, was easily marketed to additional Texas venues. Soon, they added additional supporting cast members. After finishing a stint in the U. S. Air Force and his own college degree, fellow Texas magician and very talented young clown, Bev Bergeron joined the company in 1957, and the three performers became the most recognized "tele-magicians" across the state. 

The unexpected success of these regional magic shows only enhanced their dreams of marketing their show to a national audience. All their efforts to that end finally paid off with a contract with Kellogg Corporation and the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, and in 1960 the young team packed up and moved to Los Angeles to expand their company and prepare for their first nationally televised magic show.

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]

The first of 39 weekly thirty-minute shows aired on October 1, 1960, to the thrill of thousands of spell-bound children and their families across the nation. Sponsored by Kellogg Foods and the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, the shows were produced in CBS-Television City in Hollywood, California.

Mark and Nani quickly began building the team, bringing Bev Bergeron as "Rebo, the Clown" from Dallas and hiring Johnny Gaughn as a prop designer, and a number of other highly experienced personnel, who together lifted the project off the ground.

The team produced the thirty minute shows three weeks in advance of airing and took advantage of the new videotaping technologies that allowed them to shoot segments that would then be edited together.

Mark brought to the national productions of AllaKazam three standards from their earlier shows in Texas:

1. Never cut away during a trick.

2. Always have a live audience.

3. Always make a statement, "No camera or television trickery is ever used on this show."

The Magic Land of AllaKazam continued with the Kellogg Company sponsorship for two years. When that company failed to renew their sponsorship, the ABC television network picked them up with new sponsors and continued the shows for another three years. At the end, Mark Wilson, Nani Darnell, and their company became the most celebrated magicians in America.

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]

In 1971, Mark and Nani contracted with the Pillsbury Company to produce six nationally televised shows blending magic with the circus. The results were spectacular and marked the magic production company's move into the arena of grand illusions, demonstrating, once and for all, that such large-scale illusion shows would broadcast to a wide television audience most successfully. The show interspersed magical acts with circus performances. Complementing their own acts, Mark invited some of the biggest names in magic at the time to join them, including Jay Marshall, Dai Vernon, Shimada, and Carl Ballentine.

The final television show to appear in national syndication was the 1981 productions of The Magic of Mark Wilson. Greg Wilson, the couple's second son, joined them for the first time in their television performances.

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]

When the Larsons opened Hollywood's Magic Castle in January, 1963, they needed a headliner to announce the Grand Opening to the world of magic. They immediately contacted Mark and Nani who, with only a day's notice, stepped up to the task. Newsweek Magazine, covering the event, displayed the photograph of Mark floating the ever so "beautiful Nani Darnell" atop "Erma," the grand piano, in the Castle's parlor. The rest is Hollywood magic history.

For his years of service to magic, the Academy of Magical Arts awarded Mark the coveted "Magician of the Year," the complement in the art of magical entertainment to the "Oscars" in the film industry.

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]

Although President Richard Nixon opened the doors to China with his "ping-pong" diplomacy and a breakthrough official trip to Beijing in 1972, the magic community's entree would wait another eight years until Mark and Nani received an invitation from the Chinese government to perform for the People's Republic of China in 1980.

Mark and Nani, joined by a team of 20 and a film crew, packed up more than 2,000 pounds of magical props and toured the People's Republic of China. The government filmed one of their complete shows which was broadcast on Chinese television to more 200 million people. It was the first time the Chinese had ever experienced American-style entertainment and its production methods and style.

In public places, the Chinese people loved the Americans, and children stood apart wide-eyed until Mark invited them to watch his close-up sleight-of-hand work. The  children, as seen in the photos, mobbed the American performers, demonstrating back home in America that magic's spell is universal.

Mark and Nani's trip to the Great Wall marked an important cultural shift that would see many more exchanges, not the least of those engineered in years to come by their oldest son Mike. Impressed by his first experiences with his mother and father, Mike returned to study Mandarin Chinese at Peking (Beijing) University and completed a Masters degree at the University of Illinois-Urbana. In years to come, he would produce many exchanges between the United States and the People's Republic of China.

Perhaps no other text has had such an impact on young minds into their first forays into magic as has been Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic. Years in production, this worldwide best-seller is the culmination of what originally was to be lessons in a course.

More than 470 pages long, it is divided into 26 sections, the first 14 devoted to card magic. The chapters include tricks with relatively simple methods along with others that build on the skills developed in mastering the earlier effects.

As Mark notes in the "Acknowledgments," the course reflects centuries of magical performance pieces, refined and developed by countless magical entertainers. The secrets contained, then, are ours to learn, to cherish, to revere, and to respect. But they are secrets not ours to expose or give away to those outside the field of magical discourse and study.

The production values of the course reflect only the highest standards. For example, more than 50,000 photographs were reduced to only 2,000 which then were rendered into line-drawing illustrations. The wording of each routine was written, rewritten, and then rewritten over and over to make certain that the readers could easily understand, follow, and master each step in a routine.

Some of the most creative minds in magic at the time contributed to the final publication, including co-author Walter Gibson, Alan Wakeling, Johnny Gaughn, U. F. Grant, Fr. Jim Blantz, Earl Nelson, Tom O'Lenick, Peter Pit, David Roth, Brick Tilley, and Larry Anderson.

[Photo courtesy of Greg Wilson, curator of the AllaKazam Archives]