Walter Cronkite meets Harry Maurer…




We developed our “Parlor Show” years ago on the deluxe cruise ships as a fun-filled pre-dinner “Cocktail show”.
A “Parlor Show” is “Close-up Magic” (Micro Magic) presented in a more formal setting.  It is a very strong show — so strong in fact that cruise lines now insist that I include it in my program!
Many of you know that some of the ships on which we entertain draw a very select clientele who pay in the neighborhood of $1,000 per day (per person) to sail on these ships for two or three weeks at a time! Sailing as a passenger on one of these cruises was Walter Cronkite.
I have so many memories of seeing Walter Cronkite on the nightly news when I was a child. To this day I can vividly remember his broadcast the moment that we first landed on the moon! I knew he was on the ship and I wanted so much to meet him, but our paths didn’t cross.
The night I presented my “Parlor Show” — my most intimate show — I saw Walter Cronkite sitting in the back of the room watching my show from a distance.
Some of the routines that I presented that night included pushing a deck of cards through the walls of a balloon and then visually pulling a selected and signed card out through the walls of the balloon without bursting the balloon! I also changed a borrowed one dollar bill into a $100 dollar bill, and like the psychic Uri Geller, I made the time on someone’s watch change time in their own hands!
As soon as the show finished and I took my bow, Walter Cronkite — the man I had watched and admired for years on national television — ran up to ME to tell me how much he enjoyed the show!
We sat down and had a great talk in which he told me how he had once interviewed the Israeli psychic Uri Geller, and throughout the conversation gushed with so many wonderful compliments about my show!
It was truly an amazing experience for me!…

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