Trivia

Was the world's oldest performing magician. On stage from the age of eight, he fulfilled a lifelong ambition when he appeared at the London Palladium on his 100th birthday.

Broke into films making $600 a day as a hand-double for Clark Gable in Honky Tonk (1941). Scenes required Gable's hands to do some clever, tricky maneuvering, which Gable couldn't pull off.

Inducted into the Society of American Magicians Hall of Fame.

His childhood passion for magic and illusion grew into a career, and he made more than 20,000 appearances on stage. During World War II his magic show ran for five months in Hollywood. Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Danny Kaye and Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy were among the big celebrities who helped out in his act. He still tours with his act, assisted by his wife, at the age of 90.

He and his wife Tammy were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard after they rode out hurricane Wilma on their 67 foot boat in Florida. (October 2005)

Still touring and teaching magic at age 99+ (April 2011)

He and a friend survived with multiple injuries when he crashed his DC-2 at the Lockheed Air Terminal runway on San Fernando Rd in 1948.

In his early years, one of his girlfriends was gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.

Still actively performing and teaching magic, assisted on stage by his wife, Tammy. (March 2005)

During the Great Depression and into the 1940s, he continually increased the size of his magic show, adding illusions and personnel. He gained notoriety by performing daredevil stunts for publicity.

Siegfried & Roy cited him as an inspiration, and Bess Houdini said that he was second only to Harry Houdini in "play(ing) the part of a magician.".

In 2007, IBM Ring 257 named him Magician of the Year.

His biographer, William V. Rauscher, has called Calvert a "real-life Indiana Jones" because of his reputation for surviving dangerous circumstances in his travels.

He became fascinated with magic at age eight when his father took him to see the magician Howard Thurston perform in Cincinnati, Ohio. Shortly afterward, he performed his first trick for his Sunday school class - he made an egg appear from under another boy's coat.

He made his initial magic tour when he was eighteen, performing in town halls in Kentucky backroad towns. His small troupe consisted of one assistant and "Gyp the Wonder Dog". He returned home with a $2.65 profit.

In the mid-1940s, he transported his show's equipment and personnel worldwide in a Douglas DC-3 airliner, and in later years on yachts.

Even at age 100, Calvert traveled extensively, lecturing and performing magic.

Calvert was invited to perform his magic act both on Broadway in New York City and at the London Palladium Theatre on his 100th birthday.

From the mid-1940s through the late 1950s, he performed in approximately forty films, including starring roles in three Film Classic releases, in which he portrayed a debonair detective known as "The Falcon". He also played as himself in a Singaporean Malay movie in 1971, Mat Magic.

The Society of Young Magicians (S.Y.M.) Assembly #29 of the Boston area is named after John Calvert.