RIP Randall James Hamilton Zwinge
James Randi, a magician who later challenged spoon benders, mind readers and faith healers with such voracity that he became regarded as the country’s foremost skeptic, has died, his foundation announced. He was 92.
The James Randi Educational Foundation confirmed his death, saying that its founder succumbed to “age-related causes” on Tuesday....
On a 1972 episode of “The Tonight Show,” he helped Johnny Carson set up Uri Geller, the Israeli performer who claimed to bend spoons with his mind. Randi ensured the spoons and other props were kept from Geller’s hands until showtime to prevent any tampering.
The result was an agonizing 22 minutes in which Geller was unable to perform his tricks.
For Randi, those 22 minutes of magic tricks not being done would ironically become the high point of the magician's biography but there was one more twist in the story
Adam Higginbotham writing for the New York Times Magazine in 2014.
“I sat there for 22 minutes, humiliated,” Geller told me, when I spoke to him in September. “I went back to my hotel, devastated. I was about to pack up the next day and go back to Tel Aviv. I thought, That’s it — I’m destroyed.” But to Geller’s astonishment, he was immediately booked on “The Merv Griffin Show.” He was on his way to becoming a paranormal superstar. “That Johnny Carson show made Uri Geller,” Geller said. To an enthusiastically trusting public, his failure only made his gifts seem more real: If he were performing magic tricks, they would surely work every time.
It's a great tale except that there's little reason to believe it actually happened that way. Start with the fact that Geller seems to be the main source, which should have raised some red flags for Higginbotham.
How about the appearance on the Merv Griffith Show? Wasn't he invited shortly after the Carson debacle? Not exactly. He was invited back.
From IMDB:
The Merv Griffin Show (1962–1986)
Alfred Drake, Pamela Mason, Uri Geller, Captain Edgar Mitchell
TV-PG | 1h | Comedy, Family, Music | Episode aired 19 July 1973
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992)
Ricardo Montalban/Eskimo-Indian Olympians/Uri Geller
1h 45min | Comedy, Talk-Show | Episode aired 1 August 1973
The Merv Griffin Show (1962–1986)
Eartha Kitt, Richard Dawson, Michelle Phillips, Uri Geller
TV-PG | 1h | Comedy, Family, Music | Episode aired 15 August 1973
Geller's telling makes it sound like it was the Carson appearance that got him on Griffin, but he was a returning guest and there's no reason to believe he wasn't invited back simply because he had done well a couple of weeks earlier.
[Late Edit: He'd also made appearances on Jack Parr and Mike Douglas before doing Carson -- MP]
Nor is there evidence that Geller's career took off in late 1973.
If anything, it looks like Randi's debunking of Geller starting with the Tonight Show and culminating with 1975's The Magic of Uri Geller was what brought the charlatan down.
Journalists love people-are-stupid narratives, but, while I believe cognitive dissonance is real, I think the lesson here is not "To an enthusiastically trusting public, his failure only made his gifts seem more real" and is instead that we should all be more skeptical of simplistic and overused pop psychology.
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