User:Cjr100B/Frank Hageman

Frank Hageman was one of the many magicians that thrived in the urban night club scene in the 1930s and 1940s. Before making it to that level he documented his travels across the state of North Carolina in an interview for the Federal Writers Project which was an initiative started during the Great Depression as part of FDR’s New Deal.

Early life
Frank Hageman was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina but grew up in New York City. He grew up with a fascination for watching Houdini and other great magicians on Broadway. His curiosity for the way these illusions worked, eventually lead him to practice the art and become a professional magician himself.

He started his career in magic as a fill in for a circus that later hired him full time. However, That did not last long as the circus went bankrupt and the performers went their separate ways. Hageman took a ride to the south with a performer and a female passenger whom he figured to be the performer’s wife. He later learned that the man was running ex slaves down south to their former owners for a form a punishment, which was a crime worth double digit years in jail as it violated the Mann Law.

North Carolina travels
After escaping from the illegal business the man was running Hageman traveled to Chapel Hill where he met people from the south for the first time. Southerners struck him as friendly and more sophisticated than he had imagined. He felt as if living in the north had left him uninformed of the true nature of southern people. Hageman had no money so he and a student pooled their resources to purchase a cheap vehicle and a few animals together and went touring across the state putting on magic shows. As they had no money they often slept outside during their travels or were taken in by friendly North Carolinians. They stopped at various schools across the state with mixed results as the animals they used were not necessarily trained to perfection and often caused trouble during shows. Along the way many of those animals pass away due to a number of reasons and the duo struggled to continue their show. After touring North Carolina Hageman took his skill to Chicago and his assistant went back to school.

Chicago
Once he finished his tour through the North Carolina he took his act to Chicago where he was met with a bit more monetary success. Magicians and other performers were much more sought after in big cultural cities such as Chicago. Hageman noted that while he enjoyed the luxuriousness of the ball rooms he worked at in Chicago that he missed the simplicity of his traveling across the state of North Carolina. It is unclear if he ever fulfilled his pledge to return.

Social issues
Over the course of his journey across North Carolina Hageman was confronted with many of the social issues specific to the southern region of the United States. In the 1930s poverty was in North Carolina, like much of the nation, a major issue. Hageman had no money at the start of his journey and had to stay anywhere he was allowed to spend the night, which was most likely not very comfortable as “The Housing Southerners lived in was grossly substandard.”

The economic conditions in North Carolina had been bad since the Civil War so the effects of poverty had already taken hold on the people Hageman encountered. JoAnn Bishop and Tricia Blackistone who did some research on the North Carolina economy during the Great Depression stated that, "When the Great Depression hit the state in the 1930s, many North Carolinians were used to going without; however, they soon had to find ways to go without even more." One can assume that Hageman was able to experience traditional Southern comfort from the people he called "friendly" and "hospitable" even in these conditions because North Carolinians had already grown accustomed to a lower standard of living.

There were many cultural differences between the people Hageman knew in New York and those he met in the South. Hageman expected Southerners to be “hicks that ate fatback and molasses all day” but he quickly found them sophisticated and it’s stated in the Illustrated History of Magic that, “The more sophisticated people become, the more naively they react to the ageless appeal of magic." Once getting over the culture shock, Hageman saw his opportunity to perform magic shows in the south and tried his hand at making a profit while touring the state. Even in the mountainous region where civilization was lagging behind most other areas in the nation, he was able to find success as people there were advancing in their level of sophistication.

Issues of voice
The Federal Writer’s Project demonstrates a significant issue in voice as there is not much that helps determine how accurate the descriptions given by the authors were. Many of the stories are very well put together to the point where the information seems like it could have been altered or rearranged after the initial interview. The ambitiousness of these writers for good stories may have lead to such an alteration.

As the interview Hageman gives is the only source that specifically mentions anything about him personally it is very difficult to prove the information he gives. One can’t be sure that the conditions were exactly how he described them or if he met the level of appreciation for his illusionist abilities that he says he did.