Since the dawn of television, viewers have always wanted to be amazed. One who knew this was George Joseph Kresge, Jr., a.k.a. The Amazing Keskin.
Billed as a mentalist with special powers of perception, Kreskin (born in 1935 in New Jersey) was one of those amazing TV distractions that tickled viewers in the late ’60s and into the ’70s and ’80s. As he himself predicted (or did he?), Kreskin passed away Dec. 10 at 89.
Back then there was no internet to distract or bamboozle. We could not look away at Tiny Tim, the Galloping Gourmet (Graham Kerr), Evil Kenivel, or tennis hustler Bobby Riggs.
Most of them wound up as guests on talk shows hosted by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas or especially on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Uri Geller became famous for bending spoons with his mind on Carson’s show, until his act was largely debunked by Canadian-American stage magician The Amazing Randi.
Keskin, who dressed in regular street clothes, preferred to downplay his powers. Apart from, perhaps, an oversized bow tie (although that was every guy at my high school prom in the ’70s), he looked like your next-door neighbour or your dentist.
He first took his act onto Steve Allen’s post-Tonight talk show in 1964. He was amazing, working his studio audience by correctly revealing things only they knew and even going so far as to appear to point out which stranger had his paycheck for the TV appearance in his pocket.
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Carson, who practiced magic tricks as a teenager and occasionally did slight of hand at his desk on Tonight, could not get enough of the affable Kreskin. The illusionist appeared 88 times as a guest on his show. All talk show hosts love a guest who comes to play and basically gives them the night off.
His greatest trick may have been getting a Canadian network to give him his own series. CTV ran The Amazing World of Kreskin from 1972 to ’75 out of CJOH-TV in Ottawa, with two additional years produced and originating from CFTO in Toronto during 1975-’77.
So ingrained was Kreskin in the imaginations of Canadians that, by 1980, he was one of the primary impressions showcased by a young stand-up impressionist by the name of Jim Carrey. Carrey, then still in his teens, used to perform at a comedy club called Tickles in Barrie, Ontario. Me and Pat Bullock (surely you remember Bullock & Brioux? Anybody??) did several weekend shows opening for Carrey.
My buddy Pat also did impressions, but he wasn’t very impressed when he asked Carrey to do one of his. Carrey put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, threw his head back, clapped his hands and voila: The Amazing Keskin.
Pat, however, thought Carrey had said he did Nikita Khrushchev. the former prime minister of the Soviet Union.
“Not a bit like him,” said Pat.
Kreskin continued to perform right up until earlier this year, recording voice over work for cartoons and working personal appearances. A few years ago, even though he claimed he wasn’t clairvoyant and didn’t have psychic powers, Kreskin told audiences that he had written down the very day that he would die. I don’t know if that final prediction has been proven true or not, but if anybody out there has the answer written down in his suit jacket pocket, well, that would be amazing.
