Chuck is excited that they’ve graduated from work visas that kept them pinned to the U.S. to green cards, opening horizons for travel. Harris is an expert on visas and passports: three of his four ex-wives—the Canadian, the Russian and the Chinese—exited the marriage with American citizenship. “Yeah, I’m a magician,” he tells a guest at the Castle. “Made my wives disappear.”
Stoil and Ekaterina bring down the house. In 15 minutes of fast-paced magic, she whips through 12 costumes, each change taking maybe two seconds. Harris is smitten with the evening’s MC, Ken Scott, a young comic magician from Atlanta; more so when he finds he has no agent. Harris slips him a business card. Later, a young man, dramatically dressed in black, sidles up to Harris. “I’m a sword swallower,” he says. “You have a card?” asks Harris. Harris taps his windshield-sized glasses. “That’s how he knew me,” he says in an aside. “It’s called branding.”
The next day we’re at Harris’s house in West Hollywood. It’s jammed with showbiz and political memorabilia, with rare dolls and toys and carny games. There are vanity walls with letters and photos of Harris with every U.S. president since Gerald Ford, of Harris with Queen Elizabeth II, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, with certificates of appreciation for the military shows that Harris packaged for the USO in various hellholes.
VIDEO: Watch Chuck Harris talk about his line of work
It’s his birthday, his 38th, he says, though double that and you’ve about hit the truth. He’s in a reflective mood, recalling his early days in Wilmington, Del., when he went by Oaky Miller. His mother, Gertrude—they called her Fast Gertie From the East—gambled professionally. His dad, Chuck Miller, was a haberdasher by day who lived for the comedy and minstrel shows he’d stage in local synagogues and theatres. He had Oaky on stage by age five, sometimes in blackface, and craving the spotlight ever since. By the early 1960s, he was a top rock deejay in Philadelphia. From there, he worked vaudeville revival shows, and as a stand-up comic during the dying days of burlesque, touring with the likes of Busty Russell, Tempest Storm and Rose LaRose. At his dad’s urging, he moved to California, scoring bit parts in such 1960s shows as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons and That Girl. By the mid-1970s, approaching 50, the phone stopped ringing. He took to calling casting agents pretending to be Oaky Miller’s fictional agent, Chuck Harris. Seems he was better at finding gigs for others than for himself. So Oaky became Chuck, and Harris found a niche selling the novelties and oddities that the big agencies didn’t want.
We’re at his computer now, peering through cigar smoke at client videos on his computer: some with genuine talent, the “walking wounded,” and one-trick wonders, each one with a story. Then he punches up a clip of the Hogan twins on Japanese TV.
He’d like to get their mother on the lecture circuit. He likes how she’s raising the girls, how she doesn’t hide them because of their condition, how she doesn’t even see it as a handicap. “I could get her some real decent money,” he says. “I’m talking five, 10, $15,000 minimum to give an hour’s lecture, because she’s that good.” As for the twins, “so adorable, so sweet and so bright. I want to forget they’re conjoined,” he says. “Which you can’t forget, unfortunately. It’s there. It’s just there.”
So, why hide it? It’s not about displaying an oddity, he says, but about treating them respectfully as people. And, yes, some of that respect should be displayed financially. “Listen, I would love to represent Brad Pitt or George Clooney. They don’t need me,” he says. “My people need me.” On his desk is a sign: “Life is negotiable.” It’s true as far as it goes, see? But then, you get it in writing.
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