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The Fourth Generation of Magic

Tom Hardy the IV, known to his audiences world-wide as “Li’l Tom Hardy – America’s Foremost Psychic Entertainer,” began his climb up the show business ladder at the next to top rung.

He had the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth (which he would later bend in his evening show) and really wanted for nothing.

In fact, in his youth he would “borrow” other students’ wants – mostly from poor kids – just to have wants to offer should he be asked. While attending one of the premiers boarding schools in the Tri-State Area (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin (and Upper Peninsula of Michigan)), Catheter Academy, in Lake Forest, Illinois, he learned to manipulate his fellow students, chaperones and professors into doing what he wanted.

Some suggest this was the beginning of his mentalism studies and the development of his powers of suggestion. Others suggest this was the beginning of the end. (See, Around His Finger, The Middle One: A Study of ‘Li’l Tom Hardy’s Manipulative Manners and Methods, Dan Arpen (New York: Simon & Schuster 1975); But See, Anything You Say, Tommy: Li’l Tom Hardy’s Mesmeric Powers in an Era of Disobedience, Lynne “Squeaky” Sondheim (San Francisco: Red Man Books 1972)).

Regardless of the epoch, his powers of manipulation allowed him to steal not only his classmates’ meal and laundry funds, but also their psyche. He could take upon himself the needs they had. As he often noted, “they still had all of the wants and needs they had before I borrowed them. They were just annoyed because I was as apparently needy as they were — and I was getting what I wanted.”

Fortunately, said Hardy family biographer Ernst “Dee” Dell, “Li’l Tom Hardy was introduced to the world of alcohol at the conclusion of his high school studies. This robbed him of the ability to feign needs or the desire to steal the wants of others. He now had real needs and wants.”

Initially, Tom handled the hooch about as well as any of the Hardy women and a few of the men. Comparing it to the disputed “choice” over one’s lifestyle, Peter Williams wrote in his 1978 Esquire piece, “his parents were anxious that he show the same tolerance for the demon brew as the children of generations past. Thomas Hardy III and his wife were greatly upset to find, then, their son could not stomach even half a baby bottle of good Kentucky Bourbon.” (“Hardly a Hardy: Life and Bed-Sweating Nights of Li’l Tom Hardy,” Peter Williams, Esquire, November 1978 – Reprinted in Reader’s Digest as “Not Hardy: I Am Tom’s Liver,” Reader’s Digest, February 1979).

“There is no irony,” Tom wrote in his journal two days after graduation from Catheter. “Irony presumes there is something interesting enough to compare against one’s unreasonable expectations.”

The Fourth Generation of Magic

Tom Hardy the IV, known to his audiences world-wide as “Li’l Tom Hardy – America’s Foremost Psychic Entertainer,” began his climb up the show business ladder at the next to top rung.

He had the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth (which he would later bend in his evening show) and really wanted for nothing.

Tom Hardy fought to remain independent of his famous, performing family. He eschewed all things of the stage, magic, or even entertainment. To avoid joining his father, Tom III, and his third stepmother, Betina, he tried to join the Army and hoped to be shipped to fight in Korea. He was denied entry because he was considered clinically depressed and received his 4F-M (Medical Unfit – Mental).

He now saw his drinking to be not only destructive of his plans to avoid being a professional magician but also the reason he could no longer manipulate others. “When I am with a buzz-on,” he wrote, “my eyes must be all googled-up or something. I couldn’t convince the draft board, my dean, or even the young Silhouette artist I encountered on the bus. As a result of my drinking I can’t get drafted, graduated, or *DELETED*.” Biographers have wrestled with the character of the ‘silhouette artist’ from this entry. Was there such a person, presumably an attractive female he hoped to seduce, or was it merely an archetype for all women with a pseudo-artistic skill? Regardless of whom one believes the artist to be, it was clear Tom realized he was headed toward the black hole of show-business.

Indeed, Terrance Le’Contre wrote of the situation facing the young Mr. Hardy and stated “it does not matter whether the silhouette girl was real. What matters is what this young, attractive, bus-riding tease of a girl, meant in his life. Consider her ‘art.’ She would cut from a single piece of ecru paper the outline of her subject. Looking at the “googled-eyed” Hardy, she would cut away all that was not him from all that was. He was left with either a piece of paper absent him or a piece of paper that was only him. In one sense, Mr. Hardy is gone, out of the picture. In the other sense, he is alone and the picture is gone from him. Such are the borders of the silhouette, and for the young man on the bus that day, it was also the limitations of him.” (Le’Contre, “Studies on a Bus: Consideration of the Paper-Cutting Harlot in Tom Hardy’s Existential Make-Up,” Journal of Psycho-Analytics for Vontreu University, St. Michelle, France 1977).

Tom Hardy never considered college in his alternative plans to escape his fate. One could presume his name and status alone would be sufficient to gain entrance into one of the Ivy League schools — notwithstanding his abysmal grades. It was not like the young man to avoid a challenge and so it is doubtful it was fear that kept him from applying to undergraduate school. His biographers have no answer to this question.

The Hardy’s winter camp was hardly a camp at all. The mansion was built along the Indian River just outside of Vero Beach, Florida, had as its backyard 17 acres of scrub pine, palmetto palms, and some of the most desired river-front vistas in the state. The practice stage was built within a covered walk from the mansion and from the cast/crew quarters directly behind the stage and studio.

Tom Hardy loved the winter camp but as his bags were carried from his motorcar to the mansion, he felt more trepidation and finally resignation. He wrote that night, “I felt a sense of trepidation and then, finally, resignation.”

There were no parties for the prodigal son upon his arrival. It could be his third step-mother, Lana, and his father did not know he had plans other than joining the show.

Christmas at the Hardy Mansion in Vero was special regardless of the tensions and stress the 22 to 25 member company felt as it prepared for the new season. With the exception of a new step-mother every few years, all of those in attendance had long celebrated this holiday in that very same place. In fact, as Tom III noted in his biography, “some of the step-mothers were actually former members of the cast or crew; or even daughters of cast and crew. It had a homey, comfortable feeling of family.” (Get a Pre-Nuptial and Get Back on that Horse: My Life In and Out of Magic and the People I Married, Thomas Hardy III (New York: Royal Publishing 1975)).

The younger Hardy even enjoyed the momentary respite in the otherwise grueling schedule. Unlike prior years, he was not merely “prepping props or crafting containers.” This year, he would be building a show for himself. His show would serve as the opening act for his father and step-mother. Unlike many young magicians, he did not have the skilled, experienced hands practiced on hours of rehearsal and performance. His hands had never felt the sting of a key ring slamming shut, the burn of a lit cigarette shoved into his palm when the thumb-tip was missed, or the flash singed removal of all hair up to his elbows from the Dove Pan filled with too much lighter fluid.

But also unlike the experience of many young magicians, he was not required to find effects that “played big but packed small.” An entire railroad train was filled with effects and illusions for his use. His father even offered the use of his second and third wives for one of the illusions — they were identical twins and still with the show.

Perhaps to show his independence or out of a desire to regain the lost excitement he once found in psychic entertainment, the young magician vowed to walk onto the stage with nothing more than his “suit, shined shoes, and a magnificent smile.” He broke the news gingerly to his father and now fifth step-mother. The fourth step-mother had blown the show (circus term for leaving without telling anyone) just a month after Christmas.

Li’l Tom was surprised at their reaction. It was not nearly as bad as he feared it could have been. He wrote:

I was surprised by their reaction. It was not nearly as bad as I feared it could have been. I think my new step-mother had a calming influence on my father. They all did during that ‘post-honeymoon/pre-divorce” stage of the relationship.

Young Tom was now using the name bestowed on him by a former babysitter and now his step-mother, Chloe Hardy, L’il Tom Hardy. He was willing to accept his father’s assistance in securing dates for his first tour; he played advance man to the Tom Hardy Show along the East Coast and through the Deep South.

Next Time: Bumpy and Fun: L’il Tom Hardy’s Life on the Road.

Acknowledgements:

The author would like to thank: The Hardy Foundation, Tom Hardy III, Tom Hardy IV, Chloe Hardy, Betina Hardy, The National Endowment for the Arts, Northwestern University College of Arts and Sciences, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellows Program (“Genius Grant”), and The National Geographic Foundation.

All quotations are taken from publicly available, published works. The author would like to extend his thanks to The Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. The journal entries from Tom Hardy IV appear through the generosity of The Newberry Library.

This article may be freely distributed as long as it is not altered in any manner.

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