A Celestial Celebration
RUTH FONDA
“Magic with a Woman’s Touch”
In 2006 I spent a delightful afternoon visiting Bill Pitts and his wife Ruth at their home in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Married since 2000, they each had a long-standing track record in magic. As a Past International President of the IBM, Bill had enjoyed over six decades as a magician, and Ruth had nearly 50 years on the stage to her credit. Both as an assistant and an award-winning solo performer, Ruth Fonda had an eventful life. And magic was just part of her show-business experience.
When she wrote in her 1944 high school yearbook that she wanted to be a performer, Ruth Taylor had little idea that her wish would come true. Born in Brooklyn on January 19, 1928, she grew up in Ballston Spa, New York, near Saratoga. As an only child whose father passed away when she was three, Ruth was raised by her mother (a beautician) and four relatives who gave her plenty of attention. Her great-aunt owned a diner, and Ruth worked as a short-order breakfast cook throughout her youth. An uncle encouraged her tendencies to showmanship by teaching Ruth various stunts like walking on the roof of the house, much to her mother’s alarm.
Ruth went to college for a year, married at age 18, and had three children–Patricia, Janice, and Susan. The marriage eventually ended, but since her first husband was an amateur magician and belonged to SAM Assembly 24, Ruth was introduced to the world of magic and to the man who would later become her husband of 38 years. Clark Fonda (1914-1998) was a toolmaker by profession and worked with General Electric from 1940 to 1976. His passion for magic began at age 10, and he started performing magic, hypnotism, and escapes in the 1940s in upstate New York. When Clark and Ruth married in 1959, they became “The Fondas” both personally and professionally, and they actually spent their honeymoon performing at NYCAN in Syracuse. The Fondas made their home in Scotia, New York, and together had one daughter, Jo, who often assisted her parents onstage.
As a magician, Clark had previously worked alone, but Ruth joined the act as an assistant. “I replaced three tables,” she joked. Clark was a polished performer and developed a number of original creations, including his floating dove and an impressive dancing handkerchief routine in which the hanky jumps rope. He also learned Okito’s floating ball routine from Billy Russell and adapted it for Ruth to perform. Clark built many of his own props, even going so far as to weave his own sword basket. The Fondas worked night clubs, restaurants, theme parks and other venues, but their greatest success was a 14-year run working cruise ships from 1966 to 1979. In 1976 alone they made a five-month tour and travelled 150,000 miles.
Because they often needed to do extra time on the cruise lines, Clark helped Ruth to develop her own solo act. Alternatively billed as “Candlelight and Wine” or “Magic with a Woman’s Touch,” Ruth gracefully presented classics such as the dancing cane, linking rings, salt pour, silk fountain, multiplying candles, zombie, and others. While she had few role models as a woman in magic–she of course knew of Dell O’Dell and Celeste Evans–Ruth developed a polished act. Anyone who has worked cruise lines before realizes the challenges of that venue, and many times Ruth went onstage despite seasickness and fever. “Somehow you get yourself together, and you do it,” she said. She was proud of the fact that in all their years performing, she never missed a show. One highlight was performing before former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower aboard the SS United States in 1969.
Ruth’s act won several awards. At the 1965 SAM convention in Milwaukee, she won first place for presentation as well as the first place trophy for best performance by a “Magigal.” She won first in presentation again at the SAM in Hollywood, Florida, in 1966 and at the IBM in Miami Beach in 1967, where she also shared second place for originality with Clark. Initially turned down for membership by her local SAM assembly because of her gender, Ruth started IBM Ring 186 in the 1960s, along with her husband and Tommy Atkins (1923-2000), a female ventriloquist and magician. Ruth naturally served as President of IBM Ring 186 and was a Territorial Representative for New York State in 1970. Ring 186 in New York was renamed for Clark and Ruth Fonda during the 1990s, and they performed at the Ring meetings for decades. The couple appeared together in a cover story for the May 1993 The Linking Ring. Other recognition followed, and in 1998 Ruth was the Guest of Honor at the NYCAN convention.
Ruth broke in many of her routines working as the featured magician at Storytown USA (now the Six Flags Great Escape) in Queensbury, New York. The Opera House there had a rickety floor, and Ruth once wheeled out her table and props and began performing the linking rings. Moments into her routine, the table fell over backward, taking her show with it. Ruth smiled and finished her routine and exited the stage with grace. Because of such unflappable stagecraft, Ruth earned the nickname “The Goddess of Gaslight Village” during the years she played the vaudeville-themed amusement park in Lake George, New York. She also had a clown act as Hi-Ho, and played nursery characters at local malls, including a gig as “the Snowman” at Macy’s in Albany in 1971. In addition to her magic, she was also a movie extra, a TV commercial actress, producer and star of a cable public access TV show, and co-owner of a video production company.
Ruth kept performing magic into her late seventies, both as a solo act and with husband Bill Pitts, whom she met in Buffalo in 2000. They got married at an IBM meeting later that year in front of 130 guests, and both performed in a show for the club afterwards (a honeymoon tradition carried over from her first marriage). She helped Bill run his annual Cavalcade of Magic in Eureka Springs, handing registrations, performing, lecturing, and generally doing whatever was needed. She also became active with him in the American Legion and was an avid bowler. Since Ring 75 in Fort Smith is named for Bill Pitts, Ruth had the distinction of belonging to two Rings named for her husbands. After suffering a stroke, Ruth died on December 22, 2011, at the age of 83. In addition to her husband and four daughters, she was survived by seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. At her passing, SAM President Vinny Grosso wrote that she was a “true champion and trailblazer of magic.”
An earlier version of this article appeared in the November 2006 issue of The Linking Ring and is reused here with permission.
Stargazing
There are other women in magic for the letter “F.” Among historians of spiritualism, the Fox Sisters—Kate (1837-1892), Margaret (1833-1893), and Leah (1813-1890)—certainly stand out as pioneers in the movement, though few performers in that vein were as successful as the legendary Anna Eva Fay (1851-1927) and, to a lesser degree, her daughter-in-law Eva Fay (1872-1931). As “Mohola,” Mary Floyd (1868-1953) was the wife and partner of Chautauqua magician Walter Floyd, assisting him for almost half a century, from the 1890s through his death in 1940. In the early part of the last century, Dot Ford (1875-1955) was half of the escape team of Don and Dot Ford. Daisy Franklin of Indiana had a brief career in the 1920s. One of the best known female magicians of the 1940s and ‘50s was the popular entertainer and USO veteran Lady Frances (Frances Hess). Flaurette, daughter of the noted magician Dagmar, also worked during that same era. Performers after the ‘50s include Mitzi Fabiani from Italy; Fafa, a comedy magician from France; Mandy Farrell and the eccentric Fluke–both from England; and Scotland’s Moira Fletcher. Finally, Ohio native Angela Funovits has made television appearances all over the world with her magic, including on the hit shows Phenomenon and Wizard Wars. And on top of that, she’s a dermatologist!