KAR-MI

KAR-MI was the stage name of performer Joseph Hallworth (1872–1956), an itinerant entertainer who worked in Wild West shows, circuses, dime museums, riverboats, vaudeville, movie houses, and other venues from the 1890s to the beginning of World War I.

Enthusiasts and magic historians know KAR-MI from the many vintage posters, theater cards, and ephemera. The posters present KAR-MI as the prince of India and high priest of conjurers and spirit workers. They advertise KAR-MI's sword-swallowing, knife-throwing, mind-reading, and conjuring feats, proclaiming "Swallows a loaded gun barrel and shoots a cracker from a man's head," "KAR-MI was buried alive for 32 days," and "Swallows a table leg two feet long." Other posters refer to KAR-MI, his wife, and two sons as the Victorina Show, in which she swallows swords and razors. Others advertise motion picture shows featuring spectacular train wrecks and automobile accidents of cars "traveling at 1,000 mph!" Aside from the posters and Hallworth's reminiscences that appeared in the 1950s, not much is known about KAR-MI.

Joseph Hallworth's story about himself and his showbiz family always began with his learning to read at the age of three. At six years old, he read the classics and had an "intimate knowledge of Shakespeare, Fielding, Byron, Swift, Balzac, and many others." (Remember, he was an entertainer, and nothing entertains so well as a good story.) At 14, he ran away from home and worked out West for a few years as a fur trapper, prospector, and cowboy. In Kansas, he began his show business career in a "one-ring wagon circus" and performed as a sharp-shootin', knife-throwin' cowboy in a medicine show, a Wild West show, and the Chatham Square Museum in New York. When he married, Hallworth and his wife performed together in traveling shows, adding song-and-dance routines, snake charming, fire eating, and fortune telling, along with acts of magic, illusion, and mind-reading. Their sons joined the family business too—one dressed as a female assistant to aid KAR-MI's illusions, the other as the young Hindu beauty that KAR-MI appeared to make float in midair. Hallworth ended his stage career when his two sons were drafted to serve in World War I. The family retired to a small town in Massachusetts, and Hallworth took up printing and engraving.