Carl Ballantine Profile

Carl Ballantine

Carl Ballantine (born Meyer Kessler; September 27, 1917 - November 3, 2009) was an American actor, magician and comedian. Billing himself as "The Great Ballantine," "The Amazing Ballantine" or "Ballantine: The World's Greatest Magician," his vaudeville-style comedy routine involved transparent or incompetent stage magic tricks, which tended to flop to the wisecracking Ballantine's mock chagrin.

Life and career

Kessler was born in Chicago, Illinois. In his early career, he did a straight manipulation act but gave up "real magic" when he realized he could not be as good as some of his peers. He changed his name to Ballantine early on after he noticed a bottle of Ballantine whisky in an advertisement and decided that the name of his magic act was to be "Ballantine, the World's Greatest Magician." He proved successful enough that he became the first magician to headline in Las Vegas.

Nicknamed the "Jipper," Kessler was inspired at age 12 by his barber who would do magic tricks with thimbles while cutting the boy's hair. His first job was working as a printer. In Chicago in the 1930s, Kessler was doing professional straight magic, first as "Count Marakoff" & "Carl Sharp," then, since the early 1940s, switched to comedy magic as "Carl Ballantine." He was billed as "The Amazing Mr. Ballantine" when he played the New York Capitol in 1950, The Ed Sullivan Show in 1953 and the Las Vegas El Rancho Vegas in 1956. He won Tannen's "Louie" Award and the 1985 AMA Performing Fellowship.

Ballantine is probably best remembered as Lester Gruber, one of the PT boat sailors in the ABC sitcom McHale's Navy (1962–1966), starring with Ernest Borgnine, Joe Flynn and Tim Conway. He made his only appearance on Broadway as Lycus the slave merchant in the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. In 1973 he appeared as Dr. Hankim in The Girl Most Likely to.... His most recent feature film appearance was in Aimee Semple McPherson, a 2006 biopic about the female evangelist. Many children and teachers enjoyed Mr. Ballantine as "The Star Salesman" in the "Universe and I" educational series for science education.

Ballantine's wife was actress Ceil Cabot; (March 8, 1927 - January 24, 2000)[4] He was known as an inveterate smoker of Cuban stogies. He died of natural causes on November 3, 2009[5] at his Hollywood, California home. He is survived by his daughters actress Sara Ballantine and Molly and his sister Esther Robinson.