Harry: A guy didn’t like where he found the pea. And that was—
Judd: So was it a—
Harry: It was a fix. There’s no way to play the game fair. Because the pea won’t stay under the shell.
Judd: What kind of fix? How did you work that?
Harry: The pea was not under the same shell where it started. Obviously, I was cheating the man. It should have been under that shell.
Judd: So you just lift up the shells without him knowing?
Harry: I can’t explain the technique, you know. But it’s a cheat and the fellow didn’t like it. It was just one punch. I didn’t even see him coming. He just was there and I was down on the ground. Somebody else took my money and left. So after I had my mouth wired shut for six weeks, I had a lot of time to think about what I should be doing. I’d always been a reasonably funny guy, so I decided to take a less serious, more comic approach to things. I went back out and did the shell game but it became more of a lampoon—a parody of the shell game. I created this character that I still have of a guy who is a little bit of a nincompoop—I’m poking fun at street hustlers. I didn’t make quite as much money as one would gambling, but it was a lot safer.
Judd: You did this on the street?
Harry: Yeah.
Judd: So instead of people betting, you just passed around a hat?
Harry: I would demonstrate how the game is played and I’d fool them, and uh, I’d do the shell game and then a couple of card things and then just pass the hat.
Judd: And then how did the magic get into it?
Harry: If you do sleight of hand without trying to cheat someone, that’s what magic is. A card trick is what a gambler does, only you’re not cheating someone, you’re entertaining them. It’s the same technique, applied differently.
Judd: Did you have training from anybody?
Harry: Oh, from all sorts of people. I hung around these kinds of guys when I was a kid. But no formal training. I picked it up the same way most guys do. A lot of guys when they’re seven or eight, and they’re going through the variety of hobbies, will do magic for a while. Pretty much everybody starts around that age and then they stick with it or they don’t.
Judd: What kind of childhood did you have if you were out on the street at fifteen?
Harry: Fine. Fine. I was just anxious to make some money. We weren’t particularly rich.
Judd: Where was this?
Harry: I lived all over the country. We traveled. We never stayed anywhere much.
Judd: What did your parents do?
Harry: Well my mom and dad split when I was young and my mom hooked. She was a hooker, and that’s how I ended up meeting the people I did and learning what I learned.
Judd: When did your act move into a club atmosphere?
Harry: Oh, about four years ago. Ken Kragen asked me to open for Kenny Rogers in Las Vegas.
Judd: Just off the street?
Harry: Not off the street, I was playing the Magic Castle in L.A. He saw me there and asked me. I had not done much nightclub work. I was playing colleges in Texas, Arizona, and California. It was a lawn show—I would put up a tent and do a noon show and pass the hat. And then I would go to L.A. and play the Magic Castle. I haven’t played the streets since then.
Judd: Not at all?
Harry: Not at all.
Judd: And after you got signed, what kind of work did you do after that?
Harry: I started doing talk shows. Merv Griffin and John Davidson, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas. And then last year I was signed to do Cheers. I did three episodes.
Judd: Do you have an ongoing contract with Cheers to do it next year?
Harry: I’m going to do at least one episode of Cheers, yeah. But we don’t start taping Night Court until October thirty-first, so I’ll have time to do at least one teaser. Not a major episode. I did one major episode for Cheers.
Judd: The poker game?
Harry: Yeah. And I did several episodes where I just popped in for a teaser and I’ll do at least one of those next year.
Judd: And wasn’t that, I guess that episode must have been, like, handwritten for you?
Harry: Well, I wrote it. I didn’t write the script but I wrote the sting. I designed the game and the swindle for them. I told them who should cheat who at what time and that’s part of the work I do. I have a consultation company called the Left-Handed League and we advise scriptwriters on plots like that. So the League would, if you look at the credits, the technical consultation for that episode is by the Left-Handed League.
Judd: Wait, you work for it or it’s yours?
Harry: It’s my company. I am co-founder of it with a fellow named Martin Lewis, who is a British cheat, and a sleight of hand expert.
Judd: So you’re doing many things. All grounds are covered, really.
Harry: Oh yeah, I don’t know how long anything is going to last so I have to make sure I have something to do tomorrow.
Judd: Are there any films that you are going to be starring in?
Harry: I did a film called the Escape Artist for Francis Coppola. I had the title role.
Judd: You were the escape artist?
Harry: Yeah, a very small part because I’m dead during the film but I’m seen in flashbacks.
Judd: I saw part of that. I saw a trailer—it got a good review with the two guys on Channel 11.
Harry: Siskel and Ebert?
Judd: Siskel and Ebert.
Harry: They gave it a good review?
Judd: They gave it a mediocre review.
Harry: Well, it was never released nationwide. So it wasn’t that highly sought out.
Judd: I saw a scene from it where it was at a party, the magician and he’s doing—I think flying through the air and disappearing, it was very strange.
Harry: I wasn’t involved in the whole film, so I’m not sure. Was it the boy doing it? Or was it—
Judd: It was a man.
Harry: A man? Well that’s probably the uncle because what I did, I did the water torture stuff, the escape that Houdini did. The water.
Judd: Did you do it for real?
Harry: Oh yeah, I did it thirty times for real holding my breath in six hundred gallons of water, yeah.
Judd: Oh my God.
Harry: Yeah, my God.
Judd: And is that how your character dies?
Harry: I’m dead throughout the entire thing. Actually, he’s killed attempting a prison escape. A guard shoots him. And the kid’s aunt and uncle explain that he was shot accidentally while he was staging some publicity stunt but the kid finds out that his father was actually not a real well man. He was pathological. He couldn’t stand locks and he would open any lock that he came across. And he was arrested for breaking and entering, essentially, and tried. Once he was in prison, he tried to escape because he couldn’t take locks and was shot trying to escape. And so the boy tries to duplicate his father’s feat and it’s all very convoluted. It was a real confusing film, which is why it’s going to be on cable any minute now.
Judd: So you didn’t see the whole film?
Harry: I’ve seen it on American Airlines but I fell asleep.
Judd: That must say something for it.
Harry: Well, you know. Off the record—no, not off the record, forget it. That’s the only film I made. I’ve read for a couple of films but I haven’t been taken on by them. I’m doing this very slowly. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew and end up looking foolish.
Judd: So you’re just doing your act?
Harry: Well, my act and I’m breaking into acting very slowly. Cheers was a good first step because I got to write my own material.