Magic Fortress co-founder Milt Larsen, 92, remembered Monday at memorial service – Orange County Register
LOS ANGELES — Pals, relations and colleagues will collect Monday for a memorial service in honor of Milt Larsen, who co-founded Hollywood’s famed Magic Fortress within the early Sixties.
Larsen died in his sleep Might 28 on the age of 92. Monday’s memorial service can be at 6 p.m. on the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.
Larsen was a magician himself and a author for TV sport exhibits together with “Reality or Penalties.” He based the Magic Fortress in 1963 together with his brother, William Larsen Jr., and William’s spouse Irene.
Milt Larsen was the final residing founding father of the Magic Fortress.
Members of the Larsen household have carried out magic for the reason that Twenties. Milt’s father William Larsen Sr. was a Los Angeles legal professional who turned disillusioned with legislation and left observe to pursue magic. His mom Geraldine was additionally a performer, who turned the primary feminine magician to seem on TV — as a youngsters’s entertainer referred to as The Magic Woman on KTLA within the late Forties.
The Larsen household has operated the Fortress for many years, leasing a gothic dwelling on 7001 Franklin Ave. from proprietor Thomas O. Glover and turning it into an unique clubhouse for magicians, the place members and their friends may dine and luxuriate in magic exhibits.
Larsen, his brother and his sister-in-law all carried out magic themselves on Fortress levels and at different venues.
In 2022, the Franklin Avenue manor was bought by Randy Pitchford, founding father of video-game maker Gearbox Leisure.
An avid magician himself and longtime AMA member and Magic Fortress attendee, Pitchford stated he was devoted to the preservation of the 1908-vintage constructing.
“The Magic Fortress is like bedrock — the middle level of magic,” Pitchford stated in an announcement in 2022. “The individuals who consider the Fortress as their dwelling and the place itself appear to have magical properties which have created and impressed among the world’s best entertainers. I’m proud to be trusted to each give again to the place that made me to turn into the custodian of the Magic Fortress and to work with its members and the Larsen household to make sure our most unimaginable membership home grows and thrives for many years to return.”
Larsen stated on the time that Pitchford “has finished one thing extraordinary to guard our beloved Magic Fortress and I couldn’t be happier about our present scenario in addition to the prospects for the longer term. Randy actually understands and appreciates my imaginative and prescient and the Larsen household imaginative and prescient and there’s no one higher to hold on what we began in 1963.”
Larsen additionally wrote stage revues and musicals, which had been carried out amongst different venues on the Mayfair Music Corridor in Santa Monica and the Selection Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles, each of which he owned and operated.
He produced TV specials for ABC, CBS and NBC and was the artistic advisor for the $50 million Caesars Magic Empire at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Larsen was additionally a member of SAG-AFTRA who labored in radio, opened for The Wonderful Johnathan in Las Vegas, and appeared on tv in commercials and on the Eighties’ sequence “Hart to Hart.”
He authored 5 joke books and co-authored three books about The Magic Fortress. He was additionally recognized for his collaborations with songwriter Richard M. Sherman on comedy albums.
A longtime resident of Montecito, Larsen divided his time between Los Angeles and the coastal city. Along with his spouse Arlene, he’s survived by his niece Erika Larsen, president of Magic Fortress Enterprises Inc.; his nephew Dante Larsen; and great-nieces Jessica Hopkins and Liberty Larsen.
