LOS ANGELES — Friends, relatives and colleagues will gather Monday for a memorial service in honor of Milt Larsen, who co-founded Hollywood’s famed Magic Castle in the early 1960s.
Larsen died in his sleep May 28 at the age of 92. Monday’s memorial service will be at 6 p.m. at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.
Larsen was a magician himself and a writer for TV game shows including “Truth or Consequences.” He founded the Magic Castle in 1963 with his brother, William Larsen Jr., and William’s wife Irene.
Milt Larsen was the last living founder of the Magic Castle.
Members of the Larsen family have performed magic since the 1920s. Milt’s father William Larsen Sr. was a Los Angeles attorney who became disillusioned with law and left practice to pursue magic. His mother Geraldine was also a performer, who became the first female magician to appear on TV — as a children’s entertainer known as The Magic Lady on KTLA in the late 1940s.
The Larsen family has operated the Castle for decades, leasing a gothic home on 7001 Franklin Ave. from owner Thomas O. Glover and turning it into an exclusive clubhouse for magicians, where members and their guests could dine and enjoy magic shows.
Larsen, his brother and his sister-in-law all performed magic themselves on Castle stages and at other venues.
In 2022, the Franklin Avenue manor was purchased by Randy Pitchford, founder of video-game maker Gearbox Entertainment.
An avid magician himself and longtime AMA member and Magic Castle attendee, Pitchford said he was dedicated to the preservation of the 1908-vintage building.
“The Magic Castle is like bedrock — the center point of magic,” Pitchford said in a statement in 2022. “The people who think of the Castle as their home and the place itself seem to have magical properties that have created and inspired some of the world’s greatest entertainers. I’m proud to be trusted to both give back to the place that made me to become the custodian of the…
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