Thomas Solomon
| Thomas Solomon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1969 (age 44–45) Milwaukee |
Thomas Solomon (born 1969 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American escape artist and magician.
As a boy he was fascinated with mechanical devices . . . especially locks. At the age of thirteen, too young to acquire a legal work permit, he was apprenticed (as a favor) to a local locksmith for the summer with the "enviable" and unpaid job requirement of answering the phone and sweeping the floors. Endearing himself to the lock professionals with his quest for knowledge, they gradually took him 'under their wing' teaching him the 'real work'; how to open basic lever, warded, disc and pin tumbler locks without keys; how to fashion lock-opening tools from everyday objects; and how to crack safes. Solomon never forgot what he learned and has thus afforded a knowledge of locks that today is among the best in the world. It is said he is able to fashion a tool to open a lock with only a quick glance at the key.
Around age sixteen, a separate interest in stage magic began to blossom. To Solomon, the modus operandi of most illusions and stage magic ran parallel with his interest in mechanics. He's also said it helped him to overcome his shyness and meet girls! He began experimenting with a magic act of self-working mechanical apparatus and sleight-of-hand.
As an escape artist, Thomas Solomon is a performer of many "firsts and onlys". He is the first escape artist to be profiled in The New York Times <The New York Times, Sunday, March 18, 2012, Metropolitan section, page 2> He is the only escape artist to have performed twice at The White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and later George HW Bush. Solomon is the only escape artist to have had his own network television special on CH4 in Great Britain. Solomon is the only escape artist to have escaped the leg irons of Billy the Kid at the Lincoln County Courthouse and to have escaped the jail cell of Al Capone at Eastern State Penitentary, Solomon remains the only escape artist to have escaped a titanium burglar proof bank safe (for television) underwater with cameras planted inside the safe with him and the only escape artist to have freed himself from the leather and canvas money bag previously used by the Metropolitan Transit Authority Subway system in New York City.
In addition, Solomon is the only escape artist to have received a citation from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (May, 2011) citing his remarkable abilities as an escape artist and his work through his organization, Patriotic Performers, in which he leads a group of performers who donate their time to entertain wounded service members from all branches of the military. He, along with these individuals have entertained at Walter Reed Army Hospital, Fort Detrick, the US Marine Base in Quantico, Virginia, McGuire Air Force Base, the Wounded w\Warrior Unit at Fort Dix Army Base and many others. In 2012, Solomon was the first escape artist to receive a Proclamation from Brooklyn, NY Borough President, Marty Markowitz for his exceptional performance in promoting and supporting the revitalization of New York's Coney Island.
On another occasion, he thrilled spectators with an underwater handcuff performance at the New York Aquarium in which members of the New York Police Department locked him in four pairs of handcuffs. In forty degree frigid water, he escaped in less than three minutes thrilling onlookers.<The Brooklyn Paper, March 22-28, 2012> His escape, itself a promotion to help bring attention to the Aquarium's 100 million dollar rehabilitation was widely covered by the media.
In May of 2011, the Society of American Magicians selected Thomas Solomon to perform at the annual "Salute To Magic", a high-profile show performed once a year in which the performer or performers, are selected by the Board of Directors of the Society of American Magicians. It is considered to be an honor to attain such status. Solomon combined award-winning escapes and magic into a highly theatrical two hour show that was reminiscent of a Broadway production. Stage sets were designed by acclaimed set designer and producer, George Allison, lighting design by Paul Hackenmueller and costumes by Karen Ann Ledger. The show was performed at El Teatro--El Museo Del Barrio Theatre, New York's City landmark theatre on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Solomon recently performed live on the Plaza outside for Fox Television network's "Fox and Friends" in which he escaped five pairs of handcuffs in full view of the audience in under one minute. (Fox and Friends, November, 25, 2012)
The Great Escape
In Milwaukee, then Chicago, Solomon first presented "The Great Escape," a show combining magic with one escape from a locked chain in which he demonstrated lock-picking. The nightclub, sensing potential asked Solomon to drop the magic and concentrate only on escapes. As a marketing ploy, the nightclub asked participants to bring whatever they wanted to the theatre (handcuffs, locks, and straitjackets) to challenge the magician. It is said that over the course of three years, he never failed.
He has performed a variation of the "Challenge Escape Act" at New York City's famed, former club, MK in the flat-iron district.
He has performed his award-winning handcuff act (2000 World Magic Awards, PAX Television) at The Roxy, The Magic Castle, Bally's and many others. He has performed aboard ships for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line traveling throughout Bermuda and the Caribbean. In 1988 he entertained President Ronald Reagan at the White House where he escaped the handcuffs of the Uniformed Secret Service. He performed again in 1989 for President George Bush and Vice-President Dan Quayle at the White House. He has performed escapes and magic for major trade show clients, Ford Motor Company, 'State Farm Insurance, Procter & Gamble, Absolut Vodka, 'Winston/Salem Cigarettes, Compaq Computers, Deutsche Bank, Birdseye Frozen Foods, Black and Decker and many, many others.
Accomplishments
To date (2013), Solomon has escaped from more than 5500 pairs of handcuffs of all different types from all times in history. These include:
Standard issue police restraints,
Time Release Spider Lock,
French "I" Bar restraint,
Australian Letter Cipher Lock,
Lilly Irons (imprisoned the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators)
Various German restraints including Berliners, the Deutsche Polizei, the Dortmunder, Clejusos, and Dollars.
Various British restraints including Darbys, Sheffields and Hiatts.
Various French restraints including the Lapegy and La Massenotte.
Various Italian restraints of the Caribineri.
Various American restraints including Towers, Smith & Wesson and Peerless.
Various Communist bloc restraints including those from Bulgaria, Russia and East Germany.
Solomon is the only escape artist to have escaped from the handcuffs that held the Lincoln
assassination co-conspirator, Lewis Payne (Powell). Also, he has escaped the leg irons that imprisoned Billy the Kid at the Lincoln County Courthouse in 1881.
Solomon has escaped two locked safes in his career, one of them underwater for the British television show, Thomas Solomon: The Escape Artist. Solomon has escaped 19 jails throughout his career in New York City, London, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, Trenton and others. Most notable were his escapes from the maximum security prison Pentonville in the UK (that houses IRA prisoners) and from Al Capone's personal cell at Eastern State Penitentiary for his History Channel, pilot special, "No Jail Can Hold Me."
He has accomplished hundreds of straitjacket releases, most notably an escape from the all-leather straitjacket specifically created to thwart him by Menkes Leather Works. He escaped a tightly bound straitjacket in the pouring rain hanging upside down from a tower crane 150 feet above the street in Portland, Oregon in December 2006.
Superstitions/Hidden Messages
While Solomon has never endorsed psychic ability in himself or others, he does acknowledge a 'magic' or a supernatural energy beyond human understanding that communicates through our five senses and intuition, as well as through numbers, words, dreams, and symbols. A believer in the Law of Karma and the power of symbolic messages in dreams, Solomon told the Magic Circular in a recent interview that he himself is plagued by recurring, sequential and often disturbing dreams and has been since childhood. <The Magic Circular interviews, Escape Velocity, 2004>
Solomon also has a fascination with ciphers, codes and other wordplay. He is an amateur cryptographer and is striving to create an unbreakable cipher, that disallows complicated encryption and decryption techniques—making it user-friendly in the field. He commented recently on an article about on-line security in Wired Magazine in which he gave his solution to making passwords more secure.<Wired, February 2013> His posters, some images, his promotional decks of playing cards, DVDs and other items often contain hidden messages; some are written in cipher or code. Others are written backwards or worked in with graphics (as in the blue poster). He has used palindromes, recursive acronyms, Morse code and other devices to conceal messages, solutions to an escape, names or important dates related to the image. In a famous picture taken of him on the New York City subway, there are no less than six hidden images and written messages buried within the picture.
Injuries
Four broken fingers on left hand, broken right wrist (twice), broken right foot, broken right ankle, perforated left ear drum, inch long laceration above left eye within eyebrow, longitudinal fracture at the base of fifth finger of left hand.
Stage
- Theatre of the Macabre Off Broadway 1995-1998 (1500 performances)
- Ellusions Off Broadway 2002-2003
Television
World Magic Awards 2000 PAX Television,
Thomas Solomon: The Escape Artist 2003 Channel Four Great Britain,
The History of Magic 2004 BBC Great Britain,
The Secret World of Magicians 2005 Channel Five Great Britain
No Jail Can Hold Me 2007 The History Channel
Fox and Friends, 2012 Fox News Channel
Published works
"Diaries of an Escape Artist" (1999), "Escape!!!" (2003) and "Escape Velocity" (2004).
External links
References and Citations
The Chicago Tribune, TEMPO Section, December, 1986
The Milwaukee Journal, November, 1982
The Magic Circular—Escape Velocity, 2003—2006
Interview, The Magic Circular, December 2005
GENII, The Conjurors Magazine, September 2003
Interview—The Times—August 2003
The New York Times, Jogging Shoes and Magic Tricks, March 18, 2012, Metropolitan section page 2
Wired Magazine, February 2013
The Brooklyn Paper, March 22-28, 2012
Brooklyn Courier Life, Bay News, March 8-14, 2012