Thomas Solomon

Thomas Solomon (born 1969 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American escape artist and magician.

Thomas Solomon began his career 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. In the process,he learned that success in opening locks and safes is not "just" knowledge, but equal parts finesse, practice and patience -- and mastering the shop's power and hand tools didn't hurt either. 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.

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 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, Proctor and Gamble, Absolut Vodka, Winston/Salem Cigarettes, Compaq Computers, Deutsche Bank, Birdseye Frozen Foods, Black and Decker and many, many others.

Accomplishments

To date (2008) has escaped from more than 5000 pairs of handcuffs of all different types from all times in history. These include:

Standard issue police restraints,the Time Release Spider Lock,the French "I" Bar restraint,the 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 terrorists)" and from Al Capone's personal cell at Eastern State Penitentery.

Solomon is the only person to have escaped the leather and canvas money bag previously used by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City.

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 staritjacket in the pouring rain hanging upside down from a tower crane 150 feet above the street in Portland, Oregon in December of 2006.

Superstitions and his 'Dream Plagues'

Perhaps one of the most bizarre aspects of the performer Thomas Solomon, is the dichotomy between his magic/escape profession and his private beliefs. A superstitious person, Solomon believes in numerology, astrology, hidden messages within words, the power of pendulums and crystals and for years practiced the I Ching. Most stage magicians/escape artists, because of their involvement in deception eschew superstition and label all 'psychic' ability as bunk.

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 intution, as well as through numbers, words, dreams, and symbols. He believes we can tap into it, if we are open to it. A believer in 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.

For the Magic Circular, he spoke of several of the recurring and disturbing characters: the fluid man in the un-wrinkled suit who stands with him on the corner and won't let him cross the street due to a funeral procession that is his own; the statues in the church he visits that are missing or changed, the all-knowing being that poses rhetorical questions about conflicts in the world and hints at answers, the women with the auburn hair and the yellow dress who never stops crying as well as many others. In an early dream, the aforementioned fluid man foretold Thomas' death in a future escape but also intimated that death could be averted if escapes were continuously performed. Solomon has dissected this to mean that knowledge of what could go wrong lessens the eventuality of it actually going wrong. Nevertheless, there have been injuries.

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 BritainNo Jail Can Hold Me 2007 The History Channel

Published Works

"Diaries of an Escape Artist" (1999), "Escape!!!" (2003) and "Escape Velocity" (2004).

External links

* [http://www.thomassolomon.com Official site] www.thomassolomon.com/fans,www.myspace.com/escapemaster,thomassolomon.blogspot.com