Magic, adventure characterize this man’s life LINDA DeNICOLA The Hub

Magic, adventure characterize this man’s life
LINDA DeNICOLA
The Hub


Photos by jeff huntley Linda and David Cross demonstrate a card trick, one of the many sleight-of-hand tricks Cross uses in his act. The magician and mentalist has entertained audiences around the world. Photos by jeff huntley Linda and David Cross demonstrate a card trick, one of the many sleight-of-hand tricks Cross uses in his act. The magician and mentalist has entertained audiences around the world.

Cards disappear and pop up again in his hand. Watches change time and words in your mind seem to be readily apparent to him. These are some of the sleight-of-hand tricks and mind-reading illusions performed by magician and mentalist David Cross.

Although Cross is a global person, a world traveler born in England, he has a childlike demeanor that makes you want to believe in magic. He has been a professional entertainer for more than 30 years, first with the circus, and then on cruise ships.

In between his trips as a cruise ship performer, he has done pantomime for children, created a fire-eating act, worked on a soap opera in his native England and performed in children’s theater.

After his early years growing up in London and before taking up residence in the Highlands, Cross traveled the globe from Africa to the Arctic Circle.


He has experienced adventures that most of us only dream about, including running off with the circus when he was 18 years old.

He talks excitedly about his career and his eyes widen in his expressive face when he thumbs through his scrapbooks full of colorful shots taken in the most exotic parts of the world; China, India, Bali, Africa and Russia, before the Berlin wall came down.

And then, there’s his wife, Linda. They met on a cruise ship in the 1980s. He was working, she was vacationing. By the end of the weeklong cruise, they both knew they wanted to see more of each other. "That was in November," Linda said. "We got engaged in February and were married in Bermuda in August."

Linda, who lived in Jersey City at the time, gave up her secretarial job at AT&T Corp. to become his assistant. For 15 years she traveled the globe with him. "I was nervous about leaving my job, but I loved to travel and meeting new people everyday was wonderful. We did a comedy routine. I was his straight woman. I sawed him in half," she said. "Everyone thought that was funny."

"I made her work," he said. "I included more illusions in my act, things that she could take part in. Working on ships, you need about four different acts. One night might be card tricks, another night a comedy act. It took me 10 years to perfect my card act."

Cross has used a number of names in his act. He has been known as Davini, Omar and Chan Lee. On the cruise ships with his wife, they were known as Crooksie and Linda.

The couple moved back to the states three years ago and settled in Highlands. She went back to work for AT&T in Holmdel.

"Our last cruise was on the Sun Viking. We spent three months in Asia," Cross noted.

His wife elaborated. "We went to Hong Kong, China, Bali, Bangkok, Vietnam. We were in Hong Kong on New Year’s Eve 1996. It was my dream cruise, but after 15 years of traveling together and sharing a little room on the ships, we wanted our own home," she explained.

They are settled down now, and Cross is doing private and corporate parties. Magic and mind-reading are his specialty, but situation comedy and audience participation play a large part in his performances.

"No event is too large or too small," he said.

Last New Year’s Eve, Cross had three shows in one night. Linda was his chauffeur, she said.

Cross has had many lucky and some frightening experiences. "Over the years I have worked on more than 30 ships and have been stranded in all kinds of places. I was stranded for three months in Hong Kong. I did card tricks on the street to survive."

On one cruise, he experienced a terrific storm on the Bay of Biscay, north of Spain, on a 32,000-ton cruise ship named Eugenio Costa.

"It was 1977 and the storm lasted for three days," he said. "It was terrible. People died, windows blew in, the piano in the dining room was turned upside down. One of the passengers, a 92 year-old man, had been a survivor of the Titanic."

He also worked on the cruise ship Achille Lauro the year before it was highjacked.

And he would have been on the Oceanos when the ship sank off the coast of South Africa, but he said he had a falling out with his agent, so he wasn’t booked on the ship the following year.

Another ship, the Pegasus, caught on fire and sank the year after he worked on it.

Besides a passion for magic, Cross had an extensive butterfly collection. Between his stint with the circus and his life as a magician on cruise ships, he lived with a family in Trinidad so that he could study butterflies and went butterfly hunting in Venezuela. While in Venezuela, he was robbed at gunpoint 3,000 feet up in a cloud forest. "They took all I had — my watch."

When he left England for good, he gave his butterfly collection to a schoolboy, except for one box that he couldn’t bear to part with.

As a youth, Cross taught himself magic tricks by reading books, while he worked as a bus conductor.

"I went into a magic shop one day and met the owner who was a retired vaudevillian," he explained. "He taught me how to find a job and how to market myself. He knew an editor who wrote a circus column. She knew a circus that was looking for a young magician to learn the business.

"I took the job and for three years I did everything. I drove a truck, put the tent up, sold tickets, made cotton candy. There are no stars in the circus. It was like a family at that time."

In the winter when the circus closed, he did pantomime shows for children in theaters and began his stage career performing his magic and mind-reading act in the tough workingmen’s clubs of Northern England.

He has performed before royalty in Saudi Arabia, for students at the Chinese Cultural Center in Shanghai, and to audiences of children in British theatrical productions of Aladdin, Cinderella and Snow White.

He appeared in Cabaret with Shirley Bassey, Frankie Laine and other top international stars.

To reach David Cross, call (732) 708-1200.