THE AMAZING KRESKIN, 1935-2024
George Joseph Kresge, better known as The Amazing Kreskin — the pioneering mentalist with an earnest, engaging stage personality — died on Dec. 10 at the age of 89 at his home in Caldwell, his manager told The Hollywood Reporter. Even decades ago, Kreskin always seemed to be one of the last links to a lower-tech, harder-working, more down-to-Earth era of show business.
A message was posted on his Facebook page that reads, in part:
It comes with heavy heart that we announce the passing of The Amazing Kreskin. Known as George Kresge Born January 12, 1935. The Amazing Kreskin would Have turned 90 years old next month. …
The only thing the Amazing Kreskin cared about was performing for all of you, it brought so much joy to his life. The family asks you respect their privacy during this difficult time.
As Kreskin would say at the end of every show. “This is not goodbye, but to be continued”.
Kreskin was a lifelong New Jerseyan. “My father was making $84 a week working for a battery company,” he said in 2019. “My grandparents came from Sicily and Poland. We lived in a three-room apartment. My brother and I slept in the living room and my parents in the bedroom, and let me tell ya, they were some of the happiest years of my life. I did not feel that … I was owed something. I grew up in Essex County near Montclair, N.J., and I have great memories.”
He also said, in that interview, “I’m 84 years old now and the last vacation I’ve had was about 12 or 14 years ago; I’m only home about five days a month … If you add up all of the shows, radio and television appearances that I did two years ago, I did something like 264 appearances. We didn’t add up last year’s shows yet.”
The cover of the 1991 book, “Secrets of the Amazing Kreskin.”
He attended Seton Hall University in South Orange and was most famous in the ’70s, when he did mind-blowing routines on his syndicated television show, “The Amazing World of Kreskin.” He also appeared frequently with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show,” and on other talk shows; wrote books; appeared in nightclubs; and made annual New Year’s Day predictions for the upcoming year.
Kreskin wrote in his 1991 book “Secrets of the Amazing Kreskin: The World’s Foremost Mentalist Reveals How You Can Expand Your Power”:
… I am not a psychic, an occultist or fortune-teller. I am not a mind reader, medium, or “hypnotist.” There is nothing supernatural about anything that I do.
I am a scientist, a researcher in the field of suggestion and “extrasensory” perceptions. I perform what I discover.
About 85 percent of a typical Kreskin “concert,” as I call my performances, involves these mental laws, which is why I call myself a mentalist. The remaining 15 percent of each performance is usually devoted to traditional magic.
That’s what I’ve told Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Phyllis Diller, and countless others. …
On his Dec. 11 SiriusXM satellite radio show, Howard Stern described Kreskin as “a phenom” and one of his childhood heroes.
According to an obituary on WeirdNJ.com, Kreskin had a tombstone built before his death, and installed at Gates of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover. In addition to giving his name and date of birth, it says: “Even now, I know what you’re thinking!”
Here is a clip of a 1974 appearance by Kreskin on “The Tonight Show,” as well as a clip from “The Amazing World of Kreskin,” and his cameo from Smithereens frontman Pat DiNizio’s 2006 documentary, “Seventh Inning Stretch”:
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