David Avadon, a friend and associate of mine, died of a heart attack in a gym in Los Angeles. David was recently billed as The King of Pickpockets. Although he wasn’t a close friend, we had many long and interesting chats over the years. Our intense passion for the research of stage pickpocketing was equal both in seriousness and determination to find hidden truth and facts. But we were competitors and, as such, we were cautious of sharing information.
I first met David in 1990 when he used to visit the Bally/MGM showroom in Las Vegas where I was the featured attraction for three years in the Jubilee! show. He would always come with Ricki Dunn, another pickpocket entertainer (and good friend of mine). Ricki and David were close friends for over twenty years, and Ricki was later profiled extensively in David’s book Cutting Up Touches, probably the best book ever written about stage pickpocketing and the artists practicing the art.
For his book, David managed to track down obscure facts about the jealously and infighting among stage performers. The anecdotes come fast and furious; the guarded secrecy surrounding techniques were a dominant factor in all relationships among vaudeville pickpocket entertainers then, and pickpockets now.
I never saw David perform in a live show so I cannot comment on his skill, but I know that he was a warm and outgoing performer with a tremendous knowledge about this very narrow and secretive performance art. I’m quite certain that his library on the art is far more extensive than any other private collection anywhere today. David was not a criminologist, but a collector of performance memorabilia on pickpocketing. It will be interesting to see where this library eventually goes—hopefully to an institution where aspiring performers can have access.
The art of pickpocketing is a tightly protected art form and it’s darn impossible to get the real facts or true techniques revealed. Basically because stage pickpocketing (versus stealing in the streets) depends on the individual persona of the performer and how he adapts his mannerism and personality to the extraction techniques. It is a marriage of the two that fosters a dynamic pickpocket show. Other related artists, like magicians and jugglers, might succeed without projecting a personality, on sheer finger technique and practiced skill. Pickpocketing incorporates psychology, reading the body language of a victim, creating good diversion techniques, and of course timing during extraction. It also requires a strong sense of comedy, and to some extent quick verbal skills and improvisation. Without those combined ingredients the show will fall flat.
This is why there are few pickpocket entertainers today (or ever). It’s extremely hard to learn and turn into effective entertainment. David’s book mentions many of the deceased pickpocket entertainers of the past three or four decades. Few had much impact outside the country or city where they worked. The successful ones could be counted on one hand: Borra, Dominique, Vic Perry, and Giovanni.
Today, major production houses and television talent shows like Cirque du Soleil and America’s Got Talent attempt to incorporate the art of pickpocketing—without much success. Manufacturing this talent, from a producer’s point of view, is not easy. Cirque du Soleil tried by gathering all the known video tapes of successful performers and invited aspiring pickpocket talent to come to their workshop in Montreal to screen the routines of the masters with the intent of creating a pickpocket segment in their show. And when was the last time you saw a good pickpocket segment on a talent show, like America’s Got Talent? And yet, every season they send out requests to agents and managers for pickpocket entertainers. The art form has few practitioners.
David Avadon helped keep the spirit of this murky art form alive. His book and his research will live on. Cutting Up Touches was small in size but large in content. Goodbye, David. Let’s hope you meet your old pickpocket pals and mentors in the next waystation.
Other fine pickpocket performers:
Borra, Â April 26, 1921—October 11, 1998
Ricki Dunn, April 2, 1929—January 29, 1999
Chappy Brazil, Nov. 26, 1964—June 27, 1998