75th birthday: Uri Geller: Bent spoons are his trademark

75th birthday: Uri Geller: Bent spoons are his trademark

Uri Geller became world famous for bending spoons. Now the Israeli is busy putting the finishing touches to his Uri Geller Museum in Tel Aviv. He is grateful to his critics.

The black Cadillac is littered with silver spoons and forks, all of which are bent – Uri Geller’s trademark, “mystifier,” as he calls himself.

Signs with the names of the previous owners of cutlery hang on a pillar next to the vehicle: “I know most of the spoons, I have James Dean, I have Elizabeth Taylor, I have Ataturk, I have Ben Gurion …”, counts Geller – short hair , Glasses, gray T-shirt – on. On December 20, Geller will be 75 years old, but he looks significantly younger.

The entertainer became known in Germany in 1974 with his appearance on Wim Thoelke’s ZDF show “Drei mal nine”, when he bent cutlery live on television. However, his success also called on numerous critics who tried again and again to convict him as a con man.

A museum of its own

Geller speaks quickly and hurries from one exhibit to the next. The Cadillac is part of the Uri Geller Museum in the old town of Jaffa, the Arab suburb of Tel Aviv. Since 2020, Geller has presented his collection of personal items here, such as his Vespa, which he drove for a long time when he was young, photos of the family and art from Andy Warhol, for example, but also items from other celebrities.

“There is Princess Diana’s carpet down there,” and “the most important thing was the gift from Salvador Dali”. Geller points to a glass ball made by Leonardo da Vinci, to a record cover that he designed for Michael Jackson, to a camera that he got for his work for the American secret service CIA, to a letter from Albert Einstein.

“It’s so eclectic,” says Geller of the exhibition. It presents around 220 pieces on an area of ​​around 500 square meters. The walls in the approximately 400-year-old building are made of light-colored sandstone, and the ceilings are up to eight meters high.

Geller returned to his hometown Tel Aviv six years ago, after around 35 years in the UK. He was born as the only child of his parents in the coastal city in what was then Palestine, now Israel.

His relationship with his father was difficult, says Geller himself. “How can I love a person who has instructed my mother to have eight abortions?” But he made his peace with him. The mother was a distant relative of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.

It happened when I was five

Uri bends a spoon for the first time at the age of five. “I ate soup with my mother in the kitchen.” That’s when it happened. “And then I thought anyone can do it.”

The parents divorce when Uri is ten years old. He goes to Cyprus with his mother. After finishing school he served in the Israeli army, fought in the Six Day War in 1967. In 1972 he moved to Germany, lived in Munich for eight months and then went to the USA – to work for the CIA, as he says.

He is already commercially successful with bending spoons, stopping and repairing watches. He became world famous for his “skills”, as he calls them.

Geller has lived in New York for ten years, and the legendary Club Studio 54 is around the corner, he says. “Everyone was there, from David Bowie to John Lennon to Elton John, Mick Jagger.” And everyone would have wanted to meet him. “I wasn’t a singer, I wasn’t an actor, I wasn’t a politician, I wasn’t an athlete,” he says. “I was a guy from Israel who could bend spoons with his mind.”

“I was on such an ego trip”

But he also says about his success in his younger years: “I was so shallow, I was on such an ego trip, I bought the Cadillac to show my friends in Israel: I made it.”

He develops bulimia and has panic attacks. John Lennon finally sent him to Japan. He lived there with his wife in the forest for a year. “And that’s where I found myself.”

Geller, who says that buckling the spoon is no trick, has often been criticized as a con man. In 1973 he failed to prove his skills on the US show by Johnny Carson. “I sat there for 22 minutes, humiliated, and thought: Uri, that’s it, you’re done.” The next morning, another talk show asked if he wanted to appear there.

“It doesn’t matter as long as they talk about me,” is Geller’s conclusion. “All the skeptics who fought against me created a mysticism, the energy of the unknown, the debate, and that was perfect for me in my career.”

For his birthday, his daughter wants to come from Los Angeles with her two granddaughters, says Geller. He hadn’t planned a celebration. “It’s Corona times.” Unfortunately, his son, who advises the British government, could not come.

And how does that work with the spoon now? He doesn’t have a spoon at hand, but he does have a fork. “Look, it happens very quickly.” He is holding the fork in one hand, rubbing the stile with his fingers with the other – and suddenly the fork is bent at an angle of 90 degrees. He thinks nothing of it, he says. “I’ve gotten so used to it these days. I just order her to bend. “

Source From: Stern

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