Purchase, funds graciously donated by La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso. Purchase, funds graciously donated by La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso.Īv Yaga, Alexander, the Man Who Knows, 1915. Magicians played vaudeville, but a lot of them found it was more profitable to actually go out and tour on their own.”Īv Yaga, Alexander, Crystal Seer, Sees Your Life from the Cradle to the Grave, 1915.
#Vintage houdini poster full
“It wasn't until the end of his career that he even did a full evening magic show like we assume that he did…. “Houdini was a star of vaudeville,” Cox notes. Consisting of 10 to 15 short acts, these variety shows offered opportunities for “even a guy with a card act to become a star if he was skillful enough,” explains Houdini expert John Cox, author of the blog Wild About Harry. “They played the room.”Ī number of factors fueled the rise of superstar magicians in the late 19th century, including the burgeoning popularity of vaudeville in the late 1800s. “These guys were broad,” he says, puffing out his chest. Looking around at the posters that line the AGO exhibition space, Ben admires his predecessors’ boldness. He began studying the lives and careers of the performers who came before him, and today publishes a magic history journal.
Ben first became enthralled with magic when he was 12 years old, after his father gave him a magic handbook. “Imagine these on billboards when you're walking in your town,” says David Ben, guest curator of the exhibition and a magician who performs on both stage and screen. Thurston the Great Magician – Do the Spirits Come Back?, 1915. “The wonder show of the universe!” cries a poster flaunting a performance by Howard Thurston, who could seemingly make a car vanish into thin air. “The greatest sensational mystery ever attempted in this or any other age!” declares an ad for Houdini’s Chinese water torture cell act. Colorful and alluring, the posters are rife with headless figures, floating cards, crystal balls and big promises. The show explores the fantastic feats and sensational showmanship of performers during magic’s “Golden Age”-a period that spanned roughly from the 1880s to the 1930s and saw magicians soar to unprecedented heights of international celebrity.
Purchase, funds graciously donated by La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso.Ī selection of Kellar’s ads are among 58 historic magic posters on display at “ Illusions: The Art of Magic,” a new exhibition at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario. Thurston's Greatest Mystery – The Vanishing Whippet Willys- Overland Car, 1929. Posters were key to enticing audiences to his productions they often show the magician conversing with devilish figures, as if in league with them-a promotional ploy that proved irresistible to Victorian audiences. He staged big, lavish shows, during which fans might see him make live canaries disappear, or even decapitate himself. Though his name has been all but forgotten, Kellar was once a pioneering showman and global star. Two rows of little red devils bow at the magician’s feet, as though supplicating a supreme figure of dark and mysterious powers. The illustrated poster depicts Kellar dressed in a stiff tuxedo with his hands held above a floating, raven-haired woman. At the turn of the 20th century, magician Harry Kellar commissioned a poster to advertise one of his most famous tricks, “The Levitation of Princess Karnac,” in which he appeared to make a hypnotized woman-whom he claimed was a Hindu princess-hover in mid-air.
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