Price showboat stage #1 (From Richard Flint)

Price showboat stage001, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Here is a picture especially for the priceless Tennessean Ole Whitey who, if he wishes, can claim that this was his "Ole Relatives" show! The image is a very rare and early interior view of a showboat stage (Philip Graham's book "Showboats" has none) that dates between 1891 and 1900, the years that Graham says this boat, Edwin A. Price's second Floating Opera, saw service. On the back of this large, card-mounted photograph is the printed program which I am also sending and from it viewers will get a great idea of what could be seen on the stage (sorry, Dave, no magician on this otherwise diverse bill but perhaps the "Mesmeraerial Suspension" might qualify?). Price, along with French, Emerson, and Bryant were the big names on showboats in mid-America. However, it was on ex-circus performer James Adams' Chesapeake Bay boat that Edna Ferber traveled in order to gain the flavor for her 1926 novel that became the very first Broadway musical, "Showboat." Dick Flint Baltimore From Dave Price Yes indeed, the Mesmeraerial (a combination of Mesmerism and aerial) Suspension was an old magic act in which a girl rests her head on a chair or her arm on a broom and is then raised out to a horizontal position. This routine predated the actual levitation in which the body rises from a couch or other resting place into the air without any visible means of support. There are still versions of the suspension being performed today. Uncle Edwin always provided a novel program (I did have an Uncle Edwin Price; does that count?).