Thursday, December 13, 2012

Magic Posters #12

4 comments:

Chic Silber said...


1894 by Strobridge Litho

Chic Silber said...


Half sheet

Ole Whitey said...

After the days when Harry Kellar, born Heinreich Keller (sic) levitated a lady in this position, he hired Paul Valadon, late of Maskelyne's Egyptian Hall, London, and got Valadon to help him construct the equipment for floating the lady high above his head similar to the way Maskelyne did it. Actually Kellar's was an improvement in that it could be trouped whereas Maskelyne's could not.

This illusion went to Howard Thurston when he bought the Kellar show.

The story goes that Charles Carter bribed Thurston's stagehands to let him take the levitation to a machine shop one piece at a time, where it was duplicated over a period of several nights. True or not, Carter did have the illusion.

In his retirement Kellar built another more portable copy and this one eventually went to the Harry Blackstone, Sr, show. Harry Junior used it for a time. I saw him do it with Holiday on Ice in about 1966.

This method is called "the Big Levi" among magicians. Although many versions of the levitation have been devised over the years I don't believe any is as beautiful and deceptive as this one.

Chris Berry said...

This particular litho is one of at least three versions of the Levitation which Strobridge executed for Kellar.

This particular half-sheet, owned by Alan Kanter, was sold at auction earlier this for $6000 plus a buyers premium of 22% (Hammer price: $7320)