Houdini poster original professional#

“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. Purchase, funds graciously donated by La Fondation Emmanuelle Gattuso. 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. Several outlets wondered if we’d set a new world record.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. 'Chatter on social media included considerable speculation about just how high the price would go. 'Advance buzz for the auction was high, and especially for the Houdini posters,' said Gabe Fajuri, President of Potter & Potter. Sold across two auctions at Potter & Potter, the entire collection achieved a total of $1.4 million.

Houdini poster original professional#

Advertising him as the 'King of Cards', years before he became an international star, the poster also set a new record by selling for $24,000.īoth posters originated from the collection of professional magician Norm Nielsen, who had spent 25 years assembling more than 1000 vintage lithographs from the Golden Era of magic posters.

The sale also featured another rare Houdini poster, printed in 1898 during the early years of his career.

The previous record price for one of the posters had been set back in 2000, when a copy sold at Christie’s in New York for $51,959. His brother Theodore Hardeen later sold the original cabinet, against Houdini’s dying wishes, and it ended up as a fish tank at the Houdini Museum in Niagara Falls.Īfter partially surviving a fire at the museum in 1995, the cabinet was restored by illusion builder John Gaughan, and is now part of magician David Copperfield’s private magic museum in Las Vegas.Īs one of just three examples known to exist, the rare poster soared past its estimate of $50,000 – $60,000 to sell for $116,850, making it the most valuable magic poster ever sold. It became his most famous escape act, and he performed it around the world up until his death in 1926. This enabled him to copyright the idea, prevent other magicians from performing a similar escape, and he referred to the illusion as 'the upside down' for the rest of his career. Having invented the illusion in 1911, Houdini first performed the escape to a single audience member in a one-act play entitled ‘Houdini Upside Down!’ The poster, printed in England in 1912, featured Houdini performing his most famous escape act: the Chinese Water Torture Cell. A rare vintage poster featuring illusionist Harry Houdini has sold for a world record price in Chicago.