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Magicians' Trade Catalogs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2014

Beth A. Kattelman
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Extract

In her essay in the most recent Re: Sources column, Sharon Marcus argues for the importance of theatrical scrapbooks as historical resources and notes that, to date, they have been largely neglected. I offer the current essay as a companion piece to Marcus's in that I would like to argue for the importance of another largely neglected resource for theatre researchers: trade catalogs. Specifically, I will focus on the mail-order trade catalogs of magic supply houses that were prevalent throughout the twentieth century until Web sites took over as the primary marketing tools for these establishments. I also draw upon Christopher B. Balme's idea that historiographic rewards can be earned by paying close attention to the information contained in theatrical playbills. Balme posits that one reason playbills have been neglected is because they are considered to be further removed from a theatrical performance than visual evidence such as photographs, designs, or videos:

In comparison to theatre iconography—which in superficial readings would seem to offer the promise of access to the theatrical event, a performance on the stage (which of course it seldom does)—the playbill is foreplay but not the act itself. Like most foreplay, the playbill is clearly designed to excite, to stimulate; but for the scholar in search of the real thing, the transcendent experience and enchantment that is the “performance,” playbills represent a kind of archival ludus interruptus.

Type
Re: Sources: Beth A. Kattelman
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 233 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2014 

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References

Endnotes

1. Cohn, David L., The Good Old Days: A History of American Morals and Manners as Seen through the Sears, Roebuck Catalogs 1905 to the Present (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940)Google Scholar, xxxi.

2. Marcus, Sharon, “The Theatrical Scrapbook,” Theatre Survey 54.2 (2013): 283–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Balme, Christopher B., “Playbills and the Theatrical Public Sphere,” in Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography, ed. Canning, Charlotte M. and Postlewait, Thomas (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010), 37–62Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., 38.

5. Cohn, xxiii.

6. Thayer's Quality Magic 9.2 (1943), n.p.

7. The Latest of the World's Best Magic, no. 10 (New York: Max Holden, 1943)Google Scholar, 4.

8. Pseudo Mental Magic, Mindreading, Astrology, no. 18 (Columbus, OH: Nelson Enterprises, 1939)Google Scholar, 5.

9. Marcus, 283.

10. 500 Tricks (Dallas: Douglas Magicland, 1943)Google ScholarPubMed, 16.

11. Latest of the World's Best Magic, 117.

12. 500 Tricks, 98.

13. Houdini, Harry, A Magician among the Spirits (New York: Harper, 1924)Google Scholar.

14. Pseudo Mental Magic, 154.

15. 500 Tricks, 12.

16. For more information on ghost shows, see Kattelman, Beth, “Magic, Monsters and Movies: America's Midnight Ghost Shows,” Theatre Journal 62.1 (2010): 23–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Pseudo Mental Magic, 81.

18. Ibid., 74.

19. Nixon, Doc, “Nixon's Free for All Corner,” The Linking Ring 10.5 (1930): 611Google Scholar.

20. Nelson, Robert A., “With the Mentalists,” The Linking Ring 17.6 (1937): 52Google Scholar.

21. Pseudo Mental Magic, 72.

22. Kaufman, Richard, “The Eighth Los Angeles Conference on Magic History,” Genii 67.1 (2004): 36Google Scholar.

23. Heaney's Professional Catalog of Wonders: Magical Goods, Illusions, Stage Acts (Berlin, WI: Heaney Magic Co., n.d. [ca. 1923])Google Scholar, 87.

24. Steinmeyer, Jim, The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the Marvelous Chinese Conjurer (New York: Carol & Graff, 2005), 108–9Google Scholar.

25. Heaney's Professional Catalog of Wonders, 89.

26. Thayer's Quality Magic, 38.

27. Ibid., 64.

28. Latest of the World's Best Magic, 9.

29. Thayer's Quality Magic, n.p.

30. Ibid., 26.

31. Latest of the World's Best Magic, 75.

32. Thayer's Quality Magic, 36.

33. National Magic Company, no. 4 (Chicago: National Magic Co., 1942)Google Scholar, 16.

34. Oaks Latest Tricks: Puzzles, Novelties, Sensational Escapes and Illusions (Oshkosh, WI: Oaks, n.d. [ca. 1918])Google Scholar, 65.

35. Thayer's Quality Magic, 36.

36. Catalog of Superior Magic (Philadelphia: Kanter's Magic Shop, 1939), 178–83Google Scholar.

37. Heaney's Magic Company, no. 25 (Berlin, WI: Heaney Magic Company, 1924)Google Scholar, 6.

38. “Announcing Schenectady's Chautauqua as Furnished by the Swarthmore Chautauqua Association,” Schenectady Gazette, 24 July 1924, 11.

39. Marcus, 303.

40. Balme, Christopher B., “Interpreting the Pictorial Record: Theatre Iconography and the Referential Dilemma,” Theatre Research International 22.3 (1997): 190–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 190–1.