Blackstone, Harry (Henry Boughton) | A magic show that "rivals the regal splendor of Solomon's court"

Blackstone, Harry (Henry Boughton)

Biggest Necromantic Exposition on Earth. Blackstone. Greatest Magician the World Has Ever Known. Oriental Nights. Erie, Pennsylvania: Erie Litho. & Ptg. Co., ca. 1925 (no. 8625)

Color lithograph poster (26 3/4 x 41 in.; 681 x 1042 mm). Separated and repaired, with minor loss, at central vertical fold, some wrinkling, marginal browning, chips and tears, rebacked with thick paper.

"Unlike his globe-trotting contemporaries, Harry Blackstone spent his entire career touring throughout North America. His long career on the stage … made the name Blackstone synonymous with magic" (Magic, p. 364). 

The poster for "Oriental Nights" is one of the busiest of the Golden Age of magic: a faqir climbs a self-suspended rope, the enchanted camel levitates, the phantom stallion rears up in the background, a dozen and a half scantily clad women dance and lounge, and on the right Blackstone is burned at the stake by a trio of trident-wielding imps—an illusion that also merited its own poster (see Illusions 36). The text of this poster modestly claims that "Blackstone's Tenfold Pageant of the East … rivals the regal splendor of Solomon's court and in kaleidoscopic metamorphoses outbids the Aurora Borealis."