Kellar, Harry (Heinrich Keller), & Howard Thurston | Kellar passes the torch

Kellar, Harry (Heinrich Keller), & Howard Thurston

Kellar and Thurston. Presenting All That is New in the World of Magic. Cincinnati & New York: The Strobridge Litho Co., 1907

Color lithograph poster (25 7/8 x 36 in.; 657 x 914 mm). Fold creases with minor restoration. Matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas.

A magnificent and rare jugate portrait poster of perhaps the two greatest stage illusionists of the early twentieth century. When Harry Kellar, twenty years Howard Thurston's senior, decided to retire, he named Thurston his official successor, famously predicting, "Thurston will be the greatest magician the world has ever known." The two men toured together for just one season, but Thurston continued to bill himself as "Kellar's Successor." 

In fact, Thurston incorporated only two of the many dozens of effects that he purchased from Kellar: the Spirit Cabinet and the Levitation of Princess Karnac. "More important to Thurston than acquiring Kellar's tricks was acquiring the title of successor, and the right to perform in the prime theaters that comprised Kellar's established territory" (Magic, pp. 283–84).

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, pp. 42–43