Harry Cooke's Grave

I've been doing some research on Horatio Cooke recently. He has quite the life story which I covered briefly in an earlier blog article. I was rereading the magazine article that Mark Cannon wrote for the MUM back in April 2006. The article was incredible and it ended with Mark discussing the difficulty he had trying to locate the grave of Harry Cooke. He eventually discovered it with the help of magic historian, Diego Domingo. There is a great photo in the magazine of Mark kneeling in front of the grave.

I realized that I never included Harry Cooke in my The DeadConjurers blog. So I went online and found another photo in Find-A-Grave.com. The photo owner Don Lynch kindly gave me permission to use the photo that he took of the grave. Thanks Don!

But I also found something else of interest. I found the photo of a grave belonging to 'The Infants of HG Cooke and LM Cooke' in Illinois. I'm 99% sure this grave belongs to two children of Harry and Louisa. They lived in Illinois before moving out west to California. It's likely these two children died in childbirth.

Harry Cooke and his wife are buried in Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, the same cemetery where Harry Kellar is buried. Incidentally, they were good friends.

Photo used with permission of Don Lynch

In Search of Maro, Prince of Magic

I'm currently working on a special project about The Great Maro. His real name was Walter Truman Best and he was a popular Chataqua and Lyceum performer. He died in 1908 at the young age of 39. But before he died he made connections with a number of interesting characters from the world of magic. These include A.M. Wilson, Silent Mora, Eugene Laurant, J. Elder Blackledge, Karl Germain and Harry Kellar.

His life story is fascinating. Digging up information on him has been exciting, thrilling, difficult at times, and yet really enjoyable. I'm attempting to put together a recreation of part of his act. A previous article I wrote about The Flags of All Nations was actually part of the act I'm working on. And just today I got the inside work to his Meteoric Ribbon Routine.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has information on Maro, or even props and such you'd be willing to share for my project. I'd like to have a powerpoint presentation and if I could have photos of his actual props, that would be so incredible. Anyone with any Maro knowledge, please contact me!
carnegiemagic@me.com

Once the project is complete, I'll post an article about the life of Maro here, and I'll probably begin another season of The Magic Detective Youtube Show with a longer episode about Maro.

Magic Poster Exhibition in Germany

I just received an email from Wittus Witt in Germany notifying me of an exhibition he has of Barkow and Friedlander Posters. The exhibition is at Gallerie-W in Hamburg and runs from June 21 to August 31st, 2015. The hours they are open are Wed-Friday 2pm-6pm and Sunday 12-6pm.

The exhibition is dedicated to two printers, Barkow and Friedlander and the majority of posters appear to be those of Kassner. There are also some pieces of Dante's memorabilia on display as well. Dante performed for quite a long time in Europe before being forced to return to the United States due to the outbreak of war.

The poster on the left is Kassner 'Out of a Trunk' and is actually from my own collection. Please forgive the poor quality of the image as I took it from an older photograph I had of my old studio. Currently, the Kassner poster, along with most of my posters, is in storage.

However, this is not about my collection but rather, Wittus Witt's collection, which you can see if you are in Hamburg this summer. OR, if you're not, you can view the video below and get a good glimpse of the treasures in his collection. By the way, the website for this is http://www.galerie-we.de/