Leona Lamar - The Girl with 1000 Eyes - Rare Occult Psychic Mentalist Program

Description: An extremely rare 24 page pamphlet promoting the talents of Leona Lamar "The Girl with 1000 Eyes" who would go one to become a major vaudeville star. This appears to be circa 1916-1919. Leona Lamar was born in Rochester, New York, on October 26, 1885 as Leontine Dumar. Her father an immigrant from Russia, was Alexander Dumar. Perhaps he had liked the name of French writer Alexandre Dumas, for he was accused of having filed fraudulent naturalization papers under the name Dumar, while in reality, his name (or at least one of his previous aliases) was Henry E. Von Voss. In Rochester he had been convicted of grand larceny for breaking and entering, making off with $700 worth of carpets from a furniture store with an accomplice, and was sentenced to three years in the Auburn State Prison. The conviction was overturned on a technicality after a drawn-out appeal. During the years of Leona’s childhood, he made money by advertising and dealing in second mortgages. He died in 1890 Leona’s brothers went to work on the street as hucksters selling vegetables from a cart. Leona was blonde, with a beauty that was of the “Northern Races” as one reviewer would say later. She was athletic and outgoing. She won footraces as a teenager at city-wide events and was an accomplished dancer and singer. Her local successes motivated her to make a career as a performer. In 1905, at age 22 while still living with her mother in Rochester, she listed herself in the city directory as an actress. Leona entered the profession, however at a low level of the trade. She performed ina dime museum in Buffalo the following year. In Dr. Linn’s Theater and Museum” in 1906, she appeared under the name of Leona Lamar, as a “singing and dancing soubrette.” She and other variety acts performed in the amusement hall upstairs at Dr. Linn’s educational museums of anatomical wax figures and bottled monstrosities. Like other medical museums of the era, Dr. Linn had set it up to create a clientele for his medical services. Judging by his advertisements, Dr. Linn’s specialty was the treatment of sexual diseases. Visiting such museums during that era, however, was generally seen a wholesome family fun and a good way to spend the day being alternately educated and amused, not just by the exhibits downstairs, but also by the variety show upstairs. By 1909, Leona had graduated to vaudeville, making the rounds of lesser circuit. She toured with a specialty act as a dancing contortionist, demonstrating to the audience what astonishing things the human body could be made to do “in the way of muscular control and suppleness of the body” In 1910 she appeared on Poli vaudeville bill as Mlle. Leona Lamar, “The Physical Culture Girl,” as “novelty contortion dancer,” but she occasionally appeared as a wire and trapeze artist and a comedienne. Her bookings were at places like Binghamton, New York, regional exposition, and annually held Pottersville, New York fair and carnival. She was listed in billings, but she was hardly a star. That changed after she met and married Walter Anthony “Hugh” Shannon around 1914. He had been born in 1873 in Newburgh, New York. He had finished sixth grade before he and teachers concluded school was not for him, whereupon he took to the sawdust and joined the circus. He spent his apprentice years under the shadow of the white tent as a wire walker, becoming the premier aerialist in the Adam Forepaugh Circus. He was an ambitious man, a “typical solider of fortune,” as newspapers described him. He advanced himself with positions as a ringmaster and announcer, and a side-show manager. Through risking and juggling investments, he became the wealthy owner of a couple circuses, most notably, that of Norris & Rowe, which went into bankruptcy in 1910 despite his efforts. At the time Leona married him, Walter’s second wife, after six months of marriage, had recently divorced him. In her petition, his wife had objected to being made part of his menagerie. She also “told of being beaten, pinched until she was black and blue on arms, and choked until the blood ran.” When he married Leona, Walter was forty years old. His bride was twenty-eight. They decided to work together as a team, with a small staff of advance personnel and assistants. He would focus all of his energies on their act. She would perform as a stage mentalist. He would be her manager, publicity agent and booker, as well as her assistant in the audience. In December 1914, The Billboard’s gossipy tidbits told its readers, “Walter A. Shannon is playing Chicago Theaters, doing a mind reading act” No mention was made of Leona, but she was surely part of this. These performances were rehershals of the new act; Walter was intending to fromt Leona as the onstage member of the pair. A year later, Leona and Walter were still polishing and refining, but Leona began appearing on the stage as the psychic. Walter booked them, for example into an independent theater, the Star Theater in Davenport, Iowa. Leona LaMar was advertised there as a mind reader, “able, it is said, to tell the age, date of birth even to the day of the week of any person. It is also claimed for her that she can recover lost articles” The act was called the The Mysterious Woman, a name that intentionally or not evoked “The Mysterious Lady” (Georgiana Eagle) who had toured America seven decades before. A month later in January 1916 Leona dropped that title, and become “The Girl with 1000 Eyes” and she and Walter began roaring through the vaudeville circuits from success to success.

Price: 299.95 USD

Location: Boca Raton, Florida

End Time: 2024-10-01T22:30:02.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD