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CANFIELD, Kid (George Washington Bonner, 1878 – 1935). Kid Canfield the Notorious Gambler. Sydney: The Swift Printing Co., Ltd., [1912]. Insert poster for a silent film featuring Canfield’s exposés of the methods whereby crooked gamblers cheat their marks. In one image, he demonstrates the mechanics of a sleeve holdout, and in the other stands among gamblers in a barroom “fleecing a victim who at first has been lucky.” 39 ¾ x 15”. A few old folds and scuffs, but very good overall. Rare; the only example of this poster we have encountered. See Celebrations of Curious Characters, p. 52. Canfield, a con man and crooked gambler, changed his ways and made a second career out of lecturing on and exposing the tricks of crooked gamblers, publishing chapbooks on the subject, and presented a vaudeville act along the same lines. Prior to his retirement from the gaming tables in 1910, he was reported to have hustled his way into several fortunes, including a reported $350,000.00 in one session with Arnold Rothstein. Canfield starred in the silent film advertised here, a two-reel affair produced in 1912. This poster is the only such silent film advertisement with which we are acquainted to picture a holdout device, and perhaps the only such poster to advertise a gambling exposé. Canfield recorded a second film in 1922 with a Western theme, but neither movie has survived. He died in 1935 while giving a promotional talk on the radio – his first foray into the medium – in Bluefield, West Virginia.