This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
GERMAIN, Karl (Charles Mattmuller, 1878 - 1959). Archive of Germain the Wizard’s Script, Patter, and Programs. Being a file of typed and handwritten scripts and stage patter for many of Germain’s best-known conjuring feats, including his feats of mind reading (here titled “Telepathy”) the introduction to his performance (dated 1916), the Kellar Rope Tie, Germain’s Mummy Case Illusion (Rhadama), and many others. Most significantly, a tranche of the documents includes approximately 50 pages, bound together with brass brads, a complete working script for Germain’s performances for the 1903 – 05 seasons, and chronicles not only the running order of the show but provides a word-for-word record of each effect, as spoken on stage. Among the routines in these performances were many of Germain’s best, described in two works regarding Germain and his magic by Stuart Cramer. The script pages are filled with hundreds of manuscript notations and changes in Germain’s hand. Sold together with a quantity of typed and handwritten programs for Germain’s performances (the earliest dated in his hand for 1894), some with manuscript notations regarding the staging of the performances (for the Water Jars: “take the jars off one-by-one”), as well as Germain’s typewritten notes on the methods behind several effects (The Tri-Color Plumes, various feats of mentalism, and more), and a typed list of the music used to accompany his show. In all, a large and choice archive of hundreds of pages chronicling the thinking of one of the great Lyceum and Chautauqua magicians of the first quarter of the twentieth century, written in his own hand, and giving a clear description of the poetic and artistic tack he took with his performances.