This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
[FOOT JUGGLING] MANSFIELD, George E. (d. 1906). Levantine. [Glasgow], 1880s. Large letterpress broadside with oversize wood engraved image of Levantine at its center, reclining on a special couch and juggling a large barrel with his feet. He is billed as “the champion equilibrist of the world” and the “American wonder!” 29 x 10”. Edges significantly chipped and ragged. Linen backed. Mansfield was the partner of F.F. Proctor in an act called The Levantine Brothers. Mansfield was the son of a church going Boston family who left home at the age of 17 to join the circus. He was a student of Professor Ducrowe, the trainer of the Boston Tremont Gymnasium. Ducrowe suggested Mansfield as a partner for Proctor when M.B. Leavitt (another theatrical manager) thought Proctor’s original partner, Levantine, proved insufficiently strong for the act. An engagement in Europe dissolved the Mansfield/Proctor partnership. Mansfield remained in Europe for more than a decade until bad health forced his retirement from the stage. He returned to America and became a real estate agent, partnering with Proctor in the Grand Opera House in Boston; by then, F.F. Proctor had become the king of American vaudeville, the owner and operator of dozens of theaters in America.