Carter the Great

Welcome to the Magic Poster Tour at Poe’s Magic Theatre, inside the historic Lord Baltimore Hotel.

This stop features Carter the Great, The World’s Weird Wonderful Wizard, a circa 1920s piece billed as “The World’s Weird Wonderful Wizard.”

The layout is a little theatre in itself. Carter’s name fills the top, his portrait dominates the right, and a red devil lunges out from the center. Ghosts, skeletons, a card trick, and a miniature magician crowd the remaining space, each offering a different reason to buy a ticket.

The poster’s title calls Carter a ‘weird wonderful wizard,’ then stacks the stage with enough marvels to keep that promise busy. Its images do not document one particular trick. They sell the scale of a whole evening, where every curtain might reveal another creature with an excellent sense of timing.

High-resolution scan of this 1920s poster, courtesy of the Heritage Auctions / Wikimedia Commons through Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the United States. The tour also includes Carter’s Carter Beats the Devil design.

Charles Joseph Carter performed as Carter the Great, an American illusionist whose company toured extensively around the world. He built a large-scale stage production and paired it with publicity that made the show feel both international and slightly dangerous.

Carter’s name also survives through the famous Carter Beats the Devil poster already in this tour. That design stages a comic contest with a horned opponent. This one widens the frame, turning Carter into the ringmaster of a whole company of ghosts, skeletons, and theatrical trouble.