The Great Jansen

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

This stop features The Great Jansen, a circa 1911–1914 piece billed as “America’s Greatest Transformist.”

Deep blue, scarlet, and gold create the look of a miniature stage. Jansen stands below a floating woman draped in an American flag motif, while assistants expand the scene into a full theatrical spectacle. Smaller portraits and lettering fill the upper border like a theatre façade.

The image is structured vertically: magician below, impossible body above, title at the summit. Our eye climbs the same path as the illusion. The printer is selling transformation through composition before the curtain has even opened.

Harry August Jansen was born in Denmark and became a successful American illusionist, builder, and dealer. He toured under his own name before Howard Thurston acquired his show and recast him as Dante the Magician.

The ‘American Beauty’ advertised at the bottom was one of the production’s featured illusions. Years later, as Dante, Jansen became internationally famous with the phrase ‘Sim Sala Bim.’ This poster catches him before that second identity swallowed the first.