Tag: Richard Potter

  • Apart from a handful of exotic–and almost completely unreliable–tales surrounding his life, Richard Potter is almost unknown today. Two hundred years ago, however, he was the most popular entertainer in America–the first showman, in fact, to win truly nationwide fame.

  • The first American-born stage magician and ventriloquist was an African American named Richard Potter. Potter’s stage career (1811–1835) coincided with the transition from an entertainment culture grounded in a metropolitan Atlantic world to an American show business that was nationalist and racist. This essay traces Potter’s strategies and experiences within that transformation.

  • Bro. Richard Potter: “The Great Magician” Scottish Rite Journal The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Supreme Council, 33° Washington, D.C. Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A. March-April 2011 Elliott Saxton, 32° Bro. Richard Potter [see also here] was the first professional American-born magician and is also credited with being our first successful ventriloquist. His fame was such that the town…