Carter The Great - Grave

Charles Joseph Carter, better known as Carter the Great was born in 1874 in New Castle Penn. Along with his credentials as a magician, Carter was also a lawyer, he ran an entertainment agency, he was a producer and a journalist running his own entertainment trade magazine for a period of time.

Instead of fighting over the same showbiz crumbs in America, Carter eventually decided to take his show on the road, well actually on the seas and perform around the world! He toured the globe 7 times, though I am not sure the seventh tour was officially completed as he died in while on tour.

The link above give a little more detailed account of his life than I am giving you here. If you'd like a fantastic account of the life of this world traveling performer then you'll want to locate a copy of Mike Caveney's Carter Book. It's simply fantastic. The information comes direct from Charles Carter's scrapbooks and notebooks. The stories are out of this world.

In fact, I'll share with you one quick story that I also mention over at my other blog. At the end of one of Carter's tours overseas, he tried to book passage on a new ocean liner. He was denied passage however because there was no available storage for his props. It seems some very wealthy people had booked passage on this ship as well and took up most of the available storage. It was a good thing too because that ship was the TITANIC!

Charles Carter died while on tour in Feb of 1936. He is buried in the family plot in Calvary Cemetery in Queens NY. The photo below is provided by Richie Magic. I'll try and post another photo of the entire tombstone if/when one becomes available.

photo courtesy of Richie Magic