I have probably done about fifty posts about Toledo history on this site but far and away the most popular was this one about the founder of the Crusade of Love, Carlo Sommer.
It’s the most-viewed and most-commented post here. I’ve gotten more emails about it than I possibly could have imagined since this is a pretty self-indulgent website that caters to my interests, whimsical as they are.
As I got deeper into researching it, I learned quite a bit, the most interesting thing being that he was a well-respected magician and owned a magic shop in downtown Toledo for a number of years.
Most people my age, and who lived in Toledo at all in the 1970s and 1980s, though, remember him for his Crusade of Love commercial. But this post is not about that.
Last summer, a reader who wanted no credit offered me some program pages of a traveling show Sommer did, Dr. Carlo’s Cavalcade of Mystery (the first husband of my reader’s wife was Carlo Sommer’s production manager), and I thank him for this submission.
As far as I can tell, this particular show took place May 28, 1954 in Syracuse, N.Y. at Central High School’s Lincoln Auditorium.
The program pages include pictures, little bios on the cast, details on the show itself and, for you budding magicians, how to perform magic tricks on your own! I made them as readable as I could, and they are all full-size here (except for the center pages; click on it).
Here we go! They’re in order.
So there it is. And remember,
I just wanted to say that the cover of the program was drawn and created by Isadore Yourist. I have a large poster using the same imagery.
My father, Victor Lewis, was instrumental in getting your dad involved with the cover, they were friends long before Carlo, I think.my mother grew up with your dad in the north end. Sandi Lewis Kniep
I remember his commercials quite well.