Real Photo Arthur & La Toska Vaudeville Jugglers At Des Moines IA RPPC P248

Description: Here is a nice old RPPC Real Photo Post Card for your collection! This card comes from a 40 year collection of fine postcards including RP's. Hold To Lights, Halloween postcards, Expositions, better Santa's and much more! Check out the others in my eBay store and stop back often for new listings! This postcard shows a very rare real photo postcard image of two vaudeville performers. They stand outside a theater and across the image it reads Arthur & La Toska A Couple Of J's. The card is hand decorated in red ink in beautiful handwriting! The card front reads Des Moines Iowa, Nov 30-07. Hello Duke, The Pictures Came Out Punk, Next Week Orpheum Kansas City (Dec 1st), Give My Regards To Bedini, Yours As B4, La Toska, Happy Is He Who Juggles. The card back is again handwritten in red and reads Bedini And Arthur, Arthur Roy, One Of The J's Now With The Colonial Bells, C/O Dewey Theatre Minneapolis Minn. This card is one of several I have for sale, mailed from one performer to another. Both were professional jugglers! They came from a package of postcards handwritten by Phil La Toska to his partner Arthur Roy (of the jugglers Bedini and Roy) sometime between November 30 and December 3, 1907. Philip La Toska was a vaudeville performer known as “The Talkative Juggler”. He was born Philip Love and was a French Canadian vaudeville artist. In Alaska, Phil worked for years with the famous vaudeville businessman and film producer, Alexander Pantages. After the gold rush in Yukon, Canada, in approximately 1896, they both decided to go to the United States. in 1910 he was living in Walla Walla, Washington. He would later use the name Philip Latosca and perform as a juggler in a theater career. Adolf Cohen performed under the stage name Roy Arthur. After finishing with school he became an actor in Vaudeville as early as May 1900. He played a foil in “blackface” to Jean Bedini, an accomplished juggler, and “Arthur” brought the comedy. Roy was able to get his childhood acquaintance, Eddie Cantor, a job as another lackey for Bedini. When a singer had "one too many" and couldn’t go on, it was Roy Arthur who suggested, “Let Eddie go on, he can sing a couple of songs!” An accomplished, but unknown singer, Cantor knocked the audience out, and the rest is history. Eddie never forgot what Roy did for him, and the two of them worked together for years after Eddie Cantor became a giant in stage and radio. It wasn’t too long before Bedini and Arthur parted ways, and Roy brought his brother, Phil Roy into the act as the juggler, and Arthur still playing the comic foil in Roy and Arthur. Roy Arthur brought his young nephew, Jack Cohen to Eddie Cantor’s shows and let him have a seat in the front row. One day Cantor asked Roy, "Who’s that kid in the front row who never laughs at my jokes?". Roy told him that it was his brother Phil’s kid. “Well, put him in the back, I can’t have people not laughing up here.” Afterwards, young Jack laughed like crazy at everything during the shows. Roy’s nephew Jack grew up to become comedian himself, Rodney Dangerfield. Roy Arthur would move his family to Los Angeles in the early 1930s and take a job there for Eddie Cantor as stage manager for his radio and live shows. Roy Arthur died in 1952. The card back is divided and is postally unused. Condition is good to very good as shown. Guaranteed vintage and original. The watermark is not on the postcard you are buying here. All of our cards are shipped safely inside a rigid postcard mailer. Shop all of our postcards for sale in our eBay store and save on combined shipping! New cards added daily!

Price: 129.99 USD

Location: Sarasota, Florida

End Time: 2025-01-09T10:59:25.000Z

Shipping Cost: 10.45 USD