Springston – The “Frigidaire Magician”

To be a good magician, a performer must be able to sell himself to his audience. Ernest R. Springston should not have had any problem with that, as he was a salesman for most of his life. On his throw-out card below, he is billing himself as the “Frigidaire Magician”. The back of the card lists a lot of data concerning Frigidaire refrigerators. It also says to “Ask the Frigidaire salesman in the lobby for further information”.

Springston was evidently giving a performance in conjunction with a Frigidaire promotion. I actually found a reference to one such promotion in The Sphinx for November 10, 1932, in which it was mentioned that “Springston, magician was a stage feature at the Warner Theatre in connection with a refrigeration display”. This was in an article under “Youngstown Magic News”, by Charles A. Leedy.

Springston was very active in magic in his early days according to this article in the Akron Beacon Journal for December 6, 1929

During this same time he also ran ads in the local paper to drum up business for the Christmas holidays. He referred to himself as “The Ace of Society Entertainers”.

In time, Springston backed off of being a full time magician and concentrated on being a salesman. Whether this was due to the onset of the Great Depression is not known, but it seems plausible. He had many different salesman jobs over the years. He sold appliances, roofing and siding for homes, and even cars. One really interesting ad that he ran was in The Linking Ring during his car salesman days.

From The Linking Ring for March of 1930.

In 1932, he partnered with H. B. Louis who had worked for the Loew’s Theatre, and opened a theatrical booking office. They claimed to have had 150 vaudeville acts that could work “party and banquet programs”. But by 1936, he was working for the Best Furniture Co. and in 1940, the Ohio Home Modernizing Co., again in sales.

On May 16 and 18, of 1952, I found these two rather startling articles in the Akron Beacon Journal.

Going backward in time, leads me to believe that Ernest Springston was born around 1905, with his death being May 15, 1952 in Jackson, Michigan. I could not find any additional newspaper articles detailing what the coroner concluded as to the cause of death.