Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -

Sale 2708 - Lot 185

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(SPORTS--PERHAPS?) Album of the exploits of competitive flagpole sitter "Hold 'Em Joe" Powers. 21 photographs, 11 manuscripts, 4 pieces of ephemera, and numerous clippings mounted on 51 album leaves. 4to scrapbook, original cloth, moderate wear; a few items worn but only minimal wear to album leaves; inscribed by manager John Ramsell on front pastedown. Chicago and elsewhere, 1927
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Additional Details

Endurance flagpole sitting became a popular fad in the late 1920s. The pioneer in the field was Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly, who sat on a pole in New Jersey for twelve days. This scrapbook documents the man who unthroned him: Joe Powers (born 1906), known by the nicknames "Hold 'Em Joe" and "Sitting Joe." He climbed up the flagpole of Chicago's Morrison Hotel and remained there 627 feet above the ground for a record 16 days, earning a small share of national celebrity.

This album contains portraits of Powers before his ordeal, photographs of him being hoisted up the pole with his small seating platform, and several of him after his return to earth--filthy, sunburned, and lacking teeth from being blown into his pole by the wind. Others show him being bathed, shaved, and then feted at the hotel. Also included are several contracts for personal appearances by Powers, and a note to Powers from the manager of the Morrison Hotel: "When you come down from the pole, we are going to give a banquet for you in the Terrace Garden." An affidavit by a hotel employee, signed while Powers was still up on the pole, explains how Powers and his manager Ramsell met by chance in a hotel lobby.

Powers continued to climb poles for attention and profit through at least 1934. Few of the thousands of articles on Powers provide any biographical detail, other than his age. We have not learned his home town, his ultimate fate--or even his full name.

This album was compiled by Hold 'Em Joe's manager John Ramsell. The album also includes 5 photographs and a receipt for another Ramsell client, an endurance driver named "The Masked Wonder"; and 2 pages of newspaper clippings about Ramsell.

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