Frank Eugene Eliason

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 9 January 1878,[1] Franklin (Frank) Eugene Eliason was the son of Mormon pioneer migrants from Sweden, Olof Larsson Eliasson (1836-1920) and Ingar Emma Andersson (1838-1893).

[16] The following year he joined the couple on a tour that began in Canada, then continued to New Zealand and Australia, where Oscar was promoted as Dante the Great.

For example, in a “Simla Séance” act, he played the part of a medium who was purportedly helped by an Indian spirit called “Silverlight”.

Audiences were left mystified how he was able to ring bells and blow harmonicas, despite appearing to remain securely tied inside a cabinet, with his mouth full of water.

[27] Back in Australia, for several months Frank was engaged to perform “feats of magic and mystery” at a new entertainment complex in Adelaide called The Pantheon.

[28] In his shows, Frank reproduced tricks his brother had often performed with Edmunda, like “suspending” a woman in mid-air with no visible means of support.

[42] Her identity was not disclosed, but she may have been Sydney-born Elsie Kathleen Caldwell (1882-1914), who travelled overseas with Frank and married him in Madras (now Chennai) in southern India in December 1906.

[46] In the western Indian city of Pune, he was reported to have been hospitalised with “enteric” (typhoid fever) before he proceeded to Rangoon and the British Straits Settlements.

[50] According to one reviewer, the act presented by the “mysterious” Dantes was “weird, creepy and beyond even the investigative curiosity of stage hands and house attaches”.

At the Nesbitt Theatre in Pennsylvania in January 1912, for example, he was described as “the human picture machine” who was presenting a cartoon offering in a variety program.

Shipping passenger records show that Margaret Eliason-Frazee was still travelling between New York and Britain under that name at least until 1953, describing herself as a married “housekeeper”.