Leslie George "Les" Vante Cole, known professionally by the stage
names "Levant", "Levante", "The Great Levante"[note 1] and Magician
Cole (5 March 1892 â€" 20 January 1978), was an Australian
illusionist. He is regarded as one of the greatest magicians in the
world and "Australia's most famous magician". He is also credited with
creating the Impaling illusion.Leslie George Vante Cole was born 5
March 1892 in Alexandria, Sydney, Australia to Sydney-born couple
George Cole, a driver and Sarah Catherine (née Chapman, later Reid.),
a homemaker. His family later moved to Wangaratta, Victoria where the
elder George Cole bred and sold pig's trotters and operated a dairy
farm. Cole was educated within Wangaratta, having been raised there,
and his first job was driving a baker's cart.Cole was already involved
in magic in as early as 1907, when he founded what is now the fourth
oldest magical society in the world, the Australian Society of
Magicians Incorporated. In 1909, Cole, then aged 17, travelled to
Melbourne and found work at the Vine Hotel in Richmond. There, he
marked billiards and tended the hotel's bar. It was at the hotel where
he encountered showman Tom Selwyn and became his apprentice. Cole
spent two years studying under Selwyn, who gave him the stage name
"Levant" (later changed to "Levante") and subsequently the "Great
Levante", occasionally performing at repertory theatres before going
solo as a professional magician, making appearances at Luna Park,
White City and Queensland. Once for publicity, a fully shackled Cole
jumped from the Princess Bridge into the Yarra River, a greater feat
than fellow magician Harry Houdini who had performed a similar stunt
off the Queens Bridge in 1910. During World War I, Cole briefly acted
in military propaganda films and helped recruit soldiers. After the
war Cole worked under the handles Les Cole and Magician Cole. In 1920,
at Cole's proposal, an Australian Society of Magicians branch was set
up in Melbourne. Six years after the birth of his daughter Esme in
1927, the Cole family, a trio composing of Cole, his wife Gladys
Costin and Esme (acting as assistants for Cole), toured the globe.
During which they travelled out of Australia to the Philippines,
Malaya (now split into Malaysia and Singapore), Borneo, India, Russia,
China, Japan and England. The world tour, which was Cole's first,
lasted till 1940. While in England, he came up with the idea for a
magic show which would have comedic elements, singers and animals. It
was to be known as How's Tricks and it had a cast of forty. In 1939,
the International Brotherhood of Magicians elected him as the world's
number one magician. He returned to Australia in November 1940,
entertaining army troops in Queensland and settling in New South
Wales. A financial member of the Variety Artists' Federation of Great
Britain, he continued to actively tour and in 1954, he visited South
America. Cole officially retired in 1977. In recognition of his
contributions to magic, the Academy of Magical Arts awarded him the
Performing Fellowship and the Masters Fellowship. Leslie George Cole Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter