On This Day: Celebrating Dante the Magician

October 3 marks the birthday of Harry August Jansen, the magician who became famous around the world as Dante. Born in Copenhagen in 1883, Jansen moved with his family to St. Paul, Minnesota, when he was six. He took an early interest in magic and began performing while still a teenager.

Jansen’s career included a remarkable mix of performance and practical craft. He worked as a builder of magic apparatus and helped improve the staging of the sawing-in-half illusion. In 1921, magician Howard Thurston hired him to tour with a second company and gave him the stage name Dante. Jansen would use that name for the rest of his performing career.

Dante went on to tour internationally and build his own large-scale show. Its title, Sim Sala Bim, came from a phrase he remembered from a Northern European children’s song. He began using it as a magical incantation onstage, and it became closely associated with his act.

Dante’s story is a reminder that a magician’s legacy can be built from more than tricks: technical skill, imagination, a memorable stage identity and the ability to carry a show across the world. On his birthday, magic fans can celebrate the performer behind the name—and the theatrical tradition he helped keep alive.