Lola Cotton
Encyclopedia
Lola Cotton was a vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 mentalist and hypnotist of the early 20th century. She was a popular attraction in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

Girl phenomenon

As a six-year-old she performed feats of memory at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. A particular venue often headlined her ability to solve a psychological puzzle.

At Keith's, 14th Street (Manhattan)
14th Street (Manhattan)
14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street rivals the size of some of the well-known avenues of the city and is an important business location....

 between Broadway (Manhattan) and 4th Avenue, owned by Benjamin Franklin Keith
Benjamin Franklin Keith
Benjamin Franklin Keith was an American vaudeville theatre owner, highly influential in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville.-Early years:...

, she performed a mind reading act in April 1903. Her routine included mental telegraphy with a touch of mystery added. Initially she was introduced by a man who proceeded through the audience. He pointed to objects which members of the audience suggested while Cotton was blindfolded. A sample of the dialogue which transpired between Cotton and her interlocutor is What is this? A gold nugget. Right. And this?
A railroad pass. The number. The number is 10,961. It is dated April 28. She named all types of things from buttons to the color of a woman's eyes. Then the man requested the audience to call out numbers. He transcribed them on a board. They read 38171562, 49078399, 672872217. Without hesitating Cotton said the totals of each column with her eyes remaining blindfolded. At the Orpheum in October
1899 she made the combination moves of the Knight (chess)
Knight (chess)
The knight is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight . It is normally represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which begin on the row closest to the player, one square from the corner...

 on a chessboard while blindfolded. She could begin from any number on the board. Her
moves were carried out so rapidly that one's eyes could barely follow her.

The Eight Vassar Girls and singer Charles Vance entertained at the Alhambra Theatre, 2110 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., New York City, in April 1907. Cotton was among the attractions in this vaudeville show.
Billed as a hypnotist, she was in a September 1907 production staged at Keith & Proctor's 125th Street Theatre, in Harlem, New York. She appeared with singer Emma Carus
Emma Carus
Emma Carus was a contralto singer from New York who was in the cast of the original Ziegfeld Follies in 1907. Her given name was Emma Carus.She frequently sang invaudeville and sometimes in Broadway features...

 at Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre of Varieties, 1481 Broadway,
in March 1908. A few weeks before she was again the at the Alhambra Theatre with Gertrude Hoffman
Gertrude Hoffman
Gertrude W. Hoffmann was a German-born American character actress who began her Hollywood career as she was entering her sunset years.-Family:...

. The latter gave an imitation of Eva Tanguay
Eva Tanguay
Eva Tanguay was a Canadian-born singer and entertainer who billed herself as "the girl who made vaudeville famous".-Early life:...

singing I Don't Care. The song had sparked a rivalry between the two women.
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