“The Marvellous Chinese Conjurer” Chung Ling Soo in 1915

A while back in 2010 I posted a few times on the then famous magician Chung Ling Soo and recommended Jim Steinmeyer’s biography of him too. The interesting thing about Chung Ling Soo is that he was one of the most famous magicians of his day – originally an American called Bill Robinson he became Chung Ling Soo and passed himself of as Chinese, complete with robes, pigtail and interpreter (gibberish to English!) and made a mint doing magic tricks. All went well till 1918 when, at the Wood Green Empire, he did his famous bullet catching trick (complete with Boxer storyline and effects), it went wrong and he was shot dead on stage! Robinson went to great lengths not to be revealed as a white man, though it was known among the magician and music hall fraternities it was not widely known by his audience. He was so convincing to many (who probably had not, to be fair, had a lot of contact with Chinese people) that one woman who became infatuated with him rejected him as uninteresting when he appeared to her as a white guy in a suit!

Anyway, Chung Ling Soo is seen in posters and advertising ephemera from his shows – all highly stylised – and there are some photos but only one tiny bit of newsreel footage. It shows Robinson/Chung in London welcoming back heroes of the trenches from the war in 1915 and performing a benefit concert for them. It’s only 15 seconds long and on Youtube. I’ve screengrabbed a couple of stills below so you can decide for yourself whether he was convincing or not…