Leo Itkis in Shanghai, 1941 – “A Particularly Good Musician”

Back in 2009 I posted an old advert from Shanghai’s Park Hotel (still there on Nanjing West Road) from 1941. Although it was late 1941, Shanghai was the “solitary island” and Pearl Harbor was but months away Shanghai still swung, with a tea dance from 5-7pm anyway. Providing the music was Leo Itkis and his orchestra. SAdly I knew nothing else about Mr Itkis. Well, now I know a little more courtesy of some of his descendents and a bit of research.

As best I can make out Leo Itkis was a White Russian who, as a young man, became a pianist. He appears in 1926 in Singapore at the Victoria Theatre accompanying a number of Russian ballet stars on tour – though they were also White Russians from Harbin, Shanghai and Europe. They performed straight ballet, comedy numbers and a demonstration of the seriously modern Charleston for the audience. The Singapore Straits Times described Leo Itkis as “a nineteen year old pianist said to be a particularly good musician.”

Later Itkis must have settled in Shanghai and formed his own orchestra that eventually played at the Park in 1941. According to his relatives, who’ve done some research into his life, he sadly died in 1942 of post-operative shock from an operation to repair nerve damage in his neck. He left a widow and son. She later remarried a US Army Captain and went to America with him at the end of the war.

That’s all I know so far….but if you want to know what JG Ballard thought of the Park Hotel, about the time Leo Itkis was performing there then I blogged that before here

The wonderful Park Hotel on Bubbling Well Road, towering over the old race course, now the dreary Renmin Square