Chung Ling Soo

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Chung Ling Soo bigraphy, stories - American magician

Chung Ling Soo : biography

1861 – 1918

The Old and New Magic

Chung Ling Soo was the stage name of the American magician William Ellsworth Robinson (April 2, 1861– March 24, 1918) who is mostly remembered today for his tragic death after a bullet catch trick went wrong.Randi, James. Conjuring.(St. Martin’s Press, 1992) ISBN 0-312-09771-9 page 78US Passport Application 1916

Biography

During his early career, William Ellsworth Robinson called himself Robinson, the Man of Mystery.Randi, James. Conjuring.(St. Martin’s Press, 1992) ISBN 0-312-09771-9 page 81 To increase his allure with a touch of exoticism, he changed his name to Chung Ling Soo and took his show to Europe. He took the name as a variation of a real Chinese stage magician – Ching Ling Foo – and performed many of the tricks that Foo had made famous. Chung Ling Soo maintained his role as a Chinese man scrupulously. He never spoke onstage and always used an interpreter when he spoke to journalists. Only his friends and other stage magicians knew the truth.

Feud and death

The Cosmopolitan pub. 1903

In 1905 in London, when both Chung and Ching were performing in different theatres, they developed a public feud — possibly a publicity stunt — each referring to himself as the only "Original Chinese Conjurer" and the other as an impostor.Randi, James. Conjuring.(St. Martin’s Press, 1992) ISBN 0-312-09771-9 page 84 Ching challenged Chung to perform his tricks but did not show up at the appointed time. Whether this was by design is unknown.

Chung’s most famous illusion, partly because of his death while performing it, was called "Condemned to Death by the Boxers"., "Chung Ling Soo had included Condemned to Death by the Boxers in his shows" … "The Mystic Bottle was the illusion in which little bottles became the giant bottle, The Living Target was the rope and arrow trick—they found no mention of the gun illusion.", accessed 2008-04-13 In this trick Chung’s assistants, sometimes dressed as Boxers, took two guns to the stage. Several members of the audience were called on the stage to mark a bullet that was loaded into one of the guns. Attendants fired the gun at Chung, and he seemed to catch the bullets from the air and drop them on a plate he held up in front of him. In some variations he pretended to be hit and spit the bullet onto the plate.

The trick went tragically wrong when Chung was performing in the Wood Green Empire, London, on March 23, 1918. Chung never unloaded the gun properly. To avoid expending powder and bullets, he had the breeches of the guns dismantled after each performance in order to remove the bullet, rather than firing them off or drawing the bullets with a screw-rod as was normal practice. Over time, the channel that allowed the flash to bypass the barrel and ignite the charge in the ramrod tube slowly built up a residue of unburned gunpowder. On the fateful night of the accident, the flash from the pan ignited the charge behind the bullet in the barrel of one of the guns. The bullet was fired in the normal way, hitting Chung in the chest. His last words were spoken on stage that moment, "Oh my God. Something’s happened. Lower the curtain." It was the first and last time since adopting the persona that William "Chung Ling Soo" Robinson had spoken English in public.

The Old and New Magic pub. 1906

Chung was taken to a nearby hospital, but he died the next day. His wife explained the nature of the trick, and the inquest judged the case "accidental death".

The circumstances of the accident were verified by the gun expert Robert Churchill.

His life inspired the opera The Original Chinese Conjuror in 2006, by Hong Kong born British composer, Raymond Yiu.

In film

The only film record of Chung Ling Soo that exists today shows him greeting World War I veterans at a 1915 benefit performance.

A magician inspired by Chung Ling Soo appears briefly in The Prestige. In an early scene, John Cutter (Michael Caine) challenges his assistants to figure out how Soo does his trick where he appears to magically summon a fishbowl. After watching him, Borden (Christian Bale) deduces that Soo carries the fishbowl between his legs where it is hidden by his skirt. According to him, the real trick is how Soo pretends to be crippled even in his everyday life so his audience never suspects the obvious. This alludes to Borden carrying out a similar deception throughout his daily life.

In literature

In Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine, the story of his death told by an eyewitness who calls him "Ching Ling Soo" and remembers him as having been shot in the face at Boston’s Variety Theater in 1910.Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine. Bantam, 1957, p. 60.