Chung Ling Soo

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 death after a bullet catch trick went wrong.

Early years

Robinson was born in Westchester County, New York, the first of three children born to James Campbell and Sarah Robinson (née Titus). Both of his parents were of Scottish descent. The family settled in Manhattan while James Robinson toured in Charley White's minstrel shows. James Robinson, who variously performed under the names "James Campbell", "H.J. Campbell" and "Professor Campbell", specialties included impersonations, "dialect singing", hypnotism, ventriloquism and magic tricks. He later taught his son how to perform magic tricks.

Career

Robinson performed his first magic show at the age of 14 and began performing professionally on the vaudeville circuit shortly thereafter. He initially performed under the name "Robinson, the Man of Mystery". Robinson earned a decent living performing his act but was eager to become a headliner on vaudeville. In 1887, he began performing "black art illusions" under the name "Achmed Ben Ali". The act and Robinson's new stage closely resembled that of German magician Max Auzinger who performed under the name "Ben Ali Bey" (As Auzinger never toured the United States, the resemblance went largely unnoticed at the time).

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Chung_Ling_Soo

Latest News for: chung ling soo

The Original Chinese Conjuror review – Northern Opera pull off witty magic trick

The Observer 26 Aug 2018

In telling the story of the early 20th-century magician Chung Ling Soo, aka William Robinson, who died on stage in 1918 when his most celebrated trick, catching a bullet in his mouth, went disastrously wrong, Yiu and his librettist Lee Warren had pared the action down to a sequence of 12 short scenes, with a cast of five ......

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Summer of magic: David Copperfield exhibits his collection of wonders

The Guardian 19 Jun 2018

Known as the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts, it’s housed in a windowless Vegas warehouse and contains over 200,000 trinkets and artefacts that amount, more or less, to a multi-century history of magic, from Harry Keller to Chung Ling Soo ... “But the most famous one was Chung Ling Soo.”....

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