For years, Chung Ling Soo couldn’t speak English. Then somebody shot him. Behind the robes, make-up and carefully constructed identity was William Robinson from New York, a magician who turned himself into perhaps his greatest illusion. But in 1918, at the Wood Green Empire, one tiny mechanical failure made something on his stage horribly real.
Tag: Edwardian Magic
Adelaide Herrmann – The Queen of Magic
She caught bullets, conjured ghosts and commanded spectacular illusions on stages around the world. When her famous husband died, Adelaide Herrmann refused to disappear with him. Meet the London-born performer who stepped out of the magician’s shadow, demanded recognition on her own terms and became the Queen of Magic.
