The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson aka Chung Ling Soo the 'Marvelous Chinese Conjurer'  by Jim Steinmeyer; Carroll and Graf, 451 pages, $27.

Reviewed by Joel A. Moskowitz, M.D


What had Irving Berlin,  William Tell and Houdini to do with the mysteries of the Orient?   These and other magical secrets are part of the life of an American conjurer who achieved fame pretending to be Chinese, William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo.

Berlin's "From Here to Shanghai" was a popular song in 1917.  The lyrics championed Ching Ling Foo, an authentic Chinese magician: "And I'll have Ching Ling Foo"  "Doing all his magic tricks".  As will be described,Robinson copied the name and style of this admired merlin.

Soo/Robinson performed  a variant of the William Tell story except that 'real' bullets were shot, not bow and arrow, yet Soo would be unharmed.  Indeed, he caught the rounds on a plate.  Disastrously, the trick went wrong and Soo died.

Harry Houdini, another eminent Jewish personality (like Berlin) entered the play. Following Soo's death, Houdini hoped for publicity  by duplicating  Soo's amazing effect but without the deadly consequences.

Harry Keller, another famous magician, cautioned him about the risks and Houdini cancelled his plans to perform the bullet-catching trick. Author Jim Steinmeyer in the book about Chung Ling Soo writes, "It was the only trick Houdini had been afraid to attempt."

Steinmeyer, master illusionist and historian, offers to those of us obsessed with the magical arts a grand opportunity to learn from the past.  The Glorious Deception  The Double Life of William Robinson aka Chung Ling Soo the 'Marvelous Chinese Conjurer' — the long title of Steinmeyer's latestbiographical travel through time— will appeal to even non-magicians fascinated by timeless exotic wizardry.  

Soo, a silent conjurer,  spoke only once in his stage career, "Oh my God.  Something has happened. Lower the curtain."  He had been killed in the performance of The
Bullet Catching Effect.  Houdini and others speculated about sinister plots.  None were discovered.

Instead, author Steinmeyer takes the reader as William Robinson, the magician's actual name, life ricochets off of a myriad of contemporaries of the Victorian stage including Harry Hill and his Brooklyn Saloon where fire iresulted in the deaths of many who came to be entertained by
Jim Campbell, minstrel impresario.  

Jim Campbell was William Elsworth Robinson's father.  After the devastating fire, Jim Campbell praised the two actors who, he incorrectly complimented for their "glorious deaths at
their post."  Can we wonder whether this reverence for death on stage may have had something to do with son William Robinson's death?

Few will challenge Steinmeyer as being treacherous to the craft. Divulging how it is done is for some magicians, the ultimate sin.  The author is himself a master inventor i.e. Copperfield's vanish of the Statue of Liberty.  The subject of this book, Robinson ,was not so much an inventor
as a thief.  Purloining another performer's act may be excused as admiration.  Luminaries such as Herrmann were denounced by  rival magician Keller (with whom Robinson had an association). Herrmann was charged with being ready to plunder anything: an employee, an idea or a dime.  William Robinson stole an act.

Later,  Robinson was technician and stage manager for Alexander Herrmann. After Herrmann's death, the widow didn't think Robinson proficient enough on stage to take over the act.  Despite Robinsons having masqueraded a time or two as Herrmann.  Robinson wrote in a magic periodical, Mahatma, "Secure a method and style of your own; adopt a name that is not similar
to any other person, so as to avoid all suspicion of trading  on another man's success."  This advice was not one, which he believed,  applied to him.

He performed as Achmed Ben Ali, similar to the inventor of Black Art (Ben Ali Bey) which technique Robinson also copied.  It is as though Robinson suffered from multiple personal conscience disorder (not a true psychiatric diagnosis).  He also violated the cardinal rule regarding disclosure of magical secrets by covertly aiding in the revelation of magical and illusion methods in Scientific American magazine in the 1890s.

The name and performance which was his ultimate appellation, Chung Ling Soo. was snatched from a real Chinese magician, Ching Ling Foo (born Chee Ling Qua).

The battle was joined when Ching Ling Foo bested Leon Herrmann as superior master of the classic The Linking Rings.   The Herrmann show went on to disintegration.  Robinson emerged with his own new act, as Chung Ling Soo (meaning extra good luck) mimicking and capitalizing on the fame earned by the true Chinese conjurer, Ching Ling Foo.

Robinson, illusory on stage,  was even deceptive to his closest.  A bigamist, he willed his body to his extra-marital mate.  There is no moralizing by Steinmeyer.  "Death by misadventure" was the verdict of the inquest.  Suicide by magic, chechez la femme, international revenge by the
offended Chinese Boxer militants all were considerations.  The reader of this scholarly entertaining story will not learn any further facts about Robinson's dramatic death but they will be gratified by Steinmeyer's well-researched tale of the magical scene at the turn of the last century.

Highly recommended.