This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
CHUNG Ling Soo (William Ellsworth Robinson, 1861 – 1918). Tivoli Theatre Grand Opening Night Silk Programme. Birmingham: Parkes & Groves, 1900. Finely printed white silk program with fringed ends, produced for the “grand opening night” of the Tivoli Theatre, Birmingham, with acts including comedians, performing cockatoos, singers, trapeze artists, and Chung-Ling-Soo “The Marvellous Chinese Magician.” 10 1/2 x 9 3/8”. Old fold, faint soiling. An early Soo program. Robinson had long worked behind the scenes for Herrmann and Kellar, but eventually stepped before the curtain in Paris wearing Chinese garb and billed as “Hop Sing Loo.” While his show was well-received, the name was not. Moving to London he was rechristened “Chung Ling Soo” in April of 1900 and under that guise, went on to find fame and success for the next seventeen years. Then, on the stage of the Wood Green Empire in March of 1918, Soo was shot on stage when his feat of catching a marked bullet fired from a rifle went fatally wrong. He died the following day.