Vic Taylor: Reminiscences of a showman
A shorter article this time, retelling a few stories from Vic Taylor's wartime experiences as a magician and showman...
When World War Two came, thousands of magicians and other performers across the United Kingdom and other nations joined the armed forces. Some did so voluntarily. Others were conscripted, or else were forced to sign-up due to reduced levels of theatrical work during the war years.
Vic Taylor, an Englishman born in 1900, had experienced this before. As a youngster, he'd learned magic from his father, a travelling magician. Young Vic suffered for the sake of art, cramped into a little box as the working parts of 'Zeedah, the Mysterious Talking Hindu Head,' (a fake automata) until he progressed to learning tricks and developing his own act. With his father, Vic spent most of his teenage years touring the south of England, working at fairs and seafronts. A natural showman, Vic's act embraced magic, hypnotism, ventriloquism and Punch and Judy.
Vic Taylor's Punch & Judy figures
(Source: Special Auction Services)
In 1918, the last year of World War One, Vic Taylor joined the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) when he reached 18, the military enlistment age. Soon after, he transferred to the Royal Air Force when it was formed from the amalgamation of the RNAS and the British Army's Royal Flying Corps in April the same year.
Having signed up for four years, Vic stayed in the RAF after the war ended until 1922, serving in various roles. One of these included some time entertaining troops with the RAF's Blackbirds concert party. In the military context, concert parties were groups of serving sailors, soldiers, marines, or airmen, each with some form of entertainment skill. They came together - often during work time and with the permission of the unit's officers - to put on shows for military units in barracks and on operations overseas.
A military concert party performing for troops during World War One
(Source: Imperial War Museum)
After leaving the military, during the 1920s and 1930s, he returned to a career entertaining around his home town of Portsmouth and the coastal towns of southern England.
On the day Britain declared war on Germany, 3 September 1939, Parliament immediately passed The National Service (Armed Forces) Act. This imposed conscription on all males aged between 18 and 41 who had to register for service. Those medically unfit were exempted, as were others in key industries and jobs such as baking, farming, medicine, and engineering.
Magicians, unsurprisingly, were not exempt. Aged 39, Vic Taylor was still considered to be of fighting age and he was mobilised to re-join the RAF.
Luckily, his first posting was to the RAF base on Thorney Island, a peninsula in Chichester Harbour only ten miles from his home in Portsmouth.
Aside from his war work with the RAF, Vic started up a concert part at the base and was even permitted occasional time off to do charitable shows, such as shows at Dr Barnardo’s Homes for disadvantaged children.
A major base for the Royal Navy, Portsmouth was an obvious target for bombing raids by the German Luftwaffe [German: air force]. Between July 1940 and May 1944, the city endured 67 air raids. The raids killed 930 people, injuring many more. Over 6,500 houses were destroyed (nearly ten percent of the total) and a further 6,500 were severely damaged.
One of these raids destroyed Taylor’s home, while he was living on the Thorney Island base. He later wrote:
“One day my wife [who was staying with family in the country] went to Portsmouth and found our house had had a direct hit with a bomb, and all that was left was a crater.”
Bomb damage on Portsmouth Road in the Southsea area of Portsmouth
(Source: Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery)
While stationed at Thorney Island, Taylor was ordered by the base commander, to transform an old transport hangar and theatre and cinema. Making the best of a bad situation, Taylor and his colleagues scavenged the Blitz sites of Portsmouth to fit out the camp’s new entertainment venue; obtaining the seats from two blitzed cinemas. The theatre was used by the concert party and touring shows provided by the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) throughout the war and for many years after.
Performing on improvised stages was not without risk. In one concert party show, Vic Taylor was performing alongside a chorus line of female from the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) on a stage formed from planks on trestles. During the opening dancing number, the planks tipped up at one end. The WRAFs all slid on their backsides on top of his other, ending up in a heap on the floor.
Vic Taylor performing The Chinese (Head) Chopper on Southsea Beach, Portsmouth (1946)
(Source: Taylor, V., 'Reminiscences of a Showman', 1971)
Vic Taylor didn't serve overseas during World War Two, but did end up in Northern Ireland with the RAF for a time. In January 1939, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) Army Council declared war against Britain and started a sabotage campaign a few days later. During the wider war, they hoped for support from Germany to strike against Britain. So, for British servicemen in the province, there was a real threat to life.
One evening, Vic Taylor and his fellow concert party performers had a close shave when travelling back from a show near to the province's border with the Republic of Ireland. Their coach was ambushed by the IRA. The terrorist force ordered everyone out and lined them up. They look at the concert party's identification cards and made a search of the coach for weapons. It was a tense situation. Fortunately, the terrorists ordered the party back on the coach, and to get on its way. This lucky escape was put down to the fact that the servicemen and women were entertainers, rather than pure combatants.
When World War Two ended, Vic Taylor left the RAF for a second time and, once again, returned to entertaining the public as a magician and showman for another two decades.
Vic Taylor's autobiography, Reminiscences of a Showman (1971)
(Source: Author's collection)
For further information on Vic Taylor's life, read his autobiography, 'Reminiscences of a Showman' (1971).
Related article: 'Heroic magician saves lives in Portsmouth Blitz.' Amateur magician Ray Wickens is awarded the George Medal for saving lives after a German air-raid on the city. Blog link.
Related article: ‘Kindertransport magic.’ Jewish magician and pickpocket Giovanni entertains Jewish children escaping Germany for a new life in England. Blog link
Related article: 'Entertaining Hitler: Gogia Pasha, the gilly-gilly man (and war worker)', a blog about a wartime gilly-gilly man, Gogia Pasha who served in the A.R.P. Blog link.
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