Magic at War

In this post, we discover three further examples of war-themed tricks invented by magicians to keep their acts topical for audiences and capture the national mood during World War Two.  Cheeri-Boo ‘Cheeri-Boo’ was manufactured and sold by London-based magic dealer Lewis Davenport & Co. The performer shows a set of coloured cards (roughly A4/US Letter size). When cards of leading Nazis Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering are shown, the audience is encouraged to  “Boo!” . When pictures of HM King George VI, his wife Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Winston Churchill are shown, the audience cheers. To cause some mischief, the magician makes Hitler’s trademark moustache disappear, before making it reappear and move around the dictator’s face in a comical fashion. An example of the ‘Cheeri-Boo’  cards hand-painted by Laurie (Source: Author ’s collection)   Advert (extract) for  ‘Cheeri-Boo’  by Lewis Davenport & Co in The Demon Teleg...

American-Latino Ramón Galindo fought for his adopted country in two of World War Two’s key battles, surviving the war to become a  tailor, filmmaker and world  renown bird-magician.  Introduction   Ramón Galindo was born on 29 May 1921, in San Juan, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. His parents moved across the border to the U.S.A. when he was still a baby. They opened a tortilla shop in Austin, Texas and Galindo was raised there.   He was just 8 years old when share prices at the New York Stock Exchange collapsed in 1929.    Despite growing up during the decade-long Great Depression, Galindo developed an early interest in magic after his father showed him a trick.   Off to war   When the United States entered World War Two in December 1941, the 20-year-old volunteered for military service in the Texas State Guard. He completed basic soldier training at Camp Mabry, in mid-Texas, under instructors who’d fought in World War One.   A year after...