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...

In this post, we discover three examples of war-themed tricks invented by magicians to keep their acts topical for audiences and capture the national mood during World War Two.  Doomed Dictators For this variation of a ‘torn and restored’ trick, three printed papers are shown by the magician. One features Germany’s leader Hitler, another depicts Italy’s leader Mussolini, and the third shows Japan’s leader Hirohito. Calling on the audience to ‘boo’ the images of these three dictators, the magician rips up the papers to show his disdain for the Axis Powers. But, in a patriotic nod to the Allied victory hoped for by the audience, the magician restores and transforms the papers, forming a poster of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  Raw materials to manufacture magic tricks were hard to get hold of as World War Two dragged on. Even paper was rationed. Nonetheless, London-based magic dealer Lewis Davenport & Co. managed to get hold of sufficient quantities of paper...