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...

In this post, we discover three more examples of war-themed tricks invented by magicians to keep their acts topical for audiences and capture the national mood during World War Two. Twentieth Century Silks - Victory version ‘Twentieth Century Silks’ was invented in the late 1890s as the new century approached. The effect is generally accepted to have been created by American magician, Theodore Fritz. In it, two large silk handkerchiefs are knotted by one corner. Another silk handkerchief (normally of a different colour) is displayed, before being vanished by the magician. When the two original silks are picked up, the other silk is found to be tied between them. In this wartime version, the magician has two silk U.S. Stars and Stripes flags. The third silk is a Victory flag (yellow, with a large black ‘V’ printed on it). The two U.S. flags are tied together. The Victory flag is introduced and then vanished (by any number of methods). In a patriotic finish, the Victory flag is found kno...

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...