Magic at War

On the 2 March 1942, less than three months after the United States entered the Second World War, the Stage Door Canteen opened beneath New York’s 44th Street Theatre. Run by the American Theatre Wing, it offered Allied servicemen free food, dancing and entertainment, much of it provided by volunteers from the theatrical profession. Producer Lee Shubert provided the basement without rent and theatrical unions helped convert it. The room measured only forty by eighty feet and could accommodate about 500 people at a time, so servicemen were admitted in shifts. On busy nights more than 2,000 passed through. Actors waited tables, hostesses danced with the men and performers appeared on stage without fee. Among the famous faces involved were Katharine Hepburn , who danced with servicemen, and the young Lauren Bacall , who volunteered as a hostess before becoming one of Hollywood’s best-known stars. For men accustomed to seeing such people only on a cinema screen, the informality was part o...

Snippet: In this short post, we explore a snippet of a war-related story about an African magician, Prince Ali Raji.     Before becoming a magician, George Bondinei served as a lieutenant in the German military, presumably the army.   Pre-World War One, he was likely living in one of Germany ’ s African colonies, such as Togoland, Kamerun (Cameroon), German Southwest Africa (modern-day Namibia) and German East Africa (comprising present-day Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi). The Germans recruited soldiers from their colonies to fight the Allies there, while some also served on the Western Front.       After the war ended, Bondinei appears to have made his way to America, where he studied conjuring, briefly, with William Davis Le Roy (or Leroy). Le Roy ran a shop and “School of Magic” in Boston, Massachusetts from 1893 through to his death in 1919.   Post-war, Bondinei toured theatres as Prince Ali Raji–the African magician. He likely started off on America...

In two world wars, magicians offered to make soldiers, submarines and even battleships disappear. Some proposals went little further than theatrical promises. Others were taken seriously enough to be tested by the military. Among the most remarkable was the work of Maximilian Toch, an American chemist and amateur magician whose camouflage designs were applied to actual warships. Maximilian Toch, magician and camouflage designer (Source: Wiki Commons) Invisible warships On 15 September 1915, the London newspaper Globe carried an intriguing report beneath the headline ‘Invisible Warships’. The United States, still neutral in the European war, was experimenting with ways of concealing its battleships from enemy observation. American warships were reportedly being painted in irregular spirals and contrasting colours to confuse observers about their outlines. In one experiment, the silhouette of a submarine had been painted onto a destroyer, complete with a representation of a periscope on...