Procrastinet

Chung Ling Soo: The Bullet Catcher's Chop Suicide

filed under: Idle Chatter

There's a shop on our block, which I'm sure would like to be called an "Antiques Shop" but doesn't quite get there. Maybe it makes it all the way up to "Junque Shoppe." They started up about two years ago, when a dude moved into the empty storefront with a stock of yard sale merchandise piled up on the floor and some folding card tables. Since then they've gradually improved their stock and presentation, painted their name on the awning, gotten some shelves and racks and other signs of increasing permanence, but their prices have stayed outrageous: a dinged-up Squire electric guitar in the front window, for instance, was tagged at $250 when a brand new one actually costs less.

Last week I noticed a big piece of art out front. It was a strange piece, in a Chinese Imperial theme but with the composition and feel of Russian post-revolutionary art. A man in oriental garb was pushing a bemused-seeming woman into a cannon in front of a backdrop that reads "Chung Ling Soo."

I was immediately taken with the piece, but since it was a five-foot-wide original oil painting at a usually overpriced shop, I assumed it would be prohibitively expensive. I really liked the idea of this painting in our new bedroom, but our budget right now can only handle original artwork when it's found on the street (like the one we picked up last week for Max's room - thank you, Park Slope!)

On Sunday it was out front again. On a whim, I stopped in to ask how much it was. If she had said $350 I wouldn't have been at all surprised. $200 was about as optimistic as I was willing to be.

"You mean the BIG one?" asked the girl.

"Yes," I said, "the Chinese-y one." (Chinese-y? What am I, Archie Bunker?)

"That's $75."

"Oh," I said. "Ummm... Oh." I hadn't planned on having to think about actually purchasing the thing. "Hang on," I said, "let me go talk to my wife."

Lisa was out on the sidewalk with Max (and Procrastimom, in town for an impromptu visit). "It's $75," I said.

"Oh," said Lisa. "Ummm... Oh."

"Yeah," I said.

"We shouldn't be buying art right now," she said.

"Yeah. But I just realized I have that much in my personal account." (Yes, I have an allowance. Don't mock. It works.) "I was going to put it into the Scooter Fund..."

"BUY IT," says Lisa. She doesn't like the idea of the scooter fund.

After some more back and forthing with the counter girl, who indicated that no she couldn't move the price any because the piece was on consignment, I bought it.

Pencil marks on the back reveal the painting to be entitled "The Bullet Catcher's Chop Suicidie (Chung Ling Soo)" from 1982. As it turns out, there's a story to it - or at least to the scene it depicts.

Immediately upon getting the thing mounted (it happens to be exactly the width of our new bed) I went to google it. Nothing came up for the painting title, so I checked under "Chung Ling Soo."

Turns out, Chung Ling Soo was a rather famous turn-of-the-century magician. He was really a Scottish American named William E. Robinson, who was a failure as a magician ("Robinson, The Original Man of Mystery") until he shaved his moustache, put on a fake pigtail, and became famous Chinese conjurer Chung Ling Soo:

He never spoke onstage, except an occasional "thank you" in broken English. He made a fortune touring Australia, and returned to New York with over two hours of material.

The climax of his act was the Bullet Catch, a trick that Houdini deemed too dangerous to perform. An audience member would mark a bullet, which was then fed into a gun and fired at Chung Ling Soo, who would catch it and drop it onto a ceramic plate.

For the trick, the marked bullet was palmed by the performer and replaced by a plain bullet, which was loaded into the gun. But the guns were in disrepair, and gun powder from the dummy chamber, meant to provide the bang and flash but not to shoot the bullet, leaked into the main chamber.

Robinson was shot in the chest, cried "My god, I'm shot - drop the curtain!" and died in the hospital the next day.

Later rumors had it that Robinson was in debt and that his wife was cheating with his manager, and that his death was either an elaborate suicide or murder.

The (unnamed) painter of this piece titles it a "Chop Suicide" but shows Robinson as Soo stuffing his assistant - his wife - into the cannon. His face, turned towards us, is cryptic:

More info on Chung Ling Soo is available at Answers.com (through wikipedia), Hat-Archive.com, and various others.

There's a great gallery of his posters, originals of which now fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction, here.

Posted by rjt at September 21, 2005 11:49 AM