The Even Stranger Case of Ling Look...

 

Previously, I posted an excerpt from The Miracle Mongers and Their Methods, A Complete Exposé (published by Dutton, New York, NY, USA, 1922) penned under Harry Houdini’s name, entitled (my title) “The Strange Case of Ling Look”. Further to a response sent to me by reader Lucy Bond, there are some interesting issues surrounding the tale which call Houdini’s veracity into question.

The story, as you may recall, was a fairly romantic one concerning the music-hall performer “Ling Look” being called to his grave by his brother “Yamadeva”, who pre-deceased him a day or so earlier by rupturing an artery in a poorly-conceived challenge at a Shanghai bowling alley. No doubt the retelling of the tale was supposed to elicit a frisson of spookiness in the readers and, left at that, it’s all well and good. But take a look at this:

 

This is from a British newspaper dated 1881. As you can see, it clearly states that a fire magician “the Great Chinese Salamander Ling Look”, “Lord of Fire, Cannon and Sword”, is performing a week-long stint in Brighton, every evening at 8.00pm. Not bad for a fellow who was buried four years previously at Happy Valley in Hong Kong! As it turned out, this particular gig wasn’t going to be a good one either:

 

Apparently, during the cannon act, a young man accidentally had his head blown off. This resulted in some court appearances including Ling Look’s wife Caroline. (Did she know that he was dead when she married him, I wonder?)

Which leaves us with the question of what is actually going on here?

Of course, the first thing that most HPL fans will acknowledge, is that Houdini was known for hiring ghost-writers to draft tracts to which he would put his name. The well-known incident for Mythos fans is the short story “Beneath the Pyramids”, aka. “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”, which HPL wrote and which was published in “Weird Tales” magazine in 1925. So from the word ‘go’ the question of authorship has to be raised.

Second, as he states in ‘his’ retelling, he had no firsthand connexion to the events; he says that promoter Dean Kellar told him all at a meeting in Atlantic City in 1908, and that he heard the story again (as told by Kellar) at a dinner for the Society of American Magicians in 1917. Kellar was in charge of the troupe that had performed in Shanghai, of which Ling Look and his brother Yamadeva were a part. As far as travelling shows are concerned, losing two headlining acts in swift succession must have been devastating, so perhaps relating this tale was Kellar’s way of winning something back from a disastrous tour, as well as adding a cachet of mystery to his stable of performers?

Next, we have to ask ourselves exactly which Ling Look was it who died in 1877, and which one ended up before a judge on charges of manslaughter in 1881? Again ‘Houdini’s’ report tells us that “Ling Look” was the stage name of a fire magician from Budapest whose real name was Dave Gueter. Dressing up as a Chinese magician was a way of ensuring some anonymity for the performer as well as allowing certain tricks involving the disappearance and re-appearance of the magician to be facilitated (one performer in heavy make-up looked much the same as another from the audience’s perspective). The Orientalist fantasies of the Mystic East could be employed to render the act exotic for a western crowd of the gaslight era. In short, the Chinese aspect of the performer and his act was just a shtick, a gimmick to allow him to show off his skills.

Those skills are what Houdini dissects in the book The Miracle Mongers and Their Methods, A Complete Exposé: he rigorously details all of the acts – particularly fiery stage acts – of which he has heard or which he has witnessed personally. It’s clear from his explanations, that fire magicians across the ages have taken the same basic principles and worked them up into acts that have in turn been adopted and adapted by later performers, with varying degrees of notoriety and success. From this, we can infer that the stage persona of “Ling Look” did not die with Dave Gueter; someone else took over the role. Probably someone to whom Dean Kellar sold the rights: like I said, Mr. Kellar was most likely looking for a way to make up some lost ground after that disastrous Shanghai tour!

The legacy left behind by Ling Look (whoever he was!) and others of his ilk is an effective and exciting trope which is easily adapted for those whose Cthulhu-gaming involves the music-hall rowdiness and illegality of Victorian London. The notion of the sinister Chinese stage magician gave us Sax Rohmer’s ‘Fu Manchu’ and has been effectively utilised in such vehicles as “The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao” (George Pal, 1964), “The Illusionist” (Neil Burger, 2006) and the Doctor Who story, “The Talons of Weng Chiang” (David Maloney, 1977).

My thanks again to Lucy Bond for drawing my attention to this fascinating bit of historical detective-work. She recommends that anyone interested in doing some more research into the music-hall scene should check out this book: British Music Hall – an Illustrated History by Richard Anthony Baker. I know I’ll be looking for a copy!