:36:00
He had his hair cut off
and made into a queue...
you know, one of those long queues at the back of his neck.
:36:06
And he uh...
he had himself made up
o look like a Celestial.
And he became incredibly well-known performing...
:36:15
- Was he a prophet?
..in England.
No, he was a magician. He was a stage magician.
:36:18
- Oh.
- He did these really wonderful shows.
:36:21
And the real Chinese magician,
Ching Ling Foo, got
outraged
:36:25
and he tried
o have a competition with him.
There was headlines in the paper,
:36:29
"Soo fools Foo,"
"Foo sues Soo."
:36:32
You know, they had
this amazing rivalry.
Basically, the guy who wasn't
Chinese kind of won the contest,
:36:37
as this great Chinese magician.
The other thing he did...he actually tried
o catch a bullet in his teeth on the stage.
:36:43
- What? - And marksmen would get up.
They'd have a bullet autographed.
I mean, you would nick with your nail an initial into the bullet,
:36:50
and a rifleman
would fire it at him.
And this Billy Robinson dressed up
as Chung Ling Soo would stand...
:36:55
stand on the stage with a plate
in front of his mouth,
:37:00
and the marksman would
fire the bullet.
And Chung Ling Soo would catch
the bullet in his teeth,
:37:06
and then spit the bullet onto the plate.
- You're shitting me.
- And they would check it.
:37:11
And it would be the same mark that was made by the guy in the audience.
- It was an amazing effect.
- Whoa.
:37:15
It goes back
to the 16th century.
:37:18
What was that book called?
:37:20
There was a book about it called
"The Riddle of Chung Ling Soo"
:37:22
by a guy named Will Dexter, but...
- I'll check that out. - The thing that's amazing
is he's performing one day at the Wood Green Empire Theatre,
:37:29
you know, in London in 1918.
And he's doing this stunt...
they shoot him, he drops to the ground
:37:37
and he's dead. He actually dies trying to catch the bullet
- in his mouth.
:37:42
-No! - To this day, there's still all sorts of speculation
about what really happened.
:37:46
"Was it an attempt
to commit suicide?"
He had some rocky relationship
with his wife Dot,
:37:53
who performed with...
under the name of Suee Seen.
:37:58
But the thing I always remembered about the case...
you know, being a P.I. I guess is that