Stanley Hunt – Continental Conjuror

This post features a popular magician whose presence on the magic scene spanned three continents. Sometimes when I’m researching these magicians, I check Ask Alexander and get, perhaps, two or three hits. When I scanned for Stanley Hunt, “Bob’s Your Uncle” as the Brits say. There were literally dozens and dozens of references to him and all very complimentary.

An active and popular performer, he began life in England, moved to the United States, and then emigrated to Australia. On all three continents he was admired and beloved. His card represents an ace of spades with a caricature of him inside the large ace, shooting cards from hand to hand. The back is designed by Dougherty Playing Card Company and is identified as a narrow size red angel No. 68 Squeezer. 

His full name was Arthur Stanley Hunt and he was a member of the Magic Circle M.I.M.C. He moved to New York around 1928-29 and quickly made a name for himself on the magic scene. He was a member of the S.A.M., #1714, and later of the I.B.M. 

On April 22m 1930, Hunt appeared on a Ladies’ Night show of the Parent Assembly. Also on the bill that night were William Meyerberg, Past National President B.M.L. Ernst, William Wisnew, Willard “The Man Who Grows,” and others. Hunt presented a vanishing glass of milk, color changing deck of cards and a cut out of a dog who identified selected cards by wagging his tail. He also performed the Magic Stamp Album.

The trick involving the dog deserves additional background. It was created by British magician J.F. Orrin but popularized by Hunt. It soon was offered by Max Holden and called “Reckless Rupert.” The dog sniffs the deck and by wagging his tail, identifies which card or cards were selected. Apparently it was a laugh riot.

 

When not performing magic Hunt was head of the shoe department of Abraham & Strauss, a large department store in Brooklyn. He must have been good because in 1935 he was engaged by Myer Emporium Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia as merchandise manager for all of its shoe departments. Hunt sailed for Australia in June of that year. 

On his way out of town he was hosted by Los Magicos, the Los Angeles magic club in the home of magician and book collector Earl Rybolt. He stayed with the Myer company for 32 years rising up through the ranks to become Chairman of Directors in 1964.

Hunt was a co-founder of I.B.M. Ring 84 in Melbourne and held many positions. He never sought the presidency because of the press of business. Even in retirement he avoided office because half of the year he spent in Melbourne and the other in Queensland where he had a second home in what was called “Surfer’s Paradise” a kind of Miami of Australia.

Ian Baxter, writing in his obituary in The Linking Ring said of him, “Stanley Hunt was skilful and humorous; he realised the power of magic to entertain, and he knew the value of simplicity in effects and methods. Who wouldn’t laugh at his slick rendition of Edward Victor’s “Eleven Card Trick?” And Stanley had a few specialties of his own: The Color Changing Waistcoat; the famous Stamp Album; the Hunt Spoon vanish; his witty dice stacking routine. The list goes on and on.” He was an Order of Merlin member of the I.B.M. with number 11447.

Hunt died October 18, 1977 at the age of 75. Obituaries appeared in all the major magic magazines and the conjuring profession lost another bright light.

The Eng Sung Enigma: Resolving a Riddle for the Chinese New Year!

 Last year, in celebration of the Chinese New Year, we were proud and pleased to bring you a post about Chen Ting Soo, showcasing a vintage throwing card and featuring a genuine Chinese-American magician.  This year, with the same holiday approaching, I turned to a card recently added to my collection featuring "Eng Sung - Chinese Magician."  The piece is a keepsake, featuring a handsome portrait of the performer and an absolutely wonderful graphic of a levitation illusion.  I started to wonder -- Who was Eng Sung?  Little did I know that my curiosity would ignite a fast and furious debate among significant members of the throwing card blogosphere, that quickly and conclusively resolved a mystery.

Deploying the powerful "Ask Alexander" tool, I could only find three articles containing a reference  to Eng Sung, all three of which described the very same performance at a 1934 convention of the Keystone State Federation of IBM Rings. So, whomever Eng Sung was, he didn't perform for very long.  Or, I posited, at least it was an assumed name that some magician only used for a short time.   The reporting contained little detail about his performance, other than to place him on a bill with a number of better-known performers, including Burling Hull, Max Holden and LuBrent.  And then there was the emcee....more on him in a moment.

Could this be the same fellow pictured
on the Eng Sung card?

In studying the card, I noticed was that "Eng Sung" did not appear to be Asian, but, more likely, was part of the then-popular, insensitive tradition of a Western magician playing the role of a Chinese magician.  (On these pages, you'll find references to several such performers, including Chung Ling Soo, Chang,and  Okito.)  This led to the suspicion that he likely performed under one or more other names.

Because the card provides no other information about him -- other than the photograph -- there wasn't much to work with.  But that picture, it seemed to me, was familiar.  It reminded me of a photo of another performer on a card for Namreh the magician, seen here.  Namreh was one stage name for Herman Weber (1900-1953).  "Namreh" is Herman spelled backwards.  And then I looked back at the performance reports .... Herman Weber was the emcee for the only show at which Eng Sung had been recorded as appearing.

"Rice, Rice, Rice" -just one of many Asian-themed
effects that Herman Weber published.  

Could the two be one and the same?  I was quickly able to convince myself of the viability of this theory.  Weber had written quite a bit about performing "Oriental" magic, and included some in certain of his programs.

He had assumed other characters -- like Namreh -- who performed in devils robes.   And the more I looked at the pictures of Namreh and Eng Sung, the more I grew convinced that they looked the same.

So I did what I often do when I need more material for magic research: I turned to our friend Jay Hunter.  I was hoping, most of all, that Jay could come up with another throw-out card featuring the same "Levitation" back, which, if it was for Herman Weber, could close the deal.

Jay dug into his extensive collection, producing a remarkable quantity of material in a very short period of time.   The materials he gathered about Herman included the wizard offering "Oriental Mysteries" and performing in different characters and costumes.

The levitation graphic in a book
authored by Herman Weber.

And then Jay found what I thought would be the silver bullet: he found the "Levitation" graphic, not on a throwout card, but in a booklet published by Weber!  And, Jay added, he had seen this graphic nowhere else.  While he expressed interest in my theory, he had his doubts as to whether the two men appeared to be one and the same, and raised some concerns about the ages of the performers pictured compared to certain biographical facts.

So we called in the rest of the Propelled Pasteboards team.  Tom Ewing -- our resident expert on Pennsylvania-based magicians -- advised that, unbeknownst to us,  he's currently working on a book about Herman Weber, having come across a trove of materials on the Allentown native.   While he had not come across anything about Eng Sung, Tom confirmed that Weber was an exponent of Chinese-themed magic, devoting half of his stage show to that style of performance.  Tom liked the theory, but thought we needed to do more work on the question.  He supplied a vintage ad for the sale of Namreh's show, reproduced here, which makes it clear that a large portion of the show was devoted to  "Oriental" magic.

Enter Gary Frank.  Using nothing but his keen powers of observation (which could perhaps characterized as superpowers) Gary provided a point by point facial analysis of the Namreh and Eng Sung cards -- too long to reproduce here -- that included details such as the "flow of contour" of facial characteristics, "cupids bows," hairline shape, etc.   Suffice it to say that Mr. Frank concluded they were different fellows.  An Internet based facial recognition program into which I fed the two photos reached the same conclusion.  Everyone was sold that my theory was wrong ... even though I continued to hope.

Based on the evidence we had assembled, Mr. Frank theorized that they were pals and knew each other, and he focused on a critical clue: the initial reports of Eng Sung's performance noted that one of his assistants was someone named "Miss Snyder."   Using this clue, I was able to formulate more Ask Alexander searches.  And this time, I hit pay dirt.  Herman Weber did indeed have a pal named Edgar Snyder, who had acted as Weber's assistant at one time.   Reports also noted that Edgar Snyder's wife was an accomplished magician's assistant.

Armed with this new fact, I found our man: Eng Sung was Edgar Snyder (d. 1970), who also hailed from Allentown.  He was specifically identified as such in several magic magazines, but never spelled correctly: writers listed him as "En Sing," "En Sung" and even "Yen Sen."  These misspellings explain why initial searches didn't turn up his identity.   Having completed the record, it turns out that Snyder has a fairly long career in magic, performing a s "Eng Sung" during the 1930s, and later moving to Florida and becoming an officer and important organizing force in the S.A.M.

Here's one description of his performance as "Eng Sung" from the Linking Ring in 1933:

"Then came Edgar Snyder (En Sing) of Allentown, doing Oriental Magic, using large Chinese Blocks, and a production silk act from large tube, finish- ing with a 30 foot silk banner. He also used a new idea in Chinese rice bowl. Mr. Snyder's apparatus has been decorated by a real expert in Chinese art."

Oh, and just as "Namreh" is Herman spelled backwards, Snyder left us a similar clue: Eng Sung and Ed Snyder both have the initials "E.S."