In the May 1910 issue of The Wizard, a gossip column set forth William Robinson’s latest approach to publicity. The writer explained that Robinson, who performed as Chung Ling Soo, a racist portrayal of a Chinese performer, “having saturated the press with what he does do, and is going to do, has struck quite a bright idea in getting notices saying what he proposes not to do. One item, he proclaims, will be missing from his performances, that in which he used to allow six men to fire rifles at him when he caught the bullets on a plate. It is a remarkable fact, Chung Ling Soo says, that every conjurer who has performed this trick for any length of time has been shot dead.”
It is widely accepted that performers should be careful when they start believing their own publicity, but perhaps this is one example where that would have been beneficial. Robinson was shot and killed while performing his bullet catch in 1918.
