Okito timeline question

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Richard Hatch
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Okito timeline question

Postby Richard Hatch » June 29th, 2021, 1:22 am

I'm having trouble verifying something David Price wrote about Okito in his MAGIC: A Pictorial History of Conjurers in the Theater. On page 522 he wrote:
"In 1936 and 1937 Theo [i.e., Okito] played sixteen consecutive months in Berlin, dividing the time among three theaters, the Wintergarten, the Scala, and the Plaza."

Usually when Price wrote something, he had documentation to back it up, in the form of playbills, newspaper clippings, etc. I've found him generally reliable. But I haven't been able to find anything to confirm this. If true, it would be interesting, not just because of the long successful run in a single city, but because at the time it was prohibited for Jews to perform in theaters in Germany and Okito was Jewish. Perhaps the theater owners might have argued they thought he was Chinese, but Helmut Schreiber, then head of the German Magic Circle, would certainly have known this and could have reported him to the authorities. I suspect that in this instance, Price was mistaken. Most indicators are that Okito was retired to his home in The Netherlands by then. He implies as much in Okito on Magic. The last record I have found so far of Okito in Germany is in Berlin at the end of 1932 and in Hamburg in February 1933. The Sphinx for October 1935 reports on his performance at the Chiswick Empire in England in August 1935. A notice in the World's Fair for May 30, 1936 has him performing in Rotterdam a few weeks earlier. So if he was in Berlin for 16 continuous months in 1936 and 1937, it would likely have started in the late spring or summer of 1936. I'd love to fill in this gap in his timeline if he was still actively performing.

Bill Mullins
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Re: Okito timeline question

Postby Bill Mullins » June 29th, 2021, 2:57 am

Bill Sachs column "Magic and Magicians" Billboard 5/29/1937
"OKITO, magician, is at the Empire in Brussels, Belgium."

Variety, 6/2/1937 -- a review of the show at the Empire, in Paris, May 24
"Okito's magic garners the best hand in the first half. His string of Oriental mystics are nothing out of the ordinary, but they were presented smoothly. Fishing live goldfish out of the air and the usual escape from a tie-up are the best-liked stunts."

Richard Hatch
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Re: Okito timeline question

Postby Richard Hatch » June 29th, 2021, 3:04 am

Thanks, Bill, clearly he was not completely retired, and if Price's claim of continuous Berlin performances is true, he must have been in Berlin sometime between May 1936 and May 1937, which isn't quite the 16 months claimed (if he was there at all during that period).

Brad Henderson
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Re: Okito timeline question

Postby Brad Henderson » June 29th, 2021, 11:24 am

I was just reading something about this. Could it have been in the Steinmeyer Soo book? It was about okito being able to avoid being detected as Jewish in Berlin.


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