David Tobias "Theodore" Bamberg (best known by his stage name Fu Manchu) (19 February 1904 – 19 August 1974) was an itinerant magician who traveled with his full evening magic show from the early to mid part of the 20th century.
Bamberg stayed with his grandfather for a year, but was reunited with his father when he fulfilled the postponed contracts in Russia.
[1] After his European contract was through, Bamberg's father was approached by American vaudeville agent Martin Beck.
Here he created exclusive magic tricks for magicians such as Harry Kellar, Frederick Eugene Powell, Bernard M.L.
He constructed a toy theatre and envisioned being the world's greatest magician doing his big illusion show.
[1] Through his father's connections, he met Houdini, Kellar, Horace Goldin, and the other leading magicians of the turn of the 20th century.
Bamberg, as "Syko the Psychic", learned their famous code and played the part of the blindfolded medium divining articles from the audience, solving mathematical problems, and ending with an impressive book test.
He attended performances at the Maskelyne family magic theatre at St. Georges Hall and watched all of the magicians who played there at the time.
For 120 performances, Dante filled the Casino theatre,[4] which impressed a film-distributorship executive named Walter Gaulke.
[2] He was able to use the Fu Manchu name in places like South and Central America, the West Indies, Spanish Morocco, Portugal, and Spain.
[4] Planning on retiring, he was eventually urged to go back to the stage and created a new show called Crazimagicana.
The performance was a quick moving show using blackouts skits that were similar to vaudeville comedians Olsen and Johnson's Broadway revue, Hellzapoppin'.
Bored with doing the same show every night, Bamberg eventually wrote a musical comedy called The Devil's Daughter.
[1] David Bamberg made and lost many fortunes, always living for the moment and never able to save his money wisely.
In March 1972, Bamberg was admitted to the hospital for ten days and had to be put on oxygen; he reportedly stopped smoking.
There he sat facing north in a position from which he could see his shop and read an English newspaper or magazine while sipping his coffee and milk.
Once inside Fu Manchu's Magic Center, he sat alone at a green-clothed table, leaning on his elbows waiting for someone to come in.
According to tradition among magical organizations, members of the Argentine Society of Magicians broke a wand at a memorial services for the last of the Bamberg dynasty.
[1] A young boy in Cuba named Cesareo Pelaez saw shows by Fu Manchu and later, when he came to the United States, formed a magic production in the Bamberg tradition.
On 20 February 1977, in Beverly, Massachusetts, Pelaez aka "Marco" presented Le Grand David and his own Spectacular Magic Company for weekend performances.
[1] The vaudeville-inspired stage show continues to this day, after 35 years, honoring the tradition once carried by Bamberg.
After retiring and settling down in his shop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bamberg spent much of his time teaching and coaching magicians of the next generation.
However, the talent ended there, as Contento was diagnosed with a form of brain cancer and died before his son grew old enough to learn it from him.