Background
His father had been court magician to King William III of the Netherlands making Okito the sixth generation in a family of outstanding magicians known as the Bamberg Magical Dynasty.
His father had been court magician to King William III of the Netherlands making Okito the sixth generation in a family of outstanding magicians known as the Bamberg Magical Dynasty.
Born in the Netherlands, Bamberg performed under the name Okito which was an anagram of Tokio (Tokyo). As a young boy, Theo Bamberg nearly drowned while ice skating. The accident left him almost completely deaf and as a result he performed entirely in pantomime.
As a young man, inspired by a performance of the great French magician, shadowist and mimic Felecien Trewey, Bamberg developed a shadowgraphy routine which he performed professionally, beginning in his early teens.
In 1893, Bamberg created his first Japanese-style act in Berlin at the age of eighteen. Success was virtually immediate, but he eventually abandoned the show to elope with the theater manager"s daughter.
When he returned to performing, Bamberg altered his Japanese act to become a Chinese-style act to better facilitate a new illusion he had designed. Unlike William Ellsworth Robinson who performed as Chung Ling Soo, Bamberg didn"t make an attempt to hide his European identity.
Bamberg and his family eventually moved to The United States of America where, beginning in 1908, Okito worked as an off-stage assistant/advisor and on-stage feature in the shows of illusionist Howard Thurston.
On the Thurston show, he was billed as "Europe"s Greatest Shadowist."
In 1909 he sold his Okito act to a Brooklyn magician and plumbing contractor, West.J. "Doc" Nixon. The company was the primary representative of the German firm of Carl Willmann. While minding the store and toying with a pillbox, Bamberg invented his famous Okito box used to perform coin magic.
Eventually, Bamberg returned to the road (playing vaudeville and variety theatres), selling his interest in the shop to Klein.
Bamberg"s skills were such that existing handmade props created by Bamberg are highly prized by collectors today. Following a South American and European tour in 1932, Theo decided to settle down and he returned to the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, David had established himself in South America and persuaded his father to come and visit him. Okito did so just as the Nazis invaded Belgium and the Netherlands.
As a result, all of his possessions were either confiscated or destroyed.
Squash Publishing is scheduled to release an anthology of selected Okito tricks, illusions, reminiscences and his never-before-published hand shadow routine.