The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam

The easiest way to describe this book is to say it's a graphic novel, although I thought it was so much more than that. In the end, I kind of thought of it as a family scrapbook. It's full of snapshots, document facsimiles, newspaper clippings, film stills, and drawings of the author's family. Ann Marie Fleming was in a position, like most of us, I think, where she didn't know a great deal about her family's history. So, when she discovered that her Great-Grandfather was a world-famous magician named Long Tack Sam, she was understandably intrigued. The book chronicles her search to learn about, reconnect with, and ultimately understand her family. I was fascinated by Long Tack Sam and his truly remarkable life. He was, as Fleming tells show more us, a world-famous magician and acrobat, but he was also a loving husband to an Austrian wife, a strict father to his two daughters and son, a savvy businessman, a performer who knew or worked with the likes of the Marx Brothers and Harry Houdini, a world traveler, and a man whose principles were unbendable. In fact, his principles about the way that Asian people were portrayed in old Hollywood may have resulted in his relative obscurity today, since he refused to allow himself or his daughters to be portrayed on film as opium smokers/thieves/launderers. (An interesting side note, his two lovely daughters were told by Hollywood producers that they were too beautiful to be Asian. Hollywood.) I loved this book of world history focused through the lens of one remarkable family, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to, really, anyone! show less

Ann Marie Fleming's great-grandfather was Long Tack Sam, one of the great international magicians of the late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up Marie had heard many casual references to her great-grandfather but there was little real information to go on. With members of her family spread across the world she would glean bits here and there until finally she decided to find out who he was and document the process in video.

This book is an outgrowth of that process, what Penguin calls a "graphic memoir," that on the cynical side could be seen as a very creative movie-tie in for the Fleming's award-winning documentary. I wasn't aware of it's origins when I started, and it isn't necessary to know that going in either, but I mention it show more because the reviews I have seen for the book only refer to it as a graphic novel. That was my initial reason for searching it out. I'm not so sure I agree with that label, but I'm pressing on with the review anyway.

If you've seen any magic in your life, chances are good you've seen something with Long Tack Sam's influence stamped into it. Seen anyone pull an endless strand of threaded needles from their mouth after having swallowed the needle and thread separately? How about a magician who could form ice from a bowl of tap water? Perhaps you saw that movie The Prestige about a pair of maniacal, battling magicians? There's a scene which mis-characterizes a famous trick where a Chinese magician makes a full goldfish bowl magically appear. All that comes from Long Tack Sam.

Fleming takes her time building the story, her stick figures standing in for herself as she makes her inquiries, with the majority of the book profusely illustrated with stills from her film and the various paper ephemera she dug up in the process. Interviewing family members and respected magicians and the keepers of their history Fleming manages to piece together no fewer that three official stories about her great-grandfather's early days. In one he was traded by his poor parents essentially for a sack of beans; another has him running away rather than face his father after shaming the family name. As the pieces come together what becomes clear is that, above all, Long Tack Sam was a born showman, a storyteller, a modern day shaman.

Snapshots from various family albums and handbills help paint the vaudeville era, which I'm beginning to see come more into vogue in children's non-fiction. (I hope to eventually review a picture book called Footwork that covers the same period as Long Tack Sam but follows the early days of Fred Astaire and his sister Adele.) Sam's travels take him around the world, eventually to Austria where he meets his wife. But Sam doesn't settle down, he keeps to the road, eventually deciding to incorporate his wife and daughters into his act in order to keep them together. Sam continues to wow audiences and becomes an official cultural ambassador for China. Sam and his family make friends in Hollywood, a place where many former vaudevillians are making big money. Sam's daughter screen test for the movie adaptation of The Good Earth but Sam puts his foot down, refusing to allow his daughters to tarnish the image he had spent many years building of beautiful, athletic Chinese people and culture; Hollywood was more interested in showcasing Chinese as dope smoking, murderous criminals. Mao seizes his chain of theatres in China as part of the reformation against Western influences. Racism and bigotry follow Sam and his family wherever they go; having married an Austrian forced them to leave behind their family home when the Nazis came to power. They flee to Italy under fascism scares them to America, then their visas expire and they are forced to go to Shanghai until the Japanese invade and...

If Long Tack Sam hadn't been as famous as he was he would never have lived this incredible globetrotting life. That said, the Long family endured what many around them endured -- the prejudices, the stereotypes, the demise of their livelihood as vaudeville was replaced by other media -- so that in an odd way The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam comes to be both a biography and a mirrored history of the early 20th century, an entirely fascinating document. show less

Unique look at the life of one of the world's greatest performers/magicians whose story was almost lost to history due to subtle racial and cultural barriers. Long Tack Sam, born in Chinese, traveled the world performing a vaudeville-type act. Gracious, fun-loving, handsome, and devoted to his family, he nevertheless faced discrimination (subtly, at times, openly) and boundaries at a pivotal in history (world wars, borders, passports, work visas, etc.) The story is delightfully related by his granddaughter, Ann Marie Fleming ("stick girl" animator). This upbeat tale is a triumph of research (yay for archives), conversations, family stories and seeing, as the author puts it "how we all are connected!" Bonus: history and geography lessons :-)

George Burns called Long Tack Sam the greatest Vaudeville Act he’d ever seen. This cosmopolitan Chinese magician and acrobat could have made the move to Hollywood films—if he had been willing to play the part of a criminal or laundry worker. Researched by his great-granddaughter, this fascinating story follows Sam, his Austrian national wife and his talented children during their rise to fame and subsequent scattering to far ends of the globe while trying to find safe haven during WWII.

This is an illustrated memoir of a filmmaker who travels the world to unearth the story about her great-grandfather, a Chinese acrobat and magician named Long Tack Sam, who was one of the best-known vaudeville acts in the early 20th century. Told in a mixture of cartoons, photos, old ads and newspaper clippings, and comic book stories (which each describe conflicting versions of his early life), the book reads like a wildly annotated family scrapbook. The author discovers the fascinating story of Long Tack Sam's life, who survived wars and racism, whose interracial marriage to an Austrian woman made newspaper headlines in 1908, and who was a worldwide legend in his field, and wonders why her own family and the modern world know little show more about him. Luckily for us and thanks to this book (which is an adaptation of her film on the same topic), we now know a bit more. show less

Why doesn’t the world remember one of the most famous, successful vaudeville acts of the 20th century? Wondering why her great-grandfather, the great Chinese acrobat and magician Long Tack Sam, is lost in history Fleming begins a quest traveling all over the world to find anyone who might remember him and help tell his story. Using a mix of photographs, movie stills, comic-book style cartoons, stick figures, and playbills from nearly a century ago, Sam’s life is carefully, painstakingly told. The funny thing about history is that if you base it on people’s remembrances, you might get different versions. This is exactly what Fleming discovers and she humorously depicts these different retellings with cartoons. The story and the show more format are interesting up to a point. Unfortunately, it begins to become bogged down in details that don’t further the story and is difficult to follow at times because of the layout and format. The storyline focuses more on where he and his family performed and how they got there much of the time. The experience of racism and bigotry in this multi-ethnic family offers some unique opportunities for discussion. Unless you read the afterward you will miss a fun feature that is included that will delight the reader. Recommended. Grades 9-12. show less

When Ann Marie Fleming starts researching her family history she finds out her great-grandfather was the famous Long Tack Sam, one of the first and best-known Chinese conjurers of Vaudeville (who was actually Chinese). Based on her earlier documentary movie, this is an eminently readable book; maybe the magic could have been deeper, but the book makes up for that in other ways.