Long Tack Sam - Biography

Biography

Long Tack Sam, also known as Tack Sam Long and Sam Tack Long, was the stage name of performance artist Lung Te Shan. He was born in Wuqiao County, an area of Shandong Province in Northeast China that is internationally understood to be the birthplace of Chinese acrobatics. On most official documents over his life in America, he used Sam Tack Long as his legal name.

His origins in China are a bit murky, what is known is that he joined a group acrobats around the turn of the century called the Tian-Kwai and went on world tour. Several years later with unrest in his homeland, Long Tack Sam brought his own troupe of entertainers to America. where he soon found success. His magnificently dressed troupe played went on to play major cities across the globe in the first decades of the twentieth century. Although largely forgotten as a performer today, he was considered one of the "greatest vaudeville acts of the early 20th century". Long Tack Sam was also remembered as a 32 degree Freemason.

His career brought him to the opening act for the Marx Brothers and he even became a mentor to Orson Welles. In 1922 he became a member of Houdini's Magicians Club.

Bennett Cerf once wrote of an incident of theater lore that occurred at the Palace Theatre in New York when entertainer Bert Fitzgibbon became enraged upon learning Long Tuck Sam was billed above him in the night’s card and that he was scheduled to follow the magician on stage. Later that night as Sam was ending his show, Fitzgibbon walked on stage and handed him a bundle of dirty shirts and snarled, “I want these back by Saturday night and go easy on the starch!” As a result of an uppercut, Fitzgibbon had to be carried off stage while the audience roared their approval. It’s unclear on whether or not Fitzgibbon was able to make his appointed curtain call.

After a great deal of performing and traveling the world, he and his wife Leopoldi (known as Poldi), a native of Ybbs, Austria retired to New York City. His last performance was at the Roxy Theater in New York in 1958 at the age of 73. He did his famous water bowl trick, in which he does a somersault and ends standing with a goldfish bowl in his left hand.

After a bad car accident he and Poldi went to Linz, Austria, not far from her hometown. Long Tack Sam died in 1961 at the age of 76. Poldi died two years later at Vienna .