Magician

Following the debut of the Lumière Cinématographe in Bombay, as presented by Marius Sestier on 7 July 1896, several travelling showmen visited Indian cities having swiftly incorporated moving pictures into their act. Best known among them was the magician Carl Hertz, who arrived in 1898, but he was preceded by 'Stewart's Vitograph' which came to Bombay for a week in January 1897, an unnamed showman touring with a W.C. Hughes projector, and early in 1898 the magician 'Professor' Phillip Anderson, who with 'Mlle. Blanche' (his wife Blanche de la Cour) had been touring India and South Asia for a decade. Anderson billed his machine, which is likely to have been a Robert Paul Theatrograph, as the gloriously excessive 'Andersonoscopograph'. Among the films he made were Poona Races and Train Arriving at the Churchgate station (both 1898). He is not to be confused with an earlier 'Professor' Anderson, the world famous Scottish magician Professor (John Henry) Anderson ('The Wizard of the North') of the mid-Victorian era, though this was doubtless the later Anderson's intention. Little else is known about him.

Luke McKernan (revised January 2004)