This film is part of Free
Samson Junior
A five-year-old strongman demonstrates his credentials for the camera and assembled onlookers.
Overview
The "Infant Hercules of Deepcut", aka five-year-old prodigy John Mann, is the (super)hero of this winsome newsreel. John showcases a succession of 'amazing stunts', from lifting improbably heavy weights with his teeth to acting as a 'human anvil', balancing a large rock on his stomach while an older boy beats it with a hammer. Questionable as news, this story nevertheless had the kind of ready popular appeal the newsreels lapped up.
The Sandow referred to in an intertitle ("Sandow please note!") is Prussian-born Eugen Sandow, considered the father of modern bodybuilding, who took up residence in Britain in the early 1900s and ran a profitable business from Holland Park, dispensing tips and advice to legions of admirers. We'll probably never know what the great man made of his young challenger - Sandow died aged 58 just a few months after this film was originally shown.
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