US UCLA Library Special Collections, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575. Email: spec-coll@library.ucla.edu. Phone: (310) 825-4988
Description
Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds. Prince Ucon, Algerian Wonder Worker, The Man Who Defies Death, proclaimed himself to be the toughest prisoner the jail has ever had and proceeded to show the officers present by eating a series of old keys, bullets, sticking safety pins through his cheeks and shaving with a blowtorch. Following his thirty day conviction he proclaimed to the court, "Judge, do I have to eat that jail food that long or can I have some bolts occasionally - I'm liable to start chewing on the bars unless they give me my iron." Photograph appears with the article, "Razor Blade Menu Eaten," Los Angeles Times, 23 Jan 1936: A2. Prince Ucon sits before a plate piled with bullets. He balances a forkful in one hand and a salt shaker in the other, with the gun offered by one of the jail officers for "dessert" next to his arm. Text from newspaper caption: Disdaining jail fare of morning mush, Prince Ucon, arrested for vagrancy, demanded a heavy diet of nuts and bolts. As he sat gulping down the iron diet a police officer offered his gun to the Prince for dessert. Handwritten on negative: 103 103 Prince Ucon - 1/22/36 Text from negative sleeve: 3460 - Ucon Prince Ucon Algerian Showman arrested for vagrancy "toughest man in Lincoln Heights jail" (see #3649) Actor 1/22/36 [stamped:] Jan 31 1936
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