Outwitting Herrmann’s Manager
Kit Clarke
(Copyright by Harry Houdini.)
It appears that at the present time exponents of the ancient and honorable art of magic tour the country for the purpose of inspecting choice bits of scenery, investigating the menu's of our important hotels and making an elaborate public display of their fashionable garments and swell automobiles.
It was otherwise when I entered the game way back in the seventies, our single purpose in those stimulating times was directed towards the accumulation of shekels and it was gelt, gelt and gelt up and down and all the way through. And best of all we got it, too, in copious lumps, more especially during the first season when I was manager for Prof. Gus Hartz, the same Hartz who now controls the Euclid Opera House at Cleveland, Ohio. Gus and his elder brother Joe maintained a store for the sale of magical paraphernalia at the northeast corner of Broadway and 13th Street, in the building roofing Wallack's Theatre, and adjoining the theatre entrance. The two brothers prospered greatly in their business but for some reason unknown to me, dissolved partnership, disposed of the store and separated, each determined to tour the country independently and devote himself to giving magical entertainments, I became manager and equal partner with Gus.
MANUFACTURERS OF TRICKS
Having been manufacturers of tricks they both were equipped with a most complete outfit while the advertising material devised by myself was of the finest, most diversified and attractive quality, and while Alexander Herrmann was a formidable competitor, our splendid printing was far superior to his and enabled us to "outbill" him at any time should we come into active or close competition. Our opening dates were in New England, and afforded us little reason for congratulations because, in spite of liberal advertising we found the receipts far below our anticipations, a condition not rare even in this progressive age. Indeed during the first two weeks of our tour not a dollar of profit resulted, the receipts barely covering expenses, moderate as they were. This of course was disappointing but we lived in hopes of better things to come with never a thought of striking our colors and therefore continued to "whoop it up" heavier than ever.
MAGICIAN TOM ALLYNE
We were playing in Hartford, when the announcement of a magician named Tom Allyne, fell into my hands and of course interested me. This fellow was a fakir of the foremost rank and ran a "skin" gift show with monumental audacity and hitherto had escaped with a clean hide as well as money in good sized doses. He was announced to appear at Rockville, some 25 miles from Hartford, on that evening and I determined to run over and inspect his little game. His circulars announced that an immense array of valuable presents would be given away to his patrons, promising a gift to every person who came to his show and gave high flown assurance that his performance was the most astonishing ever seen upon any stage. In this latter respect he spoke the truth as you will note and as a house literally packed with people also unanimously agreed.
I got into the hall a few moments before 8 o'clock and found it difficult to get standing room, the crowd was so great, each one of whom had paid 50 cents admission, but one price being a feature, and I estimated the receipts to be about five hundred dollars. Upon surrendering his ticket at the door the auditor was handed a small card upon which a number had been printed and bearing the words: "Preserve this card as it entitles the holder to the present, corresponding to the number drawn."
I held on to my card, and like all of the crowd began wondering if I would get a gold watch, a diamond ring, which was my preference, or something which I did not want, and the latter is just what all of us got.
Presently a bell rang, the curtain rose and "The Great Allyne" arrayed in ordinary street dress stepped upon a stage bare of everything except a table and two kitchen chairs, and without any introductory address proceeded with his entertainment, during which "wonderful" performance he perpetuated the hat and dice trick, followed by the hat and coin trick in which he produced a few coins from the air and you could hear them drop into the hat. Then he borrowed a watch from some person in the audience, broke it up, inserted the remains into a funnel over a revolver and firing into the air, the watch being found in the very center of a nest of eight boxes. The magician does not live who cannot perform these feats with both hands tied and himself chloroformed. For about twenty minutes Allyne performed similar relics of ancient magic when he stepped to the kerosene footlights and announced that the curtain would drop in order to display the many gifts upon the stage, and he added as this would occupy some little time the audience was invited to remain patient until the display was completed.
It waited, and for some time it was the nicest behaved big crowd that could be desired, but after an hour of waiting a brave few began to manifest signs of impatience and finally two or three men went back of the curtain merely to investigate progress and almost immediately one man stepped before the curtain and reported progress by shouting in an heroic voice: "The skunk has run away and we have all been robbed."
And this was the exact fact, for Allyne had quickly packed his few tricks and all the money in a bag and with a full hour's start was now out of harm's way and bound for "fresh fields and pastures new," while the big crowd unloosed a bunch of hilarious cusses, that rent the air and afforded me an opportunity to inspect the finest assortment of genuine "suckers" I have ever seen.
MISLEADING PUBLICITY
Allyne followed this game for a long time, changing his name on his circulars and variously masquerading under the names of "Lloyd the Wonder," "Dr. Cross," "Henry Little," "Prof. Sergent," "The French Major," and various other titles, and upon every occasion of his appearance, a good horse attached to a buggy stood near by the rear entrance of the hall ready for instant use. Finally Allyne met with disaster and fell into the clutches of the law at Lockport, N. Y., managing however to get bail, he promptly skipped out into the distant west, and resumed the sport, but his finish never came to my knowledge.
This incident got mixed up in my thinking cap and on returning to Hartford, I suggested to Hartz that we at once install a gift proposition feeling sure that if a skin game could draw big houses an honest gift show could do so also. It was a safe deduction that if such a rank robber as was Allyne, with no reputation and the poorest sort of printing, could pack theatres it was certain that gifts were what the public wanted, even if they were hoaxed in their search for presents.
AUGUSTUS F. HARTZ
HARTZ' GIFT SHOW DEBUIT
The week following Hartz was booked for Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Mass., and I ran ahead to work up the town. On our opening night we actually gave away gifts to the value of two hundred dollars and embracing only articles of known and substantial value such as hams, barrels of flour, caddies of tea and similar useful goods which had been bought from the best known house in the city whose name was announced in all our advertising. The hams were of the very best sugar cured variety and I never saw better pleased people than those who came up to the stage and carried away a twenty pound fine ham, and no hams of any grade ever possessed such voluble tongues of praise as did these for they inculcated such lip advertising as insured us a large business.
Fully two-thirds of our first night receipts was expended in gifts but it was a great investment for we gave away forty fine hams, ten barrels of our and many other articles, and on the morning following, the delivery wagon of the foremost grocer in the city called at the addresses of the lucky card holders and unloaded a barrel of flour, while upon both sides of the wagon could be seen in big letters these alluring words:
EXTRA DELIVERY
of a
Barrel of Flour
given away last night by
Prof. Hartz,
the famous magician.
COME TO NIGHT
AND GET ONE YOURSELF
At Mechanics Hall.
Wherever a barrel of flour was unloaded a crowd of people quickly gathered and this, with the neighborly tongue advertising disseminated by the receivers of hams, tea, coffee, arm chairs, dress patterms, stockings, orders for shoes, hats and similar articles simply set the town afire with the result that by noon on the following day every reserved seat for that night had been sold, and just to strengthen the show we increased the outlay for prizes by one hundred dollars and included an oak set of bedroom furniture.
LEGITIMATE PUBLICITY.
This set of furniture was displayed on the sidewalk before the hall during the day with the bill of sale (amounting to sixty dollars) attached, and which somebody was sure to get for fifty cents. That night our receipts were nine hundred dollars. A tremendous chunk of good luck fell upon us In giving away that set of furniture and nothing which we could have devised would have added so much io the popularity of Hartz in that community as did this incident. Our method of giving away things was simply placing duplicate numbers in a hat, calling to the stage a little girl eight or ten years of age who, upon being blindfolded, drew the numbers from the hat which was painted upon a large banner and suspended from the flies, and the holders of corresponding numbers received the prize. This was the very essence of open and fair dealing but of course it was a lottery, yet there were no stringent laws against lotteries in that day and we were not molested at any time.
The big stroke of good luck to when I have referred came in the number drawn by the child which resulted in the set of furniture being given to a young widow with three children whose husband had been accidently killed and who was known and highly esteemed by every person in Worcester, and when she approached the stage with her card she was greeted with cheers. The following morning the furniture was loaded upon a wagon, and followed by some two dozen lusty-voiced boys who shouted along the entire way ("plants" guaranteed a free ticket to see the show) the set was placed in the widow's home, and during the day it was inspected by every housekeeper within walking distance.
TRIUMPHANT MARCH BEGINS
Was this a good advertisement? Why, my dear sir, the Hartz Gift Show simply owned the city of Worcester from that moment, and when we reached Providence, we were welcomed with open arms. Our two weeks in Worcester brought us a net profit of nearly three thousand dollars and the news of our fair and square methods resulted in our receipts in Providence far surpassing Worcester during the two weeks we played there. Of course gifts became our strong" card after this, while magic took a quiet back seat—nevertheless Hartz gave a splendid performance, one which gave universal satisfaction and only added to the general good results. We toured New England for many weeks and always played in towns close together, not merely for the short journeys but in order to secure the benefit of the good reputation that came to us everywhere, for the good news invariably travelled ahead of us and the nearer the towns the better was the result.
Our twenty-two weeks in New England rewarded us with a comfortable wad of nearly forty thousand dollars when we entered New York State where our business continued to be very large, larger than it had previously been because of the sale of extra numbers which came about in response to many requests for such. I had a man in the theatre supplied with extra numbers which he sold at fifty cents each, and the nightly sale exceeded the entrance fees one hundred dollars, frequently, and occasionally the sale of these extras paid for all of the gifts of that night, enhancing our profits correspondingly.
GIFT SHOWS GALORE
A success like this could not well be concealed and very soon every magician, and every man who could pull a string and make a card rise from the pack or pull a rabbit from the coat of a "plant" in the audience started a gift show until the country was flooded with them but the great majority were unadulterated "skins" whose gifts usually consisted of lead pencils, brass jewelry and trash of all kinds, consequently they soon disappeared. In many instances, notably in Ohio, I found that where such shows had preceded us it injured our business at the opening, but our methods quickly established confidence, traffic was good, and packed houses the result.
We were well into Ohio, and the end of our splendid season was approaching but not the excitement, not by any means, for that gay event blossomed upon us in Cincinnati. At that period Cincinnati was quoted as the "Queen City of the West," but one of its poorest show towns. I think it was the last week in May, we were booked at the leading theatre in the city, the Grand Opera House, under the management of my portly and cheerful friend Bob Miles. As the city needed stirring up I ran into it two weeks ahead of our opening in order to start a little propaganda on our behalf and for this purpose called upon my old friend Phister (dramatic editor of the Commercial and who died recently). I told Phister that I was bringing Hartz to the Grand Opera House on such a date, whereupon he annihilated me with amazement by information that Herrmann was to appear at Woods Theatre, directly opposite the Grand, during the same week as Hartz.
ALEXANDER HERRMANN IN 1878
PARALIZING EFFECT
For about eleven seconds I was paralyzed, but that was all, and then I became normal with a scheme which I carried out to the letter and when we departed from the Queen City Hartz carried away Herrmann's scalp, who fell by the wayside with a heavy thump, while we had the glory and better still all the "gelt."
All of which I attribute to the fact that I knew Herrmann's business manager much better than did his employer, his habits, manners, ability and personal traits and I determined to take advantage of this knowledge and pound him, and of necessity his principal, to the consistency of raspberry jam. The first step in this siege was to assemble myself in my room at the St. Nicholas Hotel and write a bill exploiting Hartz's Gift Show In the most extravagant language at my command, and while I never claimed the possession of great wisdom it was certain that I could write a bill as heavy and attractive as any man in the business. And on this particular occasion I tore loose and just ripped out all the potent adjectives in the English language and bestowed them upon the Colossal Hartz, then added an array of gifts of a quality and value to have wrecked Rockefellers' fortune of the present day. I took this copy to Mr. Porter, superintendent of the Commercial job office, instructed him to set it up in Gothic, the blackest type in a printing office, and give me a proof as quickly as possible. On the following day this proof was ready and it was a corker. "Now," said I, "lay that form upon the stone with the proof right side up beside it" and hold it for orders, which was done. And that quaint little trick spilled the beans for my good friend Herrmann, for just what I had foreseen and had prepared for followed. In a day or two Herrmann's man, whose name was Nick Roberts, sauntered into the office, read my proof with the date, and at once wired Herrmann suggesting that he give gifts. Herrmann, for the first and only time during his life, adopted the suggestion and Roberts at once flooded Cincinnati with quarter sheets announcing that the great Herrmann had decided to incorporate the giving away of gifts with his entertainment, and this was precisely the thing I was fishing for and now I had my fish securely hooked.
SUPERIOR SHOWMANSHIP
When Roberts had the town covered and imagined he had already won a glorious triumph, not a single circular had I distributed, and I ordered Mr. Porter to break up my bill and return the type to their cases without printing any and I would pay the freight, which was done. Then I did some more thinking; I knew perfectly well that Herrmann was monumentally a more experienced and more talented performer than Hartz and thought that even with his gift affair he might beat us out and that in any fair and open competition Hartz would be wiped out. But I was young and energetic and concluded that I was eternally opposed to the wiping out doctrine, and determined to hold a flag-raising festival of my own. With this object in view I called upon the head of the Police force and explaining my great esteem for the police force of the city deliberately offered one-half of our receipts for the benefit of the police during the entire week of Hartz's appearance. There were no conditions attached to my offer, no concealed strings, but it was simply and purely an open and generous contribution to the splendid police force of the city who were not to be put to the expense of a single dollar, and the good chief swallowed the bait, hook, sinker and all.
POLICE SELL TICKETS
When I walked out I carried his written agreement that the police were to sell tickets at one dollar each, and were to retain one-half of all the money received, but were not to have any of the proceeds of the box office on the ground that it would not be much anyway, and also that the theatre had an interest in these receipts and I had no authority to grant any outside interest in the same. It was also agreed that no public announcement of the benefit was to be made until four days before our opening night, as I did not want the opposition to discover the game and try to upset it. With this signed agreement in my pocket I was the most contented young fellow you ever saw for it nailed Herrmann to the floor and I felt that my next move would fill his soul with burning agony. It did, for when our advertisements appeared side by side in the newspapers Herrmann's occupied nearly a column making his leading attraction a long array of gifts, while the space I had bought was just four inches and simply asserted that the Colossal Hartz, Instructor of all Magicians, relied solely upon his monumental talent as the World's Foremost Conjuror to delight and gratify his audiences, and that he could not descend to the degraded method of some magicians who sought notoriety by promising to give away cheap and trashy gifts to people who did not want them but solely for the purpose of inveigling some people into the theatre.
HELP, HELP, POLICE
Thus Hartz was at once placed upon the top round of dignified self-respect while Herrmann went down with an awful crash, and when on the following Wednesday the Police benefit was announced the fate of Herrmann the Great was sealed. And just as I had foreseen the police did a big business and every man began to peddle tickets with relentless energy. Every saloon in the city was held up for at least ten dollars worth, while the lady houses, of which there were many, coughed up for from fifty to a hundred tickets at a dollar a cough, while no keeper of a store of any kind was allowed to escape. Was it a success? Betcherlife it was. The sale of tickets made by the police aggregated about twenty thousand dollars, not half of which came to the theatre, but the money did, and the box office took about six thousand dollars during the week. Thus the gross receipts were twenty-six thousand dollars which I believe is the largest week's business ever done by any magician anywhere, and when we departed from the "Queen City" Hartz and myself divided about twelve thousand dollars as a reward for our week's celebration and excitement.
I do not know Herrmann's reward but he gave the same number of performances as we did, seven night and three matinees, and I have every reason to believe that one hundred dollars each performance is a liberal estimate of his receipts.
HERRMANN'S GOOD NATURE DEMONSTRATED
Herrmann was a very fine fellow, genial, contented, a great raconteur and sociable to a degree and we often met afterward and in discussing the Cincinnati jubilee both of us always reached the same conclusion—that his downfall was due entirely to the utter incapacity of his illiterate, offensive and unbusinesslike manager, a fact which I knew at the beginning and of which I availed myself, but which Herrmann discovered when it was too late and greatly to his loss in dignity, prestige and money. Herrmann endeavored to have me enter his employ and offered me three times the salary he was paying his man but when I told him that my average daily income was more than the weekly salary he had proposed the matter quickly dropped.
OFFICE HOURS FOR FIGHTING
An interesting little side issue in this magic battle comes to memory in a verbal message transmitted to me by Roberts, conveying the information that he had fully determined to "lick me like hell" on sight. At once I sent him a written note naming my office hours and assuring him that I should always be present during those hours and adding that I would rejoice greatly to stand by and watch the well deserved licking and note its effects upon the licked, and finally hoped it might be administered in first class style. I think he was too much engaged in gin guzzling and patronizing lady bazaars to carry out his design but I am quite certain that if the promised licking was inflicted I never found it out.
The actual net profits of the Hartz Gift Show season approximated eighty thousand dollars and at its conclusion, Hartz retired from magic, went to Cleveland, bought the lease of the Euclid Opera House, the finest theatre in the city and one of the finest in the country, and he has lived there in prosperity ever since. I must add that I have never been associated with a finer man that Gus Hartz, a man of charming manner, most equitable temperament, the very soul of integrity and under all conditions the perfect gentleman.
KIT CLARKE
Originally published in the M-U-M in Vol. 6, No. 54, in New York, September 1917.
