HUBERT'S VS. HUBER'S

Hubert's Museum & Flea Circus, c. 1960, as we remember it      (via Showhistory.com)

We were rather shocked recently to learn that for many years we've been hoodwinked by a little "t." 

When the Houdini books tell us he played "Hubert's Museum" on 14th Street in New York City, we always felt fairly confident this was the predecessor to the famous Hubert‘s Museum & Flea Circus on 42^nd Street, the place where we misspent a significant chunk of our  youth. And which we have lionized in our Ghosts of Magic posts.

So now comes mean old Showhistory.com to tell us that there was no “t” in the name of the 14^th Street establishment! TKO’d by a typo!

Houdini played at the 14th Street location at age 17                                                                 (via Showhistory.com)

So was there any connection between Houdini at Huber’s and anyone at Hubert’s?

Yes! There was an ‘-ini” connection! Slydini, who changed his name to that from Tony Foolem so he could be more Houdini-like, played Hubert’s. In addition to being one of the three great “-ini’s” of magic history, he was a personal friend and hero, and taught us how to do his incomparable Coins Through The Table. Here he is, in all his glory, doing the act which our late friend Presto re-imagined and performed until the last days of Hubert’s:

By the way, we were delighted to read in Bruce MacNab’s well-done Metamorphosis the long-whispered tale that the first of the “-ini’s” was actually an “in-eye.” In other words, Harry originally pronounced his stage name “hoo-dinn-eye.” More on the “-inis” in future posts.

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