Trajectory
by David Muller

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Once Muller’s Meats had moved from Centre Street in 1967, the Centre Street buildings really became an afterthought. Henry and Ferdinand were too busy at the new Muller’s Meats to focus on what to do with the Centre Street properties.

On Thursday, August 24, 1967, Henry was on a business trip in Ottawa, meeting with officials at the Canadian Department of Agriculture to try to convince them to give fast-track approval for the new plant.

On his way back to his hotel room in Ottawa, Henry stopped in the hotel lobby and picked up a New York Times. On page 42 was a human-interest story with the headline Collection of Houdini Gear Is For Sale. It was about a man named Joseph Dunninger in New Jersey who had been a friend of Hardeen, Houdini’s brother. When Houdini passed away in 1926, he willed all of his paraphernalia to his brother Hardeen, with specific instructions that the paraphernalia be destroyed upon Hardeen’s death. This proviso was in Houdini’s will because he did not want people in the future to know how he did his stunts and tricks. However, after Houdini’s death, Hardeen needed money, and he sold everything to Joseph Dunninger. This article mentioned that all this paraphernalia was still in its original thirty-six theater trunks in a warehouse in New Jersey.

Henry had certainly heard the name Houdini, but he knew nothing about him. Henry knew nothing about magic. He knew nothing about curating a museum. He knew nothing about catering to the tourist trade. But he thought to himself, I could buy this collection and build a tourist attraction around it in the former Muller’s Meats building on Centre Street.

That evening when Henry returned to Niagara Falls from Ottawa, he showed the article to Bella and told her of his idea to buy the collection and build a museum.

Bella liked the idea and added that Henry should call a friend of theirs in Toronto, an ophthalmologist by the name of Dr. Harold Stein, who had an interest in magic, and ask him what he thought of the idea. On Friday morning, Henry phoned Dr. Stein, who not only loved the idea, but asked Henry if he could be a bit partner in the venture.

Henry decided to contact Mr. Dunninger to try to buy the collection. The article did not give any contact information for Mr. Dunninger; the only reference was that he lived in New Jersey.

Henry called New Jersey directory information – 201-555-1212 – and asked for the phone number of Joseph Dunninger. When the operator responded that a specific city was required in order to look someone up, Henry responded “Newark” because that was the only city he knew of in New Jersey (because that is where the airport is and he had once changed planes there). The operator responded that there was no Joseph Dunninger in Newark; she said there was a Joseph Dunninger in nearby Cliffside Park but his number was unlisted. Henry told the operator that she must give him the number as it was an emergency (it was not!), and after much cajoling, believe it or not, the operator gave Henry the number, even though it was supposed to be unlisted.

Henry then called the number and Dunninger’s future son-in-law, Bruce Gimelson, answered the phone. Bruce had been mentioned in the Times article as the person handling the sale. At the time Bruce was not yet married, but he was dating Dunninger’s daughter Josephine. Henry asked Bruce how much Dunninger wanted for the collection as no price was stated in the article. Bruce responded by asking Henry how much he was willing to pay. Henry responded back that as Bruce was the seller, he needed to give Henry an asking price. Bruce again would not give Henry a price, but he let Henry know that there was a hotel in Las Vegas that was interested in buying the whole collection to set up a museum in their hotel.

Henry told Bruce that he would like to fly to New Jersey to meet that Sunday, and asked Bruce to wait until then before making a decision, which Bruce agreed to. When Henry then told Dr. Stein that he was going to see The Amazing Dunninger, Dr. Stein begged Henry to bring him along, and he did. That Sunday, Henry and Dr. Stein flew to Newark, where Bruce picked them up and took them to Dunninger’s house at 9 Grant Avenue in Cliffside Park.

The stories that Henry and Dr. Stein told of that day would regale friends and family for years thereafter. Dunninger was famous for his mind-reading act. Henry told the story that shortly after they got to the house, Dunninger told Henry that he was writing four digits on a small scrap of paper. He wrote the four digits, folded the paper, handed it to Henry and asked Henry to put the paper into his own pocket. Henry obliged. Dunninger asked Henry what the four digits were, to which Henry responded that he had no idea. Dunninger asked him to think harder, and playing along, Henry said, “2, 8, 6, 4.” Dunninger asked him if he was sure and Henry said he was sure. Dunninger asked Henry to take the paper out of his pocket, unfold it and read the numbers aloud. Henry did. “2, 8, 6, 4!” Henry was truly astonished and not a little bit frightened. He said that for the rest of the day, he made sure never to think of anything because he feared that Dunninger would know what he was thinking.

Bruce and Dunninger took Henry and Dr. Stein to the warehouse where there were thirty-six enormous theater trunks, all marked Houdini. They opened a few at random and saw that they were filled with illusions, paraphernalia both large and small, costumes, cases and cases of posters and photos of all sizes, cases of letters and correspondence, hundreds of films, cases of locks and keys and a myriad of ephemera.

They went back to the house and Henry asked Dunninger if he would be willing to sell the collection to Henry so that Henry could set up a Houdini Museum in Niagara Falls, Ontario. And that is precisely what ended up happening. Dunninger sold Henry the collection for $65,000, payable $32,500 then and there – Henry had brought a blank check with him – and an additional $32,500 upon receipt of the goods in Niagara Falls. Henry had agreed to arrange for the trucking.

That was Sunday, August 27, 1967, three days after Henry had read the New York Times article in that hotel room in Ottawa.

Henry and Dr. Stein returned to Canada that night. During the ensuing weeks, Henry contacted some other friends of his who had expressed interest in making investments with Henry if and when something interesting became available. In the end, Henry took 51%, and the other 49% was divided up between Dr. Stein, Vince DeLorenzo (Henry’s partner at the Cavalier Motel down the street), Abe Bogolmony, Hymie Bogolmony, and Dr. Bernie Blackstein.

On September 29, Muller’s Meats made a delivery of a forty-foot tractor-trailer load of meat on 14th Street in Manhattan. In a unique display of corporate synergy, after the meat delivery the driver went and got the trailer washed out, and headed to Cliffside Park, New Jersey, to pick up the Houdini collection. Upon seeing what there was to load, the driver called Henry and said there was no way all of that would fit in one forty-foot trailer. Henry thus hired a second trailer which was there in New Jersey, and all thirty-six trunks were loaded onto the two tractor-trailers and brought back to Canada.

The trucks arrived to Niagara Falls on Monday, October 2. When the back doors were opened, each of the forty-foot trailers was filled to the roof, which were eight feet high. As soon as they began unloading the trucks, it became obvious to Henry that without Dunninger, it was impossible to figure anything out. Many of Houdini’s greatest illusions had been disassembled for packing and were strewn amongst numerous trunks. One trunk would have a table top and another trunk in a different part of the truck would have the four legs.

Henry called Dunninger and asked him to come to Niagara Falls to help him make sense of what turned out to be over 5,000 items. The problem was, Dunninger did not fly. He would not travel by airplane, because as it turns out, several years previous, he said he had predicted a plane crash and in fact, the plane did crash. Since then, he would not fly. Henry arranged for first-class train tickets for Dunninger, his wife Billie, his daughter Josephine, and the future son-in-law Bruce, and they all came to Niagara Falls, New York, by train. Henry picked them up there and brought them to Canada.

Henry hired tour guides to guide the visitors through the museum. For several summers, even though I was only a kid, I gave guided tours of the museum. To this day, I am able to recite the entire tour by heart. There are still nights when I drift off to sleep and hear, “I AM HOUDINI! THIS MUSEUM, WHICH WAS CREATED AS A SHRINE TO MY MEMORY…”

Henry also had the idea to set up a gift and souvenir store into which one would enter when exiting the museum. He also had an idea to open a magic shop as part of the gift store.

One Sunday, he heard about a magicians’ convention taking place in nearby Hamilton. He decided to go to the convention to try to find a magician to help set up the magic store and to “pitch” magic tricks, that is, to demonstrate the tricks and then sell them to the visitors for the visitors to take home and entertain their friends.

While at the convention, Henry did find a young man who was doing tricks and impressed Henry with his charisma. Henry approached him and asked him if he would be interested in coming to work at the museum full-time to set up and manage the magic shop. He came to Niagara Falls the next day to see the location, and after some discussion, the magician said yes, and they agreed on a salary and that he would start full-time the next Sunday. He did say though, that the next day he was going to New York City to audition for a part in a play on Broadway. He said that if he did not get the part, he would be at the museum on Sunday to begin work, but that if he did land the role, he would have no alternative but to accept it, and thus would not be able to work at the museum.

As history would have it, the man landed the role and never did come to work at the museum. The show was called The Magic Show and the man’s name was Doug Henning.

Henry did end up hiring two great magicians to run the magic shop: Hugo Furney and Ron Conley. They set up the magic store and “pitched” magic to people exiting the museum, who were already in the magic mood.

The main item which was pitched was the Houdini Magic Set, which consisted of a Svengali Deck, Cups and Balls, Nickels to Dimes and a Snap-It. The sets retailed for about six dollars. During those two summers, and thereafter as well, I also worked the magic counter, demonstrating and selling magic tricks to visitors.

The Svengali Deck was a deck of cards in which a guest was asked to choose a card, after which the magician is able to turn the entire deck into the card which the visitor chose. The Cups and Balls was a trick in which the magician makes cotton balls appear to penetrate the solid cups and move through the air from one cup to another. Nickels to Dimes was a trick in which the magician makes four nickels turn into four dimes. The Snap-It or Snapper was a puzzle in which the magician is able to hook a hook onto a rubber band at the end of a tube, but the audience members are unable to do so.

We also sold other magic decks named Mental Photography, the Stripper Deck and the Invisible Deck, which as mentioned earlier was instrumental in getting me my first job on Wall Street.

Other magicians who worked at the magic store in subsequent years were Joe Nickell and Vince Matejka. Later Henry hired someone from Rochester, New York, whose stage name was Dante and whose real name was Barrett Kirkendall. He drove a hearse.

As is commonly known, when Houdini’s mother died in 1913, he was beyond grief. At that time, spirit mediums claimed to be able to make contact with “the other side” and many approached Houdini and asked him if he wanted their services. Seeing them for the tricksters they were, Houdini spent much of his later years debunking such so-called mediums. Houdini himself died on Halloween, October 31, 1926.

I mention this because as a publicity stunt, the museum organized a séance every year on Halloween to try to “reach” the spirit of Houdini.

About a ninety-minute drive from the museum, in Upstate New York, is Lily Dale, an enclave for spiritualism. Many mediums live there full time. Each year, on a Sunday in the early fall, Henry would pack us up in his station wagon and we would drive to Lily Dale for a day of fun and amusement. Henry would hire a medium from Lily Dale each year to preside over the séance.

Many luminaries in the field of magic history were invited, as was the press. Entrance to the séances was by invitation only, but they were well attended and a source of a lot of fun for my father and for our family. Needless to say, the mediums were always debunked, especially by Randi, who for decades made a career out of doing so.

One of the best séances was the one in 1969. The medium that year was Estelle Mark. She put on a great show and the press coverage was enormous and world-wide.

The séances were attended throughout the years by famous magicians, including Penn & Teller, as well as historians of magic such as Jay Marshall, Tom Boldt, Sidney Radner, Fred Pittella, Larry Weeks, Dorothy Young and the Bonnanos, who lived in Houdini’s house in Manhattan. The séances added to the museum’s mystique and fame. They also created an aura around the museum, even during the rest of the year, as an intriguing and mystifying place, an aura that the management did not play down, especially as it added to the number of visitors!

1974 was the final séance attended by Dunninger and his wife Billie. He was frail and passed away the next year. It was also a highlight because Randi escaped from Houdini’s Milk Can. 

That the Muller family made the decision to try to escape the Nazis and how they accomplished it is truly remarkable.

That the Muller family was able to restart their lives in a country whose language they did not speak is truly remarkable.

That the Mullers were able to make a go of it on the farm, starting with almost no capital and knowing nothing about farming is truly remarkable.

That after nine years in their new country, the Mullers were able to move off the farm and start a retail store in truly remarkable.

That nineteen years later, the Mullers had forty employees and had expanded to all of the adjacent buildings is truly remarkable.

That the Muller family was able to buy the N. C. Joseph Ltd. building – whose walls were black with soot – revamp it, and obtain Federal government inspection for the meat business is truly remarkable.

That Henry, at age 34, assembled plots of land down the street and built a motel is truly remarkable.

That Henry read a newspaper article in a hotel room in Ottawa and thought of building a museum in the tourist area of Niagara Falls (to make use of his now empty buildings) is truly remarkable.

Talk about unique. How many Slovak refugee meat packers can you name who over the years had The Amazing Dunninger, Louis Tannen, Al Flosso, Jay Marshall, Amadeo Vacca, Walter Gibson, Ken Silverman, Morris Young, Milbourne Christopher, The Amazing Randi, David Merlini, Doug Henning, Harry Blackstone Jr., Penn & Teller, and David Copperfield all as dinner guests in their home?

It was a thrill.

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