166 East 64th Street New York, NY 10021 Martin Beck, the famous theatrical entrepreneur, was a native of Liptovský Mikuláš, Austria (today Slovakia) who went to school in Vienna and performed Shakespeare with a traveling troupe. In 1883, he and a troupe of actors emigrated to the U.S. Martin Beck worked as a waiter in a Chicago beer garden and in the early 1890s went to San Francisco with the Schiller Vaudeville Company. While there, Beck became friends with the owner of the San Francisco Orpheum Theater and became its manager; when it was bought by Morris Meyerfeld in 1899, he helped Morris expand by acquiring other theaters. Eventually, the Orpheum circuit numbered at least sixty theatres that dominated the variety scene west of Chicago. In the spring of 1899, twenty-five-year-old Harry Houdini met Beck at a beer hall in St. Paul, Minnesota where Houdini was performing. Beck telegraphed Houdini from Chicago: "You can open Omaha March twenty sixth sixty dollars, will see act probably make you proposition for all next season." Houdini wrote at the bottom of telegram, "This wire changed my whole Life's journey." By 1905, Beck was head of the Orpheum circuit organization, which extended from Chicago to San Francisco, a position he held for twenty-seven years. A bald and fat little man known for his undying sense of humor, Beck had achieved fortune and some fame when he moved to New York in 1907 to establish himself as a leading figure in the Broadway theatre. In 1913, he built the Palace Theatre on Broadway, precipitating a war with the Keith-Albee circuit that was resolved when the Palace began taking Keith acts, with Mr. Beck directing the shows and the bookings. Headliners at the Palace included the legendary French actress, Sarah Bernhardt, whose appearances contributed to the early success of the theatre, and Ed Wynn, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Beatric Lillie, Fannie Brice, Sophie Tucker, and many others. The Palace Theatre soon became the Mecca of audiences and the paradise of actors.
He returned to vaudeville in 1932, running the booking office at RKO. In 1934, he brought the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company to America for the first time, ensconcing them at the Martin Beck Theatre. Martin Beck lived in a four-story townhouse at 166 East 64th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues. He was married twice and had two daughters. Mr. Beck died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on November 16, 1940, at the age of about 71 (his exact birth date was never known). More than 400 persons, including leading figures of the theatre industry, attended the funeral service held at the Frank Campbell Funeral Chapel on Madison Avenue. He was buried in the Martin Beck Mausoleum in the Salem Field Cemetery in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn. |
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