Horace Goldin, was born as Hyman Elias Goldstein the son of Emmanuel Goldstein, a Jewish fruit grower, on 17 December 1873 in Vilnius. Now the capital of Lithuania, it was then part of Russia. His father emigrated to join his brother in the US about 1881, leaving his family behind until he could provide for their passage. Hyman eventually arrived in Nashville Tennessee in 1889 where his parents ran a store. He had been fascinated by conjuring ever since watching a Gypsy magician when he was a boy and in 1894, he took the bold step to quit working as a travelling salesman and become a professional magician.
Hyman adopted the stage name Horace Goldin, and began working in cheap dime museums and similar venues. After the English conjuror Herbert Albini taught him his clever version of the ‘egg in bag’ trick, Goldin’s career prospered but his first major success was with an illusion called Dreyfus Escapes from Devil’s Island, based on the notorious French case. Throughout his career Goldin loved publicity and often linked his illusions with topical events
When he was five, Goldin had slipped and fallen into a well and the harrowing accident left him with a stammer. After watching his act in New York, the caustic critic Alan Dale criticized Goldin’s poor speech and Russian accented English. He advised people going to the show to stuff their ears with cotton wool as only then could they enjoy the promising young magician’s performance. Stung by the criticism, but ever practical, Goldin hired two assistants and devised a novel non-speaking act with quick-fire tricks performed to a musical accompaniment.
Goldin’s ten-minute turn at the Brooklyn Music Hall in October 1900 was distinguished by its speed and smoothness. He rushed out, pulled a bowl of fire from a scarf, blasted a handkerchief from the end of a rifle, then found it tucked in his collar. From a cone of paper came a live kicking rabbit; from a water-filled tub, into which eggs were thrown, four ducks emerged.
His female assistant stood in a framework cabinet, covered to her waist by a drape. Goldin entered a wire cage on a pedestal, pulled down curtains at the back, sides, and front. His male assistant donned a red robe and a devil mask and fired a pistol. The girl disappeared. Within seconds, she came running from the back of the theatre and up to the stage. Another pistol shot caused Goldin to vanish from the cage, and when the devil took off his disguise, he was revealed to be Goldin. Not a word was spoken.
Following these illusions, Goldin was signed for the Keith circuit of theatres and added more eye-catching marvels to his act. He caught goldfish at the end of a line flicked out over the heads of the audience. In the closing illusion the magician flourished a bedspread-sized cloth and held it up between his raised hands. A whistle blew offstage, three policemen hurried out and pulled away the cloth to reveal …. no one. One of the officers tossed off his cap, wig, and coat. Hey Presto, he was Goldin in evening clothes, who took a bow.
On the strength of his American run, Goldin was booked for London. He first performed at the Palace Theatre on 8 July 1901, to great acclaim. He returned to the Palace in 1902 and annually for the next three years, also touring the provinces and the continent. He was invited to perform for King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra at Sandringham on 12 December 1902. The King presented him with a diamond tiepin. Over time Godin performed four times for the King and Queen and was billed as the ‘Royal Illusionist’, and ‘The King of Magicians and the Magician of Kings’, he also appeared before US presidents Harding and Wilson.
In June 1904 at his annual performance at the Palace Theatre, Ellis Stanyon the editor of the magazine Magic who lived in West Hampstead, said the show was unique and the most costly ever seen in Britain.
In addition to America and Europe, Goldin toured Africa for five months in 1912, and then the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand, during the years 1915–18. But it ended in disaster in Hawaii in July 1918 when the small boat transferring him to the off-shore liner, sank. All his equipment and his earnings, reputedly in gold bars in a strong box, were lost. He went back to America and obtained loans to work with a smaller act.
In 1921 after hearing about PT Selbit’s ‘Divided Woman’ illusion, Goldin devised his own version of Sawing a Woman in Two, which he first presented in New York just before Selbit arrived from London. In Goldin’s performance the halves of his assistant were apparently separated after the sawing, whereas in Selbit’s version there was no separation of the box. Despite the use of different principles, lawsuits ensued which Goldin won, although Selbit had pioneered the concept. Goldin also resorted to litigation in 1922 when a film company screened an exposure of the illusion. In 1931 Goldin devised a version that dispensed with a box entirely and used a large buzz saw.
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Promotional stunts employed for the shows included ambulances which toured the streets with banners saying ‘We are going to Keith’s theatre in case the saw slips’, and assistants dressed as nurses with a stretcher were always in the theatre lobby, to give the impression there was a real risk of serious injury.
Other remarkable illusions invented by him were; The Girl Shot from a Cannon to the Innermost of Three Boxes (c.1905), The Tiger God (1911) which featured a tiger vanishing from a cage. Walking through a Sheet of Glass (c.1914), and Film to Life, in which a woman steps out of a film, interacts with Goldin on stage, and then returns to the screen (1920).
It was said he made a million dollars for the Keith theatre group and that he sometimes earned as much as 2,000 dollars a week. But because of the losses in Hawaii and the cost of numerous lawsuits, Goldin was declared bankrupt in 1921, and again in 1924. Despite these setbacks, he continued performing, even including a version of the Indian Rope Trick where an assistant climbs the rope and disappears at the top.
On 19 August 1927 Goldin married a widow, Helen Leighton, an American actress, whom he had admired for over thirty years, and who had rejected his earlier proposals of marriage.
He became a British citizen and spent much of his time performing here. Goldin was president of the Magicians’ Club in London, from 1934 until he died of a heart attack at his home in 55 Queen’s Gardens Bayswater on 22 August 1939, during a week’s engagement at Wood Green Empire. Goldin performed the act of catching a bullet in his teeth on the same stage where Chung Ling Soo had died attempting the trick 21 years earlier. Goldin was very popular among fellow magicians, and was a member of the Grand Order of the Water Rats (the charity supporting members of the theatrical profession) for over 30 years. His funeral at the Willesden Jewish cemetery was crowded by friends and well-wishers.
His grave is in Section EX, Row 14, Number 699 and has been restored by the Magic Circle.
Photos courtesy of Irina Porter.
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There are short films of Goldin on YouTube.
We have written previous blog stories about both Chung Ling Soo and Ellis Stanyon.
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