Editor’s Note: This is the second of two articles about Harry Houdini’s triumphant performance in Cumberland.
When Harry Houdini decided to take his career to the next level, he did it in Cumberland at the Maryland Theatre. He debuted what was known as his “3 Shows In One” on Aug. 31, 1925.
The Cumberland Evening Times printed the program for the 2.5-hour show (with two 10-minute intermissions).
Houdini entered the stage to Pomp and Circumstance, and the stage curtain was a gigantic tapestry made up of ribbons and awards that Houdini had been presented during his career.
The first show or act featured Houdini performing a series of magic tricks, both original and well-known.
“To prove there was nothing up his sleeves, Houdini would ‘tear’ off the arm sleeves of his tuxedo and perform with bare arms,” according to the Wild About Harry Blog.
The highlight trick was called “Paligenesia Or Taking a Living Man to Pieces and Restoring Him by Installment,” according to the Evening Times. Apparently, Houdini performed the trick using a cockney accent reminiscent of Dr. Lynn, who invented the trick.
During the second show, Houdini performing the “Feats That Have Made Him Famous!” or escapes. This included tricks called Metamorphosis, the East Indian Needle Mystery, and the Water Torture Cell. The latter trick involved Houdini locked in a straitjacket and being placed head down in a tank of water with his ankles clamped and locked from which he had to escape before running out of air.
The Evening Times noted, “A 1,000 reward will be made to anyone proving that it is possible to obtain air in the upside down position in which Houdini releases himself from this water filled torture cell.”
The third show featured Houdini exposing the different methods fake spiritualists and mediums used to fool people. Having been trained as a medium early in his career, Houdini knew how the frauds were perpetrated. The “3 Shows In One” was a hit. Houdini’s partner in producing the show, L. Lawrence Weber sent a note to Houdini, which read, “Hope that today in Cumberland was but the dawn of a long and happy partnership between us and that future years will bring you new and greater honors which you so honestly deserve.”
The show cost $2,000 a week (about $36,000 in 2024 dollars), and it typically grossed from $8,000 to $10,000 a week in tickets sales with the most expensive ticket costing $1.50.
The show moved on to New York where it played on Broadway at the Shubert Theater and then the National Theater.
As important as this show was in the career of “The Great Mystifier,” for decades, the location of the confounded people who believed it had been a performance in the Maryland Theatre in Baltimore or Hagerstown, but perhaps the discovery of Weber’s note directed them in the right direction. In recent years, the Maryland Theatre in Cumberland has gotten its overdue recognition as where Harry Houdini became a superstar.
It was a short-lived superstardom, though. A year later, Harry Houdini died from peritonitis after a show in the Garrick Theater in Detroit. It may have been related to appendicitis or possibly punches he had taken to his stomach about a week before. He died on Halloween 1926.
The Maryland Theatre changed its name to the Burke Theatre in 1932 when it hosted Vaudeville and played movies. In 1934, it switched back to the Maryland Theatre. It closed by 1936, but then reopened again as the Maryland Theatre in 1938. It closed for good on Oct. 9, 1963, and was razed in December 1966.