Martin Beck

Martin Beck (July 31, 1868 – November 16, 1940) was a vaudeville theatre owner and manager, and theatrical booking agent, who founded the Orpheum Circuit, and built the Palace and Martin Beck Theatres in New York City's Broadway Theatre District. He was a booking agent for, and became a close personal friend of the prominent magician, Harry Houdini. Early life Martin Beck was born to a Jewish family on July 31, 1868, in Liptószentmiklós, Kingdom of Hungary (now Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia). He went with a group of actors on the SS Elbe from Bremen, Germany, to the United States in May 1884, where he worked as a waiter in a beer garden in Chicago. He went to San Francisco with the Schiller Vaudeville Company, then gained citizenship in the United States in October 1889. When the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco was bought by Morris Meyerfeld Jr. in 1899, he worked with Morris to acquire more theaters. By 1905, Beck was running the organization.