Dorothy Dietrich and The Houdini Museum Story

A landlord can raise the rent, but they cannot kill a dream built on wonder. I’m sitting down with  Dorothy Dietrich, iconic magician and the force behind the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to tell the true origin story behind one of the most unique attractions in NEPA and why preserving magic history is harder than it looks.

We start in New York City, where Dorothy and her partner Dick Brooks built a three-floor magic hotspot with a family theater, a magic shop, and a late-night cabaret that drew top performers from around the world. Then the neighborhood changed, Trump Plaza arrived, and the rent demand jumped from survivable to impossible. That moment forced a scramble for a new home and sparked a bigger question: where can a live magic theater and a serious Houdini collection actually last?

Scranton becomes the answer, and Dorothy brings the history to life with stories of Houdini’s 1915 challenges, including the infamous beer barrel stunt and an on-stage packing crate nailed shut with seven pounds of nails. We also talk nonprofit realities, modern museum marketing after the pandemic, and the rescue of Houdini’s silent film The Grim Game, plus how live music can make a century-old movie feel brand new.

Dorothy closes with the most personal takeaway: magic as a lifeline, and as a way to give people the rare gift of surprise. If you care about Houdini, local history, or the arts surviving in a digital economy, you’ll want to hear this. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves weird history, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Dorothy Dietrich

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Joe Longo.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast Live. Are you in need of a little magic in your life? Well, some of that might be closer than you think. And today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Dorothy Dietrich of the Houdini Museum, is with us today. Dorothy, thank you so much for being here, being in the museum. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Everything is just peachy.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Just peachy. Thanks for

Building A Magic Theater In NYC

SPEAKER_02 0:42

joining us. I would love to know how did the Houdini Museum come to be.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Well, basically, we started off myself and Dick Brooks. We're we're partners. We've been partners since the 70s. And uh we would run into each other at agents' offices. And I I you know I recognized that's the same guy. And I said, What do you do? And he says, I'm a magician, I'm a magician. So what's like, why don't we share a cab and go to the agents? Because actually in New York, the only way at that time, the only way to get work was through the agents. And uh, and they had it all. And they they knew what they were doing. And so um I said, Why don't we share a cab when we go on agent trips, you know? So we did, and then we started talking about our goals. And and um, so he asked me, what do you want to do? What do you want to be? And I said, Well, number one, I want to be accepted as a female in magic, which is really difficult. It was not even um a thing. I didn't know any women, no women showed up at the meetings except for the wives of the husbands who were magicians, and um so it was really tough. And uh he was very supportive. He said, What do you want to be? And I said, Well, number one, I want to be accepted as a magician, not as a female trying to be a magician, just as a magician and one of the gang. And I'd also love to have a magic theater in New York City. And he said, I'd love to have a magic theater in New York, who wouldn't, right? Well, a lot of people say they never even thought of it. But um, we had a friend uh that had started a place called the Magic Townhouse. His name was Eddie Davis, and he and his wife Elaine started that place, and it was it was a really a great idea, except it was really hard to do, really, really hard to do. And so he he really had it for only about a year and he started in 1974. Well, uh, here's a fun fact about that. Houdini was born in 1874, Magic Townhouse started in 1974. So um he was struggling along with it, and then I Dick and I said to him, if you are ever considering selling it or you know, moving on, we'd be thrilled to take over if you don't mind. And so um wasn't even a year later, he said, let's do it. And so from then on, and we had it was amazing. We had excuse me, three floors of a uh brownstone in New York City. The first floor was a 90-seat theater where we had on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, we had a magic show for the families, and uh, and at the back end of that room was the magic store. So um then on the next floor up was our get ready for the oolala. Are you ready? The next floor was our magic cabaret, fun.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Oula, and that was wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

On Friday and Saturday night, we would have dinner for people and um a magic show, which we had hired three magicians to be the main the main staff, and um but that wasn't it. The um those per performers went on, and then we'd had have magicians from all over the world call and say, I'm gonna be in New York on such and so date. Can I do a guest spot at your place? Because they wanted to be on their resume. And so we were sometimes there till like two, three in the morning doing show after show after show, and the audiences loved it. Um, so that was spectacular.

Rent Shock And Leaving Manhattan

SPEAKER_00 4:18

And um so at one point uh in 1989, all of a sudden, all of the businesses on the block north of us, which were two-story brownstones, the Greek diner, the grocery store, the hair shop, you know, all those little boutiques all over New York. And uh they all got sold, sold, sold. They ripped them all down and built this gigantic building and uh put a sign on top that said Trump Plaza. Now that's that shouldn't have meant anything except it did to our landlord. She decided that instead of us paying $4,800 a month for rent, we should pay $30,000 a month. I said, nobody's going to do that. If you had $30,000 to pay for rent, you would buy a building. You wouldn't rent. So no, you're not going to get that money. You're putting us out of business. She didn't care. So um, and and our rent was $4,800 a month, but we also paid electric gas, sewer, the garbage bill, and any repairs. She didn't cover any repairs. So yeah, it was um, it was heartbreaking to have to go. And we started looking around the city. We couldn't get a lease for more than three years, which is nothing. And so uh we said, we gotta buy us something somewhere. So we uh looked around uh New York, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, everything, nothing was the things that were affordable. We would go there in the daytime and it was fine, and then go back at night and go, uh-oh, no, no good. And so um we said, all right, let's find a place that has connection to Houdini that's within driving distance of New York because we still wanted to work with the Asians, of course.

Why Scranton Connects To Houdini

SPEAKER_00 5:56

And uh so Houdini performed in Scranton. He actually started out uh with the with the Welsh Brothers Circus out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And uh so he traveled all over this area and uh eventually on 1915 he came here and did a couple of challenges. He performed at the uh at the Ritz Theater now, but that was back then it was called the Poli Theater. And uh so he did a couple of fun challenges. The Standard Brewery uh challenged him to go into a barrel of true age beer. He had stopped doing the beer challenges as of 1912 because every time you soak your body in all that alcohol, you are drinking alcohol through all of your pores. So he was sick for days every time he had done it and decided at one point that's it, I've done I've proven that I can do it, but there's no reason to keep doing it. But the theater didn't know that he's not gonna do it when he gets to town. So the company, Standard Brewery, thought we could get that hundred dollars from him. That you had a hundred dollar prize if you could lock him up in something that he could not get out of, and you'd take home a hundred bucks. And that was not nothing. You the ticket prices were 25 cents to get into a theater. So a hundred bucks was awesome. And you could buy four pounds of meat for 25 cents. So that was uh a good, a good reason for anybody to try to challenge him. And so he came to town and they he said, Listen, I'm not doing that beer challenge anymore. They said, That's okay, just give us the 100 bucks. And he said, No, no, I've just stopped doing it. I I that's not being that's not part of what I do. Oh, yeah, it's okay. No, just give us the hundred bucks because uh if you don't do that, then we're gonna we're gonna tell everybody you refuse to do it, blah, blah. And so he did it one more time in 1915. The J.B. Woolsey employees, they were uh home furnishing company making furniture, and they had um built a packing crate on stage. They brought the wood, they brought uh two of lots and lots of two-inch wood, made a box and nailed him in with seven pounds of nails on stage live, and he got out. It took him uh forever to build it, and he got out in six minutes.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Wow, that's amazing. So many, so many stories you must have. When did you all um come to be in Scranton?

Finding The Building And Rebuilding It

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Well, we've we realized that Houdini performed here, so we started, we had to go get a phone book to get to the phone numbers of the real estate agents, and so we're here. I'll get it right now. Let's see. Just for any of the kids that might be watching. And the idea is you have to look up people's phone numbers in this paper book, and every town that you were uh interested in, you had to get a different book for that town and that town. So most people had stacks of books on their shelves, and uh, so we contacted uh real estate agents and none would none of them would see us at that time because it was hunting season. And so we thought that was charming. We wanted it, we wanted it even more. But Ned Hawley from Clark Summit, uh, he said, you know what, come in the day before Thanksgiving. I'll I'll sit with you, I'll tell you, show you the books, show you what we've got, and drive you around to show you what the city looks like. And uh then Thanksgiving, you take your time and find every whatever you want the day after Thanksgiving. Come back, show me what you want to see, and we'll go out, look around. And if you don't find anything and on that one day, uh then I gotta go hunting. So and we did find this building, which oh, I I should have had this picture of the um I hope the audience can see this. This building looked like this. Wow, it was very affordable because that's what it looked like.

SPEAKER_03 9:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

And uh there's so many cool things about it. Um, number one, we were a lot younger and we had kickaboo juice set that would last for days and days. So it didn't matter to us that it was a rough in rough shape because we thought from number one, it had the tall ceiling, which you need if you're gonna put a stage in. And the ceiling uh was nice and high, but in this the attic and the basement, we found these things, these ceiling tiles, all stacked up all over the place. And we thought, holy cow, if that if that could be put together, that's gonna be freaking awesome because it's if you look at the the uh design in here, there's arches there and and there's actually an angel in each corner of the ceiling. Let's see, of the white part of the ceiling. Let me see if I can uh anyway, the uh the place it was really, you know, because it was in such bad shape, it was easy to start and you go start from scratch and build what you want it to be. And so the stage is uh is marvelous. And uh that's my uh that's my chicky, chicky proof. Uh the ducks at the ducks disappear, and I try to get them back, and I the only thing I could get back was the chicken.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

I love it. So Dorothy, what uh how

Marketing Struggles And Nonprofit Reality

SPEAKER_02 11:26

what are you guys? You know, marketing is a huge part of business. You've been in business a long time. What are you all doing to attract the the your target client to come and and be part of this wonderful magical place that you created?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

One of the things we do is we hope that people that have podcasts will call and say, Hey, you want to chit-chat about your place? Uh and that's wonderful. Thank you. I have another at uh today at 2 p.m.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Uh and I honestly, we need somebody. So whoever's listening, we need somebody. This is a nonprofit 501c3 uh not uh corporation. So if you are a professional company and you would donate your time, that could be a tax deduction for you. Uh, or if you can give us a fair price, we can uh work with you on promotion. But we uh since the pandemic, it's been rough. It's been really, really rough. Before that, people were lining up to come in and see us. Now with the economy the way it is, and the the gas and the groceries, the people are just saving their money. It's they're not going out like they did before. Um, so yeah, we a good question. I don't know what to do exactly. We do have a Facebook page, but it hasn't been worked on for a long time. Uh, we have a website, HoudiniMuseum.net, Houdini.org. Um, and anybody in in your room that has any ideas, give us a call, 570-3425555. But it's on the website. You can always get a hold of me. And that that phone is right here. Yeah, it's a cell phone. So no matter where I am in the world, you can get a hold of me. And um, yeah, we would accept any kind of help. Uh, we used to do most of our business through the brochures and and racks in hotels, restaurants, um, and uh uh all all over the place, all like in um 13 counties. We had 500 rack locations that uh that were our racks, and people would pay us to be in those racks. So that was working out really great. Uh, but now it's a it's a digital world. Um the uh the one thing that just happened with this last week was I got a call from the Hilton Hotel saying they're doing a um what do they call it, a kiosk that's going to be a digital brochure rack. So you could it it'll uh tell you what's in town, what are the attractions, where are the restaurants, all that kind of thing. So they want us to be in that, and that that should be very helpful because that's a very uh active hotel. They get a lot of conventions and that kind of thing, and and hotel visitors, you know, uh uh suit uh what do you call it? People that are in the area to see all the sites.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

So outside of your time in the museum and magic, what do you do for fun?

Saving Houdini Film The Grim Game

SPEAKER_00 14:27

I go to other magic conventions and magic. I'll tell you what I did for that was incredible this last week. Um, the uh the lot the New York Public Library for for the performing arts at Lincoln Center showed the film that we um saved uh from being lost forever. It's called the Grim Game Game. And this is another announcement to anybody that has an a place that you want to do something special, either for a fundraiser or whatever, uh just to have fun. The Grim Game is a one hour and 10 minute film that Houdini performed in and starred in. The cool thing, there's so many cool things about his life. Um at that point in his life, when he started doing the movies, he already had boatloads of money. He had everything that he could possibly need. He was so famous and everybody loved him. He thought he would go to Hollywood and be an actor in the films. Well, if you look at any of the uh the publicity, oh, there's a a picture here, a poster right there. His name is bigger than any of the uh any of the titles of any of the films. The um let's see, I'm gonna take you over here. This is uh a wall full of movie posters of all the movies that he was in. He had the first uh mid-air plane crash in a film, the first submarine in a film, he started his own Houdini Picture Corporation, and um there he is in uh Hal Bane of the Secret Service. And the Grim Game was the best film of them all. And um so that was that was pretty cool. I'm running back to the other place. The uh we that we knew a guy, Larry Weeks from Brooklyn, who had the only copy of the film in his collection. He actually had about 60 films, film canisters of the big films. Uh, he had Houdini movies, he had uh vaudeville shows and all kinds of stuff, which I don't even know all that he had. I've got to talk to um his buddy, uh uh Fred, who knows more about that. But Fred should have gotten those films because he took care of Larry at the end of his life. But anyway, uh that film is incredibly good film. It was put out by uh produced by Paramount Pictures. And the uh just the this last week, Friday, they had it at the uh at the Lincoln Center Library, and they had hired a composer to ad lib the music because it's a silent film, and her name was Makia Matsumura, and I have never been so entertained by music in my I mean she brought that film to life and uh at moments in the film when it was like an exciting moment, like a lot of drama, she was on that piano like this, and I was like, how the heck did she even do it? She had to be exhausted by the time it was done. Sure. But it was marvelous, it was so marvelous. But yeah, if anybody wants to do that, we can set up a uh uh a screening and talk about it and have have a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Darthi, you are a wealth of information. We can talk for days, yeah. And um unfortunately, we are a short form, we're a short form podcast. So as we you know come to a close, could you tell our listeners one thing that you would like them to remember about you and the Houdini Museum and maybe what magic means to you?

How Magic Changed Dorothy’s Life

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Well, I'll tell you what, he changed my life because when I was a kid, uh I was uh I grew up with a dad who was uh um an alcoholic that beat my mom and the kids. My mom had nine kids. And uh, and I also went to Catholic school when it was a time when it was okay to whack-a-mole the kids for no reason, you know. Uh it was just crazy time. And so I was afraid to go to school, I was afraid to go home. And one day a magician came to our school and did magic show, and I was like blown away. And all the kids in the room, like usually, you know how kids are, you know, not paying attention ever when they have a program going on. Uh, not in this case, they were riveted to this show. And I said to the teacher, what is that? What what what what was that? She said, He's a magician. I said, Does he get paid to do that? And she said, Yeah, he does. And I said, Do you think I could do that? And she said, Maybe, I don't know. She took me to the library, got me a book on magic, and it was written by Walter B. Gibson, who was also the author of the shadow series. And he wrote in that book that um, do you know what the shadow series was? It was a radio show. And the kicker to that show was at the end of it, it was like uh detectives and bad guys. And at the end, when they captured everybody, the announcer Orson Wells would come out on online and go, Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? And everybody in the audience goes, The Shadow Nose. And uh, so yeah, that was a wonderful program. But in that book, he said that Houdini ran away from home at 12 years old. And I I that it opened my whole, my, my life changed immediately. And so I went to every library, got every magic book that I could get, and uh started to put together a show. And I would, I thought this could be my thing. I could get out of here, I could go and earn money elsewhere to help my mom. And that was my goal. I my main thing was to, she was so she was working day and night, day and night, and and he was just blowing the money on on booze, you know. Um, and so uh and she even lost her house at one point because he was she gave him the money to drive to the place to to pay the the real estate tax, and he didn't do it. So it just it was heart, I just heartbreaking. So anyway, I did all kinds of work, you know, rake leaves, shovel snow, whatever I had to do, babysit, and went whenever I saw balloons on a porch or uh fence, I'd say, Hey, you want to see some magic? And I'd go do some magic and I'd save save some money. And then finally, when I got $3,000 saved up, I ran my girlfriend's older brother was pr bragging that he was going to drive a sports car to New York City for the car dealer to sell. And I said, Ask him if I can go. And then it just it blew up from that on because now I I'm in New York and I I only had 3,000. I didn't know if it was enough money or not. And I looked at the newspaper stand and there was show business newspaper right in the middle of the stand. I went, oh my god. If the red, the red sports car and then the newspaper, everything was kind of like going, here you go, girl, here you go. And then uh I looked in the paper, and three gals were looking for another gal to share the rent, and my share was 150 a month. So that means I had money to study uh acting, singing, dancing, music, magic, and enough money to buy magic to get going. And it it was not easy, but it was doable. And uh I love magic to this day. I I want to do magic until I'm gone. Um, and it to make an audience be sitting there thinking, oh, it's gonna be fun, and then they go, when the dove appears, they go. That's what that's what I like because I say thank I'm thanking you can thank me and I'm thanking you for giving me that thrill because I just gave you the feeling of wonder. And the only way to get that is if you just got surprised and you have no idea what happened.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Preserving The Collection And Houdini’s Gravesite

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Dorothy, can you tell our listeners where they can find out more about the hum the Houdini Museum?

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yeah, if you go to Houdinimuseum.net and Houdini.org, uh, that's our websites. We also have just give us a call anytime. Uh I wherever I may am in the world, I've got the cell phone with me. If I'm in a meeting, I'll get back to you later. Uh, but yeah, this year is the uh hundredth anniversary hand 100th anniversary after Houdini died. And so there are magic events, Houdini events all over the planet. So you don't know where I'm gonna be this year. And um, but we are a nonprofit 501c3 corporation. We could use donations. If anybody has uh a few bucks or or a bunch of bucks, that would be great. The other thing that is real important is I'm not gonna live forever. My partner Dick is not gonna live forever. And we have this incredible collection, and I don't want it to just die. I don't want it to get sold off to all these a million places when we're gone. I am looking, uh openly looking for someone who has a boatload of money or has the ability to do fundraising that can get a boatload of money, that can buy a building somewhere in the world. Houdini traveled all over the world. So wherever you guys want to do it, that's great because um it should be re it really should be preserved forever because Houdini is not a legend because he got lucky. He was an incredibly good man. Um, we also uh have been taking care of Houdini's gravesite for many years in New York, and it is in trouble now. So um there's a big crack on the the uh the it's an enormous um gravesite. He he bought 23 plots. And um if you look up Houdini Gravesite Hawk, Houdini Gravesite Hawk, he had a red tail hawk in his show and named Abe Lincoln, which was a uh a patriotic number that he did. And uh when we restored Houdini's bust at his gravesite, um it was crazy. As soon as we put the bust up on the monument, a red-tail hawk flew in from I don't know where and landed on the monument, right by behind where we were standing. And it stayed there forever and ever. You can watch the video and see how long it hung out, and then it flew from there over to the side, even closer, and was just, hey, what's going on, you know? And uh some people consider that they say that if a person dies and they have a lot of unfinished, unfinished business, they could possibly come back as a critter, a a bird, a dog, a cat. And uh they call that the uh transmigration of the soul. And I don't know if that was what it was, but I will tell you this I've never had a bird of prey ever show up at any event that I've ever gone to and hung out. First of all, they don't show up and they don't hang out. So yeah, the gravesite needs help, so we need money for that. We have a gravesite fund if that's your passion. And whatever you think you want to spend the money on, uh, we can make it very positive just for that. We can make it uh, you know, if you wanted to only go for restoration, because we have a lot of original posters and uh photographs that all need to be restored and you know taken care of. Uh oh, another fun thing is these are two guys that we started out. We helped out a lot of magicians in New York, and this is Rocco and Mayor Yedd. They are uh performing at the Sparta Avenue stage in Sparta, New Jersey on Saturday at 7 p.m. They are incredible. If you if you're around New Jersey, do it, they're so much fun, and that the theater is awesome. Yeah, Joe is a wonderful guy there. Um so yeah, so here's what I if a hundred people give twenty dollars, that's um not nothing.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Right, exactly.

Where To Learn More And Wrap

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Uh Dorothy, it has been a pleasure talking to you from everybody at the Good Neighbor Podcast. We wish you and the museum so much success moving forward with everything that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Thank you. And you keep being a good neighbor, okay, dude?

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Thanks. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GMPNEPA.com. That's gmpna.com. Or call 576 5084.