Abracadorable: The Magical Marriage of Adelaide and Alexander Herrmann the Great

celebrate it proper birthday. So this year, borg Ranger, we're drinking Borgs and we're gone nuts. Just learned about the bogs. Borgs are, like I guess, the current TikTok thing. And it's so funny because first I saw, you know, University of Massachusetts says, students stop drinking borgs, it's not safe for you. And then I saw the students push back and say, this is actually not so bad. You know, we mix alcohol with electrolytes and water so that we

don't get as d hydrated and hungover. It's actually safe. By the way, BORG stands for blackout rage gallon. So I was laughing my ass off at people saying, actually, the blackout rage gallon is a safe way to drink. Come on, guys, you got to come up. You need some better branding on this. Okay, I get a marketer in here. Oh man, it's better than your watery beer kegstand right, it may be. I mean, you know, it

sounds logical. I think the idea is just like, maybe your goal shouldn't be how can I figure out how to safely drink half a gallon of vodka in a day? Maybe your goal should be how could I drink less than half a gallon of vodka in a day? Right? Right? Right? Right? How about a fifth? Let's start there. Well, maybe people are trying to drink to change their reality a little bit. But if you want to talk about people who can change reality, it's magicians. It's that fair transition. Boom. Do

you like magic? I grew up loving magic shows? What about you? I enjoy them, but I'm not like I don't seek it out. Okay, yeah, and I you know I love theater magic. So um. When we watched In and of Itself, Oh my God special on Hulu Derek DelGaudio, it blew my mind's and he did so many cool theater magic things that I was just like one delighted. You know, I guess I don't like David Blaine or like any of that type of shit. No, my favorite growing up when I was a kid was well, I

liked Penn and Teller. I liked the amazing Jonathan who was more of a stand up comedian who did magic in his act. He was insane, but I really liked I think his name was Lance Burton, and he did a lot of parrot magic. He'd be like holding a parrot and then boom, he's holding two parrots. Crazy stuff like that, but I love that if they were double the birds, Oh my god, there's two birds. Amazing. Well, you know, a huge time for magic was the late

nineteenth and early twentieth century. Just people pulling rabbits out of every hat they saw. Super exciting, and two of the biggest names in magic back then were the fantastic illusions of Alexander Harmon the Great and his amazing wife and assistant Adelaide. These two seriously the most well known magicians of the late eighteen hundreds, and they were performing acts that blew the tops right off of people's hats around the world. They wowed people on huge stages and

in public streets. You know, from disappearing doves to levitating ladies. These tricksters amazed audiences and defied death from fire, glass and even bullets. All the while, these two had a deep and powerful love between them, which helped Adelaide rise above the traditional assistant role and become known as the Queen of magic herself. So pay attention, listened closely and hear the magical story of Alexander and Adelaide Herman appear

right before your very ears. Habricadabra, let's go heyla French. Come listen well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, all romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any type of person at all, and abstract concert or a concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second clans ridiculous from mass a production of iHeartRadio. So today we start with Samuel Herman.

And he was a Jewish German physician, and he occasionally toured through Europe in the early eighteen hundreds as a magician and a conjurer. So just again, rabbits hats, pulling away a cloth and there's a lady under there that you didn't expect. If only that could happen for me more often. Oh, just polish sheet away and that's a beautiful assistant there, instead of you staring at me and calling give me that covers bag. It's called what are

you doing? All right? Well, this guy's Samuel Herman was so impressive that rulers across the world would bring him to their palaces to perform for them in their courts. But you know, as as happens with many artists, he started to his family. He got married, he started having kids, and they moved to Paris, and he more settled into his day job of being a doctor. Great day job, right, no, right,

I'm pretty good name. Now. His first son, Carl, took a real interest in magic and he started learning from his father. But Samuel later performed at the Grande des col near Versailles, and that got his son, Carl admittance at the school free of tuition. And I'm just trying to imagine today, like my dad going to my college and saying, will you accept my son for this magic show? That would be a real trick, right, that's pretty dope. Oh you want tuition? Money to you. Well, maybe I

could find a quarter behind your ear. They're like, cool, it'll take thirty eight million more of those quarters place. It's a different time. But Carl, despite his free ride to this school, did end up dropping out of medical school. He totally abandoned the idea of being a doctor like his father and decided instead to pursue a career as a magician like his father. Oh that's kind of cute. Yeah, it's like, Dad, it's not that I don't respect you,

it's that I respect a totally different part of your life. Yeah. Maybe he was like, don't be like me, son, right, continue your art. Yeah. But even as his son surpassed him as a magician and his own career as a physician took off. Magician physician, a physician, magician, Samuel kept doing magic in local shows. Oh that's good. So he was still out there at the county fairs, you know, right,

cutting it up. Yeah, And between pulling rabbits out of hats and pulling stitches out of patience, he was also constantly pulling babies out of his wife because I know, right, I mean hurt and that sounds like hurt trick. Yeah, I mean let's be real now, his sixteenth and final child. Fortunately, she's like, I ain't doing seventeen all right, I have to draw the line somewhere, Samuel. Do you think her sixteenth kid came out with a bunch of like multicolored

handkerchiefs tied to it? Anyway, Their sixteenth and final child was Alexander, born in eighteen forty four, eighteen years younger than his oldest brother, Carl. Wow, this woman spent two decades having babies. Are you okay, girl? What do you need? But what can iver you? So? Anyway? You know, his brother's eighteen years older than him. They were not close necessarily,

They didn't really know each other very well. But and Carl came home to visit his parents in eighteen fifty three, he found out that little eight year old Alexander was already obsessed with magic. He was super into it. So they bonded really quickly over that, and without asking his parents, Carl kidnapped his little brother and took him with him to Saint Petersburg, Russia to study the art of magic. Now, of course, their parents insisted that Carl send little Alexander

home right away. And can't kidnap your little brother. He's eight years old. He can't bring him to Russia to teach him magic. But they negotiated and ultimately his parents agreed to let the kid finish one tour as Carl's assistant. Now, after the tour, when Alexander went back to his parents in France, his father, Samuel was so impressed by what he'd learned from Carl and what he could do as this little child, that he agreed to let him continue

performing and pursuing his young dream of being a magician. Wow, and at only eleven years old, little baby Alexander started touring with his older brother Carl as his assistant. They did this for years pretty successfully, and in eighteen sixty, when Alexander was seventeen years old, which would have made Carl what thirty five, they arrived in the United States and they did this whole tour up and down the

East Coast. As Alexander's skills grew, he became more of a performing partner in their shows rather than just Carl's assistant. And there was a little bit of jealousy there, but it never really became an issue between them. They were still brothers. Now, at first they performed tricks with these like elaborate apparatuses. But a famous magician named Robert Houdin claimed those were his devices, and he even had his mechanic arrested for selling duplicates of his illusions. So it's

basically like copyright infringement. Yeah, he was saying, that's my ip. Yeah, he like hired this mechanic to build a certain device for him, and then the mechanic is off on the side selling it to other magicians, right, and he's like, no, that's my trick. Right. So the Herman boys, you know, they're ethical guys, so they ditched those devices. They were like,

that's somebody else's work. Yeah, and they moved more into sleight of hand magic because as far as they were concerned, they just bought a cool magic trick from a mechanic. They didn't know it like already belonged to somebody sure, right, and they were like, no magician's code. Yeah, we can't take this guy's trick. But their shows used this as an advertising point, you know, their posters said stuff like quote, the Herman's distinguishing feature is the entire absence of any apparatics,

all effects being slowly produced by extraordinary menual skill. Alexander's standout skill was card scaling, or throwing playing cards. Alexander was so good at card scaling that he would have an audience member raise their hand and he would whip a card right into their lap. And he developed a technique where he could actually bounce cards off the back wall of a theater, which let people in the cheap seats feel like they were also part of the show.

I mean, that's how you spread your name through the public, right like you want the common man to be talking about you as much as the rich folk. True, and plus they paid for their seat, Give them a wave. According to magic tricks dot Com, his technique is still in use today. Amazing. I mean that the precision. I mean, I couldn't throw a baseball to one person in a crowd, you know, something that's meant to be thrown, let alone

a playing card. It would be a funny. It would be a good comedy show, but it would be a terrible magic show. Funny once funny, one time, have to count down the hook comes out. So after five weeks of full houses up and down the East coast, the Hermans had brought in thirty five thousand dollars, which I'll go ahead and tell you in today's money is one

point two million bucks in five weeks. Yeah. Then, of course, you know, they're touring the US in eighteen sixties, so the Civil War broke out and they decided that they would get out of the States while the getting was good. Thanks for the money, so long, everybody, you'll figure this out on your own. They're like, I ain't from here,

this is not mine battle. Yeah. Then they started kind of performing separately for a few years, just taking their own individual shows on the road, before doing a reunion tour in America in eighteen sixty seven. Once everything had been kind of settled. At that point, they quote implanted the name Herman quite firmly, according to Walter B. Gibson's

book The Magic Masters. And this was more than twenty years before Houdini came on the scene, and you could not talk about magic in the US or most of Europe without talking about the Hermans. After this, they did more or less separate and pretty much performed independently, and they had different approaches in their performance styles because Carl was more about dry humor and also being real mysterious in his presentation, so he probably would have done like

a fog machine. He'd have like real low lights, you know, and then he'd come out in like a spotlight and everybody like gasping a little more. David Copperfield, Yeah, totally, totally. But Alexander loved comedy and he liked to weave it into his acts. This would probably make I think I would prefer Alexander a magician. According to David Price's Magic, a Pictorial History of Conjurors in the Theater, Alexander was quote a humorist who aimed to make his performances a

joyous occasion. Sounds delightful. Yeah, Alexander wrote in his own book, The Art of Magic that quote, the magician depends for the success of his art upon the credulity of the people. Whatever mystifies excites curiosity, whatever in turn baffles this curiosity works the marvelous love of that. That's kind of like Claude Cahun. Oh sure, Marcel Moore. They also said how important the audience was right in terms of collaborating on

this art together. Yeah, I love that. That's interesting too, because there's was about visual art and his about performance, but both of them came to the conclusion that the spectator is a part of this, yes, and if they don't feel engaged with it, then you know, then you're just it's kind of masturbatory, right, Thing's missing, Yeah, yeah, something's missing. And he kind of had the look of the classic magician too that you would think of today.

He had the big mustache and goatee. Yeah. Mephistopheles is a name that comes up a lot when people describe him. A little devilish, that's cute. Yeah. Now. One of his contemporaries, H. J. Burlingame wrote in his book Magician's Handbook, Tricks and Secrets of the World's Greatest Magician, Herman the Great, that Alexander was one of the kindest and gentlest people that he'd ever known, and he had no problem making friends everywhere he went. Everybody thought he was kind and funny and sociable.

And the ladies they loved him. Oh yeah, he was ll l Alexander Herrman. He's a guy whose image was a little bit of a contrast to his personality because he had this kind of like spooky, scary again, the big goatee and the curly hair, and like he looked kind of intimidating, and he was just a sweetheart who wanted everybody be having fun. I love that, love it, love it. But he also learned while he was touring the US that staying in the press was one of

the most important things to succeeding and staying relevant. During a three year stint in London, he was out on the out in the street and he gathered this crowd around him, and then he sort of just walked casually behind these two fancy gentlemen and he pickpocketed one of their handkerchiefs. He did it real like deliberate and clumsy, so that these two nearby policemen would notice what he was doing. Was the copflict up and they're like, what

is this guy stealing from people? And they start following him right well this then, so as they got closer to him, he very deliberately pickpocketed the other fancy gentleman's pocket watch. So the cops at this point they're like, oh you sir, stop now, that's just what in my face. The cops, of course, you know, stopped him and they alerted the two fancy gentlemen that this this man just stole items, right off your persons, and those two guys

were pissed off. Of course, they're this this common street magician have stolen from them. Oh this handkerchief is worth more than your life, sir. Damn. Yeah, it's very nice. So the cops are like, oh, old on, so let's give those things back. Alexander herman opens his arms, lets them search him, and they find nothing on him, and he turns to the police and says, uh, my good sirs,

why do not you search yourselves? And the police did, and lo and behold, one of the cops had the fancy man's handkerchief on him, and the other cop had the pocket watch. What what what? Then one of these bobbies realizes, oh, my police badge is missing. That's why. That's what proves I'm a policeman. Alexander looks over at the fancy gentleman and he says, well, maybe you should check those guys, and they too, and they find the police badge on one of the fancy gentleman's person. Oh

my god. Alexander smiles looks around and said, quote, it seems I am the only honest person here. Oh my god. The crowd that had gathered around them was laughing their asses off. The cops are real embarrassed and angry. Ode a fool of, and he tries to explain to them that just a prank. I'm a magician, I'm doing a show here. But everyone was like pointing and laughing at the policeman and they said, quote, we will not be deceived in that way in otherwise, and so they arrest him.

They haul him off to jail, where as soon as he gets there, their superiors immediately recognize him because he's very famous at this point, and they let him go with no problems. So these two cops so they only well, they're what patrol the street all day, they didn't have time to read the papers. Oh God, time for a magic show. Well this is exactly what Alexander wanted when he started this whole stunt, because the next day the

story was all over the papers. Alexander was an absolute sensation and the entire city of London was laughing at his prank on the cops. You can't buy better publicity than that. I love that. But his venue in London for his three years stay was Egyptian Hall, which was one of the first buildings in England to be influenced in an Egyptian style. He decorated an Egyptian style right, And while he was performing there, a young woman came

to see his show named Adelaide Scar says. She was a twenty two year old dancer and acrobat, and when Alexander asked for a volunteer, she raised her hand and changed his life. And we'll hear about that magical moment right after this. Welcome back everyone to part two of The Magic Trick, The Turn. Oh, anybody remembered The Prestige. That's one of my favorite movies. That is a very good It's so good. So yeah, okay, yeah, I guess

this is the Turn. This is the Turn. Adelaide Scar says was born in eighteen fifty three in London, and she was out there making a name for herself at an early age. According to Alison C. Mayer in Hidden History for Narratively Dark, Adelaide was doing acrobatics and dance when she was just a kid, and by the time she was a teenager, she was doing stunt writing on the velocipede, which are those like old timey bicycles with

the huge wheels. So she was out there stunt writing the most illogical form of transportation that we've maybe ever come up with. I'm those things confuse me. I've only ever seen the sketches right in the idea of actually peddling one. I don't understand how they work. What I really don't get is how you get on it right. I'm like, how do you get on it? I guess you got to be an acrobat? I don't get it, Like, do you have to like lay it on its side

and like kick up springboard. You got any Penny Farthing writers out there, let us know you do. Please write in and explain yourself, send a video. So she's a cool stunt acrobat, dancer person and at twenty two she got to go see Alexander Herman perform at Egyptian Hall with her fiance, an American actor whose name we do not know. In Speculation Station it was John Wilkes Booth. Oh my god, which I mean it couldn't because this would have been eighteen seventy five, so I think he

was not around. Maybe it was John Willis's shoulder more famous brother, oh, because he was like, didn't have an older more famous Yeah, John Wilkes Booth was like the Liam Hemsworth of his day right and his brother Chris Wilkes Booth. I don't know what his name was, probably even have the same middle name either. So Alexander is in his show doing his amazing sleight of hand tricks and whipping cards at people, and then he asked for a volunteer from the crowd. Of course, dozens of hands

shoot up in the air. But Alexander was drawn to the beautiful young woman near the front, Adelaide, and he asked if she had a ring he could use, and she handed him her engagement ring. Alexander waved his hands around, snapped his fingers, and the ring disappeared in a burst of flames, and with another alexasam he produced a white dove from thin air, which flew to Adelaide, carrying her ring on a ribbon around its neck. Although that's crazy behavior.

I know if you handed over your engagement ring to a magician, I would be very nervous. She's like, what if they were not legits. He's like, you know those magicians, I'll have sticky fingers. So they get home from this show, and we can assume that Adelaide had a better time than her American actor fiance did, and she cried and stopped talking about it all night long. And her fiance's like, oh, yeah, well it was really good, cool magic. Wow. What a

very cool and not dorky guy that was. But sometime later, in eighteen seventy four, Alexander's three year stint at Egyptian Hall came to an end, and now, at thirty years old, he decided to return to America and do another tour there. So, you know, he stuffed his suitcase full of playing cards, he shoved a bunch of rabbits and doves into a sack, and he hopped on a steamship for New York City.

And while walking the deck of the steamship one day, he saw this beautiful woman, probably you know, staring wistfully out to see twirling a big fat engagement ring on her finger. And Alexander looked and he said, I recognize that ring from somewhere. She turned her head and it was Adelaide. What a coincidence, What a coincidence. It's almost like magic. So of course he had to approach her.

You know, I imagine he was like, hello there, mademoiselle, I believe I made your engagement ring disappear once before, perhaps I can do it again, hey, And sure enough. Yeah. She was on her way to America to arm in a dance show and to marry her actor fiance. But according to the Illustrated History of Magic by Melbourne Christopher, by the time the ship arrived in New York City after a two week voyage, she had changed her mind and decided that she wanted to marry Alexander Herman instead.

Oh damn, sorry, mister Wilkes or unnamed actor. He was smooth. Yeah, right, Look, everybody said he's the nicest guy. He's very charming, he's funny, and he's like, you know, yeah, probably pulling roses out of her butt to a surprise. Here you go. She's like, oh, thank goodness, out of my butt. Well not actually, but like from behind literally out of her But I don't know. Maybe she was into out of his button. Yes, you

get me. So, yes, she decided I'm gonna get married to him, and their wedding was presided over by New York City Mayor William H. Wickham. Now we know Alexander's kind of a goofball. He loves a show, he loves to entertain the crowd, and he loves little pranks. So at the end of the ceremony, he turned to the crowd and he said, oh, I am so sorry, Mayor, but I actually don't have the money to pay for this ceremony. And the Mayor's like, uh, kind of a problem.

And Alexander says, maybe the city will pay for it, and he reached into the mayor's big bushy beard and pulled out a huge wad of cash, and then he threw the bills up into the air and they disappeared. The mayor probably was like, I was in the middle of breathing a sigh of relief and it turned into a gasp of shock. Now Alison Mayor the author, She points out that the newspaper accounts do confirm that he did pay the wedding fees. Okay, so the cash reappeared

later in the city accounts or whatever. And Alexander and Adelaide adored each other. This is one of those true love stories that we love so much, and Adelaide soon joined his show as his primary assistant. And a website called cooper tunes dot Com points out that the convention at the time, of course, was still you know, the man is the star of the show, but Adelaide did

get an unusual amount of positive recognition. Now, in the early days of their cooperative act together, Alice and Meyer writes, Adelaide's gimmick was to dress in men's clothes and go by the character name mister Alexander. Now, her role was mostly to just hand her husband his props during the

show before his tricks. But then in the middle of the show, Alexander, herman would go gather up a bunch of handkerchiefs from the crowd and he would tie them together at these big knots, and then he would call over his assistant, mister Alexander and tell the audience quote,

mister Alexander is going to perform this trick. And then Adelaide would feign this nervousness and oh, oh no, I'm not ready, I can't do it, and she would run off stage all terrified, and then he would coax her back out and she would, you know, fake that she was really scared to do it, but she would come out, close her eyes and blow on the handkerchiefs and made the knots disappear one by one. She executed the trick perfectly,

and the crowd loved that. That became kind of her main stick for a while, but later she started taking on other characters. There was one where she would wear a white robe and come out and stand on a stool and then sort of drift off into this slumber, and Alexander would come out and sort of rotate her body in these like seemingly impossible ways, almost like she was floating, until eventually she was she was laying horizontal, hovering in air. Oh well, that's awesome, because she was

a dancer in acrobats. Yeah, surely she could do all kinds of crazy shit. Oh yeah with her body that most people can't do. Now. Alexander wrote in his book Herman's Wizard's Manual nine rules for students of magic to follow, And we won't read them all today, but some of the important points are things like never tell your audience what you're about to do, learn to quote, use the eyes and the hands independently of each other. We'll forget it.

That's the part I can't do. He also says that acting the part is equally important to your technical skill. Alexander Herman also says that if you ever mess up a trick, don't admit it. Quote, either finish the trick in a less brilliant manner, or make it look like the mistake was part of the trick and turn it into something else. He says, quote a poor trick is better than to acknowledge failure, right, all right, yeah, I

guess that makes sense. Well, you know, if people if like, you do a trick that's not that impressive and then you move on to another one, people aren't going to remember the unimpressive trick. But if you if you screw up and are like, oh camp, oh man, that wasn't supposed to happen, and then you move on to another trick, they're still going to be thinking about when you said that's not supposed to happen. That's so true, right, And

that's probably what they'll remember from the show more than anything. Now. One night, Alexander Herman and the theater manager had accidentally gotten their coats switched Luke overcoats, so Alexander was missing all his tricks when he went on stage, and he stalled with card scaling with his card throwing until they found the theater manager and they were able to switch their coats out, and he was so impressive like slinging cards all the way to the back of the house

to land to people's laps. That he had the audience cheering on their feet before he even got to start his actual acts. Incredible, and that's a freaking magician. The story's so great. He's you know, he's like running out of cards and looking off stage like yeah, they're like, we're still looking. He's like, bring me more cards, right, fucking as fast as I and you know, he's worried about losing their attention, but people are like hooting and

hollering because he's throwing these cards so perfectly. That is pretty cool. Now. Adelaide herself was also incredibly skilled and pretty fearless. During their tour in South America, their team of trapeze artists quit and at the time, their big show stopping number was to fire an acrobat out of a cannon, right, which is almost more of a circus stunt than a magic trick. Right, But people loved it, and Adelaide stepped up and said, all right, put me in that cannon. Show must go on. Let's do it.

But in her journals, she wrote that before her first time doing the stunt, she felt quote as a condemned man must feel as the fatal hour approaches. Oh my god. She was loaded into the cannon and she showed no fear to the crowd, and a few seconds later Alexander lit the fuse. There was a bang and a flash, and Adelaide flew fifty feet into the air and landed safely in the net below. Audience went nuts, and she continued doing that trick for years back in their US tour. Wow,

that really is so scary. I don't think you could ever I could ever do that. But I'm not a stunt gal. That's me. That's fair. Now. Sometimes their tricks got a little dramatic. Yeah, sure. One was called cremation, and the stage was set up to look like a catacomb, and some men dressed like guards dragged Adelaide on stage, screaming,

she's like really given it her all. They put her into a coffin and they cover it with a sheet, and Alexander would walk in with a torch and set the coffin ablaze and it burned away to nothing but a skeleton. Audience, of course, horror find. But then Adelaide re emerged as a ghost and she would hunt and torture Alexander before a bunch of extras dressed like demons dragged him into a pit to his death. Wow. Wow, this is a show. I mean it just goes to show.

Like the trick is we burned a person and then they reappeared just fine, right, And they were like, well that's just a trick. Let's turn it into this, you know this whole scene in the story. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, I got to spin this out into fifteen. Yeah. They had a real flair for the dramatic, and Adelaide would put her other skills on display too. She rode around her velocipede with another girl doing stunts on her shoulders. So you're balancing a person while you're balancing on this

insane contraption. That's crazy. She also performed as a dancer in dresses that were straight out of the Hunger Games. There were dresses that like enhanced new lighting techniques that were being invented, and so one was a dress that broke light into prisms in what was called the Serpentine Dance, and another one, La Dance did Vesuvious had her in a costume made of strips of yellow and red silk and she would spin so fast that she looked like

a pillar of fire. And that sounds awesome. Yes, I would love to say, I need to see this prism thing. I know? Rightam dress. Well. With this fame and fortune, they were able to tour the world, eventually making their way to Saint Petersburg, back where he's got his original training, and he performed for the newly crowned Tsar Alexander the Third of Russia, and the Tsar absolutely loved Herman, and he told him, quote from this moment fourth, you will

be known as Herman the Great? Who Herman the Great? Yes? Oh, where'd you get your nickname? Just the Tzar of Russia? Deal? You know when a when the Tzar Russia gives you a nickname, it tends to stay right. But then he got caught in kind of an awkward situation because after a very impressive performance, he went with the whole royal court to a nearby saloon where everyone was playing billiards.

Alexander lined up a shot, but he totally biffed it and sent the cue ball flying across the room straight into this huge Florida ceiling mirror, which shattered into a hundred pieces. Damn he was totally freaked out. He starts apologizing to the tzar. Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry I didn't I'm usually pretty good at pool, Like, oh my god. Character everybody in the room is silent, wide eyed, jaw dropped and staring straight at him. But the tzar looks up and says, yo, hey, man, the school. He's

just the mirror, you know. Don't even worry about this. Let's just get back through the game. Yes, So Alexander still freaked out, He's like, oh my god, Okay, we can play the game, but can I pay for this? Do you have like a mirror repair guy that I can talk to? And the tsar just laughs at him and says, well, jeez, if you are a such wizard, why don't you fix it yourself? And Alexander cocked his head to the side, gave a wry little smile and said,

fix it to myself. You say, well, I guess I can give it a shot, and he brings in this huge cloth covers the broken mirror, and a few minutes later he whips it away to reveal a completely untouched whole mirror without so much as a scratch on it. So he'd set this whole thing up. There's your there's your prestige. There it is surprise. He meant for the entire thing to happen. He's a great billiards player. Of course he knew how to make that shot, smash that mirror.

But how did he do it well? He later told The North American View that it was quote up to the reader's imagination as to how he pulled it off, like, Oh, these damn magicians never revealing their secrets. But I want to know how your dada no, because should I find myself in the Czar's court, I'd love to gain his favor with it. You know, I'm just going to smash one of his mirrors and be like, hang on, let me cover it with a sheet real quick. This is

supposed to work in the story. That's all he did. Well. All of this, all the tours and all the amazing pranks and all the cool shit they were doing, made the Herman's rich as yeah, and theater manager Michael b. Levitt said, quote, whenever I open a new theater, I will have Herman the Great play. The date Alexander got fifty percent of the gross he was pulling in seventy five thousand dollars a year, which is over two million

dollars today. Now, over the years, he and Adelaide became not only one of the world's most famo miss acts, but also among the wealthiest performers in the world. They had a huge estate on Long Island, their own steam powered yacht, They opened their own theaters in New York City and San Francisco, and they had their own personal private railroad car, along with additional cars for his equipment, animals, and the traveling cast of their show. So, I mean,

really balling out of control. But it wasn't all flashy stunts and broken mirrors and hucking cards at people. There was some real danger in their act as well. Alexander Hermann had become famous for his bullet catch, a trick so real that even Adelaide didn't want anything to do with it. And we'll be back with this death defying feat right after this. Welcome back everyone for the prestige

of the episode. The prestige the bullet catch. It's one of the most dangerous tricks in magic, and one of the earliest descriptions of this happening came from a non fiction French book written in fifteen eighty six, called The Theater of God's Judgments by Jean Cassignon, as describes a man catching a bullet in his hand using a particular

sleight of hand technique. But after performing the trick for years, this magician was killed by an angry assistant who actually didn't shoot him, but clubbed him to death with the trick gun. Oh my god, so many magicians have been killed by their trick guns, but usually out of being shot. This guy somehow, I don't know what he did to

piss this guy, say he must have done something real. Now, the bullet catch trick was performed by dozens of magicians through the centuries, and eventually Alexander Herman developed a whole new version of this act with his assistant Billy Robinson and future episode Alert, Billy Robinson would go on to perform his own act as a character called Chung Ling Sue, which, yes, as you guessed, is a very racist stereotype of an a parallel of a real Chinese magician from his time,

and Billy Robinson also at the time had kind of a scandalous canceled marriage with one of his assistants before fake marrying another so definitely a ridiculous romance in there to talk about. Yeah. Sure, So this is how Herman's bullet catch trick would go. An audience member would come up and make a mark on all five of these bullets that would be sitting on a tray, and then those bullets would be loaded into the muzzles of five riflemen, and then Herman the Great would hold up a china

plate in front of him like a target. He stood nervously as the drum rolled, The rifleman aimed, and on Herman's order, fired in a flash of light and smoke. Herman moved the plate to catch all five bullets. The audience shocked as he revealed himself to be fine and not shot, and asked the volunteer to examine the bullets and they were the very same ones that had been marked. The crowd went wild. Now this wasn't like a regular

part of his act. He only did it on special occasions, and his seventh and final time performing the trick was in eighteen ninety six at the Olympia Theater at a benefit for the Sick Babies Fundy. But you know, there's no one to name it after. I guess it's no specific disease, nope. Just if the baby's sick, we gotta have a fund. Generally sick babies, any kind of sick baby, we got a fund. I mean, but it's very straightforward.

I kind of like it now. An interviewer asked the couple about the trick, and Adelaide said it terrified her. She said, quote, I lock myself in the dressing room whenever Alexander faces a firing squad. She's like, I can't even be there to watch it. No, but Alexander said in response, quote I've already caught bullets six times seven,

you know is a lucky number. And then he goes on to tell the reporter that he never mentioned the bullet catch trick when he applied for his life insurance plan, so if he died during this trick, he wouldn't be covered, which, you know, Adelaide's probably rolling her eyes. Ad thanks, He's just kind of yucking around. He was always lighthearted about doing the trick in his interviews, but in doing it,

he took things incredibly seriously. Herman the Great knew that even though his version of the trick was the safest that had ever been developed, guns and bullets are never ever ever safe. In fact, his assistant Billy Robinson, who helped him develop it, would later be killed doing the same trick. Dang. Yeah. Another thing that they would do in their shows, Alexander and Adelaide was also take a

few opportunities to go after fake mediums. They're trying to blow the tops off some scams out here, because spiritualism was really big around this time. There's all these people running around saying they were spirit mediums and could communicate

with the dead and the other side and all this stuff. Well, not just people doing it, but like all the public was very into it, right no, I mean yeah, but magicians were always honest about their magic being tricks and illusions, you know, they were very clear about what was going on. They had no patience for these con artists who were

preying on people's belief in the supernatural. So one time Adelaide and Alexander even debunked a con by Anne Odelia Disdabar, who Harry Hudini once called, quote one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known. Wow.

In The New York Times in eighteen eighty eight, wrote that the Herman's recreated one of Debar's tricks, and then they accidentally gave away how they did it all at the end, before announcing to the crowd that they were deliberately quote exposing the trickery of certain people who were deceiving innocent people. Wow, the audience was also full of journalists at that show. Well, that's probably why they chose very deliberate. But Alexander had fallen into bad health due

mostly to his excessive chain smoking. He was having regular asthma attacks, and a doctor wrote, according to Adelaide's journal, that he had quote the worst kind of tobacco heart and unless he stopped his excessive cigarette smoking, he could not live more than two years. And she begged him to quit, but she wrote in her journal that he quote would not or could not. But still, despite Alexander's wealth, his devilish and his total disdain for phonies out there,

Alexander was also an incredibly generous guy. In eighteen ninety six, he was touring through Rochester, New York, when this other touring theater troupe who was performing our American cousin, speaking of John Willis Booth, had run out of money, and they were stuck and they couldn't perform anymore. Well, Alexander caught wind at this, and he just, out of the goodness of his heart, paid their hotel bills, bought their train tickets home back to New York City, and gave

them free tickets to his show that night. Oh wow, man, you know, a touring theater. That was the best thing you could have done. That And maybe a dinner would really make this perfect, right if you got any more generosity? Right. Well, after the show that night, he was the guest of honor at a local banquet, and he did invite that theater troup belong with him. Oh there's the dinner. Yeah.

And after that he invited them and a handful of local dignitaries from the banquet back to his train car to celebrate, and he was just regaling them with stories from all of his travels. He was wowing them with little like close magic, like sleight of hand, stuff that's right in your face. Adelaide wrote in her journal that he was having such a good time that night that

he was dancing around like a big kid. After they left, he quieted down and he told Adelaide, quote, we ought to enjoy these things while we are living, because after we die, we are soon forgotten. The next morning, as the train was traveling to its next performance, Alexander stumbled into Adelaide's car. It's pale. He was gasping for breath. He was having a heart attack. She tried to give

him water, but he couldn't drink. The train stopped in the next town, and Alexander whispered to Adelaide, quote, make sure all in the theater company get back to New York. And when the doctor arrived a few minutes later, it was too late. Herman the Great died on December seventeenth, eighteen ninety six, at fifty two years old. His funeral was held on December twentieth on twenty third Street in Manhattan,

and was so crowded that the streets were blocked. Unfortunately, Adelaide was not only now alone, she had a massive responsibility on her plate. She wrote, quote it is among the most pathetic aspects of the stage of which the general public knows little or nothing, that it allows no

time for the indulgence of private sorrows. As Alison C. Mayor writes in her article for Hidden History, quote, even in her immediate morning, a crew of sixteen people, a show with expensive contraptions, and a menagerie of animals were all waiting for her to decide their fate, so she really didn't have time to be sad. Yeah. Now someone offered to buy the whole show from her. Just here, take the money, and I'll take it all off your

hands right now. But she said, quote to accept it was to throw away all that we had so long worked for. Yeah, because I mean you'd think their names would go with it, you know it just now that whole thing would be somebody else's name attached to it now, Yeah, and it'd be like, not only did my husband die, but now my whole career is dead. Yeah, and what legacy are we leaving legacy? And now what do I

have to do? And I mean yeah, and maybe because of all that, Adelaide ultimately decided the show needed to continue, she contacted Alexander's nephew Leon in Paris. Now, Leon was the son of one of his and Carl's other fourteen siblings, and both Alexander and Carl had considered Leon to be their logical heir once either of them retired, so he came to New York to join Adelaide as the new star of the Herman the Great Show. And of course he was just the poster boy. He was a fairly

talented magician, but Adelaide was running the show. She knew it inside and out, and she knew that she needed to get everyone's attention as the show was changing as well as honor her late husband, and there was only one trick that would do it. Adelaide Herman was going to perform the Bullet Catch. In eighteen ninety seven, she performed as Leon's assistant, and then for the finale, she returned to the stage dressed in the traditional magician's uniform

in slacks and the tailcoat. She wrote, quote, poignant memories assailed me. As the curtain rose to the familiar strains of the Strauss Waltz, which my husband was accustomed to use for his opening accompaniment, I began to feel faint. My emotion was almost too much for me. The crowd marked and inspected the bullets. The firing squad took aim, and on her command fired. The smoke cleared and Adelaide

was holding five bullets in her hands. The crowd was on their feet, roaring and Meyer says that Adelaide revealed the trick in her memoirs. A trick serving tray allowed them to switch out the bullets for blanks, okay, and the real bullets were scorched backstage and then slipped in her hands so they bed Maide to look like they had been fired. Okay, But she actually, hopefully was never in any real danger because it was only blanks in

the gun. Right, But when Billy Robinson was killed, a real bullet had accidentally gotten mixed into the blank, so the risk was still very real. Yeah, it's a lot like the Rust shooting right recent or I believe that's what happened with Brandon Lee as well. Right, it was just like carelessness with the ammunition. And again, just to go back into my prop stays on a TV set, I can't tell you the number of steps that was

in our safety protocol when working with blanks. First off, there were no real bullets in the building anywhere allowed, but there could be, so you had to check every single one every time before you got there. I mean, and it doesn't matter. You do all those steps, and you still have to assume that the worst is possible, right, Yeah, and does happen. Yeah, but Adelaide definitely had the world's attention now she had done the damn thing, and they

were like, this show is going to be amazing. And after less than two years, she and Leon had creative differences, or, as Leon put it, quote, she wanted to be the whole thing, you can call it, manager, stage, carpenter, everything. I naturally object. Ah. So he wanted to be in charge, right, and she wanted to be in charge. I wonder what made him feel superior to her, despite the fact that she had been doing this show for decades and knew it like the back of her hand and probably helped

conceive of a lot of it. And yet he walked in something almost almost uh what's the word entitled, almost to the point where he felt like he should just be in charge by default. I don't know what that is. I don't know. I can't tell the difference between him and her that might have fled to that difference of opinion. Well, Leon went on to perform with his wife Marie, but

he could not keep the fame going for himself. Within a year, he announced that he would do his first appearance in vaudeville, which, according to Cooper tunes is a big step down. It'd be like if we started seeing, you know, Oscar winner Viola Davis appearing in your local community theaters production of the twenty fifth annual Putnam County spelling me. Yeah, yeah, kind of a shift, a big shift. Yeah. Well, maybe he should have stayed and listened to Adelaide a

little bit. Look what happened when you took charge. She immediately got her whole crowd back. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean. Adelaide, meanwhile, was only growing in fame. In an interview for Broadway Magazine in eighteen ninety nine, she said, quote, I shall not be content until I am recognized by the public as a leader in my profession and entirely irrespective of the question of sex. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, She's like, I don't even you know, it's not even like, oh wow

for a woman, you're doing really well. She's like, no, I am one of the top magicians. End of story boom for anyone. I'm doing very well, right, And she dodged challenges that Leon couldn't, because even as cheap vaudeville shows were growing in popularity and ended up taking up a lot of the space that big budget shows had been performing in in major venues. Adelaide adapted and she was still wowing crowds enough to sell enough tickets to

book these shows. One of her biggest acts was called Noah's Arc and she rolled out this huge wooden ship on the stage. She would rotate it around where you could see inside and see that it was empty. Then she turned it back around again and buckets of water would be poured into the top of the ship, like filling it up, and as it did, cats would come crawling out of the ship's chimney. And suddenly a gang plank rolled out and birds, leopards, lions, elephants, and zebras

came flooding out of this boat. That's awesome, incredible. That also makes me think of a sort of small coming out and slow moo. Now she became known as the only woman magician in the world. There was one other who was well known, miss Udina, who was a female imitator of Harry Houdini, and he hated that. He sure did. He really did not care for that. But people started calling Adelaide the Queen of Magic, and she performed with

massive success for almost thirty years. But Sadly, in nineteen twenty eight, when Adelaide was in her seventies, the warehouse where she stored her equipment and most of her animals caught fire. She was woken up and rushed to the scene where they were just finishing putting out the fire, putting out the flames, and she was told that all of her animals had died. But she looked up to the fourth floor window and she saw her white cat Magic,

and she called to Magic. The cat scaled the side of the building down to her arms and then searching the wreckage, she also found her white poodle Mami and her fox carrier Nellie alive. So she found a couple of them. Yeah, But aside from these three, over sixty animals, many rare and exotic and whom Adelaide had called quote the best talents among animal thespians, had died. They also found the body of one of her performing partners named Thomas Collins. He was found quote locked in the embrace

of his famous boxing kangaroo. Oh do you think he was trying to save him? Either save him or just hold him. It's hard, but that's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Meyer writes that quote, two hundred crates of costumes, illusions, and fifty years of life from wedding silver to ephemera from her journey with Alexander were gone, and The New York Times reported that it is likely that a bootlegger

liquor still had exploded and caused the fire. Damn prohibition, I mean, you know, and that's I'm so mad at cigarettes for killing Alexander, and I'm so mad at prohibition for destroying all of their history. Adelaide wrote in her journals, quote, summoning all my remaining urge to my aid, I clung persistently to the thought that I should again arise phoenix like from these ashes to face another future. And this is in her seventies. Wow, she's like seventy three years

old at this point. I hope I can get a little Adelaide in my life was to keep that energy, because if all of my stuff and things and whole show and all my life and a fema of my life was gone in an instant, it would just be so hard to get over. And that happens with like natural disasters. Yeah, you know, I know that happens to people. But fortunately, knock on what has not yet happened to me? I hope it doesn't because that sounds so upsetting and

I am far too sentimental about stuff. But despite this devastating loss, she did rebuild. She did build a new life for herself and everything. This is Adelaide we're talking about. She's going to get right back up on that philosophy and do what she has to do. And she had a new show that had been significantly pared down from the spectacle of herman the Great Show. Right. It was called magic, Grace, and music, which were the three things

that she was already so naturally skilled at. It makes sense because you know, she didn't have any of the stuff. So it was just like, what do I bring? Right? What do I are? No animals, no tricks. Yeah, this can't be burned away. This is in me personally. And I also remember she's in her seventies. Yeah, so let us yeah, not gloss over that. So she performed this show for a year before finally retiring, and on February nineteenth, nineteen thirty two, she passed away from pneumonia at seventy

nine years old. Mayor writes that Adelaide's memoirs were published in twenty eleven as Queen of Magic by magician Margaret Steele, and this restored some of Adelaide's fame, you know she had kind of I guess I didn't ned never heard of her the Herman's at all, So I'm glad that

people are bringing them back out. Yeah. There's also a children's author, Maura Rockcliffe, that was trying to find a book about a woman magician for her daughter, but she could not find a single one, and she read Queen of Magic and was inspired to write Anything but Ordinary Addie, The True Story of Adelaide Herman, Queen of Magic, a children's book. So she kind of was the change she

wanted to see in them. And Mayor quote magician Angela Sanchez as saying, quote, Adelaide's legacy demonstrates that women, even in the incredibly socially restrictive environments of early twentieth century America, can be standalone, single billing magicians who command their own shows and audiences. Right, damn right, where's my Ja Tanna show? Because I would definitely watch, Oh for real, can we get as a Tanna show? Yeaht me as a Tanna show? No,

it's so no, she's so amazing. I mean, both of them. This is one of those stories or I'm just like, oh, y'all are each such incredible people. Yeah, and I love that. I hope that we're you know, helping restore her fame a little bit too, because it's amazing to me. It just goes to show. I don't know what it is that sticks you in history, because obviously we're still talking about Harry Houdini today, and he was cool, he did

a bunch of neat stuff. Well, we might do an episode on him at some point, But why why is the Great Herman and why is the Queen of Magic not just as popular? Right? I can only assume maybe because the fire a lot of records were lost, you know, there was no preservation museum that went into their story afterwards. But it's like Alexander said the night before he died. He said that we ought to enjoy these things while we're living, because after we die, we're soon forgotten. A

little prophetic, I guess, I guess. So. Yeah, although it might be one of those industry things, you know, we're like within an industry, you're still so famous, but like without outside your industry, nobody knows. It's true. Yeah, but I just think it's you know, it's it's also an

important thing. I think we get so caught up in the idea of the legacy we leave behind sometimes that we don't enjoy ourselves as much because you know, I don't know, humans are always very focused on what happens after their death as opposed to what they're doing all their alive. But they didn't. They did incredible things. I

thought it was really interesting too. You know, Adelaide did all this without really as much money as they had at the height of their fame, because when Alexander died, she said she went down and like claimed the value of their assets and it was like two thousand dollars. Because you buy all these elaborate, expensive contraptions and animals and magic tricks and stuff, and to anyone who's not

a magician, they're useless. They're they're totally valueless. That's that's theater ship right there, and true, because you're like, I have so much stuff that costs me a mint, you know, and then but it's worth it's like literally worth nothing. It is trash to you. Yeah, it's worth nothing. No, it's true. Uh, you know, well, the sentimental value is through the roof, and the Banker's like, I don't care, I have no sentiment. I'm a bank And also just

like one of these wholesome marriages. Yes, that's always so nice, where nobody is like trying to hurt the other one. And then that way, thickers, we're recording a microphone. Go ahead, send it again. Where no one is trying to like hurt the other one or they're cheat on them or do you sound crazy? Oh my god, hey, you never barked when there's noise outside. Well, you know, I'll heard we're fostering a dog, snickers. Who. I don't know if you can hear barking in the background. But he's decided

that we need to wrap it up. I guess so, I guess so the press d is over. Yeah, he's ruin the trick. It's like just whatever, all right, Well thanks, Well, if you all want to adopt a labradoodle, then please shoot us an email Dick Romance at gmail dot com. We can't wait for him to find us forever home. The sweet boy. He really is such a doll. Yeah, but no, we do love hearing from you. We hope

you love this episode. We really enjoyed telling it to you and we love spending time with you, so yes, reach out to us email or We're also on social media, Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Saya my Boom and I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli. The show is at Rick Romance as well. You can find us on TikTok at Ridiculous Romance. That's right, and we will be back next week with more amazing story for you. Love you buy so long. Friends, it's time to go. Thanks for listening

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