Okay, before everyone jumps all over this; while I am not very knowledgeable about Robert-Houdin, I don't believe he ever came to America. Please feel free to educate me on this. That said, I presume there were a lot of imitators that traded on his famous name. I'm a theatre historian with a focus on the Opera House Period in the US. As such, I run across a lot of notices of magicians performing in opera houses in the 19th century. I thought readers might find it interesting that a magician going by the name of Robert Houdin was touring Michigan in 1865. He shows up in Bay City, Michigan, in July of 1865 for one performance. In April of the following year he does three performances in Bay City. Maybe if I get time I will see if a local newspaper wrote a review of one of these performances, it would be fun to see what this magician was doing.

Our guess is that possibly one of the reasons Eric Weiss called himself Houdini early on
in his career was with the hope of cashing in on the name and geting some extra work.

Two possibilities spring to mind immediately: that Robert Houdini in fact came to the States or that some other magician borrowed the name of the legendary conjurer. It is quite unlikely that there were actually two different Robert Houdins, although anything is possible. It would be most interesting to research this further. I would hope that any Houdini experts here might comment as well.

Robert-Houdin lived until 1871, so it could have been him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Eugène_Robert-Houdin

I don't believe there's any evidence that Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin ever came to America. Even if he did, I think it would be highly unlikely to find him performing even once in small-town Michigan, and incredibly unlikely that he would also perform a return engagement there a year later.

In any case, this timeline indicates that Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin gave his final farewell performances in 1856 and then fully retired from the stage:

http://geniimagazine.com/timeline/timelineworking.htm

This magician using a name invoking him might be fun to research, though.


The timeline does indicate that in 1851 a young Robert Heller duplicated Robert-Houdin's act in London, Kent and Liverpool. After a poor reception in England, he took it to America. Not until 1864 did he finally have a breakthrough success on Broadway using his own act (and name). In the interim, did Heller perform Robert-Houdin's act under a misleading name? The act was apparently not successful for him -- so might he have sold it to another, who eventually [re-sold or] performed it with that misleading name in 1865 in Bay City, Michigan?

Or maybe it was just some random magician doing a random show under that name. Do you know what effects were advertised for the show you found?