It was started by the brothers Francis and Antonio Martinka in Germany in the 1860's. Jackie learned how to read from billboards as his father traveled with a circus.Īlbert Flosso bought the store in 1939 from the magician Frank Ducrot. Houdini, who bought a partial interest in the store in 1919 and held it for several years, cuddled Jackie shortly after he was born and gave him a present, Mr. This became his title for nearly a half century, as he became the first magician to appear on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' and once played eight shows in eight different locations on the same day. Albert Flosso's friend Milton Berle later christened him ''the Coney Island Fakir'' - fakir being a Muslim holy man and, hence, a figure of mystery. His own father became Flosso because his mother's maiden name was Flosterstein.

His maternal grandfather was Louis Krieger, known as Pops, a magician renowned for his mastery of the ancient cups-and-balls trick. Jack Levinson was born in Brooklyn on Feb. ''It's a magician's heaven on earth,'' the Great Virgil, once a famous magician, said. Orson Welles, Danny Kaye, Jackie Gleason, Johnny Carson and even David Rockefeller were among its patrons. It was opened in New York in 1872, but it took over other magic stores going back to the early 1850's. In a catalog in 1918, Martinka & Company, the original name of Flosso-Hornmann Magic, already called itself the ''Oldest Magic Supply House in America.'' It was surely the oldest in New York, and earned a special place in the history of magic in 1902, when the Society of American Magicians was formed there. But Flosso-Hornmann may have been the oldest in the United States. Richard Cohn, a magician who has studied the history of magic shops, said the oldest-store honor goes to Mayette Magie Moderne in Paris. With its dust and cobwebs, it just looked it.

Over the years, they, former owners and generations of customers liked to say that the store was the oldest magic store in continuous operation in the world, but it was not. The younger and older Flossos held court on an old sofa, both making smart comments in an accent not unlike that of W.C. It was also an atmospheric fraternity house where a visiting European magician, a superstar like David Copperfield and a curious teenager from Queens might rub elbows, ideas and magic wands.

Houdini's magic shop