Martin Beck (vaudeville)

Martin Beck 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 Citys Broadway Theatre District. He was a booking agent for, and became a close personal friend of the prominent magician, Harry Houdini.

Martin Beck was born on July 31, 1868 in Liptovsk Mikul, a town in northern Slovakia that at the time of his birth was ruled by the AustroHungarian Empire. 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, Illinois.

Source: Wikipedia