"What I’m about to tell you may make you itch.
My father’s uncle was famous for having fleas. No, he wasn’t infested with fleas, but he was invested in fleas. As Professor LeRoy Heckler, my dad’s Uncle Roy made quite a nice living from his flea circus which performed several shows a day in Times Square from about 1925 until 1957. Uncle Roy inherited the flea circus from his father, Professor William Heckler, a long-time carnival guy and former strong man. My uncle’s fleas were quite acrobatic. They walked a tightrope, played football, had chariot races and even pulled a carousel.
In his book, Wild Tigers and Tame Fleas, author Bill Ballentine devotes a chapter to Uncle Roy and his talented fleas. Fleas are world-class athletes. Uncle Roy says in the book that “flea legs, of only 1/20 of an inch long, can propel the insect into a high jump of almost eight inches, a broad jump of thirteen inches, more than one hundred times its body length…If a human’s legs were this strong, a person…could leap groundwise 700 feet or straight up 450 feet, soaring over the torch of the Statue of Liberty with 145 feet to spare” (Ballentine 242). No wonder fleas were such sought-after circus performers.
Uncle Roy had an interesting life. He traveled throughout North and South America and the Caribbean islands. He made appearances on the show “What’s My Line” and other radio and tv shows of his era. Uncle Roy retired in the late 1950s to Bradenton, Florida, home to many other circus and carnival retirees. He passed away a decade after that.
Uncle Roy’s career is part of my family history, our family lore, something which we always talk about at family get-togethers. My father and his family told the stories to my sisters and I, and we in turn have passed the stories on to our own children. With every generation the circle grows wider. And, many times when I’ve shared the story of my uncle and his flea circus with people outside the family, I’ve come across someone who knew of him and saw his flea circus years ago. The circle grows wider still.
Yes, every family has significant stories which bind the members together. One of ours is fleas. So tiny, yet so significant."
I would have loved to see his flea circus. ;D
History: From the mid-1920's until 1965 this greatest of New York City institutions occupied 228-232 West 42nd Street near Times Square— the former location of Murray's Roman Gardens, a legendary opulent "lobster palace" closed by prohibition. The building which housed Hubert's dime museum was a schoolhouse built in the 1880's by the prestigious architects McKim, Mead & White. Hubert's is legendary for serving as the sometimes and seasonal home for many of the greatest freak, novelty, sideshow and variety acts for four decades— not to mention the last working flea circus in America. The origin of Hubert's seems to be on Coney Island, where a 1925 advertisement for "Hubert's Museum" in The Show World magazine lists "Hubert Miller, Owner" and shows a photo of the namesake museum on the Coney boardwalk taken by Edward Kelty. A 1927 Kelty photograph of the same location shows the sign altered to read "Huber's Museum." The final "t" has been dropped, perhaps signifying a change in ownership. Did Hubert Miller sell-out and move Hubert's Museum to 42nd Street in 1925? Yet another Kelty photo dated 1925 of "Hubert's Museum" at the 228-232 42nd Street location seems to suggest this. (There was a "Huber's Museum" owned by George Huber located on 14th Street in New York from 1888-1910). By the late-1930's Hubert's Museum was owned by Bill Schork & Max Schaefer, who relocated Hubert's to the basement of the building to make room for their street-level pinball parlor and shooting gallery. The subterranean space inside "Schork & Schaefer's Penny Arcade" was reached from the street entrance below the Hubert's marquee, through a turnstile, and down a wide L-shapped staircase, that led to a columned, linoleum paradise lined with several four foot-high stages where 6-10 performers alternated giving shows from 11am-Midnight, 6 days a week-- closed Tuesdays. In 1925 admission was "Afternoons 10¢, Evenings 15¢, Sundays and Holidays 15 and 25 Cents". The Heckler's Flea Circus eventually occupied a walled-off area of the Hubert's basement, guarded by its own ticket box and sliding wooden door, which opened to small room where the Professor and fleas did their thing for an additional admission (10 Cents, then 15 Cents, and finally 25 Cents). Hubert's hosted the flea-training Heckler family-- father William, and sons William Jr. and Leroy from 1925 or 1926 until 1933. Leroy "Roy" Heckler took over the operation in 1933, and kept the fleas dancing at Hubert's until his retirement in 1957. Hubert's was a mecca for millions, from the high-toned, tuxedoed Broadway theatre crowds of the 1920's and 30's, to the down and dirty Times Square street toughs who frequented the spot until its demise in the mid-1960's. Immortalized by A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, Diane Arbus, Lenny Bruce, Tiny Tim, Andy Kaufman and many others, Hubert's was a world onto itself. In its later years, from approximately 1956 until its closing, the museum was managed by R.C. (Richard "Charlie") Lucas, known as "Woo-Foo", a former Ringling Brothers fireeater. Lucas' wife, Mary Sahloo (Mary J. Wigfall), whom he married in 1943, was known as "Princess Sahloo" and "Princess Wago" and performed at Hubert's for many years as the "Voodoo Jungle Snake Dancer." Little has been written about Hubert's final days, but from the pages of R.C. Lucas's personal diaries, the day to day grind of the running the museum in the mid-1960's was a mental and physical strain, which along with declining profits, and the relentless chokehold of sleaze and decay, which characterized 42nd Street, doomed Hubert's to an untimely death. By late 1965 Lucas was gone, and "Hubie's" stopped its live performances— the downstairs basement remaining open free of charge with its decaying exhibits until 1968. A few seconds of film in the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy capture Hubert's neon entrance -- a last fleeting glimpse of the NY legend.
What a neat account! Thank you for posting that. Btw, for years, when I would tell people about the flea circus, they’d look at me as if I’d completely lost it. Nobody who hadn’t lived in NY at that time or at least wasn’t very well read about odd historical facts could even imagine it.