Harry Albacker’s Magic Touch – Part 3

Readers of this blog with a good memory might remember I did a two-part series on Lorain magician Harry Albacker (beginning back here). The initial focus of the posts was the fact that Harry had contributed a gag to the well-known newspaper comic panel entitled  There Oughta Be a Law! It ran on February 9, 1952.

On my post, I observed that I had been unable to determine if the comic even ran in the Journal. I also was unable to find any sort of article mentioning Harry’s achievement in the time frame before and after the panel ran nationally.

Well, it took a while but I finally did. On February 25, 1952 the photo and short article below ran in the Journal. 

It noted, “Harry Albacker, 1728 E. 32nd Street, Lorain magician, is shown with an original cartoon, one of the series regularly carried by The Journal.

“The cartoon is one of the “There Oughta Be a Law” features. Albacker, who noticed that persons at a party always urge a magician to perform then find they can’t stop him, sent the idea to the cartoon originators. Al Fagaly and Harry Shorten twisted the idea slightly but gave the credit to Albacker in the cartoon which went all over the country.

“Fagaly autographed the original for Albacker. The latter had been reading the feature in The Journal and  decided to try his luck with the idea – which paid off with the black and white cartoon.”

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There’s some Harry Albacker promotional material on eBay right now.