Harry Houdini (1874 - 1926)
Harry Houdini (1874 - 1926) was a Hungarian-born American escape artist, illusionist, stunt performer and mysteriarch, noted for his escape acts. His Hungarian name was Erik Weisz, later known as Ehrich Weiss. He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the United States and then as "Harry 'Handcuff' Houdini" on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straightjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside a sealed milk can with water in it.
In 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by London's Daily Mirror, keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, emerging in a state of near-breakdown. While many suspected that these escapes were faked, Houdini presented himself as the scourge of fake spiritualists. As President of the Society of American Magicians, he was keen to uphold professional standards and expose fraudulent artists. He was also quick to sue anyone who imitated his escape stunts.
Houdini made several movies but quit acting when it failed to bring in money. He was also a keen aviator and aimed to become the first man to fly a powered aircraft in Australia.
Early Life
Erik Weisz was born in Budapest to a Jewish family. His parents were Rabbi Mayer Sámuel Weisz (1829–1892) and Cecília Steiner (1841–1913). Houdini was one of seven children. The family lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as Rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. After losing his job and falling into dire poverty, Rabbi Weiss eventually moved to a boarding house on East 79th Street, where he was later joined by his family. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a nine-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross-country runner in his youth.
Houdini began his magic career in 1891, but had little success. He appeared in a tent act with strongman Emil Jarrow. He performed in dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as "The Wild Man" at a circus. Houdini focused initially on traditional card tricks. When Weiss became a professional magician, he began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin. Although Houdini was regarded as a competent but not particularly skilled sleight-of-hand artist, he soon began experimenting with escape acts.
In 1894, while performing with his brother “Dash" (Theodore) at Cony Island as "The Brothers Houdini", Houdini met a fellow performer, Wilhelmina Beatrice “Bess” Rahner. Bess was initially courted by Dash, but she and Houdini married, with Bess replacing Dash in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis". For the rest of Houdini's performing career, Bess worked as his stage assistant.
Houdini’s Career Takes Off
Houdini's big break came in 1899 when he met manager Martin Beck in St. Paul, Minnesota. Impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act, Beck advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Within months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the country. In 1900, Beck arranged for Houdini to tour Europe. After some days of unsuccessful interviews in London, Houdini's British agent Harry Day helped him to get an interview with C. Dundas Slater, then manager of the Alhambra Theatre. He was introduced to William Melville and gave a demonstration of escape from handcuffs at Scotland Yard. He succeeded in baffling the police so effectively that he was booked at the Alhambra for six months. His show was an immediate hit and his salary rose to $300 a week (equivalent to $9,332 in 2020).
In Cologne, he sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who alleged that he made his escapes via bribery. Houdini won the case when he opened the judge's safe (he later said the judge had forgotten to lock it). In 1904, Houdini returned to the U.S. and purchased a house for $25,000 (equivalent to $720,093 in 2020), a brownstone at 278 W. 113th Street in Harlem,New York City.
From 1907 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He freed himself from jails, handcuffs, chains, ropes, and straightjackets, often while hanging from a rope in sight of street audiences. Because of imitators, Houdini put his "handcuff act" behind him on January 25, 1908, and began escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can. The possibility of failure and death thrilled his audiences. Houdini also expanded his repertoire with his escape challenge act, in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him. These included nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into water), riveted boilers, wet sheets, mail bags, and even the belly of a whale that had washed ashore in Boston. Brewers in Scranton, Pennsylvania and other cities challenged Houdini to escape from a barrel after they filled it with beer (a very tasty escape).
Houdini introduced the Chinese water torture cell at the Circus Busch in Berlin, Germany on September 21, 1912.He was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water, holding his breath for more than three minutes. He would go on performing this escape for the rest of his life.
During his career, Houdini explained some of his tricks in books written for the magic brotherhood. In Handcuff Secrets (1909), he revealed how many locks and handcuffs could be opened with properly applied force, others with shoestrings. Other times, he carried concealed lockpicks or keys. When tied down in ropes or straightjackets, he gained wiggle room by enlarging his shoulders and chest, moving his arms slightly away from his body.
For most of his career, Houdini was a headline act in vaudeville. For many years, he was the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville. One of Houdini's most notable non-escape stage illusions was performed at the New York Hippodrome, when he vanished a full-grown elephant from the stage.
Houdini was magic's greatest visionary. He sought to create a large, unified national network of professional and amateur magicians. Wherever he traveled, he gave a lengthy formal address to the local magic club, made speeches, and usually threw a banquet for the members at his own expense.
He had created the richest and longest-surviving organization of magicians in the world. It now embraces almost 6,000 dues-paying members and almost 300 assemblies worldwide. In July 1926, Houdini was elected for the ninth successive time President of the Society of American Magicians. Every other president has only served for one year.
Debunking Spiritualists
Houdini's training in magic allowed him to expose frauds who had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. He was a member of a Scientific American committee that offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. None was able to do so, and the prize was never collected. The first to be tested was medium George Valentine of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. As his fame as a "ghostbuster" grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer.
Houdini chronicled his debunking exploits in his book, A Magician Among the Spirits, co-authored with C. M. Eddy, Jr., who was not credited. These activities compromised Houdini’s friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle, a firm believer in spiritualism during his later years, refused to believe any of Houdini's exposés.
His Later Years and Death
Before Houdini died, he and his wife agreed that if Houdini found it possible to communicate after death, he would communicate the message "Rosabelle believe", a secret code which they agreed to use. Rosabelle was their favorite song. Bess held yearly séances on Halloween for ten years after Houdini's death.
In 1926, Harry Houdini hired H. P. Love craft and his friend C. M. Eddy, Jr., to write an entire book about debunking religious miracles, which was to be called The Cancer of Superstition. In the final years of his life (1925/26), Houdini launched his own full-evening show, which he billed as "Three Shows in One: Magic, Escapes, and Fraud Mediums Exposed".
Harry Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix, in Detroit’s Grace Hospital. Witnesses to an incident at Houdini's dressing room in the Princess Theatre in Montreal speculated that Houdini's death was caused by Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead, who repeatedly struck Houdini's abdomen. Whitehead asked Houdini "if he believed in the miracles of the Bible" and "whether it was true that punches in the stomach did not hurt him". Houdini offered a casual reply that his stomach could endure a lot. Whitehead then delivered "some very hammer-like blows below the belt". Houdini was reclining on a couch at the time, having broken his ankle while performing several days earlier. Price said that Houdini winced at each blow and stopped Whitehead suddenly in the midst of a punch, gesturing that he had had enough, and adding that he had had no opportunity to prepare himself against the blows, as he did not expect Whitehead to strike him so suddenly and forcefully.
Throughout the evening, Houdini performed in great pain. He was unable to sleep and remained in constant pain for the next two days, but did not seek medical help. When he finally saw a doctor, he was found to have a fever of 102 °F (39 °C) and acute appendicitis, and was advised to have immediate surgery. He ignored the advice and decided to go on with the show. When Houdini arrived at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan, on October 24, 1926, for what would be his last performance, he had a fever of 104 °F (40 °C). Despite the diagnosis, Houdini took the stage. He was reported to have passed out during the show, but was revived and continued. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit’s Grace Hospital. It is unclear whether the dressing room incident caused Houdini's eventual death, as the relationship between blunt trauma and appendicitis is uncertain. One theory suggests that Houdini was unaware that he was suffering from appendicitis,
Houdini's funeral was held on November 4, 1926, in New York, with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpeiah Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his grave site. A statuary bust was added to the exedra in 1927, a rarity, because graven images are forbidden in Jewish cemeteries. In 1975, the bust was destroyed by vandals. Temporary busts were placed at the grave until 2011 when a group who came to be called The self-named Houdini Commandos, from the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, placed a permanent bust with the permission of Houdini's family and of the cemetery.
The 1953 Film Houdini
Houdini is a 1953 American Technicolor film biography from Paramount Pictures produced by George Pai and Berman Swarttz, directed by George Marshall, that stars Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.The film is based on the book Houdini by Harold Kellock. Normally, I usually discuss the film. Many incidents in Houdini’s life are accurately portrayed in the film, but much of his miraculous life had to be left out. I therefore decided to prepare a more detailed account of Houdini's life by Wikipedia in place of the film’s description. However, the movie is definitely worth seeing. Hopefully, I will find time to read a book about his life.
By McManus-Young Collection - Library of Congress, Public Domain,
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