Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was one of the most famous magicians, escapologists, and stunt performers of all time, as well as an investigator of spiritualists.

Early life

Houdini was born Ehrich Weiss (various spellings exist as the family would have originally used hebrew characters; however 'Weiss' is the spelling adopted by the family once in the US and is how the name appears on his gravestone and official papers) on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary. From 1900 onwards he claimed in interviews to have been born in Appleton, Wisconsin on 6 April that year, but his Hungarian birth certificate was uncovered by researchers after his death. Houdini was Jewish: his father was Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss (1829 - 1892) and his mother was Cecilia Steiner (1841 - 1913). In 1878, his family moved to the United States, where he spelled his name as Ehrich Weiss, but he was called "Erie" or "Harry" by friends. He made his public debut as a 9 year old trapeze artist, calling himself, "Ehrich, the prince of the air." He legally changed his name to "Harry Houdini" in 1913.

At first, they lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. On June 6, 1882, Rabbi Weiss became a United States citizen, then after losing his tenure, he moved to New York City with Ehrich in 1887, where they lived in a boarding-house on East Seventy-ninth Street. Rabbi Weiss later was joined by the rest of the family once he found a more permanent housing. As a child Ehrich took several jobs, one of which was as a locksmith's apprentice. This was apparently where he mastered the art of opening locks without the help of a key.

Career

In 1891, Weiss became a professional magician, and began calling himself Harry Houdini because he was influenced by French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin and his friend Jack Hayman told him that in French adding an "i" to Houdin would mean "like Houdin". Initially, his magic career resulted in little success, though he met fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner in 1893, and married her three weeks later. For the rest of his performing career, Bess would work as his stage assistant.

Houdini initially focused on traditional card acts. At one point he billed himself as the King of Cards. One of his most notable non-escape stage illusions was performed in London's hippodrome: he vanished a full-grown elephant (with its trainer) from a stage, beneath which was a swimming pool.

He soon began experimenting with escape acts, however. Harry Houdini's "big break" came in 1899, when he met the showman Martin Beck. 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, Houdini traveled to Europe to perform. By the time he returned in 1904, he had become a sensation.

From 1904 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from handcuffs, chains, ropes and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope or suspended in water, sometimes in plain sight of the audience. In 1913, he introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. He held his breath for over 3 minutes.

He explained some of his tricks in books written throughout his career. 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, being able to regurgitate small keys at will. He was able to escape from a milk can which had its top fastened to its collar because the collar could be separated from the rest of the can from the inside. When tied down in ropes or straitjackets, he gained wiggle room by enlarging his shoulders and chest, and moving his arms slightly away from his body, and then dislocating his shoulders. His straitjacket escape was originally performed behind curtains, with him popping out free at the end. However, Houdini's brother who was also an escape artist billing himself as Theodore Hardeen, after being accused of having someone sneak in and let him out and being challenged to escape without the curtain, discovered that audiences were more impressed and entertained when the curtains were eliminated, so that they could watch him struggle to get out. They both performed straitjacket escapes dangling upside-down from the roof of a building for publicity on more than one occasion. It is said that Hardeen once handed out bills for his show while Houdini was doing his suspended straightjacket escape and Houdini became upset because people thought it was Hardeen up there escaping, not Houdini.

In 1919 Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America's oldest magic company. The business is still in operation today.

Difficult though it was, Houdini's entire act, including escapes, was also performed on a coordinated but separate tour schedule by his brother, Theo Weiss, under the name "Hardeen". In 1910, while on a tour of Australia, Houdini brought with him a primitive bi-plane with which he made the first controlled powered aeroplane flight in Australia, at Diggers Rest, Victoria ^*.

Debunking spiritualists

In the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother, he turned his energies toward debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums, a pursuit that would inspire and be followed by later-day conjurers James Randi and P. C. Sorcar, and even Penn and Teller. Houdini's magical training allowed him to expose frauds who had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. He was a member of a Scientific American committee which offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. Thanks to the contributions and skepticism of Houdini and three others (there were five in the committee), the prize was never collected. As his fame as a "ghostbuster" grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer. Possibly the most famous medium whom he debunked was the Boston medium Mina Crandon, also known as Margery. Houdini chronicled his debunking exploits in his book A Magician Among the Spirits.

These activities cost Houdini the friendship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle, a firm believer in spiritualism during his later years, refused to believe any of Houdini's exposés. Doyle actually came to believe that Houdini was a powerful spiritualist medium, had performed many of his stunts by means of paranormal abilities, and was using these abilities to block those of other mediums that he was 'debunking' (see Doyle's The Edge of The Unknown, published in 1931 after Houdini's death). This disagreement led to the two men becoming public antagonists.

In Houdini's will, his vast library was offered to the American Society for Psychical Research on the condition that research officer and editor of the ASPR Journal, J. Malcolm Bird, resigned. Bird refused and the collection went instead to the Library of Congress.

Harry Houdini gained fame by exposing the tricks of mediums, as well as by his own remarkable achievements as a magician. He published numerous books (most of which were written by his good friend Walter Brown Gibson, the creator of The Shadow ^*):

The Right Way to do Wrong (1906)
Handcuff Secrets (1907)
The Unmasking of Robert Houdin (1908)
Miracle Mongers (1920)
Spooks and Spiritualism
Rope Ties and Escapes

Death

Houdini's last performance was at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan on October 24, 1926. The next day he was hospitalized at Detroit's Grace Hospital. Houdini died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix at 1:26 p.m. on Halloween, October 31, 1926, at the age of 52.

A widespread urban legend is that Houdini's ruptured appendix was caused by multiple blows to his abdomen from a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, in Montreal on October 22. The eyewitnesses to this event were two McGill University students named Jacques Price and Sam Smilovitz (sometimes called Jack Price and Sam Smiley). Their accounts generally agreed. The following is according to Price's description of events. According to Price, Houdini was reclining on his couch after his performance, having an art student sketch him. When Whitehead came in and asked if it was true that Houdini could take any blow to the stomach, Houdini replied in the affirmative. In this instance, he was struck several times, before Price protested. Whitehead reportedly continued hitting Houdini several times afterwards, and Houdini acted as though he were in some pain. Price recounted that Houdini stated that if he had time to prepare himself properly, he would have been in better position to take the blows. After taking statements from Price and Smiley, Houdini's insurance company concluded that the death was due to the dressing room incident and paid double indemnity. Despite this, modern medical knowledge gives no reason to believe Houdini's acute appendicitis was caused by any physical trauma.

Houdini's funeral was held on November 4 in New York, with over two thousand mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery Queens, New York, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his gravesite. The Society holds their "Broken Wand" ceremony at the gravesite on the anniversary of his death to this day.

Legacy

Houdini left a final sting for his spiritualist opponents: shortly before his death, he had made a pact with his wife, Bess Houdini, to contact her from the other side if possible and deliver a pre-arranged coded message. Every Halloween for the next 10 years, Bess held a séance to test the pact. In 1936, after a last unsuccessful seance on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel, she put out the candle that she had kept burning beside a photograph of Houdini since his death, later (1943) saying "ten years is long enough to wait for any man."
The United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp with a replica of Houdini's favorite publicity poster on July 3, 2002.

In 1918, Houdini signed a contract with film producer B.A. Rolfe to star in his fifteen part serial The Master Mystery (released in January 1919). As was common at the time, the film serial was released simultaneously with a novel. However, financial difficulties resulted in B.A. Rolfe Productions going out of business and Houdini was signed by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation for whom he made two pictures, The Grim Game (1919) and Terror Island (1920). He then started his own film production company called the "Houdini Picture Corporation," and produced and starred in two films, The Man From Beyond (1921) and Haldane of the Secret Service (1923), writing the screenplay for the first. Although success in film eluded him and he gave up on the business in 1923, his celebrity became such that years later he would be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.
A mostly fictionalized version of Houdini's life was made in a film in 1953 starring Tony Curtis. Most of the misconceptions about Houdini's life are due in part to this film. For example, it portrayed him dying from the Chinese Water Torture Cell, instead of the less spectacular peritonitis.
Houdini was played by Paul Michael Glaser of Starsky and Hutch fame in a 1976 TV movie called "The Great Houdinis". The film focused on Houdini's relationship with his wife and his fascination with the occult. The cast also included Sally Struthers, Bill Bixby, and Ruth Gordon.
The Tony award-winning musical "Ragtime", based on E. L. Doctorow's novel of the same name features Houdini as one of the numerous historical supporting characters.

References

Snopes More information about the urban legend of Houdini's death.
Arcuri, Lawrence. "The Houdini Birth Research Committee's Report", Magico Magazine, 1972. (Spelling of Houdini's birth name.)
Bell, Don. "The Man Who Killed Houdini", Vehicule Press, 2005. (Details of dressing room assult.)
Weltman, Manny. "Houdini: Escape Into Legend, The Early Years: 1862 - 1900", Roadrunner Press, 1993. (Parents birthdates.)
Museum Factory/One Day Of Mrs Houdini