Harrry Houdini (March 24, 1874-Oct. 31, 1926) was born in Budapest as Erik Weisz to Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and his wife Cecilia Steiner. As a child, he moved with his family to Appleton, Wisconsin, with the spelling of his name changed to Erich Weiss. His father served as the rabbi at the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation in Appleton. From there, Tte family moved to Milwaukee and ultimately to New York.
As a 9-year-old, “Ehrich, the Prince of the Air” did a trapeze act. When he later performed magic, he took the stage name of Harry Houdini in tribute to the French magician Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin. There are two explanations for the first name Harry. He said it was an homage to the American magician Harry Kellar; the other was that it was an adaptation of Ehri, a nickname for Ehrich.
He and his brother Theodore “Dash” performed magic at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and in 1894 he met and married Wilhelmina Beatrice “Bess” Rahner, who replaced Dash in the act as Houdini’s stage assistant. In 1899 manager Martin Beck recommended that he concentrate on escape acts. After Houdini demonstrated to Scotland Yard how he could get out of handcuffs, his act became very popular in Great Britain and the European continent. He challenged local police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails, from which he then escaped.
His escapes became more and more complicated and thrilling, including from nailed packing crates that were lowered into water, riveted boilers, giant milk cans filled with water, and even from the belly of a whale that had washed ashore in Boston. Sometimes Houdini would have himself put in a straight-jacket and suspended by his ankles from a tall building as the public watched him wriggle free. Such escapes made him the highest-paid performer in vaudeville and also led to his acting in movies, owning a film production company, and producing books based on his exploits.
He served as president of the Society of American Magicians from 1917 until his death on Halloween in 1926. In his travels, he would often visit local magic clubs and induce them to join.
Houdini also spent much of his career exposing the tricks of self-proclaimed psychics and mediums. Because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a believer in spiritualism, that activity ruptured their friendship. They subsequently debated the matter in their writings.
His funeral attracted more than 2,000 mourners. He was interred at the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York.
Tomorrow, March 25: Gloria Steinem
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SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article
According to an article that I read, Houdini, on his death bed, gave Bess a code word that would let her know the ghost the medium spoke to was really him. Bess attended seances, but she never heard the code word: Believe.