Background
Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States. in 1876 to German immigrants Gebhard Rahner (a cabinet maker) and Balbina Rahner (née Bugel).
Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States. in 1876 to German immigrants Gebhard Rahner (a cabinet maker) and Balbina Rahner (née Bugel).
Bess was working at Coney Island in a song and dance act called The Floral Sisters when she was first courted by Houdini"s younger brother, Theo (aka Theodore Hardeen). Bess and Harry worked as The Houdinis for several years before Houdini hit it big as The Handcuff King. But he and Bess continued to occasionally perform their signature trick, Metamorphosis, throughout his career.
Bess also looked after their menagerie of pets, collected dolls, and made the costumes for Houdini"s full evening roadshow.
After Houdini died on October 31, 1926, Bess opened a tea house in New York, and briefly performed a vaudeville act in which she froze a man in ice. On Halloween 1936, Bess and Saint conducted a "Final Houdini Séance" on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood.
At the conclusion of the failed séance, she put out the candle beside a photograph of Houdini that was said to have burned for ten years. Before he died, Walter passed on the tradition to Dorothy Dietrich, who now does them yearly at the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Bess Houdini died from a heart attack on February 11, 1943 while in Needles, California, aboard an eastbound train traveling from Los Angeles to New York City.
She was 67 years old.
She is interred instead at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New New York
Quotations: "ten years long enough to wait for any manitoba".
