Publicity photo of Harry Houdini, with signature. Circa 1900.
Gallery of Harry Houdini
1907
United States
Harry Houdini with his wife Beatrice (right) and mother Cecilia Steiner Weiss (left).
Gallery of Harry Houdini
1912
Houdini prepares to do the Overboard box escape. Circa 1912.
Gallery of Harry Houdini
1912
Houdini performing the Chinese Water Torture Cell.
Gallery of Harry Houdini
1913
Harry Handcuff Houdini in 1913.
Gallery of Harry Houdini
1915
Harry Houdini in 1915.
Gallery of Harry Houdini
1918
1120-1138 6th Ave, New York, NY 10036, United States
Harry Houdini and vanishing Jennie, the elephant, performing at the Hippodrome, New York. Others might vanish rabbits, but in 1918, on the brightly-lit stage of the Hippodrome in New York City, Houdini made a 10,000-pound elephant disappear. He created a sensation. When Houdini fired a pistol Jennie vanished from view.
Gallery of Harry Houdini
1918
Houdini in handcuffs, 1918.
Gallery of Harry Houdini
United States
Heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey mock-punching Houdini (held back by lightweight boxer Benny Leonard).
Achievements
203 S Main St, Memphis, TN 38103, United States
Walk of Fame Star at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis, Tennessee.
Membership
Society of American Magicians
Harry Houdini was a President of the Society of American Magicians.
1120-1138 6th Ave, New York, NY 10036, United States
Harry Houdini and vanishing Jennie, the elephant, performing at the Hippodrome, New York. Others might vanish rabbits, but in 1918, on the brightly-lit stage of the Hippodrome in New York City, Houdini made a 10,000-pound elephant disappear. He created a sensation. When Houdini fired a pistol Jennie vanished from view.
Crime: The Right Way to Do Wrong: An Expose of Successful Criminals
(Have you ever wondered how criminals work and what their ...)
Have you ever wondered how criminals work and what their tricks of the trade are? Yes? Well, you can soon find out. In this book, the legendary Harry Houdini exposes the ways that successful criminals and felons use to trick, steal, and con people. By knowing those ways you can prevent being a victim of a crime and protect yourself from the bad guys. In this book, you'll find out the secrets to: What burglars do and how they think Thieves and their Tricks Pickpocketers Letter swindles False Talk and Behaviour And more!
(In this volume, Houdini demonstrates with pictures, the v...)
In this volume, Houdini demonstrates with pictures, the various methods of undoing locks, handcuffs, straitjackets, and kindred devices. He travels to various countries of the world and takes on the greatest performers in his sphere, of many lands. The man whom no lock could restrain wrote one book before this and five after and was also a very capable and unbiased author in his own right.
(Magical Rope Ties and Escapes by Harry Houdini is conside...)
Magical Rope Ties and Escapes by Harry Houdini is considered the most famous magician in the world. This is his classic work on how to perform ties and methods of escape from rope shackles, whose content range from the unpretentious Thumb Tie to the spectacular escape from being bound to a cannon wheel.
Harry Houdini was a Budapest-born American illusionist, stuntman, and performer whose name forever defined the term "escape artist." His grand illusions and daring, spectacular escape acts made him one of the most famous magicians of all time.
Background
Harry Houdini, original name Erik Weisz, was born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary, to a Jewish family. He was one of seven children of Rabbi Mayer Sámuel Weisz and Cecília Steiner. To escape persecution and find a better life, the Weisz family immigrated to Appleton where they changed their name to the German spelling Weiss (Erik became Erich). Other moves took the Weisses to Milwaukee and, eventually, New York. But the family remained poor. The young Houdini sought ways to ease his mother's hardscrabble life. At one point, he took to begging for coins in the street. True to his illusionist ways, he hid the coins around his hair and clothing, then presented himself to his mother with the command, "Shake me, I'm magic." She did, and a flood of coins spilled out.
Education
Before becoming a world-renowned magician and escape artist named Harry Houdini, Ehrich Weiss dropped out of school at age 12, working several jobs, including locksmith's apprentice.
In 1894, Ehrich Weiss launched his career as a professional magician and renamed himself Harry Houdini, the first name being a derivative of his childhood nickname, "Ehrie," and the last an homage to the great French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. (Although he later wrote The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, a study that set out to debunk Houdin’s skill.) Though his magic met with little success, he soon drew attention for his feats of escape using handcuffs.
In 1899, Houdini's act caught the attention of Martin Beck, an entertainment manager who soon got him booked at some of the best vaudeville venues in the country, followed by a tour of Europe. Houdini's feats would involve the local police, who would strip search him, place him in shackles and lock him in their jails. The show was a huge sensation, and he soon became the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville.
Houdini continued his activities in the United States in the early 1900s, constantly upping the ante from handcuffs and straight jackets to locked, water-filled tanks and nailed packing crates. He was able to escape because of both his uncanny strength and his equally uncanny ability to pick locks. In 1912, his act reached its pinnacle, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, which would be the hallmark of his career. In it, Houdini was suspended by his feet and lowered upside-down in a locked glass cabinet filled with water, requiring him to hold his breath for more than three minutes to escape. The performance was so daring and such a crowd-pleaser that it remained in his act until his death in 1926.
Houdini also launched a movie career, releasing his first film in 1901, Merveilleux Exploits du Célébre Houdini Paris, which documented his escapes. He starred in several subsequent films, including The Master Mystery, The Grim Game and Terror Island. In New York, he started his own production company, Houdini Picture Corporation, and a film lab called The Film Development Corporation, but neither was a success. In 1923, Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America's oldest magic company.
Houdini's publishing career didn't end with his literary takedown of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, either, as he later wrote Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) and A Magician Among the Spirits (1924).
Harry Houdini's grand illusions and daring, spectacular escape acts made him one of the most famous magicians of all time. No one before or since has so completely defined the art of escape as Harry Houdini. From his breakthrough in 1899 to his death in 1926, Houdini was one of the world's most popular entertainers, a true star of stage and screen. Time and again, his escapes from seemingly impossible predicaments thrilled audiences, who found in him a metaphor for their own lives, an affirmation of the human capacity to overcome adversity. Escapism in both senses of the word. But while nearly everyone is familiar with Houdini's stage persona, his little-known personal life is equally revealing.
In addition to literal shackles, Houdini wanted his audiences to throw off the shackles of superstition and belief in 'real' magic. He was an important philosophical influence on the skeptical movement, which is best known through modern scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Bill Nye. Penn and Teller are also among today's most prominent rational skeptics.
Houdini was born and raised Jewish which remained for his whole life.
Politics
Harry Houdini wasn't involved in politics directly. He was rumored to have worked as a spy for the British Secret Service gaining information while performing for world leaders such as Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Views
As president of the Society of American Magicians, Houdini was a vigorous campaigner against fraudulent psychic mediums. Most notably, he debunked renowned medium Mina Crandon, better known as Margery. This act turned him against former friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed deeply in spiritualism and Margery's sight. Despite his activism against spiritual charlatanism, Houdini and his wife did in fact experiment with otherworldly spiritualism when they decided that the first of them to die would try to communicate from beyond the grave with the survivor. Before her 1943 death, Bess Houdini declared the experiment a failure.
Quotations:
"No prison can hold me; no hand or leg irons or steel locks can shackle me. No ropes or chains can keep me from my freedom. "
Membership
Harry Houdini was a President of the Society of American Magicians.
Society of American Magicians
,
United States
Personality
Houdini's wealth allowed him to indulge in other passions, such as aviation and film. He purchased his first plane in 1909 and set out to become the first person to man a controlled power flight over Australia in 1910. While he did it after a few failed attempts, it later was revealed that Houdini was likely beaten to the punch by just a few months by a Captain Colin Defries, who made a short flight in December 1909.
Physical Characteristics:
Though there are mixed reports as to the cause of Houdini's death, it is certain that he suffered from acute appendicitis. Whether his demise was caused by a McGill University student who was testing his will by punching him in the stomach (with permission) or by poison from a band of angry Spiritualists is unknown. What is known is that he died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix on October 31, 1926, at the age of 52, in Detroit, Michigan.
Interests
aviation
Writers
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sport & Clubs
athletics, acrobatics
Connections
In 1894 Houdini married Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner (known as Bess) who became his assistant. They had no children.
The association of Houdini and Doyle began as far back as 1908, when as a publicity stunt Houdini wrote a letter to "Holmes," asking for help in catching scalawags who were stealing his tricks. By 1920 the two had formed a friendship that seemed connected not only by their talent but by their tragedies - just as Houdini had lost his beloved mother, Doyle lived in grief over the death of his son, Kingsley, a casualty of World War I. But at one point the friendship began to unravel. Houdini was much more the skeptic than Doyle, and indeed made something of a second career from debunking fraudulent mystics.
