Actors - Harry Houdini

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	Actors - Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss; 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. He legally changed his name to "Harry Houdini" in 1913.

Early life

Houdini was born on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary. From 1900 onwards he claimed in interviews to have been born in the Appleton, Wisconsin, but his Hungarian birth certificate was uncovered by researchers after his death. His parents were Jewish: his father was Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss (?-1892) and his mother was Cecilia Steiner (?-1913). In 1878, his family moved to the United States, where he spelled his name as Erich Weiss. 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, Mayer moved to New York City with Ehrich in 1887, where they lived in a boarding-house on East Seventy-ninth Street. Mayer later was joined by the rest of the family once he found more permanent housing.

Career

In 1891, Ehrich 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 cards and other 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 travelled 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 explained some of his tricks in books written in the 1920s. 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 Theo 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 strightjacket escape and Houdini became upset because people thought it was Hardeen up there escaping, not Houdini.

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 ("Dash" to the Weiss family), under the name "Hardeen". The major difference between the two was in the straitjacket escape; Houdini dislocated both his shoulders to get out, but Hardeen could dislocate only one, giving Theo the disadvantage, since he had to always cross one arm on top of the other, whereas Houdini could cross them either way. 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. History records that there were several competitors for the record-making flight, but they narrowly missed out.

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Actors - Harry Houdini

Early life

Career

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