But his own disappearing act remains a secret. He also, to some extent, leaked secrets of the trade. Houdini was also a keeper of the trade secrets, keen to sue other magicians for copyright abuse but also ready to unmask fake magicians – spiritualists – among the ‘real’ ones. And when he was to vanish things – he couldn’t help but choose something as spectacular as an elephant. In Europe, he challenged local police to hold him shackled in custody – it is probably easy to guess that even the authorities could not have him.
Harry Houdini was an extremely skilled entertainer. The Secret to Being a Convincing Vampire (Hint: Accent Matters) But it was not only his fancy name, smart locks he would open with a key hidden in his mouth, or boxes with double walls that made him famous. His legacy serves as the image of the early 20th-century magician, and he introduced this trade to modern pop culture. Houdini became THE magician, and his name became the synonym for a stunt performer and escape artist. The rest of the story is far better known. By 1900 Houdini’s fame crossed the Atlantic. Soon they developed a friendship and started making real money. He also did an excellent job as Houdini’s booking agent. It was Beck who advised Houdini to focus on his career as an escape artist. Rolfe Productions, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
#Young harry houdini movie movie#
Photo: Paramount Pictures, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons (right) The Houdini Serial, 1919 movie poster. Having seen Houdini in one of his performances, Beck telegraphed him: “You can open Omaha, March twenty sixth, sixty dollars, will see act probably make you proposition for all next season.” “This wire changed my whole Life’s journey” – added Houdini on the telegraph, in handwriting, and kept it as a souvenir. He with his family boarded a transatlantic ship from Bremen. Six years Houdini’s senior, Beck arrived in the USA virtually the same way Erik Weiss did: he was a Hungarian teenager of Jewish descent. The groundbreaking moment was when he met Martin Beck, a theater owner, and a booking agent he decided to take on the task of filling the seats for young Houdini. Back then, he was known as “Ehrich, the Prince of the Air.”īut he was neither prince nor especially high (career-wise) when he became Houdini, nor was he successful in the first years of his acting. Finally, they came back to New York City, and this is where Weisz, or Weiss, as a nine-year-old, took a career as a trapeze artist. The Weisz family, headed by Erik’s father Sámuel with his wife and seven children, experienced severe poverty in America and have been in pursuit of happiness in a few regions of the country. Photo: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons (bottom) Heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey mock-punching Houdini (held back by lightweight boxer Benny Leonard). Photo: Transcendental Graphics / Getty Images (top right) Houdini in handcuffs, 1918. Photo: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons (top center) Harry Houdini Strapped To A Locomotive Wheel ca.1910. (Top left) Houdini and Jennie, the Vanishing Elephant performing at the Hippodrome, New York in 1918. He arrived in the USA as a four-year-old with his parents in a typical way for Central or Eastern European émigrés: aboard a transatlantic ship from Hamburg to New York City. Weisz (also known in the American version as Ehrich Weiss) was already a somewhat experienced stunt performer, and it seems that he was driven by the motivation to learn this art. His choice was to create one after his French colleague Jean-Eugèn Robert-Houdin, then an already dead performer and an important figure in the trade. Harry Houdini was born in the late 1880s in New York City when teenager Erik Weisz took on performing as a magician and had to find an artistic pseudonym. There is even a striking similarity to the one of another American Hungarian Jew, Robert Pulitzer, who turned American media mogul and the founder of a famous journalism prize.
In many ways, his persona may be a convenient symbol of the fate of Central European émigrés.
Houdini is among the most known people in the history of American entertainment.
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