Houdini: A Life Worth Reading (2 page)

When Mayer was forty-seven years old, he came on his own to the United States, seeking a better life for his family. He changed the spelling of his name from Weisz to Weiss. Despite his inability to speak English, Mayer found a job as a rabbi in Appleton, Wisconsin, which had a small Jewish community. After two years, he saved enough money to send for his wife and four young children, including Ehrich. While the position in Appleton had seemed promising, Mayer made very little money at this job. Soon the congregation wanted a rabbi who was more modern and who spoke English. Mayer was fired after only four years. During that time, two more children were born to the family.

Desperate to make a living for his family, Mayer moved the Weisses to Milwaukee, which had a growing Jewish population due to the arrival of families fleeing anti-Semitic violence in Russia. However, the Jewish families in Milwaukee did not practice a strict form of Judaism, and there was no demand for Mayer’s services as a rabbi. Mayer tried to earn money by conducting private religious services and by opening a school, but was unable to provide for his family. The poverty-stricken Weisses moved from one address to another, and Ehrich worked at odd jobs such as shoe-shining and selling newspapers to make money to support the family.

Ehrich’s older half-brother Herman did not live long after the move to Milwaukee. He married (a woman who was not Jewish), and Mayer sent Herman to New York City to get him away from what he felt were bad influences in Milwaukee. Herman died there of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-two.

Ehrich ran away from home at the age of twelve, hoping to spare his parents the expense of providing for him and planning to earn money to send home. He left home without a change of clothes or food, and took a train that he believed was headed to Galveston, Texas. The train was actually bound for Kansas City, Missouri. When Ehrich arrived, he followed a rural road to a town called Delavan on the Wisconsin border. A kindly middle-aged couple, the Flitcrofts, gave Ehrich a place to live while he earned a living shining shoes and selling newspapers on the streets. Ehrich was able to send a small amount of money home. Ehrich always remembered Mrs. Flitcroft and gave her expensive gifts later on in his life.

While living in Delavan, Ehrich learned that his father had gone to New York City to seek a better fortune, temporarily leaving his family behind in Milwaukee. Ehrich traveled to New York City to join his father sometime in 1887, when he was merely thirteen years old. He and Mayer lived in a boarding house in the city until the rest of the family came to New York the following year. The family moved into an apartment in a four-story tenement house.

Mayer tried to earn money as a Hebrew teacher and by performing rabbinical services, but was again unable to make a living wage. Mayer sold his collection of Hebrew books to a local rabbi, and some accounts indicate he went to work at a clothing factory. Ehrich also worked at the clothing factory, as well as at various other jobs, including as a messenger-boy for large companies and at a tool-and-die shop. Even though he was technically enrolled at a local Jewish school, Ehrich did not have very much time to attend classes, and the son of educated Rabbi Weiss grew up with little formal education. Later in life, Houdini worked hard to establish himself as an educated man through his literary forays and many efforts to engage with academics.

Mayer Weiss died in New York City in 1892 following complications from surgery performed to treat tongue cancer. Houdini later reported that as Mayer lay dying, he made Ehrich promise to provide for his mother for the rest of her life.

When Ehrich was very young, he saw a trapeze artist in Appleton, Wisconsin and became obsessed. At the age of nine, Ehrich put on red stockings and performed his own trapeze act in his backyard, charging five cents and calling himself Eric, Prince of the Air. In this act, he hung from a trapeze and picked up pins from the ground with his teeth.

Ehrich was obsessed with physical abilities and taught himself how to do acrobatics and contortionist stunts. As a teenager in New York City, Ehrich became an avid runner and joined the Pastime Athletic Club. He reportedly trained by running ten miles a day in Central Park. He won a race organized by the Amateur Athletic Union even though he was not technically old enough to have entered. A famous picture of young Houdini shows him in his running uniform, his top covered with medals, some of them actually earned, and some of them put there by Ehrich for show. At seventeen, Ehrich was already as tall as he would ever become, only five feet four inches, with a muscular, stocky build.

Ehrich met his friend Jacob Hyman while working at the clothing factory in New York. Jacob was a young coworker and also an amateur magician, and he began to show Ehrich some of his tricks. Around that time, Ehrich bought a cheap copy of the biography of the famous French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin. According to Houdini’s later writings, Ehrich was fascinated with Robert-Houdin, whom he then regarded as his hero.

Although he eventually settled on “Houdini” alone, the King of Handcuffs had a plethora of names, not just a stage name and a birth name.

As a young child he was Ehrich Weisz. There are other spellings of this name: Erich Weisz and Erik Weiss. Erik is the name on his Hungarian birth certificate, but the name he and his family used while he was growing up was Ehrich.

When he moved to America his last name, and the name of his entire family, became Weiss. His nickname amongst friends and family was Ehrie. Ehrie then changed to Harry when he became Harry Houdini. Later he dropped the “Harry” and became Houdini.

He wasn’t just Houdini on stage, either. Houdini’s name changes were often all encompassing, and friends and family had to adapt to the different names in his personal life as well as his professional one.

In
The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin
, Houdini remembers his early love of Robert-Houdin and describes it to the reader.

When it became necessary for me to take a stage-name, and a fellow-player, possessing a veneer of culture, told me that if I would add the letter “i” to Houdin’s name, it would mean, in the French language, “like Houdin,” I adopted the suggestion with enthusiasm. I asked nothing more of life than to become in my profession “like Robert-Houdin.”

After reading this chapter, you will know more about

• The Brothers Houdini:
  Houdini and his friend Jacob Hyman performed together in an early magic act with this name, although more than one person would partner with Houdini in the act.
  

• Houdini’s early tricks:
  “Metamorphosis” was an early escape trick of the type that would later make Houdini famous.
  

• Houdini’s wife:
  Bess and the struggling magician married after only a few weeks of courtship.
  

• The first hint of fame:
  A savvy manager named Martin Beck gave Houdini some good advice and his first big break.
  

A
round 1891, when Ehrich was seventeen years old, he quit his main job at the clothing factory to dedicate himself full-time to his career in magic. Ehrich joined with his friend Jacob Hyman to form a duo of magicians they called “The Brothers Houdini.” The name Houdini came from an alteration of Ehrich’s hero, the French magician Robert-Houdin. Ehrich, whose nickname was “Ehrie,” morphed his first name into Harry. Harry Houdini was born.

Some biographers speculate that Ehrich invented the persona of Harry Houdini as an alter ego that had the power to escape from the terrible poverty and anti-Jewish rhetoric that had filled his childhood. They believe that he was driven to develop an omnipotent character that couldn’t be contained by any force because of this deep urge to escape the powerlessness he experienced as a child. Whatever the real reasons, Ehrich, now Harry Houdini, began practicing his magic tricks several hours a day. He bought and read every book about magic that he could find. He learned that all handcuffs could be opened with a small number of keys and started practicing escaping from ropes with the help of a knowledgeable friend.

The actual members of the Brothers Houdini fluctuated. Jacob Hyman, discouraged by the lack of success of the show, quit the duo. Jacob’s brother Joe Hyman replaced him for a while, but eventually quit as well. Houdini recruited his own younger brother Theodore, whom everyone called Dash. Dash looked like a huskier version of Houdini. Houdini was decidedly the boss of the duo. Their show consisted of card tricks and sleight of hand, but the major act was a trick Houdini called “Metamorphosis.” This trick had become possible when Houdini purchased equipment from a retiring magician, after borrowing the needed money from Dash. The equipment included a trunk with a hidden escape hatch.

Performers normally used the trunk to lock themselves in, and then appear at another part of the theater. Houdini combined this trick idea with his developing ability to perform escapes. With his hands bound behind his back, Houdini was tied in a sack and put in the trunk. His assistant, Dash, drew some curtains around the trunk and announced a miracle on the count of three. Upon reaching the number three, the curtains were parted and Houdini stood outside of the trunk, untied. Inside the trunk, which Houdini now opened, was a tied sack containing Dash, whose hands were now tied behind his back.

Despite the success that other performers enjoyed with the trunk trick, the Brothers Houdini failed to draw big crowds. They usually performed as opening acts for other artists in dime museums and beer halls, making only the money that people threw into a hat. At the suggestion of a friend, Houdini tried polishing up his speech, changing the street slang he normally used to more formal, grammatically correct English. Despite not having gone to school full time as a child, Houdini had grown up with a very educated father from whom he had inherited a love of books and education. But still, the Brothers Houdini failed to have any real success.

In 1894, right around the time that his father died, Houdini met a petite, dark-haired girl named Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner. Raised in a family of German Catholic immigrants, Wilhelmina was born in Brooklyn and went by the nickname Bess. Bess was a performer who sang and danced in a group called the Floral Sisters. Dash reportedly met her first during a performance and introduced her to Houdini. Houdini and Bess married after only two or three weeks of courtship and went to Coney Island for their honeymoon. Houdini was twenty and Bess was eighteen. Bess’s mother objected to the marriage because Houdini was Jewish while Bess’s family was Catholic, and Bess and her mother became estranged. Houdini and Bess took some time to get used to each other. Houdini was horrified to learn that Bess believed in many superstitions which he regarded as nonsense, and Bess had to cope with her husband’s odd habits and intense work ethic, which allowed him to only sleep five hours a night.

Houdini quickly ejected Dash from the magic act and made Bess his partner; he and Bess became “The Houdinis.” Bess’s small size and pretty, expressive features enhanced the act, and Metamorphosis began to attract some attention. The Houdinis continued to perform in dime museums, doing up to fourteen acts a day. Houdini also tried to earn some money by selling short publications explaining various magic tricks. The Houdinis traveled around to various circuses and shows, and Houdini formed long-term friendships with other performers, individuals with physical oddities who made their living as “freaks.”

Houdini later claimed that Bess changed his luck. But the early career of the Houdinis was grueling and low paying; Houdini and Bess worked contract to contract with various performing shows, often traveling with few amenities and sleeping on cots in bunks shared with other performers. The two tried several versions of their act, including a comedy show billed under Bess’s maiden name, “The Rahners.” Houdini and Bess sometimes doubled as other actors as needed, including stints as the Wild Man and a singing clown, respectively.

Houdini bought a share in a burlesque show known as “the Gaiety Girls,” and Bess and Houdini traveled with the show through New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. Trying to create publicity for the shows, Houdini began showing up at local police stations and challenging police officials to find handcuffs from which he could not escape. After first attracting great attention with this performance while in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Houdini repeated it at police stations all over New England. Police would secure him with up to six pairs of handcuffs at once, and Houdini would duck into a private room and emerge with the handcuffs open in under a minute.

The burlesque company eventually went bankrupt, but Houdini continued his escape stunts to promote whatever shows with which he was performing. In New Brunswick, Canada, police cuffed Houdini with sophisticated leather cuffs used to restrain patients in insane asylums. Houdini escaped within a few minutes. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the sheriff clamped him in iron cuffs. Houdini was able to get out of them to great fanfare. In Chicago, he met challenges that he was hiding impressions of the jail’s locks by offering to strip naked for his escape. The police accepted this challenge, locking Houdini’s clothes in another cell. Houdini appeared mere moments later, fully dressed. Houdini’s name made the papers that night, and this trick became known as the Nude Cell Escape. Houdini did experience a defeat shortly afterwards in Chicago, as the handcuffs put on him had been tampered with so that they would not open. Some biographers point out that Houdini’s willingness to bare his body and the public’s fascination with this trick might point to an element of eroticism in Houdini’s appeal.