Houdini, Harry

Houdini, Harry (hdē`nē), 1874–1926, American magician and writer, b. Budapest, Hungary. His real name was Erich Weiss; he took his stage name after the French magician Houdin. He was famed for his escapes from bonds of every sort—locks, handcuffs, straitjackets, and sealed chests underwater. While his stage magic skills were limited, Houdini was famously the originator (1918) of the celebrated Vanishing Elephant illusion. He performed in silent films and was also noted for his exposure of fraudulent spiritualist mediums and their phenomena (see spiritism). He left to the Library of Congress his library of magic, one of the most complete and valuable in the world. Among his writings are The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (1908), Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920), and A Magician among the Spirits (1924).

Bibliography

See Houdini's Magic (ed. from his notebooks, 1932); biographies by H. Kellock (1928), W. L. Gresham (1959), and K. Silverman (1996); W. B. Gibson, Houdini's Escapes (1930); R. FitzSimons, Death and the Magician: The Mystery of Houdini (1985); J. Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (2003).

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Houdini, Harry

 orig. Erik Weisz

Harry Houdini.

(credit: Pictorial Parade)

(born March 24, 1874, Budapest, Hung.—died Oct. 31, 1926, Detroit, Mich., U.S.) U.S. magician. The son of a rabbi who emigrated from Hungary to the U.S. and settled in Wisconsin, he became a trapeze performer at an early age. In 1882 he moved to New York City, where he played in vaudeville shows without much success. From about 1900 he earned an international reputation for his daring feats of escape from locked boxes, often submerged, while shackled in chains and handcuffed. His success depended on his great strength and agility and his unusual skill in manipulating locks. He exhibited his abilities in several films (1916–23). In his later years he campaigned against magicians and mind readers who claimed supernatural powers, including Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, from whom Houdini had taken his name.

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Houdini, Harry (b. Ehrich Weiss) (1874–1926) magician, escapologist; born in Budapest, Hungary. The son of a rabbi, he emigrated to Appleton, Wisconsin, and borrowed the name of a French magician. An established vaudeville star in England and America by 1900, he specialized in escaping from padlocked chains, cells, straitjackets, and underwater boxes. His escapes in public locales were covered in the international press and in 1910 he started a company to film his feats. Founder of the Society of American Magicians, he campaigned against mind readers and mediums who claimed to possess supernatural powers, but he encouraged attempts to contact him through a medium after his death.

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Houdini, Harry

(1874–1926) shackled magician could extricate himself from any entrapment. [Am. Hist.: Wallechinsky, 196]

See : Escape

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Houdini, Harry

(1874–1926) famous turn of century American magician and escape artist. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 1275]

See : Magic