Harry Houdini (Erik Weisz, Ehrich Weiss , Harry Weiss)
He was born March 24, 1874 to Rabbi Mayer Sámuel Weisz and Cecília Steiner.
He was a Hungarian-born American illusionist and stunt performer. He is remembered for his sensational escape acts.
Weisz arrived in the United States on July 3, 1878, on the SS Fresia.
Houdini and his family lived in dire poverty.
As a child, he took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air".
He began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, after reading Robert-Houdin's autobiography in 1890.
Houdini became an active Freemason and was a member of St. Cecile Lodge #568 in New York City.
When he registered for selective service in 1918 he gave the name Harry Handcuff Houdini.
Houdini began his magic career in 1891.
He appeared in a tent act with strongman Emil Jarrow.
He also performed in dime museums and sideshows.
He even doubled as "The Wild Man" at a circus.
Houdini focusing first on card tricks, billed himself as the "King of Cards".
Some professional magicians would come to regard Houdini as a competent but not particularly skilled sleight-of-hand artist.
They said he lacked the grace and finesse required to achieve excellence in that craft.
He soon began experimenting with escape acts.
In 1893, he performed with his brother "Dash" (Theodore) at Coney Island as "The Brothers Houdini".
Houdini met a fellow performer, Wilhelmina Beatrice "Bess" Rahner.
Bess was initially courted by Dash, but she and Houdini married in 1894.
Bess replace Dash in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis".
For the rest of Houdini's performing career, Bess worked as his stage assistant.
Houdini's big break came in 1899.
He met manager Martin Beck in St. Paul, Minnesota who was impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act.
Beck advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit.
After a few months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the country.
In 1900, Houdini to toured Europe.
Houdini's British agent Harry Day helped him to get an interview with C. Dundas Slater, then manager of the Alhambra Theatre.
He was introduced to William Melville and gave a demonstration of escape from handcuffs at Scotland Yard.
He baffled the police so effectively that he was booked at the Alhambra for six months.
His show was an immediate hit and his salary rose to $300 a week.
Houdini became widely known as "The Handcuff King."
He toured England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Russia, where Houdini challenged local police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails.
He escaped in many of these challenges.
Each challenge he was first stripped nude and searched.
He escaped from a Siberian prison transport van.
In Cologne, he sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who alleged that he made his escapes via bribery.
Houdini won the case when he opened the judge's safe.
Houdini purchased a dress said to have been made for Queen Victoria.
He then arranged a grand reception where he presented his mother in the dress to all their relatives.
Houdini said it was the happiest day of his life.
In 1904, he returned to the U.S. and purchased a house for $25,000 (equivalent to $680,926 in 2017), in Harlem, New York City.
While on tour in Europe in 1902, Houdini visited Blois met with the widow of Emile Houdin, tand the son of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, for an interview and permission to visit his grave.
He did not receive permission but visited the grave anyway.
Houdini claime he was "treated most discourteously by Madame W. Emile Robert-Houdin."
In 1906, Houdini created the Conjurers' Monthly Magazine.
Houdini put his "handcuff act" behind him on January 25, 1908, and began escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can.
Houdini expanded his repertoire with his escape challenge act, in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him.
These included nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into water), riveted boilers, wet sheets, mail bags,the belly of a whale that had washed ashore and barrels after they filled it with beer.
In 1913, Houdini introduced the Chinese Water Torture Cell.
He was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water, holding his breath for more than three minutes.
One of Houdini's most notable stage illusions was performed at the New York Hippodrome.
He vanished a full-grown elephant.
In 1923, he became president of Martinka & Co.
It is America's oldest magic company and is still in operation today.
He served as President of the Society of American Magicians from 1917 until his death in 1926.
He sought to create a large, unified national network of professional and amateur magicians.
He had created the richest and longest-surviving organization of magicians in the world.
July 1926, he was elected for the ninth successive time President of the Society of American Magicians.
He also was President of the Magicians' Club of London.
In the final years of his life , Houdini launched his own full-evening show.
He billed as "Three Shows in One: Magic, Escapes, and Fraud Mediums Exposed".
Somewhere near Santa Ana, California in 1915, Houdini was buried without a casket, in a pit of earth six feet deep.
While trying to dig his way to the surface and called for help, he became exhausted and panicked.
When his hand finally broke the surface, he fell unconscious and had to be pulled from the grave by his assistants.
Houdini wrote in his diary that "the weight of the earth is killing."
Houdini's final buried alive was to be an elaborate stage escape that featured in his full evening show.
He would escape after being strapped in a straitjacket, sealed in a casket, and then buried in a large tank filled with sand.
The stunt was to be the feature escape of his 1927 season.
Unfortunately, Houdini died on October 31, 1926.
The bronze casket Houdini created for buried alive was used to transport his body from Detroit to New York.
Harry Houdini died at 1:26 p.m. on October 31, 1926, in Room 401 at Detroit's Grace Hospital.
His cause of death was peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix.
Peritonitis is Inflammation of the membrane that lines the inner abdominal wall and encloses organs within the abdomen.
Peritonitis commonly occurs due to bacterial infection following a rupture in the appendix.
Another one of the many causes can be from trauma to the abdomen.
He was 52 years old.
In his final days, he optimistic and held to a strong belief that he would recover.
However his last words were,"I'm tired of fighting."
An incident at Houdini's dressing room in the Princess Theatre in Montreal gave rise to speculation that Houdini's death was caused by a McGill University student, Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead.
Whitehead asking Houdini "if he believed in the miracles of the Bible" and "whether it was true that punches in the stomach did not hurt him".
He then delivered blows below the belt.
Houdini was reclining on a couch at the time, because he had broken his ankle while performing several days earlier.
Throughout the evening, he performed in great pain.
He was unable to sleep and remained in constant pain for the next two days.
When he finally saw a doctor, he found out that he had a fever of 102 °F and acute appendicitis.
He was advised to have immediate surgery.
He ignored the advice and decided to go on with the show.
Houdini's last performance was at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan, on October 24, 1926.
Despite the diagnosis, and having a fever of 104°F, he took the stage.
He passed out during the show, but was revived and continued. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit's Grace Hospital.
Houdini's funeral was held on November 4, 1926, in New York City.
More than 2,000 mourners in attended.
He was buried in the Machpelah Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his grave site.
A bust was added to the bench in 1927.
This was rare, because graven images are forbidden in Jewish cemeteries.
In 1975, the bust was destroyed by vandals.
2011 when a group who came to be called The Houdini Commandos from the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania placed a permanent bust with the permission of Houdini's family and of the cemetery.
The Society of American Magicians upkeep his grave.
Houdini's wife, died of a heart attack on February 11, 1943, at age 67, in Needles, California.
She died on a train en route from Los Angeles to New York City.
She had expressed a wish to be buried next to her husband, but instead was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester County, New York.
Her Catholic family refused to allow her to be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
Magicians Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz have been caring for the escape artist's Queens grave over the years.
