Everything you read about Harry Houdini, it seems, is qualified, hedged, comes in different versions: He was born Ehrich Weiss in Appleton, Wisconsin, or in the Jewish ghetto in Pest, across the river from Buda; he met his wife Bess when he performed at her Brooklyn high school or else when they were both playing a Coney Island theater (she was a song and dance artiste); he died on Halloween 1926 from a ruptured appendix or else by drowning during an unsuccessful underwater escape, as Tony Curtis did in the 1953 movie Houdini. So after you drive the four hours to Appleton, which Houdini himself always said was his hometown, you can find some comfort in walking up the solid stairs of the former Masonic Temple and seeing behind glass some physical objects Houdini actually touched–handcuffs, for instance. In one of the display cases, mounted on faded red velvet, are rows of old handcuffs he would set up in lobbies of theaters where he performed. There’s the Egyptian leg iron, the circa 1600 Spanish handcuffs, the oldest adjustable American handcuffs, and the famous Guiteau cuffs, which once held Charles G. Guiteau, President Garfield’s assassin, and for a short time, at least, Houdini, before, as a challenge, he escaped from the cuffs and moved prisoners from cell to cell in a jail in Washington, D.C.
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On a TV monitor you can glimpse him making the first sustained airplane flight in Australia. The monitor also shows clips from his silent movies and from his funeral.
His father, Mayer Samuel Weiss, aka Samuel Mayer, did come from Hungary, and did leave Budapest in 1874, several sources agree. According to one story, he left after a nobleman slandered him and they dueled. Weiss won, killing the nobleman, but ultimately lost because he had to flee to escape retribution. He sought shelter with friends in London and then with others in Appleton.
By then the rabbi’s son had left a job as a necktie-lining cutter and had adopted the name and ambition of the French conjurer Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, performing magic with his brother in local beer halls and social clubs. In 1894 he married Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner and incorporated her into his act. After a slow start, the escape and magic shows moved from vaudeville to the great theaters of Europe. “He was a genius in public relations,” notes Broeren, with no equal except perhaps P. T. Barnum. In a new town, Houdini would typically stride into the police station, get the police to manacle and lock him in the most daunting cell, and stride out to the glare of newspaper flashbulbs. When a German policeman charged that Houdini wasn’t living up to his claims, the escape artist sued for libel and won, and thereafter flaunted his official apology.
The Houdini Historical Center, at 330 E. College Ave. in Appleton, is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 to 5, Sunday noon to 5, and in June, July, and August, Monday 10 to 5. Admission is $3 for adults, $2.70 for seniors, and $1.50 for kids under 18. Call (414) 733-8445.
