48 Fun Facts About Harry Houdini

Under what name was Harry Houdini born on March 24, 1874?

Erik Weisz became Ehrich Weiss once the family reached America, where the surname was respelled. 'Ehrie', his family nickname, is the likeliest root of 'Harry'.

In which city was Houdini born?

Budapest was not the answer he gave: once famous, he told the public he had been born in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his family settled when he was four.

What was the profession of Houdini's father when the family settled in Appleton, Wisconsin?

Rabbi of a small Reform congregation, he lost the post after about four years, and the family slid into poverty in Milwaukee.

Billed as 'the Prince of the Air', nine-year-old Houdini made his first public appearance as what?

A trapeze artist, but not under any big top: the 'circus' was a neighbourhood show that the boy and his friends staged themselves.

How did the teenage Houdini come to idolise the French magician Robert-Houdin?

He read his memoirs: Robert-Houdin, a clockmaker turned conjurer now called the father of modern magic, had died before Houdini was born. The teenager added an 'i' to the name and made it his own.

In 1917 Houdini coaxed which retired magician, a fellow Harry he admired, back on stage for a war benefit?

Harry Kellar, long the dean of American magicians, had retired in 1908. Houdini drew him out for one last show at the Hippodrome, staged for families of men lost when a U-boat sank the transport Antilles.

In Metamorphosis, the trunk illusion that first won the Houdinis notice, what happened in an instant?

The performers swapped places: Houdini was tied in a sack and locked in the trunk, and moments later stood free while Bess was found bound inside. His brother Dash had partnered him in it before her.

By the account biographers accept, where were Houdini and Bess both performing when they met in 1894?

Coney Island had Bess singing and dancing with the Floral Sisters while Harry did magic nearby. His brother courted her first, but she married Harry after about three weeks.

What advice from manager Martin Beck in 1899 turned the struggling Houdini into a star?

Drop the magic was the gist: Beck, who tested him with his own cuffs in a St. Paul beer hall, told him to build the act on escapes. Within months Houdini was playing the country's top vaudeville houses.

Under which billing did Houdini dare police forces across Europe to keep him locked up?

The Handcuff King let officers strip and search him, then lock him in their own irons and cells. Each escape was free advertising for his show in that city.

In Moscow, Houdini claimed to escape from what, saying that failure would have meant a trip to Siberia?

A prison transport van, a locked cell on wheels that carried convicts to Siberia. By his account the only key was kept at the far end of the journey, so failing meant riding all the way to be let out.

Houdini sued a Cologne policeman for slander in 1902 over which claim?

That he made his escapes by bribery was the policeman's story. In court Houdini slipped a police chain in front of the judges, then opened the officer's own trick lock, and won.

Which London newspaper challenged Houdini in 1904 to escape handcuffs said to have taken five years to make?

The Daily Mirror's man refused to unlock him so that he could take off his coat, so Houdini opened a penknife with his teeth and slashed the coat from his back. He was free after a little over an hour.

One story of Houdini's hour-long 1904 London handcuff ordeal has his wife Bess slip him the key in what?

A glass of water is magic dealer Will Goldston's version, in which a beaten Houdini sent Bess to beg the key. Biographers doubt it, since the key was six inches long.

In 1908 Houdini retired his handcuff act and introduced an escape from what?

A locked, water-filled milk can came with posters warning 'Failure Means a Drowning Death', and he invited the audience to hold their breath along with him.

In which city's Circus Busch did Houdini give the Chinese Water Torture Cell its first public performance, in 1912?

Berlin saw it first, though the cell was built in England, where Houdini had already staged the escape as a one-act play purely to copyright it against imitators.

What did Houdini himself always call the Chinese Water Torture Cell?

The Upside Down, or USD for short, was his name for being lowered head first with his feet locked in stocks. In the earliest version he was shut inside a steel cage within the tank as well.

In one of his best-known outdoor stunts, Houdini escaped a straitjacket while doing what?

Dangling by his ankles from a tall building or a crane, he often chose a newspaper's own offices to be sure of the coverage. Crowds of tens of thousands brought traffic to a halt.

Why did Houdini stop performing his straitjacket escape behind curtains?

Audiences preferred watching him struggle, a lesson his brother Dash learned first by doing the escape in full view. Houdini dropped the curtain and made the fight to get free the act.

At the New York Hippodrome in 1918, one of Houdini's most famous illusions made what disappear?

A full-grown elephant named Jennie was led into a huge cabinet, and when its doors dropped open she was gone. The idea came by way of a fellow magician, Charles Morritt.

In March 1910 Houdini was hailed as the first person to make a controlled powered flight in which country?

Australia was the record he shipped his own plane halfway round the world for: nine witnesses signed a statement after he flew near Melbourne. After the tour he put the plane into storage in England.

Which horror writer ghostwrote 'Imprisoned with the Pharaohs', a 1924 Weird Tales story published under Houdini's name?

H. P. Lovecraft took the job for a fee and no byline. Houdini liked the tale enough to hire him again, for a book attacking superstition that was left unfinished when the magician died.

Houdini's 1918 serial The Master Mystery is remembered for one of the screen's earliest what?

Robots reached the screen early here: the villains' enforcer is a metal man called the Automaton. The 15-part serial did well enough to win Houdini a Hollywood contract.

What real accident during filming became the climax of Houdini's 1919 feature The Grim Game?

Two planes colliding mid-air was no stunt: the crash was unplanned, nobody died, and the footage went into the film. The ads said Houdini was the man dangling from the rope, but it was a double, Robert Kennedy.

Houdini's crusade against mediums cost him his friendship with which spiritualist author?

Arthur Conan Doyle would not accept a single exposé. He decided instead that Houdini was himself a powerful medium, doing his escapes by psychic force and refusing to admit it.

Possibly the most famous medium Houdini debunked was Mina Crandon, better known as what?

Margery, a Boston surgeon's wife, came close to winning a magazine's prize for genuine mediums. Houdini had her shut in a cabinet with only her head and hands free, and the committee turned her down.

Which magazine's committee, offering a cash prize to any genuine medium, included Houdini?

Scientific American never paid out. As his fame as a medium-buster grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, with a reporter and a police officer in tow.

Houdini served as president of which organisation from 1917 until his death?

The Society of American Magicians broke a wand in his memory after his death in 1926, the first ceremony of its kind, and made it a yearly rite at his grave.

What did Houdini say kept him alive for an hour and a half in a sealed coffin under water in 1926?

Controlled breathing was his whole answer to Rahman Bey, a fakir who credited a trance for an hour in a sunken coffin. Houdini beat the time by half an hour and insisted there was no trick to it.

How was Houdini buried in his near-fatal California stunt?

Without a casket, in a six-foot pit, he tired and called for help. When a hand broke the surface his assistants hauled him out unconscious; the weight of the earth, he noted, was killing.

What is Houdini believed to have died of on October 31, 1926?

Peritonitis from a ruptured appendix killed him in a hospital bed, nine days after the dressing-room blows. The tale that he drowned on stage in the Water Torture Cell is pure myth.

Who punched Houdini in the stomach in his Montreal dressing room shortly before his death?

A university student from McGill, J. Gordon Whitehead, asked whether it was true that blows to the stomach did not hurt him, then struck before Houdini, lying on a couch with a broken ankle, could brace.

Where did Houdini give his final performance, on October 24, 1926, with a fever of 104 degrees?

Detroit's Garrick Theater saw him go on against medical advice: a doctor who examined him backstage wanted him in hospital, but he would not disappoint a sold-out house.

In what was Houdini's body carried home to New York after his death?

A casket from his stage act: the bronze coffin was built for a buried-alive escape in which he was sealed inside and covered with sand. He died weeks later, and it is said to have become his own.

What secret message did Houdini and Bess agree he would send from beyond the grave?

Rosabelle believe was the agreed phrase, 'Rosabelle' being a song the couple treasured. In 1929 a medium named Arthur Ford claimed to have delivered it, a claim Bess later called a fake.

Where did Bess Houdini hold her final séance for Harry, in 1936?

A hotel rooftop in Hollywood, the Knickerbocker's, was the setting, with reporters and magicians looking on. When no sign came she put out the light she had kept burning by his portrait since his death.

Houdini's will ordered that his props and effects be 'burned and destroyed' upon whose death?

His brother Hardeen's death was meant to take the secrets with it. Instead Hardeen passed much of the apparatus, the Water Torture Cell included, to a young collector named Sidney Radner.

Which Canadian tourist city was home to the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame until a fire in 1995?

Niagara Falls, Ontario, showed off the Water Torture Cell for decades. The 1995 fire burned its wooden parts, but the metal frame survived and the cell was rebuilt.

Which real-life married couple played Harry and Bess in the 1953 biopic 'Houdini'?

Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh made a film that plays fast and loose with his life. In it Houdini is swept under river ice and finds the hole again by following his mother's voice.

Who played Houdini in the 2014 History channel miniseries?

Adrien Brody's Houdini also spies on the Kaiser for British and American intelligence between escapes. The script was adapted from a psychoanalytic portrait of the magician written by the screenwriter's father.

Whose 1982 album 'The Dreaming' includes 'Houdini' and shows her with a key in her mouth?

Kate Bush plays Bess on the sepia cover, about to pass a chained man the key in a kiss, as legend says Bess did. The gold key is the one bright touch of colour in the photograph.

Houdini's New York townhouse at 278 West 113th Street stood in which neighbourhood?

Harlem was home from the 1900s until his death, and he packed the house with books on magic, theatre and spiritualism. He left the magic and spiritualism collection to the Library of Congress.

Houdini's 1906 book 'The Right Way to Do Wrong' was subtitled 'An Exposé of' what?

Successful criminals were his subject: burglars, pickpockets and swindlers, whose methods he said he learned from police chiefs and detectives met on tour. His advice to would-be crooks was one word: don't.

In which New York waterway did Houdini first perform his overboard box escape in 1912?

The East River stunt had him shackled, nailed into a weighted packing crate and lowered from a boat, only to surface free. He later repeated it on stage in the giant water tanks of New York theatres.

In 1926 Houdini testified before Congress in favour of a bill to outlaw what in Washington, DC?

Fortune telling for pay was the target. He told the hearing that talking to the dead was a fraud from start to finish, with spiritualists sitting in the audience as he said it.

The Washington jail cell Houdini broke out of in 1906 was famous for having held whom?

A president's assassin: Charles Guiteau, who shot James Garfield, had waited for the gallows in that cell. Houdini was stripped, searched and locked in, and the escape made his name across America as a jail-breaker.

What did Houdini's 1908 book accuse his boyhood idol, the French magician Robert-Houdin, of doing?

Claiming others' inventions as his own was the charge in The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin. Fellow magicians were not persuaded, and the Frenchman's reputation came through intact.

What became of the film company and film laboratory that Houdini founded in the early 1920s?

Both lost money, and he quit the movie business after two self-produced features. His brother had given up his own stage career to run the laboratory for him.