44h.org

Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini was born in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24,1874. His real name was Ehrich Weiss.

When he was four, his family moved to United States and at the age of 10 he made his first performance in front of the audience, doing a trapeze act posted as “Ehrich the prince of air”.

At the age of twenty, Weiss was working as a professional magician and later he got the name Harry Houdini. The reason why he chose the name was to reflect two of the principal influences in his life. Harry was homage to Harry Kellar, the famous American magician of stage. The name Houdini was a tribute to the French magician Robert Houdin. To add I at the end of Houdin is the French manner to say “like Houdin”.

When disappointed with his failures, Houdini tested various types of magic, including the acts of escape, which he drew on all the childhood experience that he had developed as an apprentice of a locksmith. At last he got a break through in 1899 when he met Martin Beck who gave him a chance to carry out his shackles act on the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit. He was soon become popular and by 1900 he carried out in front of the packed audiences in Europe and in America where he was called as “The Handcuff King”.

As an element of his act, Houdini would defy the local police force to strip him, seek him, and shackle him and to lock him in prison. He would then escape swiftly, for each one’s continuous amazement. During a publicity show in Moscow, he managed to escape from a prison van bound for Siberia. It was told that if he could not leave, he should have traveled all the way towards Siberia where the only key was kept. But Houdini managed to escape a long before the van left Moscow.

In Cologne, a police claimed that Houdini only managed to escape because of the corruption. He filed the case, and gained the case when he opened the safe of the judge. The next 10 years Houdini carried out his performance in front of huge audiences, escaping from handcuffs, straitjackets, chains, ropes and the prisons. To create more excitement to his act, he often made his escape while hanging from a high rope above the ground in full sight of the viewers.

During 1908, because of the competitors and the reduction of audiences, Harry had to develop his act, thus he started to escape from the containers filled with water. This event thrilled and entertained the audience and made him more popular than ever. His more famous act is the Chinese water torture cell, which made him involved being shackled and suspended upside down in a locked glass tank of completely filled with water. He had to hold his breath more than three minutes to allow his escape.

In his entire career, Houdini indicated some of his tricks to the magicians of comrade. He explained how much locks and of shackles could be open when the force strategically applied. He also explained how he could swallow various articles, such as keys, pins and lock pins to help him to escape and regurgitate them at will. In fact, one of his best magic tricks was swallowing a succession of the needles and a piece of cotton and when pulled outside all the needles were threaded by cotton.

He also gave details how to escape from a strait jacket, which implied gaining wiggle room by increasing his shoulders and chest and by holding his arms slightly away from the body when the jacket was adapted. The additional space and the fact that he could dislocate his shoulders, allowed him to escape from the strait jacket in a few minutes.
Harry Houdini died in 1926 at the age of 52.