If someone is described as a ‘Houdini’ today, it usually means that person is adept at getting out of difficult situations. In a sense, that is what ‘Harry Houdini’ – born Ehrich Weiss to an impoverished rabbi and his wife in Budapest –sought to achieve when, as a young man, he emigrated to the United States. Like many Jewish immigrants, he tried to find his place through assimilation into American society. He transformed from Ehrich to Ehrie to Harry, his impetus to make the big time emerging from dire poverty. After one of his brothers died at 12 of tuberculosis Houdini literally ran away to join the circus as a trapeze artist, appearing as ‘Ehrich, the Prince of the Air’.
Adam Begley points out that, as much as Houdini wished to distance himself from his roots, he was never allowed to forget who he was. His German Catholic mother-in-law refused to meet him for 11 years because ‘a Jew was a person of doubtful human attributes’. He mixed instead with ‘the circus freaks’ because, like him, they were outsiders. Houdini adapted Judaism to fit his Jewishness. After his bar mitzvah, he rarely stepped inside a synagogue, but always recited the memorial prayer, the Kaddish, for his father. Together with Al Jolson and Irving Berlin, Houdini formed the ‘Rabbis’ Sons Benevolent Association’ to raise funds for the Red Cross during the First World War. All three could be defined by the subtitle of Begley’s book, ‘The Elusive American’.
Houdini discovered a fascination for escaping from seemingly impossible situations. In 1895 he amazed an array of bewildered policemen in Gloucester, Massachusetts by easily slipping out of one set of handcuffs after another. A visit to the New Brunswick Provincial Lunatic Asylum introduced him to the world of straitjackets – and how to leave them in under a minute.
Within a couple of years he had become a household name, admired by millions. He started to jump off bridges while handcuffed. The earliest footage of Houdini sees him jumping into the Erie Canal from Weighlock Bridge in Rochester, New York. A master illusionist, he appeared to be able to walk through brick walls and to make African elephants vanish in the twinkle of an eye.
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