The Secret Life of Houdini (6 page)

Ehrich nodded. And then Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss turned to his wife of twenty-eight years and held out his hand. Cecilia softly cradled his hand in hers, massaging it with small, delicate circular motions.

“Don’t worry, Mamma,” the rabbi said in a whisper that was almost inaudible. “Ehrie will pour gold in your apron someday.”

From the collection of Kenneth M. Trombly

T
HE CROWD, PART OF THE THRONG
attending the nearby world’s fair, the Columbian Exposition of 1893, surrounded the small, dark-skinned yogi wearing the flowing robes of his native land. He had just sat down on a mat, carrying a bag stuffed with the tools of his mystic trade and a pot containing some earth.

Sitting cross-legged, he spread the earth on the mat. Then he reached into the bag and brought out what looked like the forearm of a girl, charred at one end. He began to fondle it with a strange devotion.

“In order to have power to manipulate the natural stages of life, one must possess the arm that directs such processes. In the East, we would be helpless to conjure up what we desire without this talisman,” he said.

Then he reached into his bag and removed an odd-shaped bottle containing water and a perforated box.

“The elementary ingredients of life—water in the bottle, and the mango tree powder which will cause our seed to grow into a beautiful tree.”

He pulled some seeds out of the bag and spread them into the earth. Then he handed the empty bag to the audience for examination, who confirmed that there was nothing in the bag.

The yogi carefully sprinkled some of the powder and then doused it with a few drops of water. Then he passed his hands over the soil and began a strange chant.

“Goly, goly, chelly gol,” he sang.

At that moment, another dark-complexioned man dressed in a white burnoose, who had been standing off to the side, began to twang on his small lyre.

The yogi covered the earth with a red cloth as he continued chanting. Peeking under the cloth, he frowned.

“Please, please, plant. Blossom into your beautiful splendor,” he said and resumed his chant.

But nothing happened. Now he chanted louder and with some annoyance.

“Goly, goly, chelly job, chelly job,” he intoned and then started chirping like a bird.

The audience looked mystified. The lyre player started strumming with more intensity. The yogi reached under the cloth and sprinkled more powder on the earth. Again he sang, chanting in time to the sonorous sound of the lyre.

“It’s coming, it’s coming!” he said and made quick passes with his hand over the cloth. A smile suddenly crossed his face and he threw back the red cloth with childish delight. There were two separate sprouts, each five inches in height. The crowd gasped.

The yogi invited the audience members to feel the sprouts, to ascertain that they were real. A few spectators stepped up and confirmed this.

Again he covered the sprouts and resumed his singing. And after more applications of powder and more hand passing and more lyre playing, and some more frowns, finally he cackled with delight and threw the cloth to the side, revealing two mature mango trees, thirty inches high.

The crowd applauded and threw change into the hat of the lyre player, who made the rounds. And when the throng dispersed, Harry Houdini and his brother Theo went into their tent to divvy up the proceeds.

Houdini was desperate to make a living as an entertainer, and if that meant dressing up as a Hindu conjurer and charming a snake or performing the Indian basket (where the yogi puts a small boy into a basket that barely contains him, closes the lid, and then pierces the basket repeatedly with his sword), then so be it.

The Houdinis wouldn’t have made the pilgrimage to Chicago if it hadn’t been for a twenty-two-year-old native son named Sol Bloom. Initially the plans for the fairgrounds next to the world’s fair were quite tasteful. Conceived by a Harvard professor, the intent was that a leisurely stroll down the grounds would be a reenactment of the evolution of mankind—beginning in Africa, spanning the Near and Far East, and culminating in Europe.

The Midway Plaisance at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, as viewed from the giant Ferris wheel.
From the collection of Jim Steinmeyer

But then Bloom got involved. He had a P. T. Barnum–like sense for the bizarre and the spectacular and had made a name for himself by managing a theater in San Francisco. When the Harvard professor faltered, Bloom was brought in. Exhibitions of peasant cheese production went by the wayside, and acrobats, fire-eaters, and belly dancers were hired. Lots of belly dancers. Bloom even wrote a song for them, a ditty that became a standard for the suggestive dance craze that would be known as “Hoochy-Koochy.”

Bloom was also a magician, so the word got out in the magic community that if you got to Chicago that summer, you might get to pocket some of the change that the millions of tourists would leave behind. The Brothers Houdini stayed on the fairgrounds for about a month, until Harry dispatched his younger brother home and moved across town to take some solo work at Kohl and Middleton’s Dime Museum. Dime museums were among the lowest rungs of show business, usually large rooms where long stages had been partitioned off to exhibit several entertainers at once. Often the most popular of these entertainers were the freaks and other curious aberrations of the human form.

Houdini had worked at Kohl and Middleton’s before, and he could count on periodic work from Mr. Hedges, the manager. Now that Theo had gone, Houdini’s turn consisted of simple magic effects and some card work. It was routine work, a chance to earn some shekels before returning to New York, but his return to Kohl’s reminded him of an invaluable lesson he had learned on that same stage.

During his last appearance there, Houdini had been on the bill with a woman named Mattie Lee Price. Mattie was only twenty-two years old, barely ninety pounds, and had the sickly appearance of a “consumptive.” Yet this weakling was able to perform feats requiring such superhuman strength and endurance that most of the people who witnessed them were convinced that she had assistance from either good spirits or the devil himself. As wondrous as these feats appeared, Houdini, who knew they were done using subtle leverage techniques, attributed her sensational notices to the management of her husband, Mr. White, who was a brilliant salesman and showman and whose verbal eloquence “‘sold’ the act as no other man has sold an act before or since.” During the engagement, Miss Price’s affections were alienated by a circus grifter who had come between the symbiotic pair. By the next stop, Milwaukee, White was gone and the grifter was now Mattie’s new lecturer. He was a far better womanizer than a showman, and by the time Houdini had returned to Kohl’s, Mattie’s star had permanently dimmed in the celestial sky of show business.

Houdini learned an important lesson here. For variety artists to win over an audience, the performance itself must be amplified by other variables like presentation. The audience comes to the show essentially unprepared. What’s different about this performance? Is this the first time it’s ever been done? Is it particularly hard to do? Showmanship is the element that provides the context for the audience to understand what they’re seeing. It’s a way of making a performance exceptional. That was Mr. White’s genius—the ability to contextualize his wife’s performance in a grandiose way.

“This was one of the most positive demonstrations I have ever seen of the fact that showmanship is the largest factor in putting an act over. Miss Price was a marvelous performer, but without her husband-lecturer she was no longer a drawing card, and…her act was no longer even entertaining,” Houdini realized.

You couldn’t walk ten steps down the Bowery without hearing about it.

“Da Houdinis are putting Risey in the box tonight at Vacca’s. You goin’?”

Risey was a local fixture around the Bowery section of Coney Island, the magical place where New Yorkers escaped the drudgery of their everyday lives to swim in the surf and go to the amusement parks. He was a wizened old showman who had worked the circuses, the beer halls, and even some legitimate theaters for some “thirty-seven year,” as he said. No one really knew what he
did
at Vacca’s Theater, only that he was the “High Mighty Muck.” But they all knew that tonight he was going in the box.

The Houdinis’ box was actually a steamer trunk that could be thoroughly and completely examined by audience members. Harry would then be bound and placed into a cloth sack that was tied shut. He was then locked into the trunk, which was roped and then enclosed from view by what was called a cabinet—actually a frame with fabric draped around it on three sides and a curtain in the front. Theo would then stand inside the cabinet and announce, “Behold, a miracle!” He would then close the curtain and clap his hands three times. The curtain immediately was pulled open to reveal Harry, liberated, standing in front of the box. After Harry unlocked the trunk and untied the sack, his brother emerged. The transformation was remarkable. A version of the trunk substitution had just been performed locally the previous winter by the Jewel Brothers, but the Houdinis put it over spectacularly, and both the audiences and the employees of Vacca’s were mystified by the effect.

Except for Risey. He started bad-mouthing the brothers and their box. He claimed that a duo known as the Davenport Brothers had done a better box trick twenty years before, and he had showed them up then. Risey shot his mouth off so long and so loud about “fakers” and “fake box tricks” that when he ran into Harry, who was taking a stroll with one of the Floral Sisters, a song-and-dance act also appearing in Coney Island, a crowd gathered around.

“In de presence of me ladyfren’, I’ll say notin’,” Houdini snarled, reverting back to the language of the New York streets, “but I’ll do youse dirt when I get back.”

It was then that Vacca, the owner of the theater, stepped in to mediate a truce. Risey, it was announced, would go into the box and try to get out of it and expose the whole effect. And Houdini would pay him the princely sum of $100 if he was able to back up his words with action.

So the stage was set for that evening. The joint was filled, with the two private boxes packed with local politicians, actors, newspapermen, and Brooklyn power brokers. The Houdinis went onstage first, and the crowd gave them a polite greeting, but when the audience saw the grizzled head of old Risey, they erupted in a torrent of cheers and a chorus of “Speech, speech, speech.” Risey was forced to step up to center stage.

“I have been a showman for thirty-seven year, and I know what’s what. I have exposed the Davenport Brothers and called down the great Herrmann. I know fakers when I sees them, so these Hunyadi Brothers don’t scare me none. This is a fake box and I’m going to show this thing up or die trying,” the old veteran said.

The audience cheered louder.

Then it was time. Not even bothering to tie his hands behind his back, Harry and Theo assisted Risey into the silken bag and tied it at the top. Then they lifted him into the trunk and pushed it into the cabinet. And everyone waited.

For five minutes the audience seemed to hold its breath. Then there was the faint muffled sound of “Help!” followed by some serious pounding on the inside of the box. Harry and his brother immediately leapt up, tore aside the curtain of the cabinet, and pulled the trunk out. They whipped out knives and frantically began cutting the ropes. Harry opened the lock, pulled the bag out of the trunk, cut the cord, and yanked the limp form of old Risey from the bag. He was perspiring heavily and trying to catch his breath.

This was a crucial moment in the early career of Houdini. Risey, the old-timer, was likely a confederate. A mock rivalry was generated; harsh words were uttered casting doubts on the ability of The Brothers Houdini, and the ensuing publicity packed the house for the first time. Harry was beginning to learn the value of controversy and publicity.

Houdini had also learned a tactic from the Spiritualists—the monetary or “prize” challenge. Or at least what seemed to be a challenge. It was loudly proclaimed that if Risey could get out of that box, Houdini would pay him $100, a substantial amount of money back in 1894. Of course, Houdini worked the odds so that there was very little chance that his money would ever be in jeopardy.