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That and his paid-up membership in SAM, one of the performers' unions, helped his cause while uncovering the nuts and bolts of Houdini's stage career. Silverman believes that biographies need to be rewritten every quarter century anyway, so it would be just as well that he do it. After all, he grew up on 75th Street across the way from Erich Weiss' childhood home, and attended PS70 just like Erich/Harry's brother "Hardeen" did. The owner of Houdini's diaries refused to cooperate down to the last minute, when after a life threatening illness he granted the author one afternoon's access. As it turns out Silverman did so much research he couldn't afford to add his notes and citations into the actual bio. They have been published by a magic specialist in Washington DC under the title Notes To Houdini!
The author offered that Harry would have a field day if he were still alive, considering his pitched rivalry with spiritualists, amid the "looney enthusiasms of our not-so-New-Age." He tempered that with the observation that the man's performing schedule and stage shows were so punishing he was in constant pain of one sort or another. Because of his fear of failure he continued working under such conditions, but he wrote quite often in his personal diaries that he desperately wished he could quit show business. This may well be the underlying explanation for his death - not on stage, on Halloween, or from a body blow but from aggravated, too long ignored peritonitis.
If there is any reason why he took such a beating as long as he did, it's that he exercised constantly. He was one of the strongmen among Jewish folk heroes, countering the prejudicial stereotype of Jews as bookish and retiring. As he posed alongside the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the 1890s in some muscle magazine pictorial, it was clear that his 5'6" frame carried proportionately more muscle mass than that of his hulking cohort.
Even Houdini had to slow down as he aged, so he turned to exposing spiritualists as a new act without a fixed stage. Wherever someone made a claim, he would show up to test it out. Silverman showed dupes of the slides Harry used as he lectured, copied from the originals by the current owner. Familiar names like The Fox Sisters and The Davenport Brothers, sites like The Forest Temple - a sort of secular Lourdes, and various gags like ectoplasm, spirit photos and levitations were illustrated with "before and after" shots.
The most famous poser he exposed was nicknamed Margery the Medium. According to Silverman they actually became friends after their showdown, because she felt as out of place as he did among Harvard intellectuals. They wound up being the only two who saw any humor in the fact that she had stumped all the university professors Scientific American threw at her. It took Harry to make them all look like the suckers they were.
Silverman stated flatly that Houdini never spoke about his past especially concerning his father, the often unemployed Rabbi Weiss. It took a paleographer to decipher the antique German language records that showed the Weiss family was often surviving on charity in Milwaukee, one of their earlier homes. The sparse and cryptic information on Houdini's father led Silverman to conclude that a published story, in which Harry claimed he sometimes helped his dad teach kids the Hebrew alphabet, was probably made up. When informed of the slant that most of the video bios take, that the elder Weiss was singularly shiftless, the biographer did admit that underemployment was suffered by many immigrant Jewish men of that period. In fact, one person who advanced this theory in a sociological context was Jacob Drachman, who presided over young Erich Weiss' bar mitzvah in a synagogue on 67th Street.
One audience member, an elderly gentleman, was bursting at the seams to tell of his brush with fame. As a clerk for NY Life in 1924, he had to have Houdini come in and renew a lapsed policy in person. Houdini made a great show of counting a lot of money into an envelope for him, but then warned him just before leaving to check it again. It was empty! Who says the guy couldn't do sleight of hand?
-- J. Kramer
PS. Just to prove everything gets buried in New Jersey eventually, Houdini at one point had so much stuff scattered across a couple of continents he was forced to rent warehouse space in Weehawkin!
Harry Houdini
Films For the Humanities, listed as the supplier for this item, is an obscure academic label that produces materials for library reference. We know little of the status of this work.
14 min., $69.95
Houdini
The newest of the pack, with much cooler pics on the video box than the A&E tape; however it's a bit of a letdown, with many stories and pictures you've seen before despite promises to the contrary.
appx. 60 min., color and B/W, $19.99
Houdini
The famous and much-maligned Hollywood fairy tale, starring Tony Curtis. You may prefer the later TV biopic with Paul Michael Glaser, but that's as yet unreleased on tape.
106 min., color, $14.99
Houdini!
Another doc, this time dating from August of 1987...
30 min., $9.99
Houdini Never Died
This 28 minute opus was narrated by Burgess Meredith.
(no longer available)
The Life of The World's Greatest Escapologist
Just bizarre. Circus-like psychodramatic set pieces act as segues between the most obscure interviews you could imagine. Then some Camille Paglia-wannabe shows up in black leather, and announced that seeing half-naked pictures of Houdini turns her on. This English-language doc was produced in Finland, and is so full of unintentional howlers that it qualifies as the nonfictional equivalent of an Ed Wood movie.
60 min., color, $19.99
Order HereLook elsewhere for contemporary notices of Harry Houdini's movies run in Scranton Wilkes-Barre Pocono area of PA and even more obscure memorabilia than we could possibly offer...