The only known photos of Houdini’s Walking Through A Brick Wall can be found in the August 2, 1914 New York World Magazine. The Harry Ransom Center (HRC) at The University of Texas at Austin has made a copy from their Harry Houdini Scrapbook Collection available online:

Courtesy of HRC

The World Magazine, also did an article about Houdini’s Vanishing Elephant. The elusive article is said to show six photos of the illusion, but it has vanished, just like the “Holy Grail”.

At Wild About Harry, Patrick Culliton commented:

[Nov 13, 2013] About the six photo spread about the elephant in The World, it was supposed to be in the rotogravure section of the Sunday N.Y. World one week early in the run of Houdini and his elephant in “Cheer Up” at the Hippodrome. In the microfilms of the World, every Sunday rotogravure (a magazine section) is recorded–but that week’s rotogravure section is missing.

 

[Dec 16, 2016] Why wasn’t that page or pages of photos in the Walter Gibson scrapbook? It would HAVE to be. Why isn’t it in any collections, the Robinson-Locke scrapbooks or Houdini’s own scrapbooks? I wrote down the date of that Sunday issue the rotogravure section of which was to contain the photos. I went straight to the microfilms. The paper was there, but, no rotogravure. I have since misplaced the date, but, I went through the Sunday NY Worlds from Dec. 1917 to Dec. 1918, ONLY ONE ROTOGRAVURE WAS MISSING. And it was the one that was supposed to have the photos. I firmly believe that the bosses saw what Houdini saw and out of genuine friendship, they killed the little magazine that one time.

Armed with the above information, I (HHCE) decided to conduct my own search.

I started by seeing what libraries had the NY World Newspaper and noticed that the Univ of Texas at Austin had it. My thinking was, well they had the issue with Houdini Walking Through A Brick Wall, in their Houdini Collection, why not the Elephant Issue in their newspaper archives.

Courtesy of HRC

Below is my correspondence with Univ of Texas at Austin:

[Aug 26, 2019] The library is supposed to have old copies of The New York world newspaper:

https://catalog.lib.utexas.edu/search/0?searchtype=o&searcharg=13486042

I am interested in the volume: NEWSPAPER  1917-18 APR-DEC FILM POS (AVAILABLE)

Specifically, I am interested in the rotogravure (The World Magazine section) of the Sunday N.Y. World that has a six-photo spread about Houdini and his vanishing elephant. It should either be in the World Magazine Section of the December 30, 1917 or January 6, 1918 newspaper. If you have it, I would love to get a scan of the six-photo spread about Houdini and his vanishing elephant and would pay whatever it costs. This is for a research project on Houdini.

Please advise if this is request is something you can help with or if I need to send my request to another part of the library.

Thank you for your time,

Joe M. Notaro

[Aug 26, 2019] Hi Mr. Notaro,

We’ll try, but we never seem to have any luck with New York World! There were different editions of this newspaper, that were published with different frequencies, and we only own the tri-weekly edition. I’ve placed an order to have the microfilm reel sent to our office from remote storage; I think it should arrive tomorrow, and I’ll take a look for the article about Houdini. To be honest, though, I’ll be surprised if I find it.

 

Best wishes,

Rachel

 

[Aug 27, 2019] Hi Mr. Notaro,

 

I’m afraid my hunch was right. I’ve just looked at the reel in question, and confirmed that we don’t have any Sunday editions of the New York World. The tri-weekly edition was only published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

 

Sorry we can’t help,

Rachel

[Aug 27, 2019] Hi Rachel!

Thank You so much for all your efforts to look into this for me. You were very helpful. I can now rule out the tri-weekly edition. Any idea what institution would have the Sunday edition for 1917 and 1918?

Much appreciated,

Joe

 

[Aug 28, 2019] Good morning Mr. Notaro,

So, I’ve examined the records for this title in OCLC First Search, and I’m attaching a PDF of the entry for the daily edition. If you scroll to the bottom of the record, you’ll see that the OCLC number for this ed. is 13846132 (a useful number to have handy when you’re placing an Interlibrary Loan request).

 

I’m also attaching a PDF of the libraries listed as owning at least some of this title. We’re listed, but as you can see, we only have a few scattered issues of this edition. That seems to be the case for most of the holders, but there are a few that appear to have complete runs of the title… especially, as you might expect, in New York. The New York Public and New York State libraries (NYP and NYG, to use their OCLC codes which I always do since it’s quickest) both look like good bets. There’s also the University of Arkansas (AFU), Syracuse University (SYB), the Library of Congress (DLC), University of Massachusetts (AUM), Duke University (NDD), Princeton (PUL), Cornell (COO), and the University of Washington (WAU).

 

Good luck! I hope you can find that article.

 

Best wishes,

Rachel

 

[Aug 28, 2019] Hi Rachel,

Thank You for the additional information. I was using the wrong OCLC number (ie. 1077831862) for the edition I want. Now that I have the right OCLC number (ie. 13846132) and a list of holders, I have more avenues to pursue for this elusive article.

Cheers,

Joe

Armed with new information, I figured that the New York resources had already been tapped by others so I decided to contact the University of Washington and below is my correspondence:

[Aug 31, 2019] Question: The library is supposed to have old copies of New York world daily edition newspaper from 1893(v.23)-1931 (v71). The OCLC number for this edition is 13846132
I am interested in the years 1917(v57) and 1918(v58).
Specifically, I am interested in the rotogravure (The World Magazine section) of the Sunday N.Y. World that has a six-photo spread about Houdini and his vanishing elephant. It should either be in the World Magazine Section of the December 30, 1917 or January 6, 1918 Sunday newspaper. If you have it, I would love to get a scan of the six-photo spread about Houdini and his vanishing elephant and would pay whatever it costs. This is for a research project on Houdini.

[Sep 5, 2019] Dear Joe Notaro,

One of our graduate students just did a pretty extensive search of the New York World newspaper on our microfilm copy, but did not find a photo spread of Houdini and the vanishing elephant. This is her report on her findings:

“I spent the better part of two hours today looking for this “six photograph spread”. I checked the dates that were suggested, Dec. 30, 1917, and Jan. 6, 1918. Although the paper does contain a World Magazine and a section dedicated to photos called the “New Gravure” there were no photos of Houdini. All of the photos shown in these two issues pertained to World War I. I also checked the Sunday issues on the following dates: Dec. 9, 16, and 23, 1917; Jan. 13, 20, 1918. I was unable to find anything pertaining to Houdini in those issues as well.

After looking through the film I decided to do a bit of searching online. I did find that Houdini performed his act with the vanishing elephant on Jan. 7th 1918. I was also able to find an article about Houdini and his career in the New York Times on Jan. 13, 1918. I even looked on Chronicling America and I did find a newspaper called “The Evening World” but it looks like it wasn’t published on Sundays.”

Sorry not to be of more help, but let us know if there are other papers you would like us to check. You could also request the microfilm of the New York World through your local library’s interlibrary loan system.

Best,

Kian

[Sep 5, 2019] Please thank the Graduate Student for their efforts to search for this elusive 6 photo spread of Houdini and the vanishing elephant in the New Gravure section of the World Magazine found in the Sunday World Newspaper.   It is very much appreciated.  The New Gravure section of the World Magazine for Sunday is definitely where it should appear.  I thought it would have appeared before Houdini first performed it, but apparently not.  Houdini performed it for 19 weeks from Jan 7, 1918 to May 17, 1918, so it is supposed to be in one of these Sunday Magazine New Gravure Sections of the World Newspaper.  Many, many years ago, a Houdini expert and colleague of mine searched the run of microfilm for The World at another institution, and every Sunday New Gravure section was recorded but one, the one with the 6-page spread of Houdini was missing, but he couldn’t remember the week that was missing.  My hope was that your library would have this missing week, but that would require a more extensive search of the rest of the 1918 Sundays issues through the end of May.  Unfortunately, I live in Southern California, or I would schedule an appointment and do the search myself.  Would love to know if all the Jan thru May 1918 Sunday World Magazines are accounted for at your library and ultimately find this elusive 6 photo spread.  Please advise if you have someone willing to do this extra research.

 

Either way, I really appreciate everyone’s time.

 

Joe

[Sep 9, 2019] Hi Joe,

I’ve passed your thanks (& message) along to the graduate student who has been working on your question. While we don’t have the staff resources to quickly research the Jan-May 1918 issues of the Sunday World Magazines, our graduate student will start chipping away on the search over the course of the next couple of weeks. Once we’ve concluded the search or come across the photo spread in question, we will let you know. We appreciate your patience!

 

Best,

Kian

[Oct 13, 2019] Hi Kian,

It’s been 5 weeks since we last touched base. Just thought I would check in to see if the graduate student had any more time to see if all of the Jan thru May 1918 Sunday World Magazines are accounted for at your library and ultimately find this elusive 6 photo spread.

Thanks for your time,

Joe

[Oct 14, 2019] Hi Joe,

Thanks for checking in — we’ve checked through February 17th and haven’t found the photo spread yet. We’ve been busy with the start of the quarter, but will continue to find time to check additional issues when the opportunities arise.

Best,

 

Kian

[Oct 15, 2019] Hi Kian and Chris,

 

I spent majority of the day looking through the rest of the Sundays for the World Magazine, circa 1918. I could not find the Houdini page spread in any of the New Gravure sections. Most, if not all, were related to World War I. I also looked at all of the Sunday issues carefully to see if the spread may have been included somewhere else and no luck. Here are the dates that I looked at:

 

Feb. 17

Feb. 24

Mar. 3

Mar. 10

Mar. 17

Mar. 24

Mar. 31

Apr. 7

Apr. 14

Apr. 21

Apr. 28

May 5

May 12

May 19

May 26

 

I cross referenced these dates with the NewsBank calendar for 1918  to get all the approximate Sundays, checking off each one on my search.

 

Best,

Addy

[Oct 16, 2019] It looks like you have accounted for all the weeks/issues.  Finding this photo spread is turning out to be as difficult as finding the Holy Grail.  Although we didn’t find it and make Houdini history, at least I now know where it isn’t.  Please thank everyone who was involved in the search for this elusive photo spread.  I truly appreciate all the time and efforts. If I ever find it, will let you know.

Sincerely,

Joe Notaro

 

Conclusion: So, if all of the Rotogravures are accounted for, then the planned New York World elephant spread would have had to have been replaced before the magazine was published, as opposed to just pulling the magazine from the newspaper.

Special Thanks to everyone who helped at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington.