Above is an amazing framed photo of Harry Houdini’s father that I got to see in person during my special visit with my friends Dorothy Dietrich (foreground) and Dick Brookz (background) at the Houdini Museum in Scranton, PA.

This picture of his father, along with the one of his mother (pictured above) hung on the wall of Houdini’s New York home at 278 West 113^th Street in Harlem.

H A P P Y  F A T H E R ‘ S  D A Y !

In May, I shared an ad for Houdini’s Grand Magical Review that shared 6 effects.  The above ad from 102 years ago today shares the same 6 effects plus two additional effects, Lady Godiva and DeKolta’s Marvelous Cube.

• Lady Godiva – A lady and pony disappear.
• DeKolta’s Marvelous Cube – A large black die, about eight inches square, with white spots painted on it expands in a fraction of a second to a giant die about a cubic yard.

This appearance at the Empire Theatre in Nottingham was most likely the last time Houdini presented his Grand Magical Review.

Some of the other places he presented it were at Tivoli Theatre Barrow-in-Furness, Empire Theatre Leeds, Empire Theatre Bristol, Palace Theatre Oldham, Palace Theatre Hull, and King’s Hall Dover.

Source:

• The Repro 71 Harry Houdini Portfolio
• Hiding The Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer
• The Illustrated Houdini Research Diary Part 4: 1911 to 1915 by Frank Koval
• Houdini The British Tours by Derek Tait, 2011

Image courtesy of David Saltman at HoudiniFile.com

Below are snippets from a 2010 article on Milwaukee published by Pete Ehrmann that said Harry Houdini was better at magic tricks than bicycle racing:

Draped in chains and locked in a trunk that was tossed overboard, Harry Houdini would be free and swimming to the surface before the trunk sank to the bottom. No jail cell or straitjacket could hold him. But 117 [122] years ago, the great escape artist was just another guy who cried uncle riding a bicycle from Waukesha to Milwaukee in the most grueling race in the country.

A shade longer than 16 miles, the Waukesha Road Race [WRR] started at the Waukesha County Courthouse in what was then a resort village accessible from Milwaukee only by train or horse, and proceeded east along the Waukesha Road (now Highway 18, or West Blue Mound Road) to Brookfield, then east along Watertown Plank Road through Wauwatosa and finished at North 28th Street and West Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee.

…

Nineteen-year-old Houdini — then still known as Erich Weiss, an avid bike racer, swimmer and boxer — started the race in ‘93. “But he was faster with his hands than with his feet,” Milwaukee cyclist Ed Aldridge recalled in a 1928 interview, and couldn’t overcome the hazardous course.

“For the first mile from the starting point — the Courthouse in Waukesha — the road is level and quite smooth and hard until the first hill is reached,” reported The Milwaukee Journal in 1892. “Though generally hard to climb, owing to the cinders and dust, wheelmen will find it a much more difficult task this year, as the road has been recently covered with about three inches of soft, loose gravel.”

Except for the choking dust, it was relatively smooth sailing until the riders pedaled out of Wauwatosa on Stone Quarry Hill, “about 100 feet long and very steep, besides being very rough.”

Click the link below to read the article in its entirety:

• LINK: Houdini was better at magic than cycling

Was he even in Milwaukee on July 4th,1893 when the WRR was held that year?

• One would think that 1883 [to 1886] when he was living in Milwaukee would make more sense, except the first WRR started August 9th, 1890.
• According to The Metamorphosis by Bruce MacNab, Houdini was in Chicago in May 1893 and then spent the rest of the year playing third-rate theatres throughout the northern states.
• According to Entertainment in Early Milwaukee by Larry Widen, Houdini performed at all of Milwaukee’s dime museums between 1892 and 1898.

Thoughts?

Related:

• Houdini’s Forgotten Years by David Saltman
• Houdini and the Olympics by Joe Notaro