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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the amazing,

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Speaker 1: the marvelous, the stupendous stuff you missed in History Class podcast.

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Speaker 1: I am Katie the Clairvoyant Lambert and I am the

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Speaker 1: spectacular Sarah Dowdy. And we are injecting a little extra

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Speaker 1: magic into our podcast today because we're talking about the

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Speaker 1: master mystifier, Harry JUDINERI Hudini. If someone asked you to

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Speaker 1: name a famous magician, Judini is probably the very first

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Speaker 1: person who comes to mind, at least before David Blaine,

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Speaker 1: one would help, or Joe Bluth. Maybe, well, he does allusions.

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Speaker 1: He's a pretend famous magician. All right. So Houdini wasn't

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Speaker 1: born Harry Judini though, of course. Who was born Eric

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Speaker 1: Weiss on March seventy four to Cecilia Weiss and Mayor

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Speaker 1: Samuel Weiss in the newly consolidated Budapest. Which is interesting

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Speaker 1: because in a lot of his later interviews he claims

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Speaker 1: he was born in Wisconsin, but he was actually Hungarian. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: He moved to Appleton, Wisconsin when he was a toddler

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Speaker 1: or young boy because his father was called to serve

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Speaker 1: as a rabbi for the German speaking zion Reform Jewish Congregation.

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Speaker 1: But unfortunately for the family, his father's tenure there was

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Speaker 1: not very long because the congregation thought he was so

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Speaker 1: old fashioned, right, and they dismissed him abruptly, and the

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Speaker 1: family never quite recovered financially from this. They've got seven kids,

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Speaker 1: and it's tough to keep a family with seven kids

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Speaker 1: afloat regardless. But when you're hopping from job to job

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Speaker 1: and camp, find the study of my English, and now

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Speaker 1: it's they have a tackle a tough life early on. Um.

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Speaker 1: So they end up moving from Appleton to Milwaukee, and

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Speaker 1: the young Eric shines shoes and sells newspapers and does

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Speaker 1: little osenon type jobs to help keep his family afloat.

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Speaker 1: And around this time it's also when he sees his

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Speaker 1: first circus, and after that he teaches himself to walk

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Speaker 1: a tight rope in his backyard. And he'd also seen

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Speaker 1: the tight rope walker hang by his teeth from the

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Speaker 1: tight rope, so you know, little Eric is very excited

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Speaker 1: about this, and he tries it himself and knocks out

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Speaker 1: all of his teeth because he hadn't realized you use

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Speaker 1: mouthpiece and that sort of thing, and your human body

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Speaker 1: doesn't really dangle well from you know, little seven year

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Speaker 1: old teeth well. And he's also really into locks at

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Speaker 1: this point, and he starts messing around with him at

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Speaker 1: home and shops. He supposedly learns how to pick locks

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Speaker 1: in the kitchen, trying to steal baked goods from from

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Speaker 1: his mom, while all his mom wasn't looking as good

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Speaker 1: as start as any magic. And he also makes a

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Speaker 1: solemn promise at the age of twelve to his dad

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Speaker 1: that he will always always provide for his mother, especially

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Speaker 1: if something happens to his father, and he keeps to

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Speaker 1: his word for the rest of his life. Really attached

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Speaker 1: to his mother, but he does leave home at twelve

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Speaker 1: and trying to make his fortune, trying to help out

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Speaker 1: yea strike out on his own, he goes to Delavan, Wisconsin,

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Speaker 1: and um he meets a new mother figure there, woman

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Speaker 1: who feels sorry for this little ragamuffin boy and takes

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Speaker 1: them in, gives them a bath and a bed and food,

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Speaker 1: and when he has a job when he's older, he

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Speaker 1: sends her a shirt with dollar bills in it and

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Speaker 1: continues to send her presents from all over the world.

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Speaker 1: For for the rest of her life. So this gives

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Speaker 1: you an idea of Houdini's character and the kind of

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Speaker 1: guy that he was. The family ends up in New York,

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Speaker 1: and again, Harry's got all kinds of odd jobs trying

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Speaker 1: to help the family. He's a messenger boy for a

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Speaker 1: while and just trying to help florry or a little

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Speaker 1: bit of money. And uh. He starts performing in vaudeville shows,

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Speaker 1: but he's not terribly successful. If you're someone like Hoodina,

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Speaker 1: you imagine him being successful as soon as he gets

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Speaker 1: on stage. But it takes a long time. It is

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Speaker 1: a long, hard climb to the top. It does. And

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Speaker 1: but while he's working in a necktie cutting factory in

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Speaker 1: New York, he at least makes one change that sends

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Speaker 1: him on the road to fame. He reads an autobiography

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Speaker 1: of Robert da who's the father of modern magic, and um,

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Speaker 1: he likes the name so much that he decides to

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Speaker 1: take it on himself for a stage name. Right. A

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Speaker 1: friend of his had told him that if you add

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Speaker 1: the letter I to someone's name in French, it means

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Speaker 1: that you're like them. So he thought, okay, no Uda Houdini.

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Speaker 1: It's perfect because Uda had some very cool tricks. One

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Speaker 1: of them was he had these orange trees that would

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Speaker 1: just grow in front of the audience, or a wine

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Speaker 1: bottle that poured whatever you want. That's bottomlessly a nice concept,

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Speaker 1: very cool, and Houdini also accepted UDA's belief about magic,

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Speaker 1: which is that a magician isn't just someone who performs tricks.

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Speaker 1: He's someone who almost has supernatural powers. And he's also

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Speaker 1: someone who has to believe his own lies or the

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Speaker 1: ad dance isn't going lives lives the life exactly um.

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Speaker 1: But by Judini's father died and even though that makes financial, uh,

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Speaker 1: the financial situation for the family even harder, it allows

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Speaker 1: Judini to be a full time performer. You have to

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Speaker 1: imagine his former rabbi father was kind of reining him

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Speaker 1: in a little bit there. So around this time is

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Speaker 1: when the brothers Houdini are formed, and first it's Harry

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Speaker 1: and his friend Jacob Hyman. It ends up being Hyman's

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Speaker 1: brother Joe, and then Harry's brother Theo. But they do

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Speaker 1: tricks with scarves and flowers, lots of stuff with cards.

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Speaker 1: Judini really focuses on cards early on for a long time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they do a simple trunk escape, but that's about it.

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Speaker 1: He's honing his craft. He learns some rope high escapes

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Speaker 1: from an Australian magician, but it's pretty simple stuff in

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Speaker 1: the beginning. They're not really minor league there. They do

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Speaker 1: get to perform at the Chicago World's Fair, so they

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Speaker 1: have some publicity. They're just not making much money, right,

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Speaker 1: and part of that is because Houdini, how hasn't learned

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Speaker 1: yet about showmanship, which he eventually gets the hang of.

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Speaker 1: It's not just doing tricks. You've got to sell the

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Speaker 1: audible persona Pudini right when he starts doing his famous

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Speaker 1: straight jacket escape, he puts on the straight jacket and

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Speaker 1: then actually goes behind a curtain, gets out of it,

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Speaker 1: and comes back out. And finally someone suggested to him,

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Speaker 1: why don't you do it in front of the audience

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Speaker 1: so they can see how you do it well in

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Speaker 1: having that delay for escapes, you know, so that you

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Speaker 1: don't get out right away because then people think something

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Speaker 1: they were tricked somehow, But actually take your time and

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Speaker 1: pretend to struggle and really play it all upright fence

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Speaker 1: and but the act changes in around because Judini meets

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Speaker 1: a girl Best Raymond, whose real name was Willemina Beatrice Ronner,

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Speaker 1: and she's working with the Floral Sisters, which is a

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Speaker 1: song and dance act, and THEO arranges a blind date

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Speaker 1: for him his brother's Harry, Bess and some other girl

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Speaker 1: from the group, and it is love at first sight

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Speaker 1: for Harry and married after three weeks, and they're very poor.

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Speaker 1: Best so she basically paid for her own ring, and

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Speaker 1: her Catholic family was completely horrified that she'd married a

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Speaker 1: Jewish guy. And you have a pretty great quote from Best.

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Speaker 1: She said she sold her virginity to Houdini for an orange,

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Speaker 1: just as an idea of just how pul there they were.

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Speaker 1: So Houdini replaces THEO with Bess, and she's a tiny

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Speaker 1: little lady, five ft ninety pounds, so she's great for

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Speaker 1: these future escape kind of tricks he'll be doing um

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Speaker 1: And they work together in a circus for a while,

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Speaker 1: and it's there that he learns to use his toes

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Speaker 1: almost like fingers, and picks up strong man stuff and swords,

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Speaker 1: swallowing all all things that will come into his show

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Speaker 1: later on. Right, And I imagine if you couldn't work

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Speaker 1: with your toes that well, it would be very helpful

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Speaker 1: for helping getting out of knocks and straight jackets. And

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Speaker 1: he also learned a trick where he would swallow a

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Speaker 1: bunch of needles and then a thread, and then you

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Speaker 1: could look inside his mouth. Nothing there, of course, and

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Speaker 1: then somehow he pull out the thread with the needles

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Speaker 1: threaded on it, and this becomes a signature of the

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Speaker 1: Houdini act. I would like to see that he also

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Speaker 1: starts the straight jacket escape in around. It's very dramatic.

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Speaker 1: He came across the idea when he was at an

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Speaker 1: asylum in Canada and was trying to figure out just

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Speaker 1: how he could do it, like if you had to,

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Speaker 1: you know, dislocate your shoulders right, And so then he

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Speaker 1: learned to do it in front of an audience and

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Speaker 1: with all the writhing and jerking about that made it

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Speaker 1: so intense. But even while picking up all these impressive skills,

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Speaker 1: Houdini and Best are still really poor. They have shows canceled,

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Speaker 1: no one's buying tickets, and um, this is when they

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Speaker 1: actually live on rabbits for a few weeks with a

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Speaker 1: quarter they borrowed. It wasn't even their own money. So

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Speaker 1: they get into seances because spiritualism has become very popular,

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Speaker 1: and this is one thing they can actually make money,

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Speaker 1: big money making industry just communicating with the dead, a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot of tricks to make people believe

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Speaker 1: that you actually have a spirit present, and um, it's

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Speaker 1: a lot of some of it's just not so nice.

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Speaker 1: Like for a while they worked as bible salesman, so

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Speaker 1: they could get in people's homes and look at their

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Speaker 1: family bibles and look up old family members and death

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Speaker 1: and right, so they could use that information later or

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Speaker 1: pick up little things in the street. Judini had said

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Speaker 1: that when they were in one city, he'd seen a

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Speaker 1: woman talking to her child, you know, and warning him

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Speaker 1: to be careful in his bicycle. So later, when they

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Speaker 1: were channeling some spirit or other, he said that the

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Speaker 1: little boy would have broken his arm, and she went

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Speaker 1: home and he had in fact broken his arm, and

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Speaker 1: Houtini felt terrible about that. Yeah, he's he's pretty superstitious

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Speaker 1: as his best, and the deception behind the seances really

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Speaker 1: bothers them. And this will come up a little bit later,

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Speaker 1: but first we'll get to Houdini's fame when he becomes

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Speaker 1: someone who makes something like forty five thousand dollars a

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Speaker 1: week in today's money, so I'm thinking of switching to magic.

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Speaker 1: So the key decision for Hudini was getting away from

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Speaker 1: the card tricks and moving towards doing escapes, and the

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Speaker 1: Impressario Martin Beck advises him to do this and then

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Speaker 1: books him on Vaudeville's Orphian Circuit. So this is Houdini's start, right,

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Speaker 1: And nineteen hundred is when the fame really hits. He

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Speaker 1: gets this reputation for these destifying escapes from shackles and

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Speaker 1: ropes and all sorts of containers and handcuffs, and he

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Speaker 1: starts promoting himself in Europe. By the time he gets back,

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Speaker 1: he is an international superstar. Yeah, and his abilities depended

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Speaker 1: partly on his amazing strength and endurance. Houdini ran and

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Speaker 1: swam and maintain this um incredibly in shape physique. Um.

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Speaker 1: But he's also got the skill at manipulating locks, which

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Speaker 1: is something that's pretty unique to him. Right. So he

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Speaker 1: comes home and he's super rich and buys all these

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Speaker 1: houses and pretty much can do whatever he wants. So

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Speaker 1: he starts a magazine called Conjurors Monthly in nineteen o six,

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Speaker 1: which is a place I think i'd like to work

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Speaker 1: because it's very much his own personality that's coming through.

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Speaker 1: He'll write these snotty articles about his enemies, and then

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Speaker 1: really cool stuff about his own handcuff tricks and cryptography,

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Speaker 1: and then nasty book reviews of people he doesn't like.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of fun. I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to alive. And he writes a book on the history

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Speaker 1: of magic around this time too, where he turns on

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Speaker 1: Robert da his his namesake right and tries to quote

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Speaker 1: unquote give him his proper place in history. I think

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Speaker 1: that's the final title of it. At first, I think

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Speaker 1: it was just going to be look, how amazing who

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Speaker 1: does And then after a while and think maybe he

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Speaker 1: was just an imitator and took other people's ideas. So

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Speaker 1: we're going to go through some of Danny's great escapes

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Speaker 1: because I'm sure you listeners would like to like to

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Speaker 1: hear your favorites mentioned. His first big one was January seven,

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Speaker 1: nineteen o six, when he escaped from the Washington, d c.

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Speaker 1: Jail cell of Charles Guitaut, who was the assassin of

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Speaker 1: President Garfield. So as you even imagine, that got a

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Speaker 1: lot of press escaping from the Assassin's cell, and in

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Speaker 1: January of nineteen o eight he introduces the milk Can

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Speaker 1: escape in St. Louis, which is still one of his

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Speaker 1: most famous tricks. And it's a little hard to explain.

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Speaker 1: You kind of need the visual look up a milk

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Speaker 1: can Google image that, but it's this teeny tiny space

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Speaker 1: and what he would do is first just get into

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Speaker 1: it while it was full of water, and he tell

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Speaker 1: the audience to hold their breaths and see if they

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Speaker 1: could do it for as long as he could, because

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Speaker 1: Judini could hold his breath for three minutes, so of

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Speaker 1: course none of them can, and they're all gasping by

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Speaker 1: the time he gets out of it. And then he

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Speaker 1: would come out very dramatically and be handcuffed several times

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Speaker 1: and then go back into the milk can and somehow

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Speaker 1: get out, and of you can imagine Whodini has a

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Speaker 1: lot of imitators. One guy Janasta dies while trying to

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Speaker 1: do the milk Can Escape, and Judini was trying to

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Speaker 1: discourage a lot of imitators. He would say, you know,

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Speaker 1: the showmanship stuff, the justifying stunt and all that helps

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Speaker 1: promote but also maybe dissuade people from copycatting. Because again

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Speaker 1: he was in fantastic shape, and even then it was

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Speaker 1: really hard on the body. The water can stuff and

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Speaker 1: things like the straight jacket. At some point he burst

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Speaker 1: the blood vessel trying to get out of chains. He's

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Speaker 1: in chronic pain for the rest of his life. He's

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Speaker 1: aren't eas easy on the body to do. Uh. By

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Speaker 1: March thirty to April fourth of nineteen o eight, he

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Speaker 1: performed at the Hammerstein's Theater in New York in the

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Speaker 1: famous weed tire grip chain Escape. And then not too

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Speaker 1: long after that, he did a manacle jump from Harvard

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Speaker 1: Bridge in Boston. In Paris he jumped handcuffed from the

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Speaker 1: roof of the morgue into the sun. And he also

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Speaker 1: jumps off Queen's Bridge in Australia. Is one of the

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Speaker 1: best ones grows. It's over kind of a a nasty,

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Speaker 1: muddy river And when he came up from his jump,

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Speaker 1: there were two figures and the crowd is sitting there

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Speaker 1: looking part of the exactly but it was a corpse

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Speaker 1: that he dislodged from the river mud. And he described

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Speaker 1: that water is not particularly toothsome no, and he makes

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Speaker 1: a challenge to his fans A thousand dollars for a

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Speaker 1: device that would hold him, which even continues to further

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Speaker 1: his his fame. A lot of people take him up

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Speaker 1: on it and they try to try to figure something

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Speaker 1: out that will hold the great Hoodini um. And by

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Speaker 1: nineteen ten he's gotten an interest in aviation. He's the

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Speaker 1: first person to sustain flight of Australia. This is also

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Speaker 1: hard on his body right, and it it contributes to

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Speaker 1: that whole Daedeuble mistique because flying was extremely dangerous at

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Speaker 1: the time. While his very first flight crashed, He's lucky

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Speaker 1: he ended up not being hurt, but there were several

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Speaker 1: casualties when it all first started. So the fact that

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Speaker 1: he was so into it and so willing to do

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Speaker 1: it so some about his character as well. This might

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Speaker 1: be one of our favorite illusions. He performs in eighteen

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Speaker 1: he vanishes Jenny the Elephant at New York's Hippodrome. Would

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Speaker 1: really like to see that. I want to see this

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Speaker 1: so badly. There are pictures of Houdini and the elephant,

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Speaker 1: but that's that's not enough for me. What happened vanished,

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Speaker 1: you can't. He's also in a lot of motion pictures

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Speaker 1: from nineteen sixteen to ninety three, but surprisingly these don't

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Speaker 1: do well. The switch to motion pictures was just one

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Speaker 1: change in his career. As he got older, he started

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Speaker 1: a campaign against Charlatan's, against the mind readers and the

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Speaker 1: mediums and the people who claim they had supernatural powers.

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Speaker 1: He was going to expose them as Charlatan's, debunk their powers,

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Speaker 1: and uh got pretty into it. It was a crusade

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Speaker 1: almost for him, right, because a lot of these people

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Speaker 1: were making a very lucrative living off of people's grief.

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Speaker 1: You know, they would have a child dies, he knew, right,

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Speaker 1: you'd have a child or a family member, a loved

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Speaker 1: one die and they would say they could put you

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Speaker 1: in touch with that person. One guy who was even

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Speaker 1: put a man in touch with his dead wife but

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Speaker 1: really just hired a prostitute to dress up like her

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Speaker 1: and the man ended up dying of a heart attack.

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Speaker 1: But it was a shady business, yeah, so say the least,

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Speaker 1: so a little guilt from his own own experiences as

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Speaker 1: a Charlottean early in his career, and then just um

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Speaker 1: trying to shine the light on this shady industry that's

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Speaker 1: really thriving. And his main target is a woman named

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Speaker 1: Nina Crandon who's known in her medium life as Marjorie,

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Speaker 1: who did a lot of seances, and she's championed by

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Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is a very good friend

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Speaker 1: of Houdini's until this business kind of starts up and

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Speaker 1: us falling out. He ends up not quite being able

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Speaker 1: to disprove Marjorie, but a Harvard grad student does later,

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Speaker 1: and she will come up in a little later. We'll

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Speaker 1: remember her name, Remember the name Marjorie. He writes a

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Speaker 1: couple of books on this miracle mongers and their methods

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Speaker 1: and a magician among spirits, and he even combines this

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Speaker 1: exposing the Charlatans into his own act. He does sort

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Speaker 1: of triumvirate of Houdini um skills, you know, magic tricks

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Speaker 1: and escapes and then exposing the Charlatans. So a triple bill,

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Speaker 1: if you will. But despite all of that, Houdini and

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Speaker 1: Best make an agreement among themselves and whoever dies first

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Speaker 1: will try to communicate with the other one. They have

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Speaker 1: a secret code word. I think it's something like Rose

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Speaker 1: Bell or Roosevelt. But it doesn't work. Beatrice herself says

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Speaker 1: it's a failure before she died. Yeah, So keeping on

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Speaker 1: the subject, of death. On October thirty one, n Houdini

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Speaker 1: died in Detroit, and a lot of people think that

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Speaker 1: he died in one of his escape acts um specifically

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Speaker 1: the upside down water torture cell, which is kind of

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Speaker 1: like the milk can thing, except he's placed upside down,

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Speaker 1: like shackled by his feet to the top of this

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Speaker 1: water cell. It's likely you've seen this because why people

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Speaker 1: believe he died in this act is because of the

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Speaker 1: Tony Curtis movie from the nineteen fifties, and you've probably

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Speaker 1: seen it in countless magician movies. It's sort of the

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Speaker 1: main attraction. But Houdini did not die in one of

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Speaker 1: his tricks. Now, and the quote unquote true story is

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Speaker 1: that he was punched in the abdomen by a college

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Speaker 1: student and then dies of a rupture dependix a week later.

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Speaker 1: So let's give that a little background. Yeah, so Houdini

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Speaker 1: would accept punches from people because he had such amazing

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Speaker 1: abdominal control that it would just bounce off basically wouldn't

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Speaker 1: hurt his organs. So this college student comes up to

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Speaker 1: him when he's relaxing on the sofa and asks them,

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Speaker 1: is it true that you can be punched in the

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Speaker 1: stomach and Houdini, yeah, yeah, it's true, and doesn't have

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Speaker 1: enough time to contract his muscles and protect himself before

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Speaker 1: the college students starts punching away. And so it's thought

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Speaker 1: that Houdini's injured in these punches and dies from the

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Speaker 1: appendicitis a week later. But medically that doesn't make a

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Speaker 1: lot of sense, because you can't just punch someone and

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Speaker 1: rupture their appendix and then they end up dying of appendicitis.

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Speaker 1: That's not how it works. He may have already had appendicitis,

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Speaker 1: and I'm sure being punched in the appendix aggravated certainly

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Speaker 1: wouldn't help. But it also didn't help that there is

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Speaker 1: no such thing as antibiotics at the time, and that

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Speaker 1: he refused to go to the doctor. He just kept

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Speaker 1: putting on shows even though he clearly wasn't well. He

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Speaker 1: was just sweaty and feverish, and finally I think Bess insisted,

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Speaker 1: but at that point it was too late. But there's

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Speaker 1: another theory put forward in the Secret Life of Houdini,

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Speaker 1: which is a book published a few years ago by

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Speaker 1: William Collusion Larry Sloman, and that's that Houdini was murdered,

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Speaker 1: not a manslaughter kind of thing like the college student,

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Speaker 1: but was really murdered, and Poise specifically right and Best

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Speaker 1: did have food poisoning and was in the hospital I think,

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Speaker 1: at the same time as Harry Houdini. So there's at

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Speaker 1: least a little tiny bit of evidence to So the

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Speaker 1: author's contacted Marjorie, the medium who you might remember from earlier,

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Speaker 1: contacted her great granddaughter and asked her if she had

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Speaker 1: any papers and records, and she did, And it turns

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Speaker 1: out that Marjorie's husband was a Harvard trained surgeon and

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Speaker 1: an expert in appendecked mes and hated Houdini, hated him

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Speaker 1: as Marjorie would have too. How could you hate Hudini? Well,

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Speaker 1: if if he's trying to debunk your whole profession, um,

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Speaker 1: and the husband is weird too, he's adopting little boys

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Speaker 1: from England and they're disappearing. So there's this whole nebulous

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Speaker 1: situation with the mediums going on right around Hudini's death,

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Speaker 1: and the mediums foretell his death and he dies right after,

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Speaker 1: So there might be a some kind of sketchy connection there.

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Speaker 1: If you're into conspiracy theories, this is when we'd like

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Speaker 1: to hear more about Email us at History podcast at

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Speaker 1: how Stuff works dot com and let us know what

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Speaker 1: you think. Well and Katie, I also realized that a

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Speaker 1: lot of our podcasts involve exhuming a body. That seems

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Speaker 1: to be a theme lately of us telling you to

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Speaker 1: dig up this and that's come up. With Houdini. Some

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Speaker 1: people want to exume him and try to find out

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Speaker 1: if he was really murdered. But that's a weird deal too,

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Speaker 1: because um, there was supposedly a request to exhume the

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Speaker 1: body up in two thousand eight, but that you won't

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Speaker 1: find anything about it since then. If you do, please

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Speaker 1: email us because I'm really curious about that. I say,

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Speaker 1: publicity stunned. So who might be proud by the button? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: By the guys who wrote The Secret Life of Houdini

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Speaker 1: side note also from the book, These guys have suggested

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Speaker 1: that Houdini was a secret agent before World War One

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Speaker 1: with the at the States and Great Britain. Yeah, he

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00:22:02,359 --> 00:22:06,080
Speaker 1: certainly was friends with police and with agents. But they

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Speaker 1: suggest that he befriends the head of Scotland Yards Special Branch,

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Speaker 1: William Melville, and he's sends back info from Germany on

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Speaker 1: stuff like you know, I just saw the Kaiser's aircraft

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Speaker 1: and um on a double side note on that. Melville

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Speaker 1: retires in nineteen o three or so everyone thinks, but

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Speaker 1: he actually goes on to start the m I five

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Speaker 1: and was the handler of Sydney Riley, who is believed

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Speaker 1: to be the template of James Bond. So I really

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Speaker 1: like the idea that maybe British intelligence services use some

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Speaker 1: of Houdini's tricks when training their secret agents. And he

400
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Speaker 1: was interested, really interested in stuff like cryptography and special

401
00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:50,399
Speaker 1: little gadgets to hide things because of course you always

402
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Speaker 1: want to hide a half key if you can. So

403
00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:54,760
Speaker 1: it's really cool to think that, Yeah, he might have

404
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:58,879
Speaker 1: been part of that. And the fascination with Houdini's life

405
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Speaker 1: and death has not slackened since there's an official Houdini

406
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Speaker 1: seance every year. Houdini is buried in Queens, but the

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Speaker 1: cemetery has had to be closed to the public because

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Speaker 1: there's been so much vandalism to its tomb. Yeah, in

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Speaker 1: nineteen the original marble bust if Hudini was crushed with

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Speaker 1: a sledgehammer trying to get the secrets out of his head.

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Speaker 1: It's a very literal interpretation of that. Guys and the

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Speaker 1: Society of American Magicians have replaced it twice with cheaper copies,

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Speaker 1: but they've disappeared. Um so they finally had to create

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Speaker 1: a removable version that you know, makes appearances on special

415
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Speaker 1: occasions and rides around in a child's safety seat, always

416
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Speaker 1: stuck alout. It goes to a secret like it it's

417
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Speaker 1: kept permanently in a secret location maintained by a Brooklyn dentist.

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Speaker 1: But one of the one of the stolen busts reappeared

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Speaker 1: just a few years ago in a closet in a

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Speaker 1: cardboard box. So be wild. And as far as Houdini

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Speaker 1: memorabilia goes, a lot of his letters and posters and

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Speaker 1: cards from performances were destroyed in a house fire in

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Speaker 1: late two thousand six when a burglar attempted to light

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Speaker 1: his crack pipe. So thanks a lot crack pipe smoking burglar.

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Speaker 1: They memorabilia is kind of scattered all over the place.

426
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: And he had so much stuff because he was writing

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00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:24,240
Speaker 1: that book on the history of magic. So it wasn't

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00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 1: just his own stuff, it was also things you know,

429
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:30,679
Speaker 1: from Robert Udan all these others fathers of magic. He

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00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: was kind of a historian of magic, and a bunch

431
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:36,280
Speaker 1: of that is simply gone, but some of the memorabilia

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00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,360
Speaker 1: is in a permanent location in Appleton, Wisconsin at the

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00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:45,600
Speaker 1: Houdini Museum, and the museum features an explanation on the metamorphosis,

434
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 1: a trick that was a switcheroo between Houdini and Beatrice.

435
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of controversy over this exhibit

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00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:57,760
Speaker 1: because it revealed the secret to the trick, which some

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00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 1: magicians thought breaked the magician's code. Right, But Houdini revealed

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00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: some of his own secrets. He told a lot of

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00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 1: his handcuff tricks in his own writing, and even tried

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00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 1: to sell them at some points when he was poor,

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00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure he'd be entirely against his signature

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00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,880
Speaker 1: trick being told. I guess that's about it, Ladies and gentlemen.

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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed your introduction to the marvelous world

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00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 1: of Harry Houdini. But if that's not enough for you,

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00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: We've got articles on how sword swallowing works and how

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00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:30,960
Speaker 1: fire breathing works, and you can look for them on

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00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.

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00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,440
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit

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00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:41,680
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.

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00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,400
Speaker 1: Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,

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00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:47,160
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the stuff he missed

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00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com homepage