That Houdini often dared his life to entertain, and in later years was the scourge of fraudulent clairvoyants and mediums, only adds to his reputation.įinding these pages “Exposing Houdini’s Tricks of Magic,” from Modern Mechanix November 1929, brought me back to that delight and child-like wonder that Houdini’s magic inspires. When the Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh movie of the great Houdini was screened one Christmas, it only convinced me further that the man born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874 was the world’s greatest performer, illusionist and escapologist. Unlike today, where information is merely a click away, I honed-up on my heroes from books that came via a mobile library every Friday, and learned to memorize favorite programs and films when screened on TV-this was much easier when there were only two channels on British television, and nothing other than the one children’s show Watch With Mother during the day, which explains why watching television was a major event, and its impressions have lasted longer than some of the shows viewed since. The plan was to master handcuffs and I started collecting keys and quickly learned how to pick padlocks and door locks. He was an inspiration to try my own imagined skills escaping wound clothes lines and knotted school ties, while my mischievous older brother timed me, remorselessly pummeled or tickled me, depending on his mood. Harry Houdini is one of my heroes, I’ve admired the Great Mystifier from early age watching him on old flickering, hand-cranked black and white film clips, as he escaped from chains and tightly-bound ropes in prison cells, and from deep-sunk, wooden boxes and padlocked milk churns.
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