- « Easter Bonnet
- Numbers »
“Houdini had a reputation for not paying his fair share of the bill when he dined out with friends. On one occasion, however, a conjurer called Meyenberg managed to get the better of him. After lunching in a restaurant with Houdini and a number of other vaudeville artists, Meyenberg turned to the escapologist and asked, ‘Would you like to see a new trick? Lay your hands flat on the table, with your palms down.’ Houdini did as he was told. The conjurer then filled two glasses with water and carefully balanced one on each of Houdini’s hands. ‘Let’s see you get out of that without paying the bill!’ he cried as he and the other performers beat a hasty retreat.” An excerpt from Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes published by Little, Brown.
The date was March 24th, 1874 when Harry Houdini was born in Budapest, Hungary. Harry Houdini was really Harry Ehrich Weiss.
This interesting trivia was from the book Celebrity Trivia: A Collection Of Little-Known Facts About Well-Known People by Edward Lucaire, published in 1980 by Warner Books. Houdini “..became interested in magic at an early age but after he read Memoirs of Robert-Houdin(Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin was France’s greatest magician) he became obsessed with the idea of being a magician. It was Jacob Hyman, Ehrich’s friend and co-worker who suggested that he add an ‘i’ to ‘Houdin’ and adopt the name Houdini. The name ‘Harry’ came from Ehrich’s nicknames ‘Ehrie’ and ‘Erie’ although some sources say that he used the name Harry because Harry Kellar was the most popular American magician at that time.
“Like Rudolph Valentino in the same year, Houdini died of peritonitis in 1926.”
He died of a ruptured appendix on Hallowe’en. Some people thought there might be something suspicious about his death, which I will talk about late in the program tonight.
One last anecdote from Bartlett’s. “Broadway producers Charles Dillingham and Florenz Ziegfeld were among the pallbearers at Houdini’s funeral. As they carried the coffin out of the church, Dillingham leaned across to Ziegfeld and whispered, ‘Ziggie, I bet you a hundred bucks he ain’t in here.’”
***
Don Jackson
