Houdini The Elusive American by Adam Begley

I think that this one will be the first ebook of a long series, considering that the Coronavirus imposes distance and ebooks are more practical at the moment.

Jewish Lives new, fresh biography will capture for sure your attention, because ladies and gentlemen this time the protagonist is  the most fascinating illusionist and magician of all the time: Houdini.

The book Houdini

The Elusive American by Adam Begley is a biography that you'll love a lot, because he treats Houdini with great humanity. I did personally not know his entire life and existence, I knew his numbers were spectaculars; the author insists saying that maybe this man portrayed an idea of seclusion and freedom for the problems developed when little.

Houdini won't appear just like the biggest performer, illusionist of all the times but as a man with his shadows, passions, tribulations and fragilities.

Jewish, born in Budapest April 6th, 1874, emigrated with his parents to the USA, unfortunately for his dad there was no luck in the new world and their parents discovered that maybe just their children would have had success in that foreign land. 

Houdini in most cases was a "liar", he tried to impress his audience telling more than what it was true, regarding his family, his father, his activity as a rabbi, his degrees etc.

Since little Ehric, later Harry, later Houdini was attracted by Circus and shows and Delavan a city with a lot of traveling circuses. He rejoined his family, in particular his dad Rabbi Weiss in a boarding house. It was 1887.

Samuel Weiss died after some years for a cancer developed in the tongue. The promise of the future Houdini: making that money his dad was not in grade of doing. 

Houdini didn't write well. He became when wealthy a great compusive book collector and avid reader, but grammar has always been problem to him.

Who decided his future was a french-man Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, remembered as the first modern magician. In this sense when famous, Houdini attacked in a book written by him Robert-Houdin although the book did not resonate at all and Robert-Houdin didn't lose his reputation as the most important modern magician. 

At first shows were "familiars" with the participation of other siblings. Cards tricks, rope tie escapes, the metamorphosis, his first magical games. 

Houdini wasn't tall at all, just 5 foot four, but his body had a great flexibility. What I noticed looking at the pictures that you will see in the book, is that special fire burning in his eyes, absolutely absent in the other individuals close to him. Eyes, I admit, pretty intense and in grade of transmit although the man is dead a lot of time ago. 

Legend wants that he wasn't a man particularly "masculine." Married later with Bess, the two did not have children at all. The reasons? Some people thought that Houdini, the great magician suffered of impotence. Other voices spread the news that the wife of Houdini simply hasn't never had menstruation in her existence. Both these stories are eccentric to my point of view.

Bess was a Christian and for this reason Houdini will wait a lot of years before to sit close to the mother of Bess, peacefully.

Bess became of course his main partner but not just this: let's remark the beautiful relationship and the tenderness,attentions of this husband regarding his wife. He left often in the coushions or in other part of the house love-messages, letters, post-it. Here a poem written for the wife. 

Adorable

Sunshine

of my Life,

I have had my coffee,

have washed out this glass,

and am on my way to business.

Houdini

“My darling I love you.”

He addressed notes to  "Beautiful Beatrice Houdini"

"Darling-Darling Darling" or "Honey-Baby-Pretty-Lamby"; one of this note was signed as "a trillion, billion Kadillion million, Kisses sincerely the rube who is stuck on you." 

He wasn't an erotic man. He could not cope with prostitution and he said during an interview that no, he wouldn't never been a man appreciated by ladies under many ways.

He was terribly in love for his mother. A mother devoted, a mother appreciated, a mother who could be just venerated for the fact that she was his mother, the best one of the world. Houdini remarked this fact to the spouse many decades after their wedding. 

"I love you as I shall never again love any woman, but the love for a mother is a love that only a true mother ought to possess, for she loved me before I was born and naturally will love me until one or the other passes away into the Great Beyond, not passing away but simply let us say gone on ahead."

Once dead Houdini lived severe depression, he went to the cemetery everyday for more than a month, he sent messages and cards to his friends remembering his mother. He was a destroyed man and he also fell sick. 

Not having children, Bess and Houdini were surrounded by animals who marked their existences.

Sometimes Bess drunk too much; Houdini did never smoke (if he wanted to maintain that body and considering the work he did, he could not) or drunk. He gambled once, then he lost money and he decided that it wasn't for him.

In 1895 the couple joins the Welsh Brothers Circus Troupe. In this period he starts to add to his numbers the handcuff repertoire. 

If it was the USA that gave him the first chances of proving his talent, it was the Old World, Europe that gave to him the final consacration.

During that years, he also tried some numbers mixed with spiritualism a trendy activity started in 1840s, but later Houdini remarked this...."They believed that my tricks were true

communications from the dead. I was brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average human being bestows on the departed. . . . I was

chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time I realized that it bordered on crime.”

In this sense you will find absolutely beauty the friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle and Houdini and their sad and strong good-bye. 

Houdini worked in several part of Europe, appreciating the most beautiful european capitals, Paris, Vienna, Prague, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Edinburgh. He was a passionate of german food. You musn't never think he adopted an European touch. When in London, asked to the American Embassy of changing his status in the passport, from immigrant to citizen of the USA. A realized dream. 

Once returned to the USA Houdini was very well known and presented to Americans numbers always more complicated about punishment, torture, fatal shows etc. All for shocking his audiences.

He also wrote several books, and Hollywood was not just interested, much more, to him, proposing movies and projects, all successful. 

Houdini was fascinated by magicians in...pension, so he tried to interview them for discovering much more. Once he was pretty unlucky. He contacted a magician. This magician was more than 80s and he promised he would have taken in consideration a visit if he would have sent him a certain kind of tea. Houdini sent the tea; the magician answered back all happy and cheerful giving him an appointment, but when Houdini arrived the magician, isn't it a magic? was dead from two hours!!!

If Houdini respected all the past magicians, he didn't love at all all the other competitors and that was also this one the reason why his numbers became more complicated, more difficult, more spectacular. He was the number one and no one could capture his essence.

I am a passionate of magic and to me magicians are the creatures more close to that dimension. They're in grade of letting us dream and there is a desperate need to return to hoping, dreaming with that magical touch in grade of giving back the most genuine part of life.

For all the lovers of magicians, magical worlds, magic, so to everyone, this book is perfect. 

Highly recommended.

I thank Jewish Lives for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori