The Secret Life of Houdini

by William Kalush

  Library of Congress

  Epilogue

  HARRY HOUDINI WAS DEAD BUT HOUDINI the myth was young and vital. Ehrich Weiss had been born into poverty and cast into the world with an inadequate education and a great burden. This flawed mortal struggled, schemed, and persevered, transforming himself into America’s first international sensation by creating the idea that he could beat any possible restraint. This idea was so powerful that he broke into the language and became mythic, a popular legend, an embodiment of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, a superman who would submit to no human authority. We all enjoy a level of pride in being human that comes in his reflected glory.

  Inspired by Sarah Bernhardt’s advocacy for the Russian Jews, the superman morphed into a superhero. Using his unprecedented fame like a fire hose, he cleaned the streets of the ruthless frauds who were preying upon the bereaved, the most vulnerable among us. He had transformed himself again, now into a public defender.

  Yet he didn’t believe his own myth. He told his wife that the greater world wasn’t interested in his story and, on his deathbed, he confessed to a stunned doctor that he was a fake. The great irony is that while we can see his successes so clearly in hindsight, Houdini couldn’t see them in the moment. He was the most popular entertainer of his age. No one has yet filled his shoes as a magician. Fifty years after his death his name was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and it’s being used every day.

  Houdini has become truly immortal.

  The last years of his life were not kind to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His finances were drained by the losses of a psychic bookstore that he opened in the shadows of Westminster Abbey. On his evangelical trip to South Africa in 1929, he presented a slide show during his lectures that featured several interesting examples of spirit photography. In Nairobi, after showing one slide where the spirit looked truly lifelike, a man named Spencer Palmer got up in the audience and announced that he was in fact the spirit, and the photo had been an obvious hoax taken by his brother at a “ghost hunting” party in England. As soon as Doyle returned to London, he tried to shore up the veracity of the photo by writing an article about it, claiming that the negative of the photo had been sent to him by a F. R. Melton. To bolster his claim, he sent the negative to a Nairobi newspaper, The East African Standard, and issued a $1,000 challenge to Palmer if he could prove that it wasn’t the original negative of the photo. Palmer had inadvertently destroyed the negative, but an analysis of Doyle’s photo showed it to be a negative derived from a print of the photo. In fact, Palmer’s print was a more complete representation of the scene. When Palmer accepted Doyle’s challenge and the expert testimony had labeled Sir Arthur’s negative a fraud, Doyle sent a letter to the newspaper claiming that his source, Mr. Melton, “has made a sudden and mysterious disappearance from his residence and suicide is feared.”

  Doyle was having trouble within the Spiritualist movement too. A controversy over a book review that criticized one of Doyle’s Spiritualist friends as being too lax in his control of mediums caused Sir Arthur to submit his resignation to the SPR, a group of which he had been a member for thirty-six years. On top of this, he was having problems with Pheneas. Doyle had been expecting the end of the world for several years now and was frustrated by Pheneas’s laxity when it came to timetables. If he pressed Pheneas on this issue, his spirit control would mock him as a “whale,” always hungry for information. In October of 1929, though sick, Doyle set out on a tour of Scandinavia, against Pheneas’s wishes. While he was there, Pheneas came and chastised him for “breaking his traces,” telling him “you must work with me and not get out of hand.”

  The trip took a lot out of Doyle, and by the end of 1929, he was suffering from a severe case of angina pectoris. Drained and weary, Doyle began to have doubts about his eschatology. Writing in March of 1930 to a medium friend who also was receiving messages about the imminent end of the world, he noted, “There has been some sort of lull in the last year, as if the powers that be felt that they had said enough and that now we had only to wait. I have moments of doubt when I wonder if we have not been victims of some extraordinary prank played upon the human race from the other side. I have literally broken my heart in the attempt to give our spiritual knowledge to the world and to give them something living, instead of the dead and dusty stuff which is served out to them in the name of religion. But they tell me that I shall be rejuvenated if I keep quiet for a few months and at the end of that time I shall be ready to do the work which they ordain.”

  Less than four months later, on July 7, 1930, propped up in a chair overlooking his beloved Sussex countryside, Sir Arthur died at the age of seventy-one, surrounded by his family. His last words were to his wife. “You are wonderful,” he said.

  On October 26, during a sitting in the same house, the spirit of Conan Doyle returned. After the séance, Lady Doyle pronounced that she and her children were “perfectly satisfied” that they had spoken with Sir Arthur and she was so delighted that she scheduled another séance for the following week. The medium was Arthur Ford.

  Doyle’s spirit also made many appearances to Margery. At the end of her mediumship, she had developed a knack for automatic writing and she was able to channel the spirits of Doyle and William Butler Yeats and their old friend Robin Tillyard, the bug hunter. Doyle told her that he would produce some writings that she could publish under the title Sherlock Holmes in Heaven. “You carry my mantle onward,” he encouraged her.

  By then Dr. Crandon had already passed on. He died two days after Christmas in 1939, after a long illness as a result of tumbling down a flight of stairs. His relationship with Margery had been rocky for years, but in 1935, after Walter’s purported fingerprints had been finally proved beyond doubt to be identical to the fingerprints of Margery’s dentist and her mediumship was irrevocably tainted, Crandon seemed to have lost interest in her. By then the constant stress to produce had turned Margery into a hopeless alcoholic. The vibrant young woman who had marched for suffragette rights and peace before Dr. Crandon had stage-managed her into the world’s most famous medium had turned into a dowdy, overweight middle-aged woman who had lost her considerable allure to the opposite sex.

  She had paid a price to be Margery. For years she had been dogged by rumors that Crandon had surgically altered her vaginal opening to allow for the production of bigger apports in the séance room. Bird’s confession didn’t help her cause. In 1930 he wrote a confidential report to the ASPR admitting that Margery had nervously approached him before one of the Houdini sittings and pleaded with him that if no phenomena occurred he should ring the bell box or “produce something else that might pass as activity by Walter.”

  Margery’s misery came to a head in 1932 when, supposedly under the influence of an evil spirit, she left the séance room, climbed onto the roof at 10 Lime Street, and seemed poised to dive off it. Only the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer by one of her sitters brought her back to her senses.

  After Crandon died, Margery began an affair with William Button, the president of the ASPR. She moved in with him in his New York apartment and shuttled back and forth between New York City and Crandon’s Massachusetts farm. The stress of the last few years seemed to have taken their toll on Walter too. For months in 1940 he had been promising to materialize the loving cup that Doyle had sent Margery years earlier at the farm. Séance after séance, he came up with excuses for not producing it. Finally on March 19, 1940, the last recorded séance we have, Walter “gave us very encouraging statements that we will soon begin to have important phenomena.”

  By the middle of 1941 Margery was gravely ill. She moved back to 10 Lime Street to await the end. A few days before she died, Nandor Fodor, a psychic researcher, sat at her bedside, pad in hand, and suggested that it might be best if she came clean about her whole mediumship. He would take down her confession and document her secret methods.

  Margery mumbled something indiscernible.

  “Can you repeat that?” Fodor asked, pen at the
ready.

  “Sure,” said Margery. “I said, you can go to hell. All you ‘psychic researchers’ can go to hell.”

  She laughed.

  “Why don’t you guess?”

  She laughed again.

  “You’ll all be guessing…for the rest of your lives.”

  A few years after Houdini’s death, Bess visited Houdini’s former showgirl Dorothy Young in Palm Beach. Dorothy was struck by how old Bess seemed and how she had let her hair go completely gray. She was wearing a white dress, with a white cape. “The lady in white,” Bess joked. Dorothy was struck by something else. Bess was now a prime target for young gigolos, and had shown up on the arm of one who happened to be friends with Dorothy’s husband. Other seducers may have sought her out at a tea room that Bess ran for a short time on West Forty-ninth Street. It had a magic theme but among the things that vanished was her investment. Between the failed business and the young pretty men, things became so bad that, according to Dorothy, Hardeen had to step in and take control of what was left of the insurance proceeds so Bess would have some portion of her nest egg remaining.

  In his own way, Arthur Ford had been one of those who played Bess, only he had been after Houdini’s reputation, not his money. In 1930, while visiting Rye Playland in Westchester, Bess ran into a man named Edward Saint. His real name was Charles David Myers and he was a longtime carnie man who, performing as “The International Smileless Man,” would offer audience members $1,000 if they could get him to crack a smile. What the audience didn’t know was that due to a nerve paralysis of certain of his facial muscles, it was impossible for him to smile at all. Whatever he called himself, he was a godsend to Bess. He controlled her alcoholism, managed her career, and put a lot of energy into keeping Houdini’s legacy alive.

  One of the events that kept Houdini’s flame burning was the tenth anniversary Houdini séance. Saint convened an interesting circle that included the president of the Southern Californian SAM, the editor of the magic magazine Genii, Dr. Jack Hyman, Houdini’s first partner, the president of the L.A. Association of Spiritualist Churches, and, perhaps in a sly tip to Houdini’s covert career, a representative of the U.S. Naval Intelligence service. The séance took place on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel, near the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, in Los Angeles. Three hundred invited guests filled the temporary bleachers that were set up, and a live radio transmission brought the event to millions across the country.

  During his introductory remarks, Saint revealed an interesting fact. “He had safes and vaults in his home, and vaults in banks that his lawyers had access to; but one secret, now made public for the first time, is the fact that Houdini had one safety deposit vault in a bank or trust company in the East under some familiar name other than Houdini, and of which the secret location rested only in Houdini’s brain,” Saint said. “In this vault was kept highly secret papers, and into which was always placed a certain glass case of jeweled medals and a diamond question mark pin with a rare pearl drop, a gift from Harry Kellar to Houdini…. Many things were left untold because of the unexpected death of Houdini in Detroit. There is a law, a time limit. Madame Houdini has year-by-year awaited word that the Federal Government had located or opened this box, long overdue. Perhaps the vault was rented and paid years in advance. However, this secret vault has never been located to this day. No medium or psychic has ever brought forth information from Houdini or the spirit world touching on or leading to its discovery. So, if any circle tonight in any city or town in the world believes they are contacting Houdini, let them identify themselves by bringing forth this information regarding the secret vault.”

  The lady in white. From the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook

  Unfortunately, no one did and Houdini failed to manifest himself in L.A.

  At the end of the séance, Saint turned to Bess. “Mrs. Houdini, the zero hour has passed. The ten years are up. Have you reached a decision?”

  “Yes,” Bess said sadly. “Houdini did not come through. My last hope is gone. I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me—or to anyone. After faithfully following through the 10-year Houdini compact, using every type medium and séance, it is now my personal and positive belief that spirit communication in any form—is not impossible. I do not believe that ghosts or spirits exist. The Houdini Shrine has burned for ten years. I now, reverently—turn out the light. It is finished. Good Night, Harry!”

  And with that, she slowly switched off the red lightbulb that had illuminated a photo of Houdini.

  Over the years, Bess was continually asked about the Houdini messages that had come through Arthur Ford. “There was a time when I wanted intensely to hear from Harry,” Bess told the press. “I was ill, both physically and mentally, and such was my eagerness that spiritualists were able to prey upon my mind and make me believe that they had really heard from him.” To friends, she was a bit more coy. Speaking of Ford, she said, “But he was such a handsome young man.”

  When Ed Saint died in 1942 at the age of fifty-one, Bess was devastated. “After Ed’s death, I just collapsed,” Bess wrote Hardeen. “The big Palooka left me with files and files of junk—he took every picture that Harry ever had taken and had hundreds of copies made—hundreds of busts—even photostats of his letters—now who the devil wants all that…Poor Dear Ed—he spent every cent he could get to have something made of Houdini—even went to Washington to have some H.H. copyrighted games…and although I never got angry with Ed whilst he lived—I’m sore at him now for leaving me this mess.”

  Bess wound up at a nursing home, where she laid down the law the very first day. “The nurse came to my room with a wheelchair—what I told her to do with it is still spoken of in the nurse’s quarters,” she related in the same letter. “You have no idea how I miss Ed. He did everything for me—ill as he was he would tend to me like a baby—now I’m alone—miserable but hope to be strong enough by spring to come to N.Y.”

  Even after Houdini had died, Hardeen kept himself in his shadow.Library of Congress

  Bess tried to come home, but she died en route on February 11, 1943. The name of the stop where her body was removed from the train was Needles, California.

  Hardeen continued to play the vaudeville circuits, basically doing Houdini’s act, except for the Upside Down. He couldn’t fit into the small cell. He played for five years on Broadway in Hellzapoppin, a Broadway revue staged by Olsen and Johnson. During World War II, he performed for the troops, just as his brother had done decades earlier. He was planning on writing a book about Houdini and had started on it when he went into Doctor’s Hospital for an operation. He never came out. He died on June 12, 1945 at the age of sixty-nine. The newspapers reported that now Houdini’s secrets would finally be buried with him.

  There were a lot of questions that remain unanswered about Harry Houdini, the man. You could start with why he changed his birth date to April 6 when he knew the real date. What made him turn on Robert-Houdin with such ferocity? Was he ever really married to Bess? How extensive was his spying for Melville? Did he truly believe that his brother Leopold’s dalliance with another brother’s wife contributed to his mother’s death?

  If you were in New York in the early 1960s, you could have potentially gotten the answers to those questions—right up until October 6 of 1962, in fact. On that evening, a slightly eccentric old man with bushy white hair, who somewhat resembled Einstein, left his tiny studio apartment IC and took the elevator to the top floor. He climbed a set of stairs and opened the door onto the roof. Most days he would feel his way around the clotheslines and go right to his wooden chair and sit and look out on the Hudson River. He didn’t see much because when he had turned seventy, his eyesight had failed him. He was eighty-three now. Twenty-two years ago he had been a multimillionaire with a huge Connecticut estate and a wife with expensive tastes. But the marriage ended bitterly and his wealth was lost in the stock market crash. And now he was alone, living in a studio apartment in Inwood.

/>   On that night, he didn’t stop to sit. He walked over to the 215th Street side of the building, climbed up onto the ledge, and jumped off. This was no magic stunt. He fell six stories, careening right past seven-year-old Gary Schmidt’s bedroom window, and he hit the pavement with a sickening thud. And with that, Dr. Leopold Weiss exited this world, and the remaining secrets of Harry Houdini departed with him.

  Houdini—forever on tour.Library of Congress

  Acknowledgments

  THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE incredibly generous support of the magic community. From David Copperfield to Ricky Jay to David Blaine to John McLaughlin, every single person in the world of magic overwhelmingly embraced our project (with the singular exception of the owner of a Midwest magic club for collectors) and we are humbled by their response.

  If you’re ever in a room with Michael Weber, beware. He can read your mind. At once one of the most talented and creative magicians alive, Weber was instrumental in the conception of this project, spending hours with us brainstorming, and helped a great deal along the way. Without his input, there would have been no book.

  As an illustrator/designer/writer, Steranko has cut a fierce path through the pop-culture universe, but magic has never been far from his creative heart. His daredevil stunts inspired the comic book superheroes Mister Miracle and The Escapist, in addition to the protagonist of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. He not only allowed us to tap his memorabilia and letters collection but also his knowledge and experience regarding Houdini’s methods and mentality, generating a level of understanding that otherwise would not have been possible.