The Secret Life of Houdini (87 page)

Newspapers around the country had extensive coverage, and the tributes to Houdini were plentiful.
The New York World
wrote, “Starting out as a magician, he developed so much that by the end of his career he had fairly earned the title of scientist.”
The New York Times
lauded him as “a man of wide reading, a collector both of books and of art.”
The New York Sun
lamented: “His death removes a great artist and a useful scientist, and he was both without impairment of the qualities of heart and soul that endeared him to his fellows of the stage and his unnumbered admirers in front of the footlights.”
The New York Daily News
headline seemed to sum up the outpouring of grief: “Wanted: More Houdinis.”

Heartfelt tributes came from all quarters. “Houdini was the greatest showman of our time by far,” the great humorist Will Rogers wrote. “I played with Harry at Keith’s Philadelphia over eighteen years ago for the first time. I was roping at my pony on the stage and was billed to close the show…. Harry was just ahead with his handcuff tricks. It was late when he went on. He held that audience for one hour and a quarter. Not a soul moved. He would come out of his cabinet every fifteen or twenty minutes, perspiring and kinder size up that crowd to see just about how they were standing it. Now, mind you, when he is in that cabinet there is not a thing going on. A whole Theatre full are just waiting. Now he had that something that no one can define that is generally just passed off under the heading of showmanship. But it was in reality, Sense, Shrewdness, Judgment, unmatched ability, Intuition, Personality, and an uncanny knowledge of people.”

“Harry Houdini was a picturesque figure,” his friend Charles Carter wrote in
The Billboard
. “He was much maligned and generally misunderstood. His life was unselfish and devoted always to the betterment of those he loved and those less fortunate. His deeds of charity were manifold. Indigent showfolk by the score he has relieved and made prosperous. So unostentatious was he in such acts that only his closest friends were cognizant of them. He made the long, long fight. He fought for a principle; this principle was the kernel of magic, its respectability. He fought everywhere—on the stage, in the press, in the home, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in the church and, lastly, in the little back room of Martinka’s or wherever the meeting room of the Society of American Magicians happened to be. He stood as the greatest figure of usefulness to, and representative of, the conjurer in his generation. He was an institution, and we, the exponents of modern magic, owe his memory a debt that we can never pay. His name alone lent dignity to magic.”

At a memorial service a few days after the funeral, the movie star Eddie Cantor, in the midst of eulogizing his friend, broke down and had to be helped off the stage.

In Houdini’s will there was a provision for Hardeen to inherit Houdini’s props. It was meant to be a loan, not a bequest, for Houdini also stipulated that upon Hardeen’s death, the material was to be destroyed. Hardeen immediately resumed his career. He was booked to open January 10, 1927 at the Ritz Theater in Elizabeth, New Jersey. On that same day, William Matthews, the Ritz’s manager, revealed that threats against the life of Hardeen had been received and asked for police protection for the performer. According to Matthews, Hardeen’s life had been threatened because “he fell heir to certain of Houdini’s secrets.” It seems more likely that Matthews was referring to Houdini’s investigative files on the Spiritualists rather than his production of silks from a globe.

Fellow magician Charles Carter (center) wrote an eloquent eulogy for Houdini.
From the collection of Sid Fleischman

Six months later, Scotland Yard detectives began investigating a breakin at the home of Colonel Harry Day. Day was concerned about the slashing of a painting that was given to him by Houdini in 1909. It had been inscribed “To Harry Day from his sincere pal, Harry Houdini.” Day told the press that he “could not imagine a motive for the vandalism.” Was the slashing of the Houdini gift a random act of vandalism or a symbolic message to Day? Or were the intruders looking for something hidden in the slashed painting?

A British newspaper clipping of the incident was sent to Crandon by the psychic researcher Eric Dingwall, who was still angling for sittings with Margery. “This is the man whom Houdini got to ask about your kid. You are revenged!” Dingwall wrote. Although it was hardly news to Crandon, the clipping and the note wound up in Crandon’s scrapbook.

Also in the scrapbook was a copy of the letter that Crandon sent Doyle on July 6, two weeks after the Day breakin.

Dear Sir Arthur:

Did you notice June 22 that the apartment of Harry Day, M.P., was robbed and destroyed by Vandals?
If we were superstitious
, we might be inclined to say that old John G. Nemesis were on the job. Consequent but not because of unfair treatment of Margery, the following events should be noted:

1. Dr. Walter Franklin Prince loses his job at the American S.P.R.

2. Dr. Comstock has mysteriously shutup.

3. McDougall was “promoted” from Harvard.

4. Code has left Harvard.

5. Foster Damon has left Harvard.

6. Marshall has left Harvard.

7. Hillyer has left Harvard.

8. Houdini is dead.

9. Dingwall has left the S.P.R.

10. Harry Day, M.P., is a victim of Vandals.

We hope you and Lady Doyle are thinking well of a possible visit to us. It would mark a new peak in metapsychics. A book by you fully describing all the phenomena at Lime Street as observed by you yourself, ending up with the fingerprints, would do as much towards turning the world over as any one thing you could do. Our love to you all.

As ever,
L. R. G. Crandon, M.D.

On August 15, 1927, Hardeen, who had just returned home from a western tour, went to the Snider Avenue police station to report that his Brooklyn home had been broken into while he was on the road. A friend of Hardeen, who had been forwarding his mail, saw that the pantry door had been forced open and two panes in the door from the pantry to the kitchen had been cut away. While jewels, linens, other valuables, and $15,000 in Liberty bonds were undisturbed, the “thieves” had taken apart several pieces of Houdini’s apparatus, looking for something. The crime was never solved.

Sometime later, in the presence of Joe Hyman, Houdini’s old friend, Hardeen destroyed all of Houdini’s personal files by burning them in the basement furnace of his home. According to Hyman, Hardeen “incidentally almost burnt his residence down doing so.”

Hereward Carrington, who had been loaned a vital piece of evidence (Walter’s thumbprint) and was once the sole supporter of Margery on the
Scientific American
committee, had become convinced by August 1932 that she was a fraud. When he returned to his apartment after a day trip to Philadelphia, he was amazed to see that someone had entered his residence by forcing open a window. Writing to the owner of the thumbprint, he had an idea about who had engineered the breakin: “I spoke to several people about this incident, at the time, and was warned that certain people would stop at nothing in their attempts to obtain evidence, or destroy existing evidence. I was warned quite frankly that I was in a way dealing with the ‘underworld,’ and advised to act accordingly.”

Carrington was convinced that he had just had a visit from John G. Nemesis.

“I do not believe [Bess] will ever fully recover,” Frank Black wrote Kilby after Houdini died. “He was more to her than the average husband.” After the funeral, she began her recuperation with a trip to Atlantic City. Then she went back to the brownstone and began boxing up her husband’s books and going through his effects. One box that she opened was filled with love letters to Houdini, including some torrid letters from Daisy White. When Bess raged at Daisy, the counter girl told her that the letters were just a put-on and somehow managed to mollify the widow. The other authors weren’t as lucky. Bess made appointments for them to visit her and when they arrived, all at the same time, the maid informed them that Mrs. Houdini was too ill to receive them and to send each one home with their love letters in a neat bundle.

Having disposed of her flesh-and-blood rivals, Bess wasted no time in banishing Houdini’s other true love—his numerous collections, with which she had been forced to share her home. It took Bess a few months to arrange her husband’s books, some of which were going to the Library of Congress. She sold the drama collection and gave away several of Houdini’s effects to his close friends. Then she sold the house at a loss and bought a smaller house, where she lived with her mother, niece, and sister. According to the magician William Frazee, before the move “she called in a junk man and he took several wagon loads of things away. if Houdini knew it he would turn over in his grave. Boxes of Hancuffs and thousands of keyes, faked mail bag locks, keys from cell locks from all over the world
etc.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
.” The very stuff of Houdini’s soul, his locks, manacles, and keys, were now just junk to be disposed of in the back of a junkman’s wagon. To Houdini, they were just as precious to him as trophies, and they didn’t even earn the dignity of winding up in a pawnshop window on the Bowery.

After Houdini died, Bess did a massive housecleaning but kept all the trophies.
From the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook

Houdini had made many arrangements with friends, giving each one a unique code so they could communicate from beyond the grave with him. By one count, he had made more than twenty compacts, each one unique. On December 2, 1917, he visited his friend W. J. Hilliar in his office at
Billboard
magazine and dropped a copy of
Roget’s Thesaurus
on his desk. Hilliar opened the book and found a penciled inscription on the inside. He began to thank Houdini for the gift, but his visitor cut him off.

“Hilliar, there is
our
code,” Houdini whispered. “But never breathe it to a living soul. If I go first and you get a message from me which includes these words you will know it is genuine.”

Hilliar used the book over the years, always noting the inscription on the front page, but when he picked it up three weeks after the magician’s death, he was stunned to see that while Houdini’s signature was still prominent, the code words had faded out. Hilliar consulted handwriting experts, who told him that penciled words should never fade away. A minute examination revealed that the indentations of the pencil still existed and Hilliar carefully traced them over. He was shocked to learn that overnight, the code had once more faded from the page.

Houdini seemed to be manifesting himself in other unusual circumstances too. When he had posed for the marble bust that eventually would adorn his grave, he had had three clay copies made. He kept one and gave one to Harry Day and one to Joe Hyman. Ten days after Houdini’s death, Joe’s fell to the floor and shattered. A few days later, the exact same thing happened to Day’s version.

Strange things had happened even before Houdini died. Robert Gysel, who was one of Houdini’s Spiritualism investigators, wrote Fulton Oursler to report such an occurrence. “Something happened to me in my room on Sunday night, October 24, 1926, 10:58. Houdini had given me a picture of himself which I had framed and hung on the wall At the above time and date, the picture fell to the ground, breaking the glass. I now know that Houdini will die. Maybe there is something in these psychic phenomena after all.”