The brochure offers the secrets to the entire act that Houdini spent nearly a decade polishing - for $10. No dinner."Īn especially poignant artifact is an 1898 catalog for Professor Houdini's School of Magic. 23, 1898 following a performance outside Cumberland: "Rained hard. His travel diary contains a succinct entry from Sept. Five years later, Houdini was still struggling. In 1893, when the 19-year-old King of Cards married a fellow performer, he was so poor that his bride, Bess, had to purchase the $2 marriage license. In 1891, he renamed himself "Harry Houdini" in honor of the great French conjurer, Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, took his act on the road and - as the exhibit makes clear - toiled in obscurity for the next eight years. "Inescapable" contains an 1886 letter to Mayer and Cecilia Weisz signed "Your truant son."Įrik eventually made his way to New York, where he found work as a messenger and in a necktie factory and began to seriously study magic. But in 1882, Houdini's father, Mayer Samuel Weisz, lost his job as rabbi for a Reform Jewish congregation in Appleton, Wis.plunging his family into poverty.Īfter the family moved to Milwaukee when Erik was 8 years old, the boy sold newspapers, shined shoes and delivered groceries to put food on the table. The Weisz family emigrated to America in 1878 when the future magician was 4 years old. "Our exhibit," London said, "takes a peek behind the curtain." In contrast, "Inescapable" devotes equal resources to documenting the hardscrabble first 26 years of the conjurer born Erik Weisz. London said that most exhibits focus on the headline-grabbing last half of Houdini's life. It's impossible to overstate the impact he's had on magic."
"I've had a poster of Houdini hanging in my bedroom since I've been a teenager. "It almost seems as though my entire life had been leading up to this moment," London said.
#HARRY HOUDINI MUSEUM MOVIE#
Museum visitors will learn about Houdini the adventurer (he claimed to be the first man to fly an airplane in Australia), Houdini the entrepreneur (he founded his own movie studio and directed and starred in his own films) and Houdini the inventor (he holds a patent for a diving suit developed for military use around World War I that was easily removed while underwater). The show includes one of Houdini's original brown leather straitjackets and a rare recording of the magician's voice, which was higher and lighter than might be expected from a man with such an intimidating stare. The exhibit displays about 100 artifacts - documents, photographs, his father's Bible, a set of see-through handcuffs - culled from private collections across the U.S.
#HARRY HOUDINI MUSEUM UPDATE#
Update as of June 2021: The museum is soon relocating to New Jersey.In celebration of the opening of the Jewish Museum of Maryland’s newest exhibit, Inescapable: The Life and Legacy of Harry Houdini, Baltimore-based entertainer and escape artist, Dai Andrews, recreates one of the international superstar’s greatest feats. The magic shop is actually right in the museum, so along with the fascinating display from the legacy of one of magic’s greatest figures you can try out tricks yourself and make some purchases to propel your own career in illusions. About two hundred objects are on display, with 1,500 in storage, so the exhibitions regularly change out to show different artifacts. The items are mainly from the private collection of Fantasma’s CEO Roger Dreyer. In a corner is his last metamorphosis chest, and alongside is a plaster bust of the magician that once stood on his grave in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens. A cabinet displays some of the objects from Houdini’s career in debunking spiritualism which he saw as a misleading use of magic. Numerous framed photographs and posters line the wall, along with curiosities like an x-ray of the bullet in his hand. There are of course handcuffs and straitjackets, as well as impressive objects like his 1907 escape coffin from which he emerged in 66 minutes after it was secured with six inch nails (illustrations of the achievement line the wooden casket). Take the elevator up to the fourth floor, and soon you’ll suddenly be surrounded by hundreds of objects from Houdini’s history. Located in a nondescript Midtown building right by Penn Station is New York’s own Houdini Museum.ĭedicated to the escape artist Harry Houdini, the museum is housed in the Fantasma magic shop.
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