Houdini, Harry (1874-1926)
Before there was a Doug Henning, a David Copperfield, or a Siegfried and Roy, Harry Houdini was the celebrity magician without peer. A worldwide celebrity thanks to his relentless touring, he was the first entertainer to take full advantage of the emergent mass media, engaging in death-defying public stunts that cannily made use of newspapers, radio, and film. Had Houdini simply been another skilled magician, he might have been forgotten along with the generation ofvaudevillians from which he sprang, but the magnitude of his exploits, combined with his tormented personality and unexpected demise, have left an allure that has hardly dimmed over the passing decades. Houdini was a figure out of Greek tragedy: the indestructible warrior with an Achilles Heel, and his legend, like all archetypal figures, has only increased with time.
Born Erich Weiss in Budapest, Hungary, Houdini was the son of a rabbinical scholar of somewhat dubious credentials who moved his family to America in 1878 after securing a position as rabbi for a small synagogue in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ultimately, Mayer Weiss was not to the liking of his small-town flock. Perhaps it was his advanced age, or his European conceits or his habit of conducting services in German, but for whatever reason the congregation cut him loose, and the Weiss family, now numbering seven, moved to Milwaukee, barely scraping by on Mayer's earnings as a freelance minister.
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