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Houdini, Harry

Houdini, Harry (hOOdē'nē) [key], 1874–1926, American magician and writer, b. Budapest, Hungary. His real name was Erich Weiss; he took his stage name after the French magician Houdin. He was famed for his escapes from bonds of every sort—locks, handcuffs, straitjackets, and sealed chests underwater. While his stage magic skills were limited, Houdini was famously the originator (1918) of the celebrated Vanishing Elephant illusion. He performed in silent films and was also noted for his exposure of fraudulent spiritualist mediums and their phenomena (see spiritism). He left to the Library of Congress his library of magic, one of the most complete and valuable in the world. Among his writings are The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (1908), Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920), and A Magician among the Spirits (1924).

See Houdini's Magic (ed. from his notebooks, 1932); biographies by H. Kellock (1928), W. L. Gresham (1959), and K. Silverman (1996); W. B. Gibson, Houdini's Escapes (1930); R. FitzSimons, Death and the Magician: The Mystery of Houdini (1985); J. Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (2003).