He rose to fame in vaudeville and founded his own motion picture company, creating a legacy of daring escapes on film. Houdini began his career in dime museums, home to curiosity shows and unknown acts. "A magician," he wrote, "is an actor playing the role of a magician." A consummate showman, Robert-Houdin had brought magic from its historic venues of public fairs and private parlors to open performance on the stage. He did this to establish his relationship to the father of modern magic - the French 19th century master conjurer Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin. As a young man, known as Ehrich Weiss, the aspiring magician selected his own name and persona - Houdini. American immigration officials changed Weisz to Weiss. His family soon immigrated to the American Midwest, where his father became the first rabbi of a new congregation in Appleton, Wis. Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary, on March 24, 1874. 1920, is one of the more than 140 items available to the public online from the Library's Houdini Collection. This photo of Houdini being secured in a straitjacket at the start of an escape, ca. The online Houdini site contains 143 photographs and 29 related items of memorabilia. Young jointly presented their 20,000-item magic collection to the Library in 1955. The other major source for Houdini online is the McManus-Young Collection, also in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. The special relationship that he forged with the nation's library through this remarkable gift gives a person dimension to Houdini's return to the world stage via cyberspace. Those who visit the site ( ///) encounter Houdini through images and text masterminded by the illusionist as he effected his metamorphosis from unknown sideshow performer to international celebrity.Ī formidable collector, Houdini willed his holdings on magic and spiritualism to the Library of Congress. Here, more than 140 high-resolution graphics and documents, derived from primary source materials in multiple Library collections, chronicle an extraordinary life. Last fall, 70 years after the death of Harry Houdini, the Library of Congress released a home page devoted to the legendary magician as part of its American Memory online collections.
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