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Harry Houdini: Death
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After being punched in the abdomen a week earlier, Harry Houdini died on Sunday, October 31, 1926 at 1:26 PM. For the great showman, Halloween seemed a fitting day to die and this date is now remembered as "National Magic Day." Despite more than eighty years since his death, Houdini is undoubtedly magic's best-known entertainer of all time.
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Houdini's family had its share of conflicts. Not only was Houdini's childhood spent in poverty, but the individual family members seemed often to be at odds with each other. Consequently, permanent animosity arose when brother Nathan's wife Sadie divorced him and, within two weeks, married brother Leopold. Houdini himself caused friction in his Jewish family when he married Bess (Wilhelmina Rahner), who was Catholic. This choice would have consequences after Houdini's death: though he stipulated in his will that he wanted Bess buried beside him, the Machpelah cemetery would not allow the interment of someone outside the Jewish faith. Bess, who passed away aboard a passenger train traveling cross-country between Los Angeles and New York, instead is buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery (Hawthorne, NY), near Babe Ruth, Jimmy Cagney, Sal Mineo and Dutch Schultz.
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In his later years Houdini campaigned against mind readers, mediums, and others who claimed supernatural powers. He argued that they were charlatans who produced all of their effects through natural means and various tricks. He wrote Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) and A Magician Among the Spirits (1924). Houdini and his wife... agreed to conduct an experiment in spiritualism: the first to die was to try to communicate with the survivor. His widow declared the experiment a failure before her death in 1943.
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Houdini's brother, Theodore Hardeen, who returned to performing after Houdini's death, inherited his brother's effects and props. Houdini's will stipulated that all the effects should be "burned and destroyed" upon Hardeen's death. But Hardeen sold much of the collection to magician and Houdini enthusiast Sidney H. Radner during the 1940s, including the Water Torture Cell. [30] Radner allowed choice pieces of the collection to be displayed at The Houdini Magical Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls, Canada. In 1995, a fire destroyed the museum and its contents. While the Water Torture Cell was reported to have been destroyed, its metal frame remained, and the cell was restored by illusion builder John Gaughan.[31]
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Houdini left a final sting for his spiritualist opponents: shortly before his death, he had made a pact with his wife, Bess Houdini, to contact her from the other side if possible and deliver a pre-arranged coded message. Every Halloween for the next 10 years, Bess held a séance to test the pact. In 1936, after a last unsuccessful seance on the roof of the Knickerbokker hotel, she put out the candle that she had kept burning beside a photograph of Houdini since his death, later (1943) saying "ten years is long enough to wait for any man." The United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp with a replica of Houdini's favorite publicity poster on July 3, 2002. Harry Houdini has a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7001 Hollywood Blvd. He starred in 5 silent films and wrote some of them. A mostly fictionalized version of Houdini's life was made in a film in 1953 starring Tony Curtis.
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At age 36, Houdini became the first person to fly a plane in Australia. A seasoned aviator, Houdini gave up flying after that, never again setting himself behind the controls of a plane. Instead, he threw himself into his act, releasing his newest escape trick, "Chinese Water Torture Cell" in 1913. Houdini was at the height of his career and as he traveled through Europe with his wife and their impressive act, when he received word that his mother had died. Shocked that no one in the family had told him of his mother's illness or impending death, Houdini separated himself from his brothers and worked even harder. Just five years later, he would make a 10,000 pound elephant disappear in New York City and he would grab headlines again.
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