Our good friend David Saltman is tackling on his blog The Houdini File a part of Houdini's history that is vastly under-researched. I'm talking about the years young Ehrich and his family lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While Houdini himself said of these years "the less said the better," this was a transformative time for Ehrich Weiss, and David had uncovered some information that has never see print before.
Begin the journey by visiting the links below:
- Home
- Life
- Escapes
- Magic
- Movies
- Houdini's Movies
- Les merveilleux exploits de Houdini à Paris (1909)
- The Master Mystery (1918)
- The Grim Game (1919)
- Terror Island (1920)
- The Man From Beyond (1922)
- Haldane of the Secret Service (1923)
- Velvet Fingers (1925-26)
- Medium Well Done (1937)
- Religious Racketeers (1938)
- Houdini Picture Corp.
- Film Developing Corp.
- Filming locations
- Unmade Movies
- Deconstructing Houdini '53
- Spiritualism
- People
- Beatrice Houdini
- Theo Hardeen
- Cecelia Weiss
- Mayer Samuel Weiss
- Jim Collins
- Franz Kukol
- Martin Beck
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Margery
- J. Gordon Whitehead
- Edward Saint
- Jacob Hyman
- Leopold Weiss
- Carrie Gladys Weiss
- Bernard M.L. Ernst
- Charmian London
- Jess Willard
- H.P. Lovecraft
- Sherlock Holmes
- Assistants
- Imitators
- Other magicians
- Media
- Full Bibliography
- By Houdini
- Biography
- Fiction
- Foreign
- For Kids
- Methods
- Wild About Harry Bookshelf
- Houdini His Life Story (1928)
- Houdini The Man Who Walked Through Walls (1959)
- Houdini The Untold Story (1969)
- The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini (1993)
- Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss (1996)
- The Secret Life of Houdini (2006)
- The Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini (2012)
- The Witch of Lime Street (2015)
- The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini (2019)
Great stuff here John! Thanks for posting the link to this. One can almost write a new Houdini biography on just the information on your blog!
ReplyDeleteHats off to David for this information. Thanks to his efforts, Houdini's childhood is beginning to come into focus. Those were hard times for Houdini. Can we blame him for wanting to put it all behind? Don't we do the same thing in our lives?
Thanks for the kind words. Am discovering more gems in Milwaukee and will be publishing them over the next couple of weeks.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to it!
DeleteI'm assuming you have the Manny Weltman book, Houdini Escape into Legend? Some good stuff in there about the Milwaukee years.
Yes, that's got a lot of good clues. He goes a little overboard with assumptions about Samuel Weiss's religiousness (makes him "extremely Orthodox," etc.) which are not borne out by the facts (e.g.: he preached in German, not Hebrew). But Weltman was the pioneer in this kind of research.
ReplyDelete