Groupon discounting tickets to The Houdini Box

Groupon is running a special deal on tickets to see The Houdini Box performed by the Chicago Children’s Theatre. The discounter is currently offering 41% off the price of adult and children's tickets. The deal lasts for 2 days with five shows available.

Head over to Groupon for all the details.

The Houdini Box is a musical adventure based on the book by award-winning children's author Brian Selznick. It opened January 24 at the Chicago Mercury Theater.

Houdini and his bag of tricks

Check out this terrific advertisement from the December 27, 1925 New York Times sent to me by a mysterious contributor who calls himself only "Harry Houdini." I love how this unique image sells Houdini purely as a (traveling) magician. I don't even see a pair of handcuffs or spirit slates in that "bag of tricks."

This, of course, is an ad for Houdini's full evening roadshow, which he launched in December 1925 and played until his death in October 1926. The show was more typically advertised as "Three Shows in One: Magic, Escapes, Fraud Mediums Exposed." This ad might actually be for the very first move of HOUDINI from the Shubert Theater on 44th St. (where it had debuted) to the National on 41st. Street.

Thank you "Harry".

The Crystal Ball now shipping

The Crystal Ball: A Rebecca Mystery by Jacqueline Dembar Greene is now shipping from Amazon.com.

This is the latest release from American Girl featuring Rebecca Rubin, a young sleuth growing up in a Russian-Jewish family in New York City in 1914. In the first chapters of The Crystal Ball Rebecca and her family go to see Houdini perform an escape in Times Square. The book concludes with a nonfiction essay that further explores the historical aspects of the book, including four pages on Houdini with pictures and illustrations.

The Crystal Ball: A Rebecca Mystery can be purchased as a hardcover or paperback.

Houdini and the President

In honor of this President's Day (also National Handcuff Day), I thought I'd repost this photo of Houdini and Theodore Roosevelt taken aboard the ocean liner Imperator on June 23, 1914.

It was aboard this "last boat out of Germany" (before the outbreak WWI) that Houdini would amaze the former President with a demonstration of Spirit Slates -- accurately pinpointing where Roosevelt had just spent his Christmas holiday. The next day it was said that Roosevelt took Houdini aside on deck and asked him, "man to man," if what he did was genuine Spiritualism.

"No, Colonel," Houdini is said to have answered. "It was just hocus pocus."

Original version

The original version of this photo was of Houdini and Roosevelt standing amid a group of other passengers. Houdini had the others cropped out and proudly gave this out as presentation piece. The above photo, from my own collection, is glued into an inscribed copy of The Unmasking of Robert Houdin (those ink flecks are from Houdini's signature). I've seen several other copies of Unmasking with this photo inside. I'm not sure when Houdini did these or how many exist, but it makes for a terrific presentation copy.

In his book Shots At Sea, Tom Lalicki had some fun with Houdini and Roosevelt's ocean-bound adventures, although he set his action aboard the Lusitania and worked in his fictional young hero Nate Fuller. Recently a remarkable artifact from this voyage sold on eBay.

Of course, Houdini was also photographed with President Abraham Lincoln...via the spirit world!

Houdini's leading ladies: Rosemary Theby

The most overlooked of all Houdini's leading ladies (for reasons I will explain below) is Rosemary Theby, who was born Rose Masing on April 8, 1892, in St. Louis, Missouri. Theby played Stella Mourdant, wife of the villainous Guy Mordaunt (described as being "no better than her better-half"), in Houdini's second feature for Famous Players-Lasky, Terror Island.

Here is her biography from Fandango:

Slender, sad-eyed leading lady Rosemary Theby made her film debut in 1912, and that same year starred as Celia in a greatly abbreviated film version of Shakespeare's As You Like It. In her heyday (1915-1922), Theby often co-starred with her husband, actor/director Harry C. Meyers; among other roles, she played Morgan Le Fey in Meyers' lavish version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1921).

Professional and financial reverses forced both Theby and her husband into bit parts and extra roles during the talkie era. Several of Theby's 1930s assignments were obtained through the kindness of comedian Oliver Hardy, who'd been a minor player in some of the actress' pre-WWI vehicles. Rosemary Theby's best talkie role was the laconic Mrs. Snavely in the classic W.C. Fields two-reeler The Fatal Glass of Beer (1932). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Theby is present throughout Terror Island, and even has the distinction of being the only Houdini leading lady to die onscreen (she's shot on the sinking submarine -- blink and you'll miss it). However, Theby's best scene, in which she vamps Houdini's Harry Harper in an attempt to get a map from him, is contained on one of the two reels that are missing from the only known print of the film. There isn't even a description of this scene on the explanatory cards that summarize the missing action on the DVD. All we have of Theby's performance here are a few stills, including a lobby card that reads: "Are you crazy, madam?".

This may be why she is often forgotten among the pantheon of Houdini's leading ladies. In fact, poor Theby's photo in The Secret Life of Houdini is misidentified as being Nita Naldi in The Man From Beyond (wrong vamp, wrong film).

Rosemary Theby died on June 10, 1973 at the Virgil Convalescent Center in Los Angeles, CA.

Rosemary Theby and Houdini in their lost scene from Terror Island.

More Houdini leading ladies:

• Ann Forrest
• Lila Lee
• Jane Connelly
• Gladys Leslie
• Nita Naldi

Next weekend: LADIES OF 'MYSTERY'

Houdini's leading ladies: Nita Naldi

While the leading lady of Houdini's 1922 The Man From Beyond was Jane Connelly, the more famous actress in that film was Nita Naldi. Born Mary Nonna Dooley on March 1, 1895 in New York City, Nadi was probably the biggest female star Houdini ever worked with. She had played opposite John Barrymore in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and would famously vamp Valentino in Blood and Sand, released the same year as The Man From Beyond.

In the film Naldi played Marie Le Grande, "the vamp", which was her specialty. Even though she doesn't actually appear in a scene with Houdini (at least in the existing print), she was featured in The Man From Beyond publicity, which played up the fact that she had just signed a five year contract with Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount.

Here is Nita Naldi's biography on Fandango:

The "female Valentino," as she liked to call herself, Nita Naldi became the most outrageous vamp of the 1920s -- reportedly both on and off the screen. Born Anita Donna Dooley and convent-educated, Naldi took her professional name from a school chum (Mary Rinaldi) and set out to conquer the world of show business with a vengeance. A chorus girl in The Passing Show of 1918 and The Midnight Whirl (1919), Naldi was appearing in Morris Gest's Aphrodite (1919) when approached by John Barrymore, who cast her as Gina in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920). Although Barrymore would later dismiss her as his "dumb Duse," Naldi is surprisingly modern in her flamboyant role as Hyde's would-be seducer and she steals every scene she's in. She was personally selected by famed writer Vicente Blasco-Ibanez (who, Naldi claimed, dropped his dentures down her cleavage while engaged in a tirade against the Catholic church) for the role of the temptress Doña Sol in Blood and Sand (1922), outrageously vamping Rudolph Valentino who seems to be literally energized by her lustful behavior. The florid melodrama became her signature film and was so popular that she was reunited with Valentino twice in A Sainted Devil (1924) and Cobra (1925). Gertrude Olmstead met Naldi while filming the latter and later told the film historian Anthony Slide that the notorious femme fatale was "so sweet to me and so very interesting."

Contrary to popular belief, Naldi did not play the native girl in Alfred Hitchcock's directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden (1925), but she did turn up somewhat unexpectedly as the schoolteacher in his second film, The Mountain Eagle (1926), a presumably welcome respite from vamping. A few more European films followed, including Léonce Perret's La Femme Nue (1926), but her type had become an anachronism by then and she wisely retired at the advent of sound. There were brief returns to Broadway -- The Firebird (1932), Queer People (1934) -- and Naldi became one of the former Hollywood luminaries featured at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in the early '40s, where, quite appropriately, she recited Rudyard Kipling's famous poem A Fool There Was backed by a line of chorus boys. Naldi's final public appearance came opposite Uta Hagen in the 1952 stage comedy In Any Language.  

One of the last of a breed, Naldi brought old-fashioned screen vamping into the more liberated age of the Roaring Twenties, the true heiress to the throne vacated by Theda Bara. But screen vamps rarely took themselves too seriously, she confessed in a later interview. "At least I didn't and I know some of my best friends and rivals didn't either." Spending her final years as a recluse, Nita Naldi died of a heart attack in her room at Manhattan's then-shabby Wentworth Hotel in 1961. Sadly, she had been dead for at least 48 hours when her body was finally discovered. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi 

Interestingly, Nita Naldi has several things in common with Houdini's Terror Island leading lady, Lila Lee. Both appeared in Blood and Sand, and they both have the honor of being the only Houdini leading ladies to have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Naldi's star is at 6316 Hollywood Blvd., directly across the street for Bess Houdini's Hollywood hangout, Sardi's.

For more on Nita Naldi, vist the excellent nitanaldi.com.

Houdini and Nita get serious in a moment not in the existing film.

More Houdini leading ladies:

• Ann Forrest
• Lila Lee
• Jane Connelly
• Gladys Leslie

Tomorrow: Rosemary Theby

Kevin Connolly unearths "The Cologne Papers" (updates)

Super collector Kevin Connolly has posted on his blog a recent acquisition which, according to Kevin, "may be one the most significant Houdini finds in years, maybe decades." It's a book, commissioned by Houdini, that contains all the documentation related to his famous slander trial in Cologne, Germany in 1902.

Says Kevin, "This item hasn’t been seen in many, many years and most Houdini collectors and historians don’t even know of its' existence. I’ve been tracking in down, on and off, for about 30 years."

Click here to have a look at this amazing Houdini artifact at Houdini Himself.

UPDATES:

• On The Trail Of The Cologne Papers
• Jim Bard Sends Telegram To Houdini
• A Splash Of Cologne
• Werner Graf Gets Spanked!
  

The perennial 'Houdini on Magic'

My recent post about Scholastic's The Great Houdini got me wondering which Houdini book has had the longest continuous life in print. Didn't take me long to figure out that it must be Houdini on Magic by Walter B. Gibson and Morris N. Young. The book was first published in 1953 by Dover and has apparently never gone out of print. Check out the Dover website or Amazon where you can still buy a brand new copy today. This is also the book that you most likely find looking back at you from any magic shop book rack.

The original 1953 hardcover and paperback editions.

The book itself is a confection of previously published material, including Gibson's Houdini's Escape and Magic and Houdini's own books and pitchbooks. This means it contains some Houdini mythology. On the upside, it's very nicely illustrated and Gibson's introduction -- in which he talks about knowing and working with Houdini -- is worth the price of the book alone.

Paperback editions from the 1960s.

Here I've gathered a selection of Houdini on Magic covers from my own collection (along with the Gresham bio, Houdini on Magic was the first Houdini book I ever purchased). The Dover copyright pages only ever say 1953, so it's hard to determine exactly when these books were first published. I can't claim these are all the variations, but it's a good cross section of the major changes in cover art that the book has experienced over its amazing 59 years in print!

Houdini on Magic cover art from the 1970s to today.

Houdini's tomb tale digs up $680

A 1924 issue of Weird Tales magazine that contains Houdini's short story, Imprisoned With The Pharaohs, has sold on eBay for an impressive $680.01. The auction received 16 bids.

While Imprisoned With The Pharaohs appeared under Houdini’s byline, the story was actually ghost written by H.P. Lovecraft. The auction offered up this excellent description of the story and its history:

"Under the Pyramids", also published as "Entombed with the Pharaohs" and "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", is a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft in February 1924. Commissioned by Weird Tales founder and owner J. C. Henneberger, the narrative tells a fictionalized account in the first-person perspective of an allegedly true experience of escape artist Harry Houdini. Set in 1910, in Egypt, Houdini finds himself kidnapped by a tour guide, who resembles an ancient Pharaoh, and thrown down a deep hole near the Great Sphinx of Giza. While attempting to find his way out, he stumbles upon a gigantic ceremonial cavern and encounters the real-life deity that inspired the building of the Sphinx. Although he did not believe Houdini's story, Lovecraft nevertheless accepted the job because of the money he was offered in advance by Henneberg. The result was published in the May-June-July 1924 edition of Weird Tales, although it was credited solely to Houdini until the 1939 reprint. Despite Lovecraft's use of artistic license, Houdini enjoyed the tale and collaborated with the author on several smaller projects prior to the latter's death in 1926. "Under the Pyramids" has been suggested as an early influence on author Robert Bloch and as anticipating the cosmic themes in Lovecraft's later work, including The Shunned House.

Happily, you don't have to pay this kind of cash if you just want to the read the story. Imprisoned with the Pharaohs is included in several Lovecraft collections and in a stand alone booklet.

Happy Valentine's Day

Paul Michael Glaser helps solve a 'Great Houdinis' mystery

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting my favorite "Houdini", Paul Michael Glaser, at The Hollywood Show in Burbank, and I was finally able to clear up one of the mysteries about his 1976 TV movie, The Great Houdinis.

In my Making of The Great Houdinis blog from last year, I noted that the final day of principle photography (May 25, 1976) was planned for the Belmont Amusement Park in San Diego, which was to double for Coney Island. Here a scene in which Harry proposes to Bess (Sally Struthers) aboard a roller coaster would be filmed.

While it appears in the script and shooting schedule (as well as in the novelization), this scene didn't make it into the final film. Was it cut, or never shot? It seemed unlikely that a TV movie would cut a scene that took this much effort and expense to film, so it was my guess that the scene and location were scrapped and the last day was used instead to complete a schedule that may have run over.

Even though it was 36 years ago, I figured Mr. Glaser would remember filming a scene aboard a rollar coaster, so I brought the question to him at the show and he was able to confirm that I was correct. The Belmont Amusement Park/Coney Island proposal scene was never shot. "No, we never did that," he said.

Thank you Paul Michael Glaser for clearing up the mystery. Below is the scene (that never was) as it appears in The Great Houdinis screenplay.

Click to enlarge

Death and Harry Houdini extended to April 15

Having sold out its entire scheduled run within five days of opening, The House Theatre of Chicago is extending Death and Harry Houdini for another month at the Chopin Theatre in Chicago.

The avant-garde stage show, which features illusionist and actor Dennis Watkins, will now play through Apr. 15. It then moves to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami where it will run April 26 - May 20.

For more information and to buy tickets visit the official House Theater of Chicago website.

Silverman on Radner

Just a heads-up that the February 2012 issue of Genii includes an obituary of Houdini collector Sidney Radner written by Kenneth Silverman (Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss). As you would expect, it's beautifully written tribute. In regards to Radner receiving Houdini's original equipment from Hardeen, it includes this little gem:

"He believed that Theo, a serious horseplayer, sold off such apparatus to pay gambling debts."

I believe this is the first time this has ever been acknowledged in print.

Houdini's leading ladies: Gladys Leslie

Having cast the unknown Jane Connelly as the leading lady in his first independent feature, Houdini would turn to an established actress as his co-star for his next film, Haldane of the Secret Service (1923). Born in New York City on March 5, 1899, Gladys Leslie was a 24-year-old starlet when she played Adele Ormsby in what was to be Houdini's last movie.

Here is Gladys Leslie's biography on Fandango:

"The Girl With the Million Dollar Smile" and at one point a rival to Mary Pickford, blonde Gladys Leslie had begun her screen career in the early 1910s as an extra in Edison one-reelers. She became a star with the Thanhouser company in 1916, appearing as winsome waifs in Falstaff brand comedies.

The following year, she played the youngest daughter of Frederick Warde's The Vicar of Wakefield and starred in the title-role of An Amateur Orphan (1917), a Pickford-esque fairytale filmed on location in upstate New York.

Switching to Vitagraph, Leslie continued to play dimpled ingenues, but her career was already waning by the early '20s. She always maintained that she would quit films once her bank balance "has mounted high enough" and by 1925 she did just that, apparently never looking back. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Gladys Leslie (Moore) died in Boynton Beach, Florida on October 2, 1976 at age 77.

More Houdini leading ladies:

• Ann Forrest
• Lila Lee
• Jane Connelly

Next weekend: THE VAMPS

Houdini's leading ladies: Jane Connelly

A mystery of Houdini's movie career is why he chose an unknown, first-time film actress as the leading lady in the first feature for his Houdini Picture Corporation, The Man From Beyond (1922).

We still know almost nothing about Jane Connelly -- who played Felice Strange and her past life incarnation, Felice Norcross -- except that she was born on May 2, 1883 in Port Huron, Michigan, and died on October 25, 1925 in Los Angeles. She only made one other appearance in a film, Sherlock Jr., for which she was uncredited. Even more perplexing is that Connelly was 38 when she was cast in The Man From Beyond, which made her an unlikely starlet in the silent era which saw ingenues as young as 15.

So why after working with established names like Ann Forrest and Lila Lee did Houdini go for a complete unknown? It's possible the budget was limited by his choice of emerging star Nita Naldi to play the vamp in the film. It's also possible Houdini knew Connelly from the past, as she was have said to have performed in Vaudeville with her husband, Erwin Connelly (who played Dr. Gregory Sinclair in the film).

But another, much stranger answer can be found in The Man From Beyond pressbook. In an article titled "Houdini's Perplexing Problem" it says that the production was "confronted with the strange problem that Houdini had to solve in order to engage the proper type of leading woman to support him." It continues:

The story of "The Man from Beyond," dealing with the theory of reincarnation, the psychic type was required for the leading feminine role. Houdini, determined to secure exactly this type, made composite photographs of Paladena and Eva Fay, Mrs. Piper, the Gohlier Girl and Mme. Tomychik, names, all of them, that are familiar in the field of psychic phenomena.

Equipped with this composite photograph, Houdini knew exactly what was needed in the way of type for his leading woman and after a long and exhaustive search through all the available talent among screen leading women, he selected Jane Connelly as being precisely the type required to interpret the role.

So much like the composite photograph was Miss Connelly's own portrait that it seemed as if she had posed for it.

Pretty wild, eh? And while this could just be typical ballyhoo (The Man From Beyond pressbook is filled with references to reincarnation, psychic matters, and even pro-spiritualist remarks), it does explain the unusual choice, and in light of my recent posts about Houdini's apparent belief in reincarnation, maybe he really did cast Connelly for her "psychic" quality.

Or maybe she was just willing to work cheap and didn't mind getting wet.

More Houdini leading ladies:

• Ann Forrest
• Lila Lee

Tomorrow: Gladys Leslie.

Bessie's two graves

Tomorrow marks the 69th anniversary of the death of Beatrice "Bess" Houdini on February 11, 1943. She passed away aboard a train bound for New York as it arrived in the town of Needles, CA. For the occasion, I thought I'd take a look at the question of her two gravesites.

Bessie's first grave is the one that was prepared for her in life. Inscribed on Houdini's tombstone in Machpelah Cemetary in Queens, NY, is Bess's full name, Wilhelmina Beatrice, her birth year, and the year of her death which as you can see in the pic below has not been carved. That's because despite Houdini's wishes, Bess was not buried alongside him in the Weiss family plot.

Instead Bess was buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. The reason for this has never been made 100% clear, but it's said that her family wanted her buried in a Catholic cemetery (consecrated ground and all that). Some have said Machpelah wouldn't allow Bess to be buried there, but from what I've read online, Jewish cemeteries do allow the burial of non-Jewish spouses.

According to David Charvet's superb article on Bess in Magic (Oct 1995), Bess's sister Marie claimed "that Bess had re-embraced Catholicism on her deathbed." So if it was Bess's wish to be buried in a Catholic cemetery instead of Machpelah, so be it. But if it wasn't, I think it's sad that religion, which did not prevent Harry and Bess from falling in love and getting married in 1894, would separate them in eternity.

Nevertheless, Bessie does have an attractive headstone in Gate of Heaven, and she's in good company with such notables as Babe Ruth, James Cagney, New York mayor Jimmy Walker, and Houdini's friend and associate Fulton Oursler nearby.

Thanks to Joe Fox for the photo of Bess's Gates of Heaven headstone.