The display was a hodgepodge of "vintage" items, so I'm unsure what to make of it. Are we to believe this is Houdini's top hat? I do know that two authenticated Houdini top hats exist in the collections of John Hinson and Roger Dreyer.
The Culver Hotel was built in 1924. Houdini briefly visited Los Angeles that year to give his spiritualism lecture, but he stayed at the Biltmore Hotel. It's unlikely he ventured outside of the downtown area as this was a quick whistle stop on his lecture tour. So I'm not aware of any Houdini connection to the Culver Hotel.
Of course, if we ask Google's A.I., we get a very different answer:
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| WRONG |
If you're interested in catching a Bond movie and viewing the display for yourself (the hotel sits directly across from the Culver Theater), here's the current film lineup with more to come.
Thanks to Dr. Larrian Gillespie for the tip about the display and Bob Mitsch for the above photo.
Related:
I spoke to the hotel manager and they had NO idea how that material appeared and if there was any connection. They did give me a booklet for hotel guests Art in Public Places for Culver City but there is no mention of a Houdini connection. The John Wayne connection, which IS seen in the display, is supposedly correct ( he won the hotel in a bet with Charlie Chaplin) and Red Skelton owned this hotel at one point as well. I thought perhaps these were studio props but the Brodie Houdini was filmed at the Alexander Korda Studios in Budapest ( Michael Korda, who was the head of Simon and Shuster was his nephew). So like so many Houdini related items...its' a mystery!
ReplyDeleteThanks for asking. I was there late and didn't find anyone to ask. Yes, another mystery! But these look like fantasy pieces to me.
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