We know Broadway like the back of our prosthetic hand.
We still have our two real ones but like having the third for status. We are so cool when we go to the manicurist shop and all the gals with their lousy one or two soak dish set-ups have to stare with envy.
We used to have a little (and we mean little) shop right in front of one of the big-time theaters. This was a while ago and the theater went by a different name and we cannot print the name or our website will be thrown out of public libraries, again.
Our shop was designed to look like a card table with a Navajo blanket covering the top. We sold us some Cups and Balls, Ball in Vase, Multiplying Billiard Balls, Magic 8-Balls, Bounce/No-Bounce Balls and our knock-off version of the spring and fake fur puppet, Rocky Raccoon. At the time, the real ones were selling for $17.00 over at Tannens. We cut out the middle-man, the man who enforced the child labor laws and the “you don’t need to go through Customs” man; but we could not eliminate the “It would be a shame if something were to happen to your cute little store or cute little wife” man.
Broadway was a tough place where guys like us would walk the mean streets with our pants weighed down by coins in our pockets. All the sales people on the Great White Way jingled. There was almost no paper money on Broadway then. The Automat served meals and hot coffee but only if you had exact change. The restrooms in the nicer establishments cost a dime or a quarter. Showers were half a dollar and all of the better movie theaters charged per three minutes per $1.00 in coins. You could always tell a fellow salesperson by the tension on his or her belt, the bumpy, dimpled bulges projecting like a topographical map over their pants legs, and the bar of Ivory Soap in their back pocket.
Ivory Soap was started right on Broadway and they never forgot their roots. They went from selling cheap turquoise or silver plated jewelry to becoming one of the largest companies in the world. If you were from the Broadway Sidewalk Sales Society, you could walk into any store – it didn’t have to be on Broadway – and pick-up one bar of Ivory Soap per month. Most of the times no one even noticed or cared. They likely knew about Mr. Ivory’s promise to his fellow merchants and were happy to see his wishes fulfilled. Sometimes you’d get a new clerk or cashier and we’d have to go through the whole story. They usually gave in about an hour into our spiel and we’d walk out cleaner.
Rumor had it that there were folks on the south side of Broadway that worked with their version of the Ivory Soap man. He was the person who invented orange juice and they could go into any store that sold orange juice (fresh-squeezed only – we guess he didn’t invent the concentrated version) and take one gallon a month.
So the north side merchants smelled good and the south side guys smelled bad but didn’t have scurvy. Life is all about trade-offs, though.
Our point was that we cannot wait until Hugh Jackman takes on the role of our hero. In fact we named other people’s children “Harry” and “Houdini” and “Bess” when we were employed for a week as a temp at the Mystic Hospital for Women and Childrens. (Yes, we know the “s” is grammatically incorrect and there is not even a word with that spelling but the benefactor of the MHWC was a self-taught Polaroid Land Camera repairman. He knew everything about every version of that famous camera from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He could fix your camera as good as new in no time but he was otherwise unintelligent. He couldn’t count (except to 60 – the number of seconds to wait before exposing pictures taken with the first film stock) he chewed with his mouth open, he sewed his own clothes – while they were on – and they remained in place for years as a consequence. Jimmy knew those dang cameras though. He would lose all the money he made on one repair job when the next customer would get him confused about the amount of change he was owed. Poor guy.
Even though he was destitute for most of his life, he loved what he did and folks in town loved to have him roam the streets looking for Polaroid Land Cameras in need of repair. People wonder how he could afford to fund Mystic Hollow Michigan’s largest building and most important medical service when he rarely had a dollar in his usually securely sewed pocket. Apparently, one of the big celebrities heard of Jimmy’s abilities and brought his camera for repair while he was performing in Chicago. He couldn’t stay for the hour or so it would take to repair so he asked Jimmy to send it to the Schubert Theater in Chicago when it was ready.
Jimmy was surprised to find two photos stuck in the mechanism. He wasn’t sure if he should look at the pictures to make sure they weren’t ruined from their cramped position inside the camera for years. He decided he wouldn’t look because he thought that would invade the celebrity’s personal life. Instead, he caught a series of trains to the Schubert Theater and tried to drop the pictures off at the box office. They wouldn’t take them and they directed him to the stage door outside and down the alley. It was raining pretty heavy and Jimmy put the pictures in his tattered but well-sewn pants. His pockets were completely sealed from years of stitching practice and probably of the natural glue we all produce through our skin pores if we don’t change clothes or bathe properly.
In a very interesting new program, the premiere library for the English-speaking world (appropriately located in England) asks ordinary people like you to help preserve the great original books in their vast collection.
Among the 40 or so offerings is Houdini's classic from 1921.
In this practical guide with illustrations, Houdini explains how to perform ties "of two distinct types, namely, those adapted to use in spiritualistic work, and those intended for the escape artist." A perfect adoption for fans of the most famous magician in the world.
The cost to adopt this book or one of the other classics of non-magic literature, is a mere £30.00 which prices out at about €36.00 or $47.50 in U.S. Dollars.
Your name will be on the certificate and in the records of the British Library.
Not to be outdone, our hometown Mystic Hollow Library has a similar adopt a book program. For $2.50, you can adopt the entire 2009 collection of TV Guide in hardback. Not quite a classic, but it does contain some very interesting information about what you could have seen during that crucial year in television.
In the United States, analog television signals were replaced by their digital equivalent and millions of homes were stripped of their ability to see Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. The nation was rocked and congressional efforts to supply conversion boxes to those affected by this horrific crisis fell short. You can read about the congress and the president's efforts to delay or fix the great social upheaval here.
Inside Magic is honored to bring its readers John Cox’ great review of Christopher Sandford’s book, Masters of Mystery: The Strange Friendship of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. Mr. Cox owns one of our two favorite Houdini sites on the world wide webs, Wild About Harry (http://www.wildabouthoudini.com). The other Inside Magic Favorite site is Houdini.org, the incredible work of Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brooks. Both of these sites should be on your bookmark toolbar or made your home pages.
Full confession. In my 35 years of obsessive Houdini research, I’ve always found his anti-spiritualism crusade to be the least interesting aspect of his life and career. In fact, I’ve sometimes felt I’ve had to slog though these sections in biographies. But all this has changed with the new book Houdini and Conan Doyle by Christopher Sandford, which had me riveted, and is one of those rare books that I came away from feeling like I know Houdini better.
Houdini and Conan Doyle (which will be titled Masters of Mystery: The Strange Friendship of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini when it is released in the U.S. next month) is the third major non-fiction book written about the curious relationship between these two famous men. The other books are Ernst and Carrington’s Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship (1932) and Massimo Polidoro’s Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle (2001). While full props must go out to these first two books, especially Polidoro’s scholarly work, I do feel like Sandford has synthesized all previous research with his own new findings and formidable skills as a biographer to create the best book yet written on the subject of Houdini and spiritualism, and maybe the most skillfully written book about Houdini in general since Silverman (Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss).
Houdini haters will be upset to learn that Houdini actually comes off as quite scholarly and rational in this book. For all of Houdini's efforts to portray himself as a man of letters, it really wasn’t until this book that I finally saw that man clearly. Houdini was a man of action (and reaction) to be sure, but Sandford shows he put more thought into these actions then he is generally given credit for. In other words, he really was a smart as he said he was! This is because Sandford has gained access to some key Houdini diaries (as well as some "unpublished writings" of Bernard Ernst, Houdini lawyer and close friend) that offer a counterpoint to what was going on between the two men in their letters and in public. There was what Houdini said to the papers; there was what he said to Doyle in letters; and then there are his own beliefs and private feelings that are sometimes very different.
While there are no Charmian London level bombshells in Houdini and Conan Doyle, there are a several things that I found revelatory (my apologies if these are in Polidoro – I hoped to re-read that book before I wrote this review, but that didn’t happen). My jaw hit the floor as early as page 3 when Sandford says Houdini, at age 11, attended a "series of séances" in a failed attempt to contact his dead half-brother Hermann. Also, at age 18, Houdini sold his watch to pay for a "professional psychic reunion" with his recently deceased father. Forget the death of Mama in 1913, certainly the seeds of Houdini's hostility toward mediums can be at last partially attributed to these early disappointments in his youth.
I was also fascinated to learn that Houdini purchased Doyle's father's art portfolio in auction, and that Bessie returned this treasure to Doyle after Houdini’s death; that J. Gordon Whitehead was born on the same day Houdini performed his first ever public handcuff escape (Nov. 25, 1895); that Houdini prided himself on having a substantial collection of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia, and struggled to prove that Doyle lifted his Holmes material from the writings of Edger Allen Poe. (Houdini seems eager to unleash this evidence on the world, he even teases it in his spiritualist lectures. But despite spending "long hours in his library comparing the two texts", he doesn't seem to be able to prove the theory to himself and never publishes.) And then there's the suggestion from Will Goldstone that Houdini occasionally "partook in a nip of opium"(!).
(Also, on a fun personal note, I had no idea that Dr. Daniel Comstock, inventor and founder of Technicolor – my current employer – was on the Scientific American committee with Houdini.)
The narrative of Houdini and Conan Doyle is pretty evenly split between the two men, relating their respective biographies in equal measures (maybe a little more weighted to Doyle in the first third). Of course, I came for Houdini, but I found the Doyle material just as fascinating, and sometimes downright shocking! I had no idea just how far off the rails Doyle went near the end of his life, firmly believing his prophetic spirit guide, Pheneas, that the end of the world was imminent and preaching preparedness to his followers. One thing Sandford never really addresses is why Lady Doyle, as the voice of Pheneas, perpetuated this fiction for her husband. (At times
Pheneas would implore Doyle to buy new home furnishings or kitchen appliances.) Unless they were both just flat out bonkers. It really is a strange, strange story.
My only complaint might be that the collection of photos included in the book leaves something to be desired. There is not even a single photo of Houdini and Doyle together (at least not in the UK proof edition, which is what I'm writing this review from — maybe the final book will have more photos*). But photos are not what's important to us Houdini nuts and historians. It's the text that matters, and this is where Houdini and Conan Doyle by Christopher Sandford delivers!
UK edition (left) and U.S. edition (right).
*UPDATE: Having now received my copy of the finished book, I'm happy to report that it does indeed contain more photos than what was in the proof, including a photo of Houdini and Doyle together.
Teller of Penn & Teller fame, is more than an incredible magician, writer, historian and inventor. He has a life outside the Penn & Teller Theater (that’s “Theatre” in metric).
He graduated from prestigious Amherst College in 1969 under the nom d’études (metric for “student name”) of Raymond Joseph Teller.
To ensure that our posting on the topic will be the most derivative of all on the topic, we cite Tom Shay from MassLive.com who in turn credits New York Magazine for the bird’s eye lowdown on Teller’s favorite movies about Magicians.
“The Great Buck Howard: The most accurate depiction of what it’s like to be in magic anywhere, because it’s so sad!
“A-Haunting We Will Go: One of the movies that made me fall in love with stage magic. Laurel and Harding encounter the actual magician Dante, and there’s a whole bunch of slapstick mix-ups.
“The Man from Beyond: It’s melodramatic crap, but it’s got Houdini, for crying out loud! You’re actually seeing Houdini on the screen!
“Nightmare Alley: Tyrone Power starts off as a sideshow magician, then does a mind-reading act, and he’s gradually tempted into being an evil crook. A hideously black downward spiral; and
“The Lady Vanishes: One of the most perfect movies ever made. And the fact that the evilest bad guy takes cover as a magician – that makes me laugh.”
You can read Tom Shay’s version of this list at MassLive.com here. We checked and checked but could not find a New York Magazine article on Teller or his favorite movies. We don’t doubt Tom Shay’s word, we just wanted to give credit where it was due.
We considered a few people pillars of our Magic Reality. Sidney Radner, Martin Gardner, Harry Blackstone, Jr., and David Copperfield. We could not imagine magic without these four fixtures in our worldview of this wonderful art.
Mr. Radner thoroughly in loved Magic and literally held the key to some of the finest pieces of history from Magic’s Golden Age.
According to his son, William, cancer was the cause of Mr. Radner’s death.
The Times correctly observed Mr. Radner’s unique position in the preservation of magic history.
Mr. Radner is credited in the world of magicians and magic collectors with having preserved some of the most important of Houdini’s props, including the “Chinese Water Torture Cell” (a water tank in which Houdini was lowered upside down, his feet chained) and the oversize “Milk Can” he used in a similar escape stunt.
His collection also included lesser items, but for Houdini buffs equally treasured, like the lock picks Houdini hid from his audiences by swallowing them, then regurgitating them, for escapes; cylinder pulleys, key wrenches, latches, levers and tumblers he used in various tricks; and a set of charred handcuffs from the exhibit that was set up in the theater lobby for his shows, advertised by Houdini as “handcuffs used in Spain on prisoners burning to death in 1600!”
Mr. Radner’s great fortune began when he attended a convention in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1935. It was there that he met Theo Weiss a/k/a Hardeen; Houdini’s kid brother and an fine escape artist in his own right.
We know Broadway like the back of our prosthetic hand.
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