Houdini: The Elusive American

by Adam Begley

From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, an exuberant biography of the world’s greatest escape artist

In 1916, the war in Europe having prevented a tour abroad, Harry Houdini wrote a film treatment for a rollicking motion picture. Though the movie was never made, its title, “The Marvelous Adventures of Houdini: The Justly Celebrated Elusive American,” provides a succinct summary of the Master Mystifier’s life.

Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini grew up an impoverished Jewish immigrant in the Midwest and became world-famous thanks to talent, industry, and ferocious determination. He concealed as a matter of temperament and professional ethics the secrets of his sensational success. Nobody knows how Houdini performed some of his dazzling, death-defying tricks, and nobody knows, finally, why he felt compelled to punish and imprison himself over and over again. Must a self-liberator also be a self-torturer? Tracking the restless Houdini’s wide-ranging exploits, acclaimed biographer Adam Begley asks the essential question: What kind of man was this?

About Jewish Lives:

Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present.

In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.

More praise for Jewish Lives:

“Excellent.” – New York times

“Exemplary.” – Wall St. Journal

“Distinguished.” – New Yorker

“Superb.” – The Guardian

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Judaism, American History, History, Biography Memoir

232 pages, Hardcover

First published March 17, 2020

About the author

Adam Begley was for twelve years the books editor of The New York Observer. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Guardian, Financial Times, London Review of Books, and Times Literary Supplement. He lives with his wife in Cambridgeshire, England.

Reviews

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short biography of Houdini focusing on why he performed his escape acts rather than the techniques he employed to escape from jail cells and water tanks. The book was most interesting when it focused on Houdini's overseas tours and placed him in the context of his times. The European tour in the early 20th century was especially engaging - Houdini bought a dress intended for the late Queen Victoria as a souvenir for his mother, was cross examined about his act by a court in Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany and courted controversy in Czarist Russia by showing it was possible to escape from transport for prisoners being sent to Siberia. There's also an extended chapter about his friendship then feud with Arthur Conan Doyle regarding spiritualism.

[Deke Moulton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, short biography by @jewishlives - even though I have known the name Houdini forever, I didn’t really know anything at all about him. And it honestly wasn’t until a few years ago, that I even knew he was Jewish! But I also learned that he is the first person to fly in airplane in Australia? As well as spending the last five years of his life, fighting against spiritualism and seances that he saw as preying upon the bereaved. A great biography that doesn’t try to sugarcoat or put up onto a pedestal this “mysterious and magnificent” man

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, well-balanced biography, with a lot of authorial voice but an admirable reluctance to pass judgment on its subject.

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Begley's biography of Houdini covers all the literature to date (2020), including psychological inferences to his character, especially his intense love of his mother.

[Jason Schneeberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, but excellent biography!

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not know Houdini had such a close relationship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Very close who became rivals. He also had many large collections.

[Eleanor Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I feel like a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer. Other times I don’t. x

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Houdini (born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary) was the son of a rabbi who struggled to make a living in America, and a mother he adored. He was incredibly driven, an inexhaustible self-promoter, and not above hyperbole and outright lies. (I liked the story about his press agent convincing Funk & Wagnalls to include the word houdinize in their dictionary, though it is not in my 1943 edition.)

He was small, wiry, extremely strong, and good-looking. He was really good at wriggling out of handcuffs and straitjackets, and the rest of it was tricks of one kind or another. The book doesn't explain the details of any of Houdini's famous escapes (such as the famous Milk Can), a good choice: the details are actually not that interesting.

That is basically it. He had a mostly unsuccessful stint in the movies, critically and commercially. He couldn't act, and his amazing escapes were not impressive on film - it's too easy to cheat with cameras.

Houdini liked literary celebrities, and felt validated by their friendship, craving the social cachet that would put his act above that of low-class carnie performers. He befriended Jack London and later had a brief affair with his widow. Another friend was Arthur Conan Doyle, who tried to persuade Houdini to believe in spiritualism. Houdini was very sceptical, although he at first tried to mask it out of respect for Doyle. Doyle is portrayed as very naïve, being astonished even by the schoolyard trick of pretending to have cut off the end of one's thumb.

Later Houdini became a famous debunker of spiritualists, going to seances undercover and exposing their tricks. (This apparently exposed them to lawsuits or even criminal prosecution, on the grounds of falsely separating people from their money. Is this still the case today?)

Honestly, I didn't enjoy this very much. Possibly Begley is not to blame, and I'm simply not all that interested in his subject.

[Olivia Plasencia · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Jack Kirby's Mr. Miracle, I starting thinking that the character may be based on Houdini. After all Houdini is a name many associate with escape! But I didn't want to google Houdini, I wanted to know more than just a few paragraphs. I found Adam Begley's book while on vacation and decided to risk it. The book on Harry Houdini is part of a collection called Jewish Lives.

The first part of the book did not disappoint at all. How Harry got started in magic, his bouts of spiritualism, which he came to hate, and finally as the great Harry Houdini, a named he adopted from his hero Robert Houdini. His magic, and his shows are catalogued rather well, but some of the writer's musings as to why Harry did what he did or felt how he felt; seem wildly off and also not needed. Readers can draw their own conclusions as to Harry's desire to be an escape artist without prodding.

Harry's travels were vast and his fame enormous, he took stints lecturing, flying an airplane when that was still VERY new, and he has a few movies under his belt. However, the book goes into heavy detail on his friendships and feud with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer seemed to find it odd that Houdini had bold and firm opinions that he wanted stated clearly and found important for people to agree. At the time what else did people really have going on? And that is a desire people have today, to be understood and at times agreed with. I plan to search for another book Harry Houdini in hopes of finding more details in Harry's escape shows and travels. Not a bad book for an introduction to the subject.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

As is true for many magicians, I have read more than a dozen Houdini "biographies." They range from the juvenile (intended or not) to the excruciatingly detailed. Begley, commissioned for a series of books about famous Jews, treads a middle ground. There is nothing new here, as this presents more of a synopsis of current published information. More valuable than the body of the book is the Note On Sources, as he briefly reviews eight of the more recent and well-known biographies. I do disagree with him on the Ruth Brandon book, which I thought was shallow. (Hard to respect an author who was blown away by the old 'ashes on the arm to reveal a name' trick... which was similar to Doyle's being blown away by the 'pulling off the thumb' trick when Houdini claimed to do it.)
If you haven't read much Houdiniana, then this would be an OK place to start. New readers will be perplexed by some of the claims, until they have finished the book and have also read at least the reviews of the other primary books.

[Roger Woods · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a workmanlike biography of Houdini which does not go into a great deal of detail. It is well written and an easy read. The author has drawn on several previous biographies. As far as I know he is not a magician but an author of other biographies. There were one or two new facts I had not heard before but mostly very familiar stories. Unless a cache of new material is suddenly discovered I think pretty much every drop has now been rung out of the life of Houdini. He remains a fascinating character in the folk memory even though he died in 1926. If you want to know more about Houdini go to John Cox's web site www.wildabouthoudini.com where you can find as much material as you need short of researching at the Harry Ransom Center and the Library of Congress!

[Ross Siegel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched, and thankfully not overly exhaustive as some biographies can be. Relatively short (but somewhat slow since this reads more like an academic text than a pop-page turner biography) but one gets a strong sense of the visionary, vain, indefatigable, relentless, innovative, world of Harry Houdini. As a Jewish minority, at a time when Jews weren’t exactly accepted by society at large, he thrived using his wits, understanding of what makes for great stories and entertainment and a canny sense of the new art of media and hype generation.
Not an essential read. But I’m glad did it.

[Sean O · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good bio of arguably the most famous magician ever.

Houdini’s life was fascinating:

He was the first person to ever fly a plane in Australia.

He died of a ruptured appendix (a fact that haunted my 8th grade appendectomy.

He was a collector and bibliophile (a man after my own heart.)

Anyhow, a well-written book that isn’t hagiography and isn’t mumbo jumbo.

Recommended for fans.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stylishly written, quickly digested biography of the escape artist. A good introduction if you've never read about him, and a nice retelling if you have. I read the opening chapter describing Houdini's Chinese Water Torture Cell escape with the line, "His smile is a slice of fierce energy." I was immediately hooked. You will be too.

[Darlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining biography of a man who saw himself as larger than life and made sure the whole world knew it. Harry Houdini was a master of self-invention and self-promotion, and this is a good overview of someone who would have fit right in an age of influencers and social media.

[Etain Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes reality can give fiction a run for it's money. PT Barnum of Magic.

[Chloe Mclaren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick read that doesn't belabor its points, with an excellent roundup of other Houdini biographies at the end.

[Adam Aptowitzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun read. Not that deep. Basically an interesting description of the events of his life.

[Martin]

interesting. not the best from yale series.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

simple bio of Houdini

[Deedee · Rating 4 out of 5]

First part about Houdini’s beginnings from childhood to creating his illusions is very interesting. Later part about Houdini’s obsession with exposing mediums and séances, is tedious and boring….

[Valerie Glassman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not the greatest biography on Houdini, although it was the first I've read. Poorly written and repetitive, what was basically said in 200 pages could probably have been 100 pages. Most interesting are Houdini's relationships with authors jack London (and Houdini's affair with London's wife) and Arthur Conan Doyle, along with Begley's assertion that it was not the infamous blow to the stomach but appendicitis that killed Houdini.

[Stuart Shiffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another volume in the Yale series of Jewish Lives. It is less than 200 pages but it is a wonderful biography of a mysterious man. I must confess that until this book appeared in the series I did not realize Houdini was Jewish. Begley's biography is a wonderful read. The series is well worth consideration given the wide range of lives covered. I am keeping my books to pass on to my grandchildren in order for them to have some understanding of the contributions of many Jewish men and women to American life. Ironically my next book in the series is the life of Bugsy Siegel.