Houdini

A Pictorial Biography,
Including More Than 250 Illustrations
Milbourne Christopher

Houdini...The name is still magic.The most popular vaudeville performer Of his era,Harry Houdini died during the stunt-crazed twentys on Halloween in 1926.His reputation and legend have continued to grow in the years since.
Dynamic and enormously talented, he was famed in his own time as a master magician. a man who could walk through a solid brick wall or make a live elephant disappear...as a daring performer, unfazed by the prospect of leaping, chained, into an icy river...as a pioneer aviator (the first to fly to Australia)... as a daredevil actor in the days of silent films... as an unrelenting crusader Against fake spiritualists...and as above all the greatest escape artist the world has ever seen. He could get out of anything. from manacles and straitjackets to coffins and jail cells.
Today Houdini is a folk hero. Myths And legendary tales have collected about him. It was said that he would be Able to overcome death, sending back a message to the living; that he left his secret in a safe-deposit vault, to be opened on the Anniversary of his death; that he used psychic powers to perform his feats; or, most bizarrely, that he had a pocket in his skin in which he hid his picklocks. Even late in the century, Houdini continues as a prominent presence, a featured character in E. L. Doctorow's famed novel (and film and Broadway musical), Ragtime.

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