A Late Tribute to Harry Houdini
I just found out (a couple days late) that October 31 marked the anniversary of Harry Houdini’s death. That’s right. Perhaps the greatest Magician in history passed on Halloween. Strange. Houdini died in Detroit, MI on October 31, 1926 of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix. He was 52 years old.
Each November, the Society of America Magicians (SAM) performs their Broken Wand Ceremony at Houdini’s gravesite, which is located in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, NY. Find out more at www.magicsam.com.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:54 am
Yes,..that is strange about the day of his death. Houdini’s trademark were his escapes. He didn’t really preform magic tricks so I wouldn’t classify him as a great magician. But he was the greatest when it came to his death-dfiying escapes. No one in the history of magic could hold a candle to Houdini! C Angel also does a lot of escapes. Many of them fashioned after Houdini. These escapes are very real and most of them are very very dangerous to attempt. There have been a few magician’s die in the “buried alive” escape. The weight of the ground was too heavy and collapsed on them,..killing them all in an instant. Criss posted a few memorial words and mentioned their names after he successfully pulled off that particular escape. They closed the episode on that note. There is a great movie about Harry Houdini that is a very factual and real biography about his escapes and his life. It seems to me it may have been Tony Curtis who portrayed him. I’ll have to look that up to confirm it now! So,..Rest in Peace Harry. You told us that if you could come back in anyway, shape or form,..you would do it. Well,..there’s just some things that are unescapeable. Death would be one of them.
E hayenga
November 18th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
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February 20th, 2010 at 8:25 am
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