The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush, Larry Sloman Read Free Book Online Page A

and the grifter was now Mattie’s new lecturer. He was a far better womanizer than a showman, and by the time Houdini had returned to Kohl’s, Mattie’s star had permanently dimmed in the celestial sky of show business.
    Houdini learned an important lesson here. For variety artists to win over an audience, the performance itself must be amplified by other variables like presentation. The audience comes to the show essentially unprepared. What’s different about this performance? Is this the first time it’s ever been done? Is it particularly hard to do? Showmanship is the element that provides the context for the audience to understand what they’re seeing. It’s a way of making a performance exceptional. That was Mr. White’s genius—the ability to contextualize his wife’s performance in a grandiose way.
    “This was one of the most positive demonstrations I have ever seen of the fact that showmanship is the largest factor in putting an act over. Miss Price was a marvelous performer, but without her husband-lecturer she was no longer a drawing card, and…her act was no longer even entertaining,” Houdini realized.
     
    You couldn’t walk ten steps down the Bowery without hearing about it.
    “Da Houdinis are putting Risey in the box tonight at Vacca’s. You goin’?”
    Risey was a local fixture around the Bowery section of Coney Island, the magical place where New Yorkers escaped the drudgery of their everyday lives to swim in the surf and go to the amusement parks. He was a wizened old showman who had worked the circuses, the beer halls, and even some legitimate theaters for some “thirty-seven year,” as he said. No one really knew what he did at Vacca’s Theater, only that he was the “High Mighty Muck.” But they all knew that tonight he was going in the box.
    The Houdinis’ box was actually a steamer trunk that could be thoroughly and completely examined by audience members. Harry would then be bound and placed into a cloth sack that was tied shut. He was then locked into the trunk, which was roped and then enclosed from view by what was called a cabinet—actually a frame with fabric draped around it on three sides and a curtain in the front. Theo would then stand inside the cabinet and announce, “Behold, a miracle!” He would then close the curtain and clap his hands three times. The curtain immediately was pulled open to reveal Harry, liberated, standing in front of the box. After Harry unlocked the trunk and untied the sack, his brother emerged. The transformation was remarkable. A version of the trunk substitution had just been performed locally the previous winter by the Jewel Brothers, but the Houdinis put it over spectacularly, and both the audiences and the employees of Vacca’s were mystified by the effect.
    Except for Risey. He started bad-mouthing the brothers and their box. He claimed that a duo known as the Davenport Brothers had done a better box trick twenty years before, and he had showed them up then. Risey shot his mouth off so long and so loud about “fakers” and “fake box tricks” that when he ran into Harry, who was taking a stroll with one of the Floral Sisters, a song-and-dance act also appearing in Coney Island, a crowd gathered around.
    “In de presence of me ladyfren’, I’ll say notin’,” Houdini snarled, reverting back to the language of the New York streets, “but I’ll do youse dirt when I get back.”
    It was then that Vacca, the owner of the theater, stepped in to mediate a truce. Risey, it was announced, would go into the box and try to get out of it and expose the whole effect. And Houdini would pay him the princely sum of $100 if he was able to back up his words with action.
    So the stage was set for that evening. The joint was filled, with the two private boxes packed with local politicians, actors, newspapermen, and Brooklyn power brokers. The Houdinis went onstage first, and the crowd gave them a polite greeting, but when the audience saw the