Even today, nearly a century after his death, we say his name. The dog gets out of the yard, or the baby out of the playpen, and someone will say: “That little Houdini!” The name still stands for “magician” the way “Fido” stands for “dog.”
The funny thing is, Houdini wasn’t really a magician. Or rather, after failing as a magician, he reinvented himself in a new role that made him famous: the escape artist.
He wrote: “My birth occurred April 6, 1874, in the small town of Appleton in the state of Wisconsin, U.S.A.” Although many books and sites repeat this, none of it is true. All his life, Houdini, and later his widow Bess, told fibs and conflicting stories. Separating truth from illusion is as hard for his biographers as it was for his audiences….