A couple of years ago we unearthed this BBC footage in which Orson Welles makes two remarkable claims: first, that Houdini himself personally taught Welles magic; and second, that Houdini himself told Welles the story of how he rang the Kremlin bells for Nicholas and Alexandra, the Emperor and Empress of Russia. (The whole clip is utterly entertaining; the Houdini section begins at 4:00.)
If you follow our blog you know we've devoted considerable effort to proving or disproving both these statements. In our opinion, the jury is still out on the Kremlin bells.
The BBC video resurfaced recently on our friend Kevin Connolly's "Conjuring History" Facebook page. And again the burning question in Houdiniland is this: did Houdini really teach Welles how to do magic? Or is that just another "F for Fake" moment?
It was Orson Welles himself who said "I don't want any description of me to be accurate, I want it to be flattering."
Welles's description of Houdini was both flattering and one hundred percent accurate: "He was the greatest showman of our time!" When one great showman says that about another, someone somewhere is telling the truth.
So back into the breach: once again we've deputized ourselves to find the facts.
First off: know now and forever that Orson Welles was proud to be a magician, and a really good one. He had a profound understanding of the splendors and miseries of the trade. Even mentalism, as he showed in this illuminating lecture to David Frost on cold reading:
Here's Welles doing his first-class mental act, on a network special:
Welles told an interviewer in 1975 that he had had three principal teachers of magic, all of them world-famous performers. Who were these teachers? Was Houdini really among them?
First stop in our inquiry: Citizen Welles, a comprehensive biography written by Frank Brady, who knew Welles personally and has done good bios of difficult characters like Aristotle Onassis, Barbra Streisand and Bobby Fischer. (It's a testament to Brady that he survived the Fischer bio unscathed enough to be elected president of the Marshall Chess Club in New York.)
Brady reports that young Orson, a child prodigy, was already practicing cartooning, puppetry and magic by age five.
Orson's father, Richard Welles, known as Daddy, and his surrogate father, Dr. Maurice Bernstein, known as Dadda (it's complicated), were theater buffs and had taken Orson to see Thurston and Okito when they played Chicago. The Okitos, both Theo and David Bamberg, lived in Chicago for a time and, according to biographer Patrick McGilligan, gave young Orson extensive magic lessons and schooled him in magic history.
Orson thought Thurston was the best magician he'd ever seen.
"I idolized him," he said.
He copied - and some would say improved! - nearly all Thurston's big illusions from "The Wonder Show of the Universe." And he lifted Thurston's signature line "I wouldn't fool you for the world!"
These artifacts of his lifetime of magic all appeared in a TV pilot called The Magic Show, but alas the networks cringed and the project was lost ... until it was pieced together by a German foundation. Here's what remains - including the supercharged Thurston and Bamberg routines:
But what about Houdini? At age ten, Brady and McGilligan both say, Welles did indeed meet Houdini backstage, impressed him with his knowledge of magic history and learned from him the two-handed pass and a clever sleight with a red silk.
But there's a problem, as in so many unprofessional dives into Houdini's depths. Both biographers say this meeting happened at the Hippodrome in New York.
Indeed, Welles himself has said it happened at the Hippodrome. But today we're declaring that the man of many theaters just made a forgivable mistake. It was in 1926 that Orson Welles met Harry Houdini - twice. He did indeed learn the two-handed pass, and more. But it was in Chicago, not New York.
... [In March 1926 during a break from school] Orson was taken one afternoon by Dadda to see Harry Houdini perform early during the master's recordbreaking eight-week stay at Chicago's Princess Theater on South Clark Street. With 13 assistants and an executive staff of three this was the master's first big all-Houdini show, which he'd been trouping through the Eastern and Central states since the previous fall.
The two-and-a-half hour performance watched by the blue-eyed boy had three acts. The first, lasting 45 to 60 minutes, featured Houdini's magic. This segment included The Miser's Dream where Houdini produces a small fortune in silver dollars from his bare hands and the Orange Tree that visibly grows real oranges. The second act was devoted to his three most famous effects: the opener was the Substitution Trunk (with wife-assistant Bess), followed by the Needle Swallowing Trick, and closed by the death-defying upside-down Water Torture Cell escape. The final act was his lecture-exposé of the methods used by fraudulent psychics. Except for the Miser's Dream and the Water Torture Cell, Orson would eventually perform all these famous feats, including at least one private psychic exposé.
After the show, Dadda took the boy backstage to meet the 51-year old star. Impressed by the tall, round-faced lad's grasp of magic history, Houdini taught him the Pass, that basic sleight-of-hand move for cutting a deck of cards.... Accompanying the great showman to his dressing room, Orson did this sleight. Houdini, annoyed, commanded, "Never perform any trick until you have practiced it a thousand times." Orson so took to heart this advice from his admired master that he spent the next few weeks practicing the Pass.
Next month Orson met Houdini for the second and last time and presumably was anxious to show his teacher the results of long practice. On this occasion he was brought by his father. During their backstage visit after the matinee show, Carl Brema, the famous German-born maker of fine quality conjuring apparatus, arrived from his shop in Philadelphia with an imported Conradi Vanishing Lamp. Young Orson was dumbfounded when Houdini on accepting the prop, said "Fine, I'll put it in the show tonight!" Orson didn't know that Houdini had already been doing the Vanishing Lamp for at least four months. So Brema's must have been either a repair job or a replacement for the gimmicked prop required for the effect. Despite Orson's misunderstanding this encounter served as a useful lesson in "great disillusionment," as he called it, about advice from one's elders.
Whaley notes that the dates of Houdini's stay at the Princess are established thanks to Frank Koval and Ken Silverman, by a notice in The Sphinx (May 1926) and letters by Houdini to Frank Ducrot and Dr. A.M.Wilson. Orson says, in the BBC video, that he first met Houdini at the Hippodrome in New York. But to be true that would have to have been in 1918 when Houdini featured the Vanishing Elephant and Orson would have been only three. It's Orson's recollection of the Vanishing Lamp that pinpoints the meeting with Houdini to the 1925-1926 tour.
There's more to the story: watch this space.
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I can't remember where I read it, but I believe Harry performed at the Hippodrome a few more times in the 1920s.
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