I have read many, many books on Houdini since I was a child and I am now getting to feel like I'm ten years old again.

I just bought "The Secret Life of Houdini" or "The Making of America's First Superhero"
by William Kalush and Larry Sloman

I'm less than half way through and am loving it! So much info. You could never get this much info on me, thanks to e-mail and the delete button.

I highly reccomend it as a good read.

Regards,

Will

I have it but have not taken the opportunity to read it. I'm going to have to.
I grew up reading about Houdini as well. He's what started my interest in magic.

Did you know he was a spy? For the UK, the USA and Scotland yard!

Ummmm...noooo. I did not....lol

Don't believe everything you read.

It's a good book, but there's rather a lot of doubt as to the spy allegation.

If you look for opinions on it in various reviews, you'll begin to see that it could be seen as a stretch.

Some call it plain B.S.

It's still an entertaining read IMHO, but not something I'd consider either the absolute truth, nor the final word on Houdini.

Don't believe everything I read? Where did you read that?

There is a lot of conjecture in the book. Some of the allegations that Houdini was a spy are based on the fact that he was debriefed extensively by government agents when he would come back into the country from abroad. He also kept people informed about what was going on in Europe. As far as being a formal member of any intelligence gathering group, there is serious doubt about that.

There are other threads about this book. You might consider posting to them, or at least reading them to get some more information about the material in this book.

Do a little research, it's not hard to find.

It's an entertaining book, but not at all definitive.
There's a lot of Houdini's life that's missing from the book, and some very doubtful information contained within being passed by the authors as facts.

I should add that many prominent entertainers were asked about what they had seen when they came back to the States after they had been abroad.

BIll I used the fantastic search engine offered on the Café and did not find any other threads, which is why I started this one. Where are they???

Briefing of other countries military goings on. I would call that a spy but I suppose it is a matter of semantics.

spy: a person who secretly collects and reports information on the activities, movements, and plans of an enemy or competitor.

I feel it is a far better veiw of his life compared to all the other books I read as a child. Then again H.H. wrote one of those himself.

You may want to read THE book on Houdini by Ken Silverman.

Thanks for the tip Kevin. I will amazon it right now.

Try searching "Secret Life of Houdinii" and use the "exact phrase" option.

Houdini actually wrote pitifully little himself. Much of the time, he had ghost writers, one of which was Walter B. Gibson.

You will probably not find Ken Silverman's book on Amazon.com. You should check with a good magic book dealer.

According to Arthur Moses, there has been more written about Harry Houdini than about anyone else in the history of the world. So you could read a dozen books about HH and still not even scratch the surface.

If you are going to quote a definition, you should also give a source.

Hey Bill,

I just looked at my bookshelf and I had forgotten I had a small paperback book called "The Man Who Walked Through Walls" by William Lindsay Gresham (5th edition 1961 - Hillman Books). Any thoughts on it??

James

Thanks again Kevin, I found it on Amazon and await it's arrival.

The source was "Dictionary Version 2.0.2 (51.4) Apple Inc." I didn't feel like going across the room to look it up from the other book forms I own.


Will

No problem. Take a look at the photos. They used some of them from my collection.

I think you have to take it with a grain of salt about the there is more written about Houdini than anyone else. It just seems that way from our angle.

With all due respect, Apple, Inc. is not noted for writing dictionaries. Merriam-Webster, Funk and Wagnalls, or the Oxford Dictionary of the English language are considered authoritative.

Regarding the Gresham book -- it was better than anything else that had been published before; however the Silverman book is much better documented.

One of the biggest problems with material like this is that much of it is not supported by any kind of bibliographic reference. Books with no bibliographical references are generally written for the public, not for scholars.

Hi all.

What are the evidences to affirm that Houdini was a spy?
There are several myths which surrounding the magician, such as he didn't created his routines or he worked for the mafia as well. Why are there so much rumours about Houdini?

Emeline

>>>>>>>>>>>Why are there so much rumours about Houdini?
Maybe because he like to do it?

I get from Internet one magazine by Harry Houdini. He wrote a lot about Russia. There is a "News from Russia". We absolutely do not understand what he wrote about... We can not realize who was mr. Bolin, supposed Russian magician, what gives him information, we can not understand who was that "famous magicians" what he use inside news...

Remember, Houdini did not write all of the things that were submitted with his name on them. He may have written some of them, but he had a professional writer who worked for him as his "scribe." That was Walter B. Gibson. He may have had another one earlier than that.

Houdini was a master publicity hound. If he had gas, there would be a headline that he had mysteriously escaped stomach poisoning, I think.