Houdini(19)

Meanwhile, the financial troubles of Houdini’s company, the FDC, deepened. In desperation, Houdini started a second company to support the FDC, the Weehawken Street Corporation, which dealt in real estate. However, that company did not prosper, and when the FDC was sued, became a serious financial liability.



Houdini’s last film, Haldane of the Secret Service, featuring another main character with the initials HH, came out in 1923 to poor reviews. The movie as usual starred Houdini, this time as a secret service agent for the United States who performs incredible stunts.





By the early 1920s, Houdini’s film career was over, although Houdini was still involved in many lawsuits stemming from various contracts and corporations associated with his ventures in film. In some cases, Houdini was the plaintiff and in some, the defendant.





X. Houdini, the Collector





Read It and Know It




After reading this chapter, you will know more about



Houdini’s collection: Any item that related to magic interested Houdini.



Collecting and continued insecurities: Houdini included drama and literature in his collection to help fulfill his desire to be considered well educated.



Alfred Becks: Houdini hired a full-time librarian to handle his large collection.



The collection today: The magic library is in the hands of the Library of Congress.





Beginning in his youth, Houdini passionately collected books, artifacts, and historical memorabilia related to magic. An old man named Evanion approached Houdini during one of Houdini’s first tours of London. Evanion, although a man of modest means, was a collector of rare artifacts from the history of magic. Houdini became an admirer of Evanion’s collection and bought several items from him. He treated Evanion fondly and wrote sadly about his passing. Houdini hauled his massive magic library around with him, eventually establishing a huge collection in his home in New York. The library included a great deal of literature on the topic of Spiritualism.



With his determination to become a film star and his eternal desire to prove himself a learned and cultured man, Houdini also became obsessed with accumulating a library of drama and theater literature and memorabilia. He reached out to Robert Gould Shaw, a famous drama collector affiliated with Harvard University, and George Pierce Baker, the creator of the Yale School of Drama. In October of 1919, Houdini’s drama collection received a huge infusion when he sent an agent to a large drama sale at the American Art Galleries in New York. His Harlem brownstone was flooded with thousands more programs, playbills, and other items from his purchases. The upstairs floors were so stuffed with Houdini’s collections of dramatic literature and magic memorabilia that he had to hire a full-time librarian to organize it in the early 1920s. The librarian, Alfred Becks, had formerly worked for Robert Gould Shaw at the Harvard drama library. Becks lived at the brownstone for a year and a half, working full-time on Houdini’s collections. Houdini, however, acknowledged that he was behind the game in the collection of theater literature and that his collection of magic literature was his crowning achievement.



Houdini’s dedication to developing a library chronicling the history of magic paid off; he developed a huge library including books, playbills, and other artifacts from the history of magic, which is now housed at the Library of Congress. He also briefly attempted to bring to life a theater devoted exclusively to magic. In July of 1919, Houdini purchased the oldest magic shop in the United States, Martinka & Company. As president and majority stockholder of the New York business, Houdini opened “Martinka’s Magical Place” in the Bronx. However, by the time six months had passed, Houdini had already sold his shares in Martinka & Co, and his theatre idea with it.



In his early fifties, Houdini bragged to friends that he spent only five months a year working, and the rest of his time in his library. He continued to add to both his drama and his magic library, insuring it for a great sum of money. His longtime librarian, Alfred Becks, died in 1925 at the age of eighty. Houdini mourned his passing both for its toll on his collections and for the loss of his friend. In his will, made out in 1925, Houdini left his magic library to the Library of Congress, where it is today, and his drama library to Bess.





In Houdini’s Words




Houdini’s relationship with Evanion was an important one to the magician, both for its own sake and for the access it gave him to the history of magic. In The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, Houdini remembers his relationship with Evanion.



Often when the bookshops and auction sales did not yield fruit worth plucking, I had the good fortune to meet a private collector or a retired performer whose assistance proved invaluable, and the histories of these meetings read almost like romances, so skilfully did the Fates seem to juggle with my efforts to secure credible proof.