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The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini
For the most famous magician of our century, life on and off stage were inseparably linked. In this widely acclaimed biography, Brandon shows how Houdini's obsession with mortality drove him to create death-defying escapes that not only captivated the public, but also subdued his own psychic demons. 50 photos.
337 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 28, 2011
Harry Houdini is one of those legendary characters whose names have become metaphors but as the author of The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini points out there are people who don’t even realise that he actually existed. And the more you read about the greatest escapologist of them all the more you can’t help feeling that truth really is stranger than fiction.
Houdini was conscious of his own legend and had no qualms about improving and embroidering it. It’s not even certain where and when he was born. His parents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants to the US but whether Erich Weiss, later to become Harry Housini, was born in Hungary or America remains unclear. His father was a failed rabbi. You might wonder how someone could be a failed rabbi, but Houdini’s father managed it, In fact he was a failure at everything he attempted, which may well explain Houdini’s prodigious thirst not merely for fame but for intellectual respectability.
Apart from a very brief spell as a necktie salesman Houdini spent his whole life in the world of carnivals, sideshows and vaudeville. He had been born into abject poverty and poverty continued to dog him through his early career as an illusionist. He finally found success in England and Europe and this success was the springboard for his later American career. When success came it was based on concentrating on specialised areas of illusionism, most famously escapologists.
His success was also due to a genius for publicity. He would arrive in a city and challenge the police to handcuff him and lock him in gaol. The police were usually happy to oblige, thinking they’d get considerable amusement from leaving this arrogant magician to cool his heels in the cells for a few hours. In most cases it took Houdini a few minutes to escape and these stunts gained him the attention from the newspapers that guaranteed healthy crowds when his act opened.
Houdini was more than just a magician. He was a pioneer aviator, the first man to carry out a successful heavier-than-air flight in Australia. And he was, briefly, a movie star.
Ruth Brandon’s biography is sympathetic enough but she sees Houdini as a tragic figure, haunted by fears of death but half in love with death at the same time. She sees his relationship with his mother as being excessively close and unhealthy and suggests that Houdini’s marriage was possibly never consummated. He was also acutely conscious of his complete lack of formal education. He produced many books but Brandon claims that all were to a greater or larger extent ghost-written (most notably by H. P. Lovecraft who ghosted several short stories published under Houdini’s name). Houdini had a desperate need to be recognised as a man of letters.
One can’t help feeling that Brandon perhaps exaggerates the tragic aspects of Houdini’s life and focuses a little too much on the negative sides of his personality.
While Houdini’s whole art was based on deception, it was deception in the service of entertainment. He was enraged by those who used such arts to claim for themselves paranormal powers or links to the supernatural. His campaign to expose phony spiritualists and fake mediums cost him a fortune and also cost him a friendship he valued very highly, that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But Houdini simply could not stand by and do nothing when he saw this kind of cruel fakery.
One interesting question Brandon addresses is this - why is Houdini still a household name when other equally skilled magicians of his era are long forgotten. She believes it’s because for Houdini escapology was a way of confronting his own personal demons, that Houdini’s magic acts exposed his own soul and his deepest fears, and that audiences recognised this. It’s a nice theory.
The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini is a fascinating look at a bizarre larger-than-life figure. Recommended.
Houdini was conscious of his own legend and had no qualms about improving and embroidering it. It’s not even certain where and when he was born. His parents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants to the US but whether Erich Weiss, later to become Harry Housini, was born in Hungary or America remains unclear. His father was a failed rabbi. You might wonder how someone could be a failed rabbi, but Houdini’s father managed it, In fact he was a failure at everything he attempted, which may well explain Houdini’s prodigious thirst not merely for fame but for intellectual respectability.
Apart from a very brief spell as a necktie salesman Houdini spent his whole life in the world of carnivals, sideshows and vaudeville. He had been born into abject poverty and poverty continued to dog him through his early career as an illusionist. He finally found success in England and Europe and this success was the springboard for his later American career. When success came it was based on concentrating on specialised areas of illusionism, most famously escapologists.
His success was also due to a genius for publicity. He would arrive in a city and challenge the police to handcuff him and lock him in gaol. The police were usually happy to oblige, thinking they’d get considerable amusement from leaving this arrogant magician to cool his heels in the cells for a few hours. In most cases it took Houdini a few minutes to escape and these stunts gained him the attention from the newspapers that guaranteed healthy crowds when his act opened.
Houdini was more than just a magician. He was a pioneer aviator, the first man to carry out a successful heavier-than-air flight in Australia. And he was, briefly, a movie star.
Ruth Brandon’s biography is sympathetic enough but she sees Houdini as a tragic figure, haunted by fears of death but half in love with death at the same time. She sees his relationship with his mother as being excessively close and unhealthy and suggests that Houdini’s marriage was possibly never consummated. He was also acutely conscious of his complete lack of formal education. He produced many books but Brandon claims that all were to a greater or larger extent ghost-written (most notably by H. P. Lovecraft who ghosted several short stories published under Houdini’s name). Houdini had a desperate need to be recognised as a man of letters.
One can’t help feeling that Brandon perhaps exaggerates the tragic aspects of Houdini’s life and focuses a little too much on the negative sides of his personality.
While Houdini’s whole art was based on deception, it was deception in the service of entertainment. He was enraged by those who used such arts to claim for themselves paranormal powers or links to the supernatural. His campaign to expose phony spiritualists and fake mediums cost him a fortune and also cost him a friendship he valued very highly, that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But Houdini simply could not stand by and do nothing when he saw this kind of cruel fakery.
One interesting question Brandon addresses is this - why is Houdini still a household name when other equally skilled magicians of his era are long forgotten. She believes it’s because for Houdini escapology was a way of confronting his own personal demons, that Houdini’s magic acts exposed his own soul and his deepest fears, and that audiences recognised this. It’s a nice theory.
The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini is a fascinating look at a bizarre larger-than-life figure. Recommended.
June 23, 2016
This biography is such a disaster. Clearly, Brandon didn't have an editor, or at the very least had an editor who is terrible at her job. I'm not sure why the book was organized the way it was; there was no effort to chronologize Houdini's life, which makes this the most confusing and frustrating biography I've ever read. There are many moments where the author actually thinks we're interested in her life, as if we picked up a biography on Harry Houdini just to learn about Ruth Brandon (very happily, her editor must've woken up from her nap and told Brandon to cut that shit out around chapter 8). Brandon also takes psychoanalysis to its EXTREME when presents a Freudian analysis of Houdini's behavior as something close to fact: in the beginning chapters, she mentions that one interpretation of Houdini's childlessness is that his love of his mother made him impotent.
WHAT??? I MEAN, W H A T??????
The only good thing I can say about this is that the crazy wears itself out, and in the last 5 chapters it almost becomes a normal biography. Brandon's lack of bias when presenting Houdini's irritating qualities/character flaws is actually a little refreshing, although her emphasis on his ego does make one wonder if Houdini actually had any good traits to him.
A terrible biography, only read if you want to be irritated and more confused about Houdini's life than when you started.
WHAT??? I MEAN, W H A T??????
The only good thing I can say about this is that the crazy wears itself out, and in the last 5 chapters it almost becomes a normal biography. Brandon's lack of bias when presenting Houdini's irritating qualities/character flaws is actually a little refreshing, although her emphasis on his ego does make one wonder if Houdini actually had any good traits to him.
A terrible biography, only read if you want to be irritated and more confused about Houdini's life than when you started.
October 30, 2024
A struggle to get through. The author jumps around and fills the book with his ideas and perspectives on what Houdini and those in his life thought. Facts and details are never clear and it feels very erratic.
December 5, 2007
I thoroughly appreciated this biography because it talked a lot about the nature of performance, and the performer's life. Harry Houdini's escape acts were not just acts: they were a compulsion, an affirmation of life. They were like religious rituals, sacred, important. In this way, I think anyone who does any kind of performance--because he/she needs to, because it is impossible to live without it--can identify with Houdini's life.
One quibble: there is a factual error when the author talks about how he was locked in a cell that had housed the assassin of Warren G. Harding. Harding was not assasinated, and at any rate, he did not become President until 20 years after the incident described in the book. I believe the President to which she was referring was Garfield.
One quibble: there is a factual error when the author talks about how he was locked in a cell that had housed the assassin of Warren G. Harding. Harding was not assasinated, and at any rate, he did not become President until 20 years after the incident described in the book. I believe the President to which she was referring was Garfield.
August 10, 2018
I would have preferred more detail about his life and illusions, and less armchair psychology.
March 9, 2024
Houdini certainly led an interesting life and unlike the famous or the still more-famous personalities of the time he has persisted in the overall cultural consciousness to this day. For example, Howard Thurston was considered the greatest stage-magic performer of the era but is now an obscure trivia question. Fame is indeed fleeting, but not for Houdini.
I downgraded the book's rating to 3 stars for several reasons. The author indulges in a great deal of psychoanalysis of Houdini and posits it as fact. This it the author's opinion only. It also slows down the narrative of Houdini's life. Houdini was indeed one odd person but it's up to the reader to decide what the issues were. Just share the personal oddities. This is open to very wide interpretation.
The reason I decided to read a Houdini biography was my prior and recent encounter with him in the book "The Witch of Lime Street", the subject of which was the physical medium Mina Crandon, aka, Margery. Houdini was not a good guy. Being the ultimate 'macho' man he turned very nasty toward Margery because she actually defeated him when he tried to prove she was a fraud. The irony is this upper-middle class housewife at a minimum matched Houdini with his 30+ years of stage magic. Since Houdini had major issues with women which is mentioned in the book it's not surprising that he was doubly enraged by being bested by a woman. His reaction was both vile and nasty.
The author goes over briefly some of the more notable mediums and psychic investigators of the era and gets it all wrong. Since this book was written in 1992 the author probably didn't have access to the records and publications that are now widely available electronically. She regards the psychic investigators of the day as credulous fools claiming that because they're scientists they're easily duped. I've read about how the investigations and tests were conducted and there was considerable scientific rigor applied in the investigations. A noted author (not scientist) of the time and psychic investigator was Hamlin Garland, who went to insane lengths to prevent fraud. He tested Margery at a residence not her own and without her husband present (he was accused of being an accomplice). Hamlin was a skeptic's skeptic came away convinced that she was real.
The author believed that Houdini was sincerely open-minded to the existence of psychic phenomena. He was paying lip service so he would be perceived as an unprejudiced investigator which he certainly was not. I've read his book "A Magician Among the Spirits" and for some reason he never tested the famous (and quite real medium) Leonora Piper which he could have easily done. He was afraid of any evidence that contradicted his world view. His chapter in the book on Eusapia Palladino is interesting. It actually confirms that there was something real about Palladino but he was oblivious to the irony.
Despite some of the issues as outlined above the book rates 3 stars because it does contain a lot of interesting information.
I downgraded the book's rating to 3 stars for several reasons. The author indulges in a great deal of psychoanalysis of Houdini and posits it as fact. This it the author's opinion only. It also slows down the narrative of Houdini's life. Houdini was indeed one odd person but it's up to the reader to decide what the issues were. Just share the personal oddities. This is open to very wide interpretation.
The reason I decided to read a Houdini biography was my prior and recent encounter with him in the book "The Witch of Lime Street", the subject of which was the physical medium Mina Crandon, aka, Margery. Houdini was not a good guy. Being the ultimate 'macho' man he turned very nasty toward Margery because she actually defeated him when he tried to prove she was a fraud. The irony is this upper-middle class housewife at a minimum matched Houdini with his 30+ years of stage magic. Since Houdini had major issues with women which is mentioned in the book it's not surprising that he was doubly enraged by being bested by a woman. His reaction was both vile and nasty.
The author goes over briefly some of the more notable mediums and psychic investigators of the era and gets it all wrong. Since this book was written in 1992 the author probably didn't have access to the records and publications that are now widely available electronically. She regards the psychic investigators of the day as credulous fools claiming that because they're scientists they're easily duped. I've read about how the investigations and tests were conducted and there was considerable scientific rigor applied in the investigations. A noted author (not scientist) of the time and psychic investigator was Hamlin Garland, who went to insane lengths to prevent fraud. He tested Margery at a residence not her own and without her husband present (he was accused of being an accomplice). Hamlin was a skeptic's skeptic came away convinced that she was real.
The author believed that Houdini was sincerely open-minded to the existence of psychic phenomena. He was paying lip service so he would be perceived as an unprejudiced investigator which he certainly was not. I've read his book "A Magician Among the Spirits" and for some reason he never tested the famous (and quite real medium) Leonora Piper which he could have easily done. He was afraid of any evidence that contradicted his world view. His chapter in the book on Eusapia Palladino is interesting. It actually confirms that there was something real about Palladino but he was oblivious to the irony.
Despite some of the issues as outlined above the book rates 3 stars because it does contain a lot of interesting information.
April 29, 2021
There are many better books out there about Houdini that don't have the armchair psychology of Ruth Brandon's book.
Read Kenneth Silverman's Houdini!!!: The Career of Ehrich Weiss, Sid Fleishman's Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini, or David Jehar's excellent The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World.
Ruth Brandon seemed to actively dislike Houdini. I wonder if it was before she started writing this book, or if it was after she started researching him. Disappointed.
Read Kenneth Silverman's Houdini!!!: The Career of Ehrich Weiss, Sid Fleishman's Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini, or David Jehar's excellent The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World.
Ruth Brandon seemed to actively dislike Houdini. I wonder if it was before she started writing this book, or if it was after she started researching him. Disappointed.
July 22, 2017
For some reason I've always been interested in Harry Houdini. This book was given to me many years ago from my mum, but I think I was too young to read it at that time. Houdini was a strange character indeed. I would have preferred a more scientific approach and explanation of his tricks, but unfortunately this book focused only on his personality and strange quirks. No stone was left unturned.
April 10, 2022
Ruth Brandon really seems to hate Houdini, and she uses way too much Freud to justify this. I don't want an author who idolizes the subject, but I also don't want someone who outright dislikes him. Thankfully there are other biographies about Houdini. This is just the first one I was able to get from the public library.
December 23, 2017
This biography made me realize again how magic and obsession can be closely related.
September 18, 2018
Harry Houdini is fascinating and this book is full of interesting information. The book, however, is organized very strangely and it makes it difficult to follow sometimes.
December 8, 2019
This book began my great interest in magic and escapism, and I remember it fondly. Tells the story of Harry Houdini and his unfortunate passing.
May 31, 2021
I tried reading this years ago but stopped a quarter way through. I've finally finished this book. I didn't enjoy it.
August 3, 2011
Good introduction to Houdini's life story. He's been hovering around the edges of my reading life for a while, but this is the first bio of his that I've read. Brandon lays down the basics with a not unreasonable amount of Freudian analysis. You meet lots of interesting characters along the way -- my favorite is Margery, the debunked spiritualist who kept her "ectoplasmic" pseudopod in her no-no.
As an obsessive nerd, this just makes me want to read more Houdini books, so I appreciate the bibliography. Also, Brandon includes the names of Houdini's personal librarian and the guy who was in charge of the 'closed stacks' (read: porn) at the British Library. Now, those people I need to learn about...
As an obsessive nerd, this just makes me want to read more Houdini books, so I appreciate the bibliography. Also, Brandon includes the names of Houdini's personal librarian and the guy who was in charge of the 'closed stacks' (read: porn) at the British Library. Now, those people I need to learn about...
November 6, 2013
I picked up this book on a whim while browsing in our public library. I had heard of Houdini since I was a boy growing up in the 1960's, but I did not know much about him. Now I do, and he was a fascinating guy. He not only was (and is) the ultimate escape artist, but he was also a magician, wrote books and acted in silent films. I enjoyed the book alot, but did not give it 5 stars because there are a couple of very slow chapters and the author's style was difficult for me to read. However, if you want to learn about Harry Houdini's life and ongoing legacy then I recommend this book to you.
January 4, 2011
Abandoned as too boring. A few interesting moments in the first 50 pages made me think that maybe once it warmed up it could get better. But it was taking too long. The most interesting moment-Houdini, in an attempt to teach his wife a lesson about superstition (despite being very superstitious) made her father's name (which she never told him) appear in blood on his arm. He then tells her how the trick was done. The man was no doubt worth reading about and maybe if this were written in a more storytelling manner as opposed to as a list of facts I would have appreciated it more.
January 12, 2013
Thoroughly readable exploration of Houdini's life work. Gets to grips with the myths and legends, but pushes the envelope in terms of what we think we know about the man, his family and associates. The unravelling of magic tricks and escape acts, and the cult of magicians, is brilliant. The stories of Houdini's most famous tricks (some of which he bought or inherited, like the 'handkerchief' trick) which have never been explained, are gripping and kind of chilling.
March 12, 2015
I've always been interested in Houdini ever since seeing a escape artist perform as a child. Seeing the drive of this man to perform and thwart all rivals as well as getting to see behind the tricks (Illusions, Michael!) was a fun read. The author seemed determined to psychoanalyze Houdini a half century after his death which sometimes was interesting but often said more about the author than the man.
September 2, 2014
The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini by Ruth Brandon (Random House 1993)(Biography). The author ultimately concludes that Houdini’s obsession with his own mortality led him to create and practice regularly his death-defying stunts and illusions. My rating: 6.5/10, finished 2003.
July 20, 2011
I think it was this one I read.
May 11, 2014
Interesting at first, but starts dragging.
July 5, 2015
Just...there are no words. I feel like I know him. This was amazing and a must-read for any Houdini enthusiast. <3
June 29, 2016
I used this book as inspiration for and information to include in a puzzle escape room. It served that purpose well, but otherwise was not an entirely captivating look into Houdini.
December 16, 2023
Great book but towards the end gets a little too detailed.
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August 14, 20181. This is a biography of Harry Houdini's life so obviously it talk quite a bit about each part of his life. It talks about his early life with the name Erik Weisz and moving from Hungary to the United states while he was 4 years old. It goes into talking about his family such as his brothers, parents, and wife. It also explains how he was able to pull off many of his tricks all the way up to his death.
2. He was extremely influential to immigrants of his time. He showed that it was possible to completely create a new life and have a good job if you work hard enough for what you love. He also helped American Soldiers out during WWI by teaching them how to escape if they were ever captured by Germans.
3. This text shows how he was able to get through extremely tough times by doing what he loved. He never gave up and always figured out how to get through things. Even when his mother died, he got through it with what he loved.
4. I would recommend this if you find Houdini interesting. It tells how he did many tricks and many secrets he kept during his life.
2. He was extremely influential to immigrants of his time. He showed that it was possible to completely create a new life and have a good job if you work hard enough for what you love. He also helped American Soldiers out during WWI by teaching them how to escape if they were ever captured by Germans.
3. This text shows how he was able to get through extremely tough times by doing what he loved. He never gave up and always figured out how to get through things. Even when his mother died, he got through it with what he loved.
4. I would recommend this if you find Houdini interesting. It tells how he did many tricks and many secrets he kept during his life.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews