Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls

by William Lindsay Gresham

First edition. Illustrated biography of this famous escape artist. Houdini was also a book collector. Jacket worn. xii, 306 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

306 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

William Lindsay Gresham (August 20, 1909 – September 14, 1962) was an American novelist and non-fiction author particularly regarded among readers of noir. His best-known work is Nightmare Alley (1946), which was adapted into a 1947 film starring Tyrone Power.

Gresham was born in Baltimore, Maryland. As a child, he moved to New York with his family, where he became fascinated by the sideshow at Coney Island. Upon graduating from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1926, Gresham drifted from job to job, and worked as a folk singer in Greenwich Village. In 1937, Gresham served as a volunteer medic for the Loyalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. There, he befriended a former sideshow employee, Joseph Daniel "Doc" Halliday, and their long conversations inspired much of his work, particularly Gresham's two books about the American carnival, the nonfiction Monster Midway and the fictional Nightmare Alley.

Returning to the United States in 1939, after a troubling period that involved a stay in a tuberculosis ward and a failed suicide attempt, Gresham found work editing true crime pulp magazines. In 1942, Gresham married Joy Davidman, a poet, with whom he had two children, David and Douglas Gresham. Gresham was an abusive, unfaithful, and alcoholic husband. Davidman, although born Jewish, became a fan of the writings of C.S. Lewis, which led eventually to her conversion to Christianity. Davidman eventually fled her marriage to Gresham and later married Lewis, their relationship forming the inspiration for the play and movie Shadowlands.

Gresham married Davidman's first cousin, Renee Rodriguez, with whom he had been having an affair and who was herself suffering an abusive marriage. Gresham joined Alcoholics Anonymous and developed a deep interest in Spiritualism, having already exposed many of the fraudulent techniques of popular spiritualists in his two sideshow-themed books and having authored a book about Houdini with the assistance of noted skeptic James Randi. He was also an early enthusiast of Scientology but later denounced the religion as another kind of spook racket.

In 1962, Gresham's health began to take a turn for the worse. He had started to go blind and had been diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. On September 14, 1962, he checked into the Dixie Hotel — which he had often frequented while writing Nightmare Alley over a decade earlier. There, 53 year old Gresham took his life with an overdose of sleeping pills. His death went generally unnoticed by the New York press, but for a mention by a bridge columnist.

Reviews

[G. Salter · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's no getting away from the fact that Gresham's writing style is a bit grandiose and "pulpy," (which makes sense given his background writing for pulp crime magazines), but he tells Houdini's story with dramatic flair and an expert knowledge of stage magic and "spook acts."

[Michael Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography does a deep dive into the craft of Houdini's illusions. At one point, Houdini learns to take his time doing a trick. It is an epiphany for him. He can free himself almost immediately from handcuffs, but he learns that people are less interested when he does so. If he fakes a struggle and some sweat, the audience applauds uproariously. I heard somewhere that a great actor makes it look easy; apparently, a stage illusionist makes it look hard -- nurtures suspense. I had recently watched the film, “Nightmare Alley” (both versions), and I thought that this might be a bit more of the same. And it was … sort of. Gresham’s style is feels less of an academic biographer, and more like a detective getting the “QT” from those "in the know." Forefinger tapping on the nose, so to speak. There is a good deal of procedural information about Houdini's tricks. If you are interested in magic, and the devices used in magic, then Gresham’s focus on how Houdini did most, if not all, of his illusions might be interesting to you. There are some fun sections about seances, and an appearance by the crime doctor himself, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If you want to escape, well, this might be the book for you (although you might have to hold your breath a little longer than you might like.)

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty thorough biography of Houdini, though it reads like it was written in the 1950s which it was. He was a skeptic and famous as reinventing himself, and died far too soon. But fun to read about a famous person from a diffeent era.

[Laura Eppinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an older biography of Houdini written by a literal pulp fiction writer and it is PERFECT. Gresham does a wonderful job of preserving the lore and apocryphal legends around this magician and escape artist's life -- he disproves them! But they are told deliciously, and I am certain they would have been lost to time if they were not recorded here in 1959. (Did you hear the one that as a 5-year-old, little Houdini ran away to join the Five Cent Circus because he was already adept at the trapeze and picking up needles with his eyelashes? It isn't true but I could see why people would believe it.)

In fact, Ehrich Weiss was raised in Appleton, WI by an immigrant family from Hungary, the third child in a loving Jewish family who valued education above all. But then 16-year-old Ehrich learned some tricks while bullsh*tting with a hobbyist magician as they both worked at a necktie factory (the American dream!!), and the rest is history. He'd later pick his stage name to honor Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the conjurer.

Gresham says this book reveals "... the man himself: stormy, and devoted; cruel, and warmhearted; unselfish, and egocentric ... He was one of the most annoying, most unlikeable, most unpredictable geniuses who ever lived." And really, what more do you want from a biography?!