Word: houdini
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...front of Monroe was a black- draped table laden with miscellaneous memorabilia: a manila envelope containing a letter from Arthur Conan Doyle, two pairs of handcuffs, a selection of lockpicks, a yellowed photograph. Monroe's task: to contact, on the 60th anniversary of his death, the ghost of Harry Houdini, master escapologist, prestidigitator and Appleton's most celebrated son. While Monroe writhed and jerked, it must be noted, a block away the sign outside the Valley Bank effortlessly blinked out the message: WELCOME HOME HARRY HOUDINI HAPPY HALLOWEEN...
...surprise the seance flopped. No handcuffs opened. No lights dimmed. No furniture levitated. No unearthly dust blew through the room. What is more, the Houdini contacted by Monroe bungled the answers to questions posed by members of the inner circle. "What was your favorite dessert?" Marie Blood, the great magician's niece, wanted to know. "Strawberry," gasped Monroe. "Wrong," chided Mrs. Blood, who traveled all the way from Pinehurst, N.C., for the occasion. "It was bread pudding," she informed the audience, "with Bing cherries...
Bread pudding. That's about as exotic as Appleton, Wis. This lack of sophistication may be why some historians insist that the great Houdini was born in Budapest. Still Houdini always said he was born in Appleton, observes Outagamie Museum Curator Mary Mergy, and that's what she likes to believe. "It adds," she says, "a little zest to life...
Whether he was born in Appleton or not, Houdini did spend the first nine years of his life there. His real name was Ehrich Weiss, and he was the son of Appleton's first Reform rabbi, a Hungarian immigrant. Everyone in Appleton has heard about young Ehrich Weiss and how the night clerk at the Waverly Hotel taught him his first rope trick. Gus Zuehlke, today the chairman of Valley Bancorporation, remembers listening to his father spin tales about young Ehrich's daring escapes from the Fox River, which meanders its way right through the heart of town. "My father...
When Soviet troops rolled into Auschwitz in January 1945 and liberated the camp's remaining prisoners, they found no trace of the elusive doctor. By the following year, he is said to have settled in Freiburg. Indeed, he seemed to have already developed Houdini-esque gifts as an escape artist. Last January, former U.S. Army Private Walter Kempthorne told the Wiesenthal Center that in July 1945, he ran across a red-faced, sweating German in the custody of U.S. Army soldiers at a camp near the German town of Trier. Why, Kempthorne asked, was the man being put through such...