A Rare Peek At The Vanishing Elephant

 

On my recent podcast interview with Eric Colleary, the curator of Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas, and the man responsible for the new book and exhibit Houdini's Library, we talked about missing Houdini posters. I said, I was fairly confident Houdini must have had a poster for the biggest trick in history. Eric said there were actually two mock-ups of potential posters in the collection. 

One of these was made into a greeting card, which he was kind enough to mail to me. It is a wonderful piece and you can just imagine what the finished product might have looked like. Clearly this is an artist rendition of what the effect might have looked like. 

In real life, we know some sort of box was rolled around the elephant, but beyond that, the actual details vary from person to person. Some claiming the effect was unbelievable. Others saying they really couldn't see what was happening, due to sight restrictions. None of the props used in the effect remain, or at least are known to remain. Perhaps someone has a small garage in NY, that once was actually the box for an elephant, lol!

The Houdini's Library Exhibition is currently running at the University of Texas/Austin, and will continue to run until late January 2027. 

In case you missed the episode with the interview, here is the link: https://magicdetectivepodcast.com/e/ep-118-dr-eric-colleary-houdinis-library/

And I don't usually do this, but I also recommend you listen to Adrian Tenant's interview with Eric Colleary, his link is here: https://themagicbookpodcast.com/episode/dr-eric-colleary-houdinis-library

The two interviews are very different and should help to answer a lot of questions that might remain.

The Houdini Podcast

 

The Houdini Podcast is a new project using the existing episodes from The Magic Detective Podcast that are on Houdini and creating its own playlist. Eventually, I may take these various episodes and pull the featured audio and add new commentary for an actual separate podcast. But for now, you can listen to 30 plus episodes on Houdini and folks that had connections to him. 

The best way to get to the podcast is go to TheHoudiniPodcast.com and you will see the list. I have tried to put episodes in a timeline of when they happened, not when the episodes appeared. More than 15 hours of Houdini content!!!

Any future episode of the Magic Detective Podcast that features Houdini will also go directly into the Houdini Podcast. What can you expect going forward? Margery the Medium, Houdini in Various Locations, Houdini In the Movies, And interviews with authors, collectors, and historians!

Theodore Weiss - The Boxer

While working on my podcast episode 119 on Theo Dash Hardeen, I stumbled upon an article that appeared in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader on June 28, 1928. The article mentions how Hardeen had boxed in that very city 30 years earlier. I had never heard of that. I knew Houdini had a little bit to do with boxing, amateur as it was. Here now was an example of Theo boxing. This would have been the time period between when he stopped working in the Brothers Houdini and before he went to Europe to tour as Hardeen, 1895-1899 time frame.

He would not have gone by the name Hardeen, because it hadn't even been created yet. What he went by I am not sure. But clearly the reporter knew exactly who he was, remembering him vividly. 

The photo at the top of the page, also got me thinking. We see a number of people in this imagine, among them on the far lower left is Leonard Hicks, a protege of Houdini. And the upper right is Hardeen. But standing next to Hicks is Willie Ritchie, a light weight prize fighter. This is not the first example of Hardeen or Houdini for that matter in the company of a boxing champ. 

Below is the article from the newspaper!

An interesting side note, a relative of Hardeen's, his great grandnephew is also a boxer. https://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2016/08/chris-hardeen-in-ring.html