Word: houdini
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...many circuses back then," observes Oscar Boldt, president of the Boldt Holding Corp., "and when they unloaded the elephants, there was excitement, real excitement, the sort of excitement you could feed off for months." Today some kids in Appleton still feed off the excitement evoked by the name Houdini. Thirteen-year-old Bill Brehm, an aspiring magician, is one of them. "I'd like to know how he did some of his tricks," confides Brehm, who has started practicing Houdini-inspired handcuff escapes. "Like when he was handcuffed and got into a box and was thrown over the side...
...Houdini," reflects Dr. Thomas Loescher, Appleton's chief emergency- room physician, "was probably the greatest magician who ever lived: the drama, the presentation, the superb physical ability, the personality. I've always felt proud he was from Appleton. It's living in reflected glory, I guess." It wasn't until 1985 that the city finally got around to honoring its most celebrated citizen, dedicating its new downtown plaza in his honor. The house where the Weiss family used to live stood just to one side, notes William A. Brehm Jr., a card-carrying magician who is also the city...