![]() (Like Houdini, Randi would later make a name for himself asĪn exposer of psychics and other hoaxers and was eventually awarded a MacArthur Liberated himself from the jacket and was lowered to the ground. High above the crowd in the street, he twisted and writhed until, finally, he On the street in front of the museum, Randi replicated one of Houdini’s mostįamous feats: tied in a straightjacket, he was hoisted upside down by a crane. Museum in an open limousine (I remember the mayor looking uncomfortable). Hood tied over his head, Randi drove the town’s mayor from city hall to the new James “the Amazing” Randi, a magician and escape artist. The highlight of the grand opening in 1968 was Magician who owned Houdini’s Water Torture Cell, agreed to loan it to the exhibit-or Mailbags he had accumulated for use in his acts. His day, as well as the many handcuffs, locks, straightjackets, trunks, and Most used by Houdini, some that he had purchased from other great magicians of Originally opened in 1968 and housed in two locations, it burned down in April 1995.īorn the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame. Houdini Magical Hall of Fame, Niagara Falls, Canada. After two decades in the meat business, my family was also in the magic business. Three days later, they bought the collection from Dunninger. It occurred to my father that the collection might be turned into a tourist attraction in the space on Centre Street where Muller’s Meats had stood. It reported that Joseph Dunninger, a famed magician and mind reader, was selling his collection of some five thousand items, many from Houdini and other magicians of his era. Shortly thereafter, my father chanced upon an article deep in the interior of the August 27 edition of the New York Times. My bar mitzvah party took place in a hotel on Clifton Hill in June. That left the Centre Street property empty and, from a business Outgrown its quarters and moved to a location in a more industrial part of They wereĮntrepreneurs, and by 1967, the year of my bar mitzvah, the meat business had Strip packed with attractions, including Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Located on Centre Street, a half-block from Clifton Hill, the main tourist My family owned Muller’s Meats, a business My father and his partners then built the Houdini Magical How did that happen? To borrow a trope from the Ethics of theįathers: Houdini created his illusions and handed them down to hisīrother Hardeen, Hardeen sold them to the Amazing Dunninger, and Dunninger sold ![]() Straightjackets, the Water Torture Cell, and scores of posters advertising hisĮxploits. In the company of Harry Houdini, or rather, of his paraphernalia: handcuffs,
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