Speaker 1: When you hold this in front of me. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: surely that's a little too high. Sorry. How long did
Speaker 1: it take you to make this? About a month? Uh?
Speaker 1: Did you use good steel?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, the very best. Well, some steals are better than others,
Speaker 1: you know. Oh yes, excuse me, I think you've got
Speaker 1: a bad piece, But better luck next time.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 3: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joey Angelfield producer.
Speaker 3: Engineer Mike Tomran is working somewhere behind the scenes. Amusing
Speaker 3: Jews is a project of a Dot Havreem Corregation for
Speaker 3: Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the American West In
Speaker 3: I did studios. Hey Joey, what did the world's greatest
Speaker 3: escape artists do to escape the limelight? He read books.
Speaker 2: We're allowed to top with Barb Rosenstock, a picture book
Speaker 2: author whose latest book is Houdini's Library. Barb, Welcome to
Speaker 2: Amusing Jews.
Speaker 1: Thanks, it's really great to be here.
Speaker 2: What sparked your interest in Harry Houdini?
Speaker 1: Oh, I had this crush on Tony Curtis in the
Speaker 1: Old Houdini movie when I was like I don't know ten.
Speaker 1: My grandma was a big old movie buffin so anytime
Speaker 1: we go visit Grandma, you know, there was some old
Speaker 1: movie on and that one I can just remember being fascinated.
Speaker 1: So if anybody out there hasn't seen it, they really
Speaker 1: need to go look it up. The whole thing, the
Speaker 1: Tony Curtis muscles and the hanging upside down in the
Speaker 1: tank and the death on Halloween. You know, I just
Speaker 1: remember being really fascinated about that as a kid, not
Speaker 1: really particularly into magic, more just kind of like into Houdini.
Speaker 1: And then years ago now, I mean, I want to
Speaker 1: say it was about eight years ago. I was at
Speaker 1: the Library of Congress doing some research on Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with this particular book, and there's
Speaker 1: this little sign in the basement of the Library of
Speaker 1: Congress that says the Houdini Collection or the Harry Houdini Collection,
Speaker 1: And I just remember making a note like, what in
Speaker 1: the heck is there, Like what would be at the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress that was related to Harry Houdini. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know if it was, you know, I had
Speaker 1: this image of it being like some rabbit and an
Speaker 1: old topy haad or something. You know. I didn't really know,
Speaker 1: and just it took me a couple of books to
Speaker 1: get around to, like looking up what exactly was it
Speaker 1: at the Library of Congress, and it turns out to
Speaker 1: be Houdini's books, of which he had many.
Speaker 3: Mentioning the Tony Curtis movie, it's great that a Jewish
Speaker 3: actor was playing probably the most famous Jew in the
Speaker 3: world in his day.
Speaker 1: Rah. Yeah, I never I mean, I certainly didn't put
Speaker 1: it together then, but yeah, that's true. That's great.
Speaker 3: I want to give a shout out to the books
Speaker 3: artist mar delmar whose illustrations are themselves pretty magical. Could
Speaker 3: you describe her artwork for the book?
Speaker 1: Mar is essentially a she paints on paper then turns
Speaker 1: those little tiny paintings into physical paper objects, kind of
Speaker 1: like building a diorama. So like, for example, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to just use the book, like here is a
Speaker 1: page from the book, and these are all real built
Speaker 1: objects out of paper that she then sets up in
Speaker 1: a scene and photographs lights and photographs them so that
Speaker 1: they've got kind of a painterly but yet you can
Speaker 1: tell that they are real. Look to them, and it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of to me it was like having a doll,
Speaker 1: having someone take my words and the scenes that I
Speaker 1: had kind of created and turn them literally into a
Speaker 1: dollhouse like page by page Whudini's life, Like what did
Speaker 1: it really look like? What did it feel like to
Speaker 1: inhabit those spaces, whether they were on the stage or
Speaker 1: in his house in Harlem or wherever. And so Mars
Speaker 1: just an incredible detailed artist, and we really felt it
Speaker 1: was important to her work is so unusual that we
Speaker 1: felt it was important that she gets her own back matter.
Speaker 1: So in the back of the book, she's got two
Speaker 1: spreads to kind of explain. And kids have been finding
Speaker 1: that artwork, that explanation of the artwork completely fascinating. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys noticed it and liked it. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost magical in the sense that it's like
Speaker 3: an optical illusion. Am I looking at a painting or
Speaker 3: a drawing? Or is this something different? It's like mysterious,
Speaker 3: like the subject matter of much of Houdini's own work,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a photograph of a diorama kind of,
Speaker 1: I would say, But it depends because then she goes
Speaker 1: back in and she'll paint a little you know, or
Speaker 1: you know, so it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, we thought
Speaker 1: it was magical. The art director at Kadaf thought like,
Speaker 1: we're waiting, we're we've got a we got a magical artist,
Speaker 1: and we need a magical project. So it all came together.
Speaker 1: It was great.
Speaker 2: You connect Houdini's love of books to his rabbi father,
Speaker 2: who sailed his books to the United States ahead of
Speaker 2: his family, The fact that Houdini was book obsessed seems
Speaker 2: pretty Jewish.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, we've got the whole people of the book thing, right,
Speaker 1: But actually I wasn't the one to connect that. Whodini
Speaker 1: was just so you know, so I didn't just make
Speaker 1: that up wholesale. Houdini spent an awful lot of time
Speaker 1: talking about his father's love of learning and the family
Speaker 1: that he had come from in Europe. I've got a quote,
Speaker 1: we have records for five generations that my direct forefathers
Speaker 1: were students and teachers of the Bible and recognized among
Speaker 1: the leading bibliographers of their time. So he always considered
Speaker 1: that part of his family legacy. His Judaism too, Although
Speaker 1: he was not a particularly the practicing person, like faithful person.
Speaker 1: But he he just kind of considers it almost like
Speaker 1: the books became the religion at some point, or they were.
Speaker 1: They were certainly meshed together in his head with dad,
Speaker 1: with you know, with the rabbinical studies, were with his
Speaker 1: the generations that they had left behind in past in Hungary.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it does seem kind of Jewish, that kind
Speaker 1: of it is. It's fine.
Speaker 3: In his library, were there books, uh like Talmudic books
Speaker 3: and other things that would have been reminiscent of his
Speaker 3: father's legacy.
Speaker 1: Only the ones that were his father's. He actually did that.
Speaker 1: That's seen in the book where he searches for his
Speaker 1: where they his father sells the great majority of the books,
Speaker 1: and I mean, you know, no one knows how many
Speaker 1: books exactly who Diane's dad had. You know, let's say
Speaker 1: a big library for people of that time would have
Speaker 1: been fifty books. I mean, we're not talking thousands of
Speaker 1: books at that point, and but his father sold essentially
Speaker 1: almost all of them. Houdini eventually did buy back a
Speaker 1: couple of things, and now Houdini's father's bible, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, it's kind of it's kind it's
Speaker 1: a combination of a couple of books, but is in
Speaker 1: the library, is in his collection, so yeah, he did.
Speaker 1: He did not have like a huge religious collection. The
Speaker 1: collection was very focused in magic and witchcraft, mind reading, spiritualism.
Speaker 1: It's definitely had a focus. He wasn't just collecting books,
Speaker 1: you know, in general. He was collecting around his craft,
Speaker 1: and initially for purposes of learning it, and then he
Speaker 1: just couldn't bear to not know everything that there was
Speaker 1: to know about magic, so he just kept going.
Speaker 3: And the name Houdini came from a book he read, correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Gen Robert Whodin was a French magician born I
Speaker 1: want to say, like eighteen oh five, so right at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the eighteen hundreds. Super famous guy. Houdini
Speaker 1: was not the only person influenced by him. He was
Speaker 1: a clockmaker I think to begin with, and then wound
Speaker 1: up having his own magic theater and performing his act,
Speaker 1: wildly popular in his time, and wrote an autobiography about,
Speaker 1: you know, basically about how great it was to be
Speaker 1: Gen Robert Houdin the magician, right, and about some of
Speaker 1: his you know, some of his tracks and some of
Speaker 1: the people he met. And Houdini had picked up that
Speaker 1: book and was right away like, well, Eric Weiss picked
Speaker 1: up that book because it was before he was Houdini,
Speaker 1: and and was just like instantly. He speaks about being
Speaker 1: instantly captivated, like that's who I want to be when
Speaker 1: I grow up, you know, that's it. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of astonishing because that's exactly who he became, is a
Speaker 1: little bit modern, more modern version of the super famous
Speaker 1: magician known around the world. So yeah, and he thought,
Speaker 1: Houdini is, if I get the story right, Houdini. He
Speaker 1: thought it meant like he thought adding an eye to
Speaker 1: words was like the Italian version of making it like
Speaker 1: who Dan. So Whodini was supposed to be? I'm like Whodan.
Speaker 1: It turns out that that probably is not exactly grammatically
Speaker 1: correct in any language, but you certainly can't argue with
Speaker 1: the name because people still know it today.
Speaker 3: So do you know how Houdini transitioned from more standard
Speaker 3: kinds of magic tricks to the escape artist persona and
Speaker 3: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a little bit he when he first
Speaker 1: started working with Best, he had a various standard mandic
Speaker 1: geck early on when he was a young man, you know,
Speaker 1: card tricks and coins and you know, and he always
Speaker 1: kept some of those things in many of his performances.
Speaker 1: But when he began working with Bessy, he started there
Speaker 1: is some there's there's some feeling and because there's no
Speaker 1: real proof of this that Houdini might have worked for
Speaker 1: a locksmith when he was a boy, he didn't. He
Speaker 1: quit quit. He had to leave school somewhere between second
Speaker 1: and third grade. So we're talking about someone that did
Speaker 1: not attend very much formal school at all and went
Speaker 1: to work. And one of the things that people think
Speaker 1: he might have been is been working in some way
Speaker 1: from a locksmith, because he seems super good at it,
Speaker 1: super quick and almost like unbelievably quick, so that there
Speaker 1: might have been some knowledge there to begin with. But
Speaker 1: he and Best began working right away with with handcuffs,
Speaker 1: and it just became the thing that people were the
Speaker 1: most fascinated by, you know, and it became a way,
Speaker 1: i think for him to really interact with the audience.
Speaker 1: It was like, God, you lock me up now, which
Speaker 1: is different than standing in front of somebody and just
Speaker 1: going and no, I'm going to take a coin and
Speaker 1: take this out of my ear, and now here's a rebit,
Speaker 1: you know. It was very interactive, which I think is
Speaker 1: one of the things that made Houdini so popular with
Speaker 1: his audiences. You know, it became see if you can
Speaker 1: be you know, it was there were very challenging. They
Speaker 1: were challenges. Challenges to companies, you know, make a box
Speaker 1: that Houdini can't escape from, make a cage that Hugini
Speaker 1: can't escape from. Challenges to police departments. Okay, Philadelphia, you
Speaker 1: think you can lock me up, go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: And if you just think about that difference, that's an
Speaker 1: enormous like a leap in the in the craft, you know,
Speaker 1: to involve the audience to that degree. They really weren't
Speaker 1: used to it at that point. So it was pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And that stuff was ready made for the press as well.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean, he was a genius the press genius Houdini,
Speaker 1: you know not. I mean, because it's one thing to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get locked up in jail, It's another thing
Speaker 1: to announce it a day ahead of time, Strip yourself naked,
Speaker 1: make sure all there, the guy's every newspaper man in
Speaker 1: the city is there, and then have the police chief
Speaker 1: not be able, you know, then get out right in
Speaker 1: front of the police chief. That is an entirely different,
Speaker 1: you know, experience, So and Whodini, I mean, Houdini at
Speaker 1: least early on didn't had did his own press. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty it's pretty incredible that he would
Speaker 1: have both skills, because sometimes being an artist and having
Speaker 1: people and knowing how to promote yourself are not necessarily
Speaker 1: one and the same thing. So you definitely could do both,
Speaker 1: I think out of desperation quite frankly, certainly necessity, Yeah, necessity, well,
Speaker 1: and even desperation, I mean, is it's some hungry, rough
Speaker 1: years going. I mean, yeah, there wasn't a lot to
Speaker 1: fall back on. That's that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Another commonplace Jewish story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of is, yeah, especially of those years.
Speaker 2: Yes, enjoying the show, Click like and subscribe. There's a
Speaker 2: wonderful image in the book where the crowd is waiting
Speaker 2: for Houdini to emerge from a locked container and he's
Speaker 2: relaxing backstage behind the curtains reading a book. Is that
Speaker 2: based on any account?
Speaker 1: It is? It actually is. There is a book, Houdini,
Speaker 1: The Man who Walked Through Walls. It's by William Grusham Crusham,
Speaker 1: I think, and he based it on an account that
Speaker 1: he had seen in a book called American Vaudeville, where
Speaker 1: people had said there was there was, you know, actual
Speaker 1: eyewitness accounts that Houdini would do. It would do a trick.
Speaker 1: But you can't make even if it was easy, which
Speaker 1: it wasn't always, but even when it was, you couldn't
Speaker 1: make it look that easy because then you know, where's
Speaker 1: the you know, where's the anticipation, right, So he would
Speaker 1: sit behind the stage and just read what you know,
Speaker 1: just waste some time reading whatever was the book on,
Speaker 1: you know, on tap for the day. And he did
Speaker 1: travel with a bookcase with one hundred books. Always everywhere
Speaker 1: there was this bookcase. I don't think the bookcase as
Speaker 1: from what I know, the bookcase doesn't exist anymore. A
Speaker 1: lot of people have been asking me lately, I'd love
Speaker 1: to see that bookcase, and like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are collecting Houdini memorabilia. But that bookcase that I know
Speaker 1: of hasn't turned up yet. But if anyone has it,
Speaker 1: it might be David Copperfield, but who knows.
Speaker 3: Right, But he won't let you see it. He'll do
Speaker 3: some trick and make it disappear eventually.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to have to be opened as
Speaker 1: a museum. It's just too much. But we'll see. Hopefully
Speaker 1: I'll be one of the first people online if it
Speaker 1: ever does, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Houdini wrote some books himself, including one of my favorites,
Speaker 3: A Magician among the Spirits, in which he exposes supposed
Speaker 3: psychics and paranormal phenomena. Is it true he was a
Speaker 3: terrible speller?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, it's true that basically anyone before
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties was a terrible speller. It just wasn't
Speaker 1: standardized spelling the same way that we know it now,
Speaker 1: I mean at all. I mean George Washington was a
Speaker 1: terrible speller too, and he was not none, and he
Speaker 1: was he was pretty educated, and he was a bad speller.
Speaker 1: Like you know, so they're is saying, but yeah, Whudini.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, when you leave school in second grade,
Speaker 1: there are things you don't learn to do. And what
Speaker 1: I found very admirable though, is it it just didn't
Speaker 1: occur to him that that should be something that should
Speaker 1: get in your way, you know. I mean he found
Speaker 1: people that could read his stuff and say, hey, that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's sounds spelled that way, and and had
Speaker 1: editors and had people who typed up his things, and
Speaker 1: he just kept going. I mean, his thoughts were fine,
Speaker 1: It's just his spelling was not.
Speaker 3: I will say that as someone who is dyslexic myself
Speaker 3: and really struggled to learn how to read and write
Speaker 3: when I was growing up, that part of the book
Speaker 3: was really inspiring to me to read that he had
Speaker 3: those challenges, not that he was dyslexic, but that he
Speaker 3: didn't let the you know, the impediment of this crazy
Speaker 3: language that you have to spell get in his way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think he really thought about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think to Whodini, books are books were home, and
Speaker 1: books are where he relaxed, and books were also his
Speaker 1: thought process, how he learned about anything. And it was
Speaker 1: just the thoughts were more important than the exact words.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know what I mean. You know, he
Speaker 1: could keep going. And again also he was by that
Speaker 1: time world famous, you know, and quite doing quite well financially,
Speaker 1: and so you know, there were there were people he had,
Speaker 1: people like people have people.
Speaker 3: A team of editors, a team of a team.
Speaker 1: Of lots of people, a team of magicians, helpers, and
Speaker 1: a team of people to help in and off the stage,
Speaker 1: and of people to pack the trunks and people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was good to be Houdini at some point, really good.
Speaker 2: And he's also a wonderful thinker, you know, exposing supposed
Speaker 2: psychics and paranormal phenomena, right.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, and I think he really would have
Speaker 1: he said, I have an open mind, even at the
Speaker 1: very end. I mean, he really didn't think that any
Speaker 1: of the psychics that he had seen, you know, he
Speaker 1: pretty much proved that they were fraudulent, But it didn't
Speaker 1: mean that he said that it was impossible, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And I really kind of admired that too.
Speaker 1: So he wasn't Houdini was never so sure of his
Speaker 1: own opinion that he wasn't willing to consider someone else's.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's kind of the mark of
Speaker 1: a well of a really educated like the in the sense,
Speaker 1: in the real sense of the word person is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about it. You know, I don't know, I've
Speaker 1: never been dead, have you, you know, so who knows
Speaker 1: what really happens? Right? And so he was always willing
Speaker 1: to entertain possibilities and could and therefore could like be
Speaker 1: really close friends with like Conan Doyle, who was a
Speaker 1: huge believer in spiritualism, and you know, at some point
Speaker 1: the friendship completely fell apart, but really, for a long
Speaker 1: time they were two people at opposite ends of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: and they had dinner together and talked it through and
Speaker 1: you know, spent a lot of time just discussing what
Speaker 1: they completely disagreed on, and it, to me is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. It was kind of Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: could use more of that.
Speaker 3: Basically, a part of me thinks that that friendship was
Speaker 3: a model for Fox Mulder and Danas Scully on X Files.
Speaker 3: You have the firm believer and the doubter, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right, right right, You've got you've got a true
Speaker 1: believer and a doubter. You know, the true believer was
Speaker 1: much more of a true beleiader believer. The doubter could
Speaker 1: have gone either way. It's just that he never thought
Speaker 1: he never found him. He just knew it was magic.
Speaker 1: I mean, for the most part, what he was seeing
Speaker 1: were people who were doing his craft, which he knew
Speaker 1: an awful lot about. And so he's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well now take your hands from under the table and
Speaker 1: do that, you know, I mean, he just knew the tree.
Speaker 1: I mean, he knew what could have been done, but
Speaker 1: it is a concept speaking to people be on the dot.
Speaker 1: I mean I think he I mean, he loved his parents,
Speaker 1: his mother especially, and when she passed, I think he
Speaker 1: would have loved nothing better than to be proven wrong
Speaker 1: and to have been able to communicate with her one
Speaker 1: more time. I mean, that is just that's clear from
Speaker 1: all of his writing. It was a very emotional topic
Speaker 1: for him. So he wasn't He wasn't a doubter. He
Speaker 1: wasn't a scoffer, you know what I mean. He wasn't
Speaker 1: like someone who just went that's stupid, nobody should believe,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. There was a real intellectual
Speaker 1: curiosity there, and like, hey, I don't think you're it,
Speaker 1: but as far as it being a possibility, it might exist.
Speaker 1: You know, I did a book about the Fox Sisters
Speaker 1: right before Houdini, and that's all spiritualism too, so I
Speaker 1: think they kind of blend in my mind a little bit.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I wonder if part of Whodini's openness was
Speaker 3: just how much spiritualism, seances all that stuff was such
Speaker 3: a big part of the culture at the time that
Speaker 3: it was very normal to believe in this stuff, and
Speaker 3: maybe he felt there might be something to it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well anytime that there's any kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it's like tragedy. Right. Spiritualism came about right right before
Speaker 1: the Civil War, was very popular through the Civil War,
Speaker 1: kind of died back off, very popular again during World
Speaker 1: War One, which is Houdini's time, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So it kind of is a waving. It's kind of
Speaker 1: back on the upswing right now, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: not an exact same way, but definitely you see a
Speaker 1: lot more tarot cards and reading and people doing zodiac
Speaker 1: signs and all of that is you know, it's on
Speaker 1: another wave of can we communicate? And you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you know, maybe AI has its own intelligence like all
Speaker 1: of that kind of thing, like what is AI spiritual?
Speaker 1: Can it be? You know, those those kind of questions.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just coming up again. So I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting, you know, not necessarily. I'm pretty big skeptic myself,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's interesting.
Speaker 2: What do you help kids take away from Houdini's library?
Speaker 1: First of all, what I always do when I write
Speaker 1: a picture book like this is I'm trying really hard
Speaker 1: to just tell a story that I find fascinating in
Speaker 1: a way that a kid will find fascinating. So I
Speaker 1: really try really hard not to be preachy, like preaching
Speaker 1: to kids. To me is just not necessary and not
Speaker 1: a turn off and kind of a turn off. You know.
Speaker 1: What I hope anybody would take out of reading Houdini's
Speaker 1: story is just like, look what you can do with
Speaker 1: a book that has nothing to do as goal. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he had to leave school, he
Speaker 1: did not have books. His family had said, these are
Speaker 1: important things. We can't afford them right now, but these
Speaker 1: are important things you might if you get any extra dime,
Speaker 1: if you get an extra dime, you might want to
Speaker 1: pick up a book. And he did, and he gave
Speaker 1: himself a career, and he made himself into the most
Speaker 1: famous and our pretty I mean on the planet. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's arguable, but I don't know besides like Jenny Lynn
Speaker 1: that I don't know who else would even come close
Speaker 1: in that day and age, you know, and certainly Jenny
Speaker 1: Lynn does not still have a dou a lipa song
Speaker 1: about him or you know, I mean, so the name
Speaker 1: and just the idea that Whodini is to, you know,
Speaker 1: escape the way Einstein is too smart. I mean, it
Speaker 1: just is, It's part of the language. So he's transitioned,
Speaker 1: just like, almost out of his personality. Re means magic,
Speaker 1: you know, you can go anywhere with it. And Houdini
Speaker 1: really knew that. I mean his favorite kind of magic
Speaker 1: was picking up something he didn't know and at the
Speaker 1: end knowing something that you know, knowing something new. I
Speaker 1: just think that that's cool, and I think he did
Speaker 1: too well.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Bart for joining us. Thanks and to
Speaker 3: our audience. Now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
Speaker 2: Amusing Jews is here to amuse you. If you like
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