Harry Houdini Outline

I am doing my outline over Harry Houdini. Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American illusionist and stunt performer. He was a very brave man who had a lot of insane escape acts and it all fell apart with one dumb idea. This outline iis going to be hard to get four pages but lets hope it gets there Mr. Webb.

Houdini was born on March 24, 1874. Houdini was born in Budapest, Hungary. Around the age of four, he and his family moved to america. On july 3, 1875 he sailed into new york. Houdini had five brothers and a sister. His parents were Mayer Samuel and Cecilia. Houdinis father died from cancer at the age of 62. His father passed before Houdini had his magic career. Houdini was very close with his father and wrote a lot about him in a family bible.

Most of Houdini’s childhood was spent in poverty. His brothers on the other hand seemed mad with each other. Nathan, one of Houdini’s brothers, wife Sadie divorced him and married Houdini’s other brother Leopold. Houdini, who was jewish, married Bess (Wilhelmina Rahner), who was Catholic. This created conflict, when Houdini died he wanted his wife buried beside him. Houdini’s wife was Catholic and the cemetery did not let anyone who was not Jewish buried on the grounds. His wife died on a train going to New York. She ended up buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in hawthorne, New York.
Houdini was around five and a half feet tall.

He had dark, curly hair, and dark gray eyes. Houdini never got much of an education, but he was athletic and always wanted to succeed. Houdini’s brother, Leopold, was New York’s first X-ray specialist. Houdini let his brother X-ray him constantly. The amount of X-rays most likely cause sterilization. Houdini watched Dr. Lynn, a traveling magician, perform the Linking Rings trick and fell in love with magic. Around the age of 17, is when he finally started magic as an alternative to factory work. Houdini teamed with Jack Hayman and created the Houdini Brothers. Hayman eventually got bored and quit so his brother joined him. His brother followed Haymans footsteps and left. Shortly after Houdini met Bess Rahner. She became his partner in act and in

life.
It actually took a long time for Houdini to become popular.

He tried many different types of magic but never got attention. At one point Houdini tried selling all his tricks and secrets and not one person offered. At that point he realized he had to go bigger than card tricks and illusions. Houdini did an act that could go terrible, but this one act boosted his career. He swallowed dozens of needles tied with thread and regurgitated all of them. After this trick the only way to stay popular was to do more dangerous, life threatening acts. After around 2 years Houdini created an act called the Challenge Act. Houdini could escape from any handcuffs that the audience gave him. Then some police officers decided it would be funny to jam the handcuffs and made a fool of him. After finding out what the police officers did Houdini had to make some modifications. Houdini eventually got brave with his ability to escape handcuffs. Houdini got brave with his acts and started escaping from anything. He would escape from jail cells, bridges, locked crates in rivers. He managed to escape a giant paper bag without making a single tear in it. At this point in time Houdini was very popular and was a very insane guy. Considering that he almost quit, it only took one act which turned his entire life around completely. After being famous houdini could slow down and do acts that were not as dangerous. He started to show his illusions in front of so many more people and they were actually

interested. At one point Houdini owned a magic shop in New York. When he was in he sat around signing autographs and sold his books to eager magic fans. He also ended up being president of the Society of Americans Magicians for several years. Houdini bought a biplane in Germany. He went to Australia with it and was the first pilot there. After he left his tour in Australia, he ditched the plane and never drove a car. When America joined World War I he got rejected when he tried to join the army. They said that the age 43 was to old. Houdini was very polite to the men in service. He often did free shows for them and threw out gold necklaces as souvenirs. Houdini put around 7000 dollars towards their free souvenirs. He was talented, brave, polite, and everyone loved him. Houdini always went out of his way to support the magic community. Houdini was president of many magic groups. He was the only one to serve president of the Society of American Magicians for more than a year. This group is still going on yet he is the only one who served for not only one year, but multiple.
There are different beliefs on how Houdini died. Some say he died onstage performing the water torture cell illusion. What really happened was Houdini starting a new idea to boost his fame even more. Houdini would let anyone in the crowd give one blow straight to the stomach. No matter how big, or strong the person was, he said take one hit. On one of the hits he took to the stomach, someone punched him so hard that it ruptured one of his appendix. He did not want to get it checked out even though he was in pain. It was part of his act and if he got caught being in that much pain he would be made fun of. He also would have to miss other acts so the word would have gotten out. As he continued doing acts not getting his thriving pain checked out, he still let people punch him. One day, in Detroit, he let someone named Gordon Whitehead punch him in the stomach. Houdini collapsed on stage and was immediately sent to Grace Hospital, suffering from peritonitis. Houdini was never sent home from the hospital. His wife also took blows and she immediately got herself checked out. As she was put in a wheelchair before she did the same thing. On October 31, he finally passed. His brother Hardeen was right beside him. Houdini’s last few words were, “I’m tired of fighting”, and then he passed. The Society of American Magicians honored him with a Broken Wand Ceremony. At the ceremony, all of the magicians that looked up to him broke a wand to symbolize the loss of Houdini. Houdini started a trend that even today, at every funeral of a magician, they break a wand. Every year a group of magicians always go to Houdini’s grave and still do the same process. This shows how much people still love him to this day. His wife on the other hand was left with about 500,000 dollars. His brother ended up leaving the show and every thing with it. Houdini wanted his brother to keep all of the stuff and have it burned at his death. His brother wanted the world to remember it so he sold all of the equipment and it is still around to this day. Different magic collectors have his equipment now.
This was my story about the magician, Harry Houdini. I am hoping this turned out good because i did it in two days because I was not thinking very well at all. You now have hopefully learned more about the things Houdini did. I just want this as close to four pages as possible but it will end here i guess. Just shy of four sadly.