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Escapist fair.

By STEFAN KANFER [City Journal] – Erich Weiss began life in total obscurity. His father, Mayer Samuel Weiss, was an itinerant rabbi who fled from Budapest to Milwaukee in the late 1870s, vainly seeking a position in the New World. The family of seven—his second wife Cecilia and five boys—was always in need of funds. Young Eric grabbed jobs wherever he could find them—peddling newspapers, shining shoes, working in a tie factory. When Mayer died in 1891, the 17-year-old plunged into show business, hoping to support himself and his beloved mother. Like so many other ghetto youths, among them Irving Berlin and Al Jolson, he started out by singing popular songs in taverns. Modest applause greeted his efforts. Then he tried his hand at magic. Overnight, Erich found his métier. Later, it all seemed logical to him: Jews had been magicians since biblical days. Hadn’t Aaron turned his rod into a serpent?

He teamed up first with a sleight-of-hand man. They billed themselves as the Brothers Houdini, an homage to the then-famous French prestidigitator, Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. A year later, Erich and his real brother, Deszö, performed under the same name. After Deszö went out on his own, a pretty 18-year-old stepped into the act.

Bess Rahner came from a German-Catholic family, and when she and her partner fell in love and married in 1897, Bess’s anti-Semitic mother coldly ostracized the couple. Frau Rahner changed her tune when Erich Weiss morphed into Harry Houdini, who called himself—with good reason—vaudeville’s premiere escape artist. That was only the beginning.

Continued at City Journal | More Chronicle & Notices.

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