Detroit Historical Society honoring Harry Houdini 100 years after his death
It's a name that has stood the test of time: Harry Houdini. The world's greatest escape artist escaped death countless times around the world for decades, until he died in Detroit 100 years ago on Oct. 31, 1926. It's a coincidence that did nothing to diminish his mystique.
"I mean it's just part of the fabric of what makes Detroit History so interesting," said Jeremy Dimick, director of collections at the Detroit Historical Society. "He kind of lived in that space between fact and fiction, and that's what he did for a living, so I guess it's no surprise that people took everything they heard about his death with a grain of salt."
On Halloween night, the Detroit Historical Museum will host a party to celebrate the international sensation and bring back the era when he drew massive crowds to Detroit. Dimick says that to this day, there are theories about why the performer died. Most seem to believe his health took a hit a week before his death when he was allegedly punched in the gut while in Montreal.
"By the time he takes this overnight train trip from Montreal to Detroit and by the time he gets here, he's extremely sick. He has a 104-degree fever," said Dimick.
The man known for escaping straightjackets, handcuffs, and even underwater escapes performed 19 times in the Motor City. At a time when Detroit was booming, so was Houdini.
"He was so popular that there's a story about a performance in Detroit where he was playing and they had to turn away 2,000 people, but out of those 2,000 people, 200 people went around to the back of the theater to wait in the alley for the people to come out and tell them what happened in the show," Dimick told CBS Detroit.
Dimick says Houdini, whose real name was Erick Weisz and took his name from a French magician, performed all of his most death-defying acts in Detroit, like when he jumped from the old Belle Isle Bridge into the freezing Detroit River while handcuffed or when he hung from the Fife Building over Grand Circus Park.
"You know it takes a certain amount of guts to do that; even if you know how to do it theoretically, it's another thing to hang upside down from a skyscraper and do it," Dimick said.
