History’s most celebrated magician was born Erik Weisz on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. He was four years old when his family set sail for America aboard the steamship Frisia, arriving in New York on July 3, 1878. Eric’s father, Mayer Samuel Weiss, was already there. His mother Cecilia, nee Steiner, answered the immigration officer in German, so her appointed surname became Weiss and the whole family was given a raft of new “German” names: Herman for Armin, Nathan for Natan, William for Gottfried Vilmos, Theo for Ferencz Dezso and, for Erik, the altogether more cumbersome Ehrich.

Cecilia had two months to spend with her mother and sisters in New York, and then in September she and her family moved on to join Mayer in Appleton, Wisconsin. There this story begins, with a poor, diminutive Jewish boy immigrating to WASP America with his swelling family, whose father could barely speak English and whose mother never did learn how. He was already off to a rough start, and would soon learn that he couldn’t be backward about coming forward.

The Houdini boys after Harry hit the big time: From left, brothers Leopold, Theodore (who became the magician Hardeen), Ehrich, William and Nathan.

Appleton was a young town practically on the wild frontier, and a quirky one at that. It had a college and an opera house, but it didn’t have sewers or running water. Apart from its odd character, it’s never had a lot going for it. Senator Joe McCarthy came from Appleton too, and he’s nothing to be proud about. Willem Dafoe is another local, but he didn’t even bother revisiting until many years after becoming a movie star. In Google Earth imagery, as of mid-2007, the town remained a blurry mush, and in circumstances like that, imagination comes in handy, as it did for McCarthy, Dafoe, Ehrich Weiss and for the fourth famous Appletonian, Edna Ferber.

The future author of “Show Boat” and “Cimarron” and the book that became my favourite James Dean picture, “Giant”, was also of Hungarian Jewish origins, and she reckoned the way to become a successful writer was to start out as a newspaper reporter. (It’s a theory I’ve been testing for three decades.)

In July 1904 she was working for the Appleton Crescent when the famous Harry Houdini came home for a visit. He’d been back once before, in the spring of 1897, with a touring troupe called the Rogers Orpheum Stars. They put on a show at the local opera house, and Houdini escaped from three pairs of handcuffs in five minutes. Seven years later he was one of the world’s most celebrated entertainers.

Edna found him in a drugstore on College Avenue and interviewed him on the spot. The article she wrote is online, though she doesn’t say what he was doing in the drugstore — maybe just chilling at the soda fountain.

“I am earning, now, from $900 to $2,000 a week,” he told her, “but my first performance brought me slightly less than that. It took place in an old field across the track in the Sixth Ward and I did a contortionist act, giving three performances, for which [my manager] paid me exactly 35 cents.”

She was impressed by his sinewy physique, the result of being a track star in his youth (biographer Kenneth Silverman claimed that all but one of those medals on his chest in the photo were fakes) and sampling a bit of trapeze work. But Ferber was even more amazed at his dexterity: he ended their conversation by offering her a gumball from the drugstore’s vending machine, which he’d idly unlocked while they were gabbing.

Today in the same part of town is Houdini Plaza, inaugurated in 1985 at the former site of the Weiss home, which was above a downtown store. There’s a towering sculpture by Richard Wolter called “Metamorphosis”, around which magicians often put on shows, including famous ones like Doug Henning, David Copperfield and Penn & Teller.

There’s also a bar called Houdini’s Lounge, and many bronze plaques memorialising young Harry.

Further along the road at 330 East College Avenue is the History Museum at the Castle, usually referred to as the Outagamie Museum because it’s run by the Outagamie County Historical Society. It has a Houdini Historical Center featuring ongoing exhibits, and it looks pretty good from its website.

William Kalush and Larry Sloman made ample use of its apparently vast archives for their 2006 biography “The Secret Life of Houdini”. The photo here shows museum staff in the 1970s unpacking the famous Milk Can from which Houdini escaped a thousand times. Also among the treasures is Harry’s first book of press clippings, which would be a real mess after all these years had the pages not been lovingly “deacidified” here and encased in a chemically inert polyester sleeve.

Another website I’ve seen relates that the town used to host magicians from all over the country at its annual Houdini Days festival. It wasn’t made clear why they abandoned the event, but they might want to consider reviving it. Houdini is making news again these days.

Father Weiss used to make soap in Hungary and then begun practising law, but when he linked up with his friend in Appleton and was told the local Jews needed a rabbi, and he readily took the position. Things were fine for a while, and two more children came along, Leopold and Gladys, but eventually Mayer’s adult flock wanted someone with a little more pizzazz, and they got someone.

The family moved to Milwaukee in late 1882 and stayed there for four years, residing at several addresses while Ehrich sold newspapers and shined shoes. Mayer left the family behind and went looking for work elsewhere, mostly teaching the good book. At one point Ehrich, who at least learned from his old man how to “put on a show”, tried the same thing — hitting the road, that is.

When he died Houdini was making plans to establish a University of Magic in New York and even had a course list drawn up. Maybe someday someone will actually follow through on the idea. For now, the kids in Appleton can start small — at Houdini Elementary School. (No, they don’t teach them tricks. Not knowingly, anyway.)

The school’s name was apparently chosen by its first pupils, and its official colours are the red and black of a stereotypical magician’s cape!

In “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero”, William Kalush and Larry Sloman provide plenty of detail about Ehrich Weiss’ introduction to magic. He was seven when a travelling circus came through Appleton, they report, and its trapeze artist on a highwire, Jean Weitzman, made such an impression on him that he immediately went home and stretched a rope between two trees. He fell off, sure enough (and lost some teeth trying to suspend himself orally, as Weitzman had done), but got back on again and soon had the knack.

Then he and a pal named Jack Hoeffler set up their own a five-cent circus in a vacant field, and “Ehrich, the Prince of the Air” showed off his acrobatic and contortionist skills. It was October 28, 1883, Houdini always remembered — his start in showbiz — and it earned him 35 cents, as he’d told Edna Ferber. After that there were a lot of shows put on for the amateur nights held regularly at a Milwaukee museum.

Three years later the famous Dr Lynn performed in Milwaukee, a star of London’s Egyptian Hall of curiosities thanks to amiable stage patter and feats as dazzling as beheading a pigeon and bringing it back to life. The audience was invariably befuddled by his tongue-in-cheek explanations of all the tricks, but his final pronouncement — “That’s how it’s done!” — became a popular catchphrase.

Rabbi Weiss took Ehrich to see how a real professional magician operated, and the capper of the show, for the future Houdini and everybody else, was a routine called “Paligenesia”, Greek for “new genesis” or “back from death to life” — a simple matter of cutting some poor volunteer into pieces with a scimitar. No one in the audience would volunteer, of course, so Dr Lynn lashed one of his assistants to a curtained contraption and proceeded to lop off an arm, a leg and his head. All were duly restored amid hilarious banter.

It was an amazing effect, one that Houdini would actually buy from Dr Lynn’s son in 1916 and revive onstage, as seen in the photo above. He cultivated a macabre interest all his life in tales of executions and other gruesome forms of death, particularly through decapitation and electrocution. Drownings too, of course.

Ehrich’s father often mentioned his relationship to the great Hungarian conjurer Compars Herrmann, who had been Mayer’s first cousin through his first marriage. Renowned in theatres and royal palaces across Europe in his time, Compars had even performed at the White House for Abraham Lincoln.

Ehrich’s half-brother Herman was the fruit of that marriage as well, and when Herman died from tuberculosis at age 22 in 1885, Mayer was devastated and didn’t recover for months. Ehrich was moved to offer his life savings, $10, to pay for the funeral. Instead, his father called him aside and asked him to promise that he would always take care of his mother. It was a pledge his father would make him repeat on his deathbed, and one that Ehrich always honoured.

In fact, that was doubtless why Harry packed his bag and hit the road. He was off to seek his fortune, which he would share with the family. He sent his mom a postcard saying he was bound for Galveston, Texas, for reasons he never revealed, but in the event seems to have mostly wandered for a year, odd-jobbing and occasionally hooking up with travelling circuses, signing on as “Eric the Great”, escape artist.

In their 2006 biography, Kalush and Sloman say he fell in with the westbound US Cavalry, shining the soldiers’ boots with the kit he’d packed next to his books, lockpick and a deck of cards. In Delavan, Wisconsin, a young local boy named Al Flitcroft came to see the troops encamped and discovered Harry, hirsute and raggedy. He took him home so he could get some proper food, and his mother, Hannah Flitcroft, also cleaned him up, sent him to bed and put an end to his military career.

Harry stayed for awhile and never forgot Mrs Flitcroft, posting her fancy gifts from around the world and rushing to see her when he heard she was dying.

By 1887 the meanderings of father and son ended up in the same place, New York City. They roomed together in a Mrs Leffler’s boardinghouse at 244 East 79th Street in Manhattan, then upgraded to a tenement building at 227 East 75th, where the whole family — including mother Cecelia and her five boys and baby girl — were reunited. There they remained until 1890 when their joint income afforded a larger apartment at 305 East 69th Street.

Ehrich got work as a necktie cutter and started learning a few things about locks, which was certainly going to come in handy. Soon he was entertaining at parties and club meetings as Eric the Great or sometimes “Cardo”, and he was reading about a great French wizard called Robert-Houdin.