The Houdini Picture Corporation

 

For some reason I used to get the Houdini Film Development Corporation and the Houdini Picture  Corporation confused. I guess I sort of thought they were one in the same, they were not. They were different and had different locations. The Film Dev. Corp was run out of a warehouse in New Jersey.

The Houdini Picture Corporation had a slightly more prestigious address in NYC.

The Picture Corp was located in the Candler Building on West 42nd Street. This is one of those rare addresses that still remains today. If you've been to NYC you might have been in this building or at least seen it because the ground floor is taken up with a huge McDonalds.

The Candler Building is a high rise that was build back in 1914. It sits right in Times Square and as mentioned, houses one of the busiest McDonald's in the country.

I don't know what floor Houdini's company was located though it's a good guess that it was NOT on the ground floor. Houdini had big plans for his Picture Corporation, but those plans never came together. The Houdini Picture Corporation only put out two films, The Man From Beyond and Haldane of the Secret Service. He had plans to put out other films but it never happened.

The movie business turned out to be a lot harder than Houdini first expected. In addition, seeing Houdini's feats on the big screen, were not quite the same to his audiences as watching him do his incredible escapes live! Still, he did produce two movies and often used his magic/escapes to promote the movies.

The Magic Detective YouTube Show is Returning Next Week!

After a very long absence, The Magic Detective Youtube Show is returning! I had a lot of emails over this from folks wondering when I was going to resume. Well, the first new episode is already done and will debut next week. The upcoming episode will actually not have any Houdini stuff, but you can expect Houdini pieces after. The upcoming episode has a couple items on Robert Heller.

So get ready for the new season of The Magic Detective Show! Coming Soon....

Bess Houdini's Costume

The Potter and Potter Auction that is coming up on August 23rd, features a costume apparently worn by Bess Houdini. It is Lot #77. The piece has a nice description of the costume and some information on who Bess gave the costume to and how it has survived. The estimated value is $7000 & $9000.

John Cox over at WildaboutHoudini.com wrote about the costume. And he provided a photo of Bess wearing the costume from an old postcard. However, to my knowledge, no one has given much more information than that. Until now.

This is the costume Bess wore around 1900+ when she performed the Metamorphosis with Harry. I'm not sure if that adds more value to the costume or not. She probably wore the costume throughout the whole act, but for sure she wore the costume during the Metamorphosis. And how do I know this???

In the book, Metamorphosis by Bruce MacNab, on the Table of Contents page near the front of the book is a photograph, actually a series of photos (4) of Harry and Bess presenting their Metamorphosis routine. Bess can plainly be seen wearing this incredible costume. The photos are from the Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library. Try as I might, I couldn't dig them up online.

But if you turn to the Table of Contents in this book, assuming you have a copy, you can see Bess wearing this incredible costume in action, for yourself!