Magicians angry as Houdini secret escapes
The magical world is sawn in half over a US museum exhibit that has let the secret of Harry Houdini’s legendary Metamorphosis escape trick out of the bag.
The new exhibit, AKA Houdini, opened yesterday at the Outagamie Museum in Appleton, Wisconsin, revealing how the Hungarian magician, handcuffed inside a sack and locked in a trunk, somehow managed to switch places with an assistant on the outside.
Among other things, it transpires that the trunk has a side panel that allows someone inside to sneak out.
The revelation did not spoil a thing for museum visitor Matthew Martin, a missionary from Orem, Utah. “I think it’s still impressive if someone can do it in three seconds,” he said.
But the disclosure has some in the business tied up in knots.
Magicians say their code of ethics bans revealing secrets to the public. The famous and not-so-famous alike, including David Copperfield (pictured) and Ronald “Rondini” Lindberg, have called to protest at the AKA Houdini show.
“It’s just that this is a very, very passionate thing that magicians feel about and what the museum is doing is wrong,” Lindberg said.
Museum chiefs in Appleton, where Houdini spent some of his childhood, insist the exhibit has not revealed anything not already available in books and on the internet. They also say people will appreciate magic more by knowing the secrets.
The exhibit – set to run for 10 years – includes 38 artefacts, 190 documents and hands-on displays.
There are a straightjacket and a jail cell from which visitors can try to escape, plus Houdini items such as handcuffs and lock picks.
The part of the exhibit showing how tricks were actually performed is in a backstage area. A sign warns visitors: ”Those who do not want to know how Houdini performed his magic should avoid this area.”
In the Metamorphosis trick, also known as the ”substitution trunk”, a magician, handcuffed in a sack inside a trunk, frees himself and switches places with an assistant standing by the trunk.
The exhibit lets visitors climb inside the trunk to see how it works. Houdini first performed the trick more than 100 years ago with his wife.
Kim Louagie, the museum’s curator of exhibits, said before the exhibit opened that it had received more than 200 emails and 40 phone calls from people against the idea of revealing secrets.
But she said it had also received support from museum members and others in the community.
“In some ways, what we’re doing here increases the value of magic rather than making it something cheap,” she said.
She said there had been rumours in internet chatrooms of plans to sabotage the exhibit, and police had been contacted to step up patrols around the area. But there was no trouble when the museum opened yesterday.
Bob Rath, a professional magician and small business owner, backed the museum. It would take hours of practice to do the trick successfully, he said.
"The performance is more important than the secret, and just because somebody is going to know the secret to Metamorphosis isn’t going to make them any great magician. It’s a very complicated and very difficult effect to do.”
Houdini was born Ehrich Weiss in 1874, in Budapest. His family moved to Appleton when he was four, when his father became the town rabbi. They stayed for four years.
He embarked on a career in magic and later focused on escapes. He died of peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix in Detroit on Hallowe'en 1926.
