A lot of the time there was a hidden key but with a lot of locks Houdini had ways to open them without one. He was especially good at escaping handcuffs and was named ’The King of Handcuffs.’ He had studied and collected locks ardently. Houdini relied a great deal on his physical strength and also little unnoticeable ‘cheats’ to get him out of his self-imposed prisons and bindings. His mother moved into the brownstone with them until she died in 1913. In 1905 Houdini came back to America and bought a farm in Connecticut and a brownstone in Harlem. Houdini toured America then moved on to Europe. A little while afterward Houdini received a message from Beck saying, "You can open Omaha March 26 sixty dollars, will see act probably make you proposition for all next season." This set Houdini’s career off extraordinarily. Beck was especially impressed by Houdini’s skill for escaping handcuffs and challenged him with his own from which Houdini escaped easily. ‘The Houdinis’ continued on at small venues and attracted some attention with their act called ‘Metamorphosis’ but they weren’t discovered until Martin Beck, a vaudeville theater owner, saw his performance. In 1894 Harry met Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, an eighteen year old singer and dancer and they were married. Later on for a short amount of time his younger brother, Theo, took Hyman’s place as the other Houdini brother but not for long. In 1892 his father died and he took his show to the road, mostly to dime museums and other small venues. This is when Ehrich changed his name to Harry Houdini, the name Houdini coming from the magician Robert Houdin who he idolized. Ehrich’s first performance was when he was nine years old as the trapeze artist “Ehrich, the prince of the Air.” When he was thirteen he and his family moved to New York where later he and his friend Jacob Hyman got together to form the act they called the ‘Houdini Brothers’. His father, Mayer Samuel Weisz, was a struggling rabbi in the Midwest United States when Ehrich, who was a toddler, along with his mother, Cecelia, and his siblings reunited with him in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ehrich Weisz, more commonly known as Harry Houdini, was born on March 24 th, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary.
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