Sunday, January 11, 2009

From Raffaele DeRitis


houdini, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Houdini with Jennie, of Thompson's elephants, at the NYC Hippodrome in 1918.
It is a just publicity shot. In fact, Houdini used a less convincing box on wheels to make the elephant disappear. The act, even if being a great promotion of the show, did'nt resulted to be the most impressive of the production. No pictures exists today of the act itself, and few descriptions of witnesses. The working of the trick was the development of a solution conceived by British magician Charles Morritt, that before used the system to make a donkey disappear. Steinmeyer's books "Hiding the Elephant" or, better, his previous "Art and Artifice" are the great sources in discussing that. A very similar system was used by RBBB in the Larible's magic act few years ago.

Posted by Buckles at 1/11/2009 08:29:00 AM

6 comments:

Bob Cline said...

Mr. DeRitas,
Could you provide some more information about this group of elephants? Eph Thompson died in 1908 in India I believe, so was someone else working his elephants or is this another group?
Many Thanks,
Bob Cline

11 January, 2009 15:23
Anonymous said...

This is not an Eph Thompson elephant as his passed to relatives of his second wife who were in the circus business in Europe. The English illusion inventor Cyril Yettmah wrote magician Charles Carter in 1933 that “Powers supplied the Elephant for that very [underlined] weak illusion, [the] Vanishing Elephant of the late Harry Houdini’s” presented at the Hippodrome in 1918 (letter in Mike Caveney’s Carter archive). Perhaps Buckles can confirm this if he has a list of the names of the Powers elephants. I do not know what Mr. DeRitas’s source is for it being a Thompson elephant. Perhaps it is an error caused by the fact that the developers of the Hippodrome were Elmer Dundy and Frederick Thompson of Luna Park, Coney Island, fame but they were out of the picture about 1906, shortly after the Hippodrome was built.

Incidentally, Houdini revived the vanishing elephant at the Times Square Theatre in early 1922 using an elephant named Fannie Ringling but I do not know where she came from.

Dick Flint
Baltimore

11 January, 2009 16:59
Buckles said...

Powers elephants in 1918 were,"Lena", "Julia", "Jennie" and "Roxie".

11 January, 2009 18:15
Eric said...

I once saw an explanation of how the Houdini disappearing elephant illusion was done. (I believe it was in Walter Gibson’s SECRETS OF MAGIC.) In order for the illusion to work, it had to be presented on a really big stage so that the audience couldn’t judge the true size of the special box that the elephant was placed in. (There was enough room inside for the elephant to be moved into one corner and be out of sight when the ends were opened up.)

11 January, 2009 19:39
Anonymous said...

Dick Flint: come on, there's nothing you don't know. Said with a chuckle, a n d a lot of respect.

You know I read this blog and books and periodicals when I can an I listen to you guys and gals talkand I always think to myself,
how the blazes do they know all that "stuff". All I know is Dan invented Rice A Ronie in 1993 and the Ringling Bros had a bell factory Baraboo Indiana. LOL I hope.

13 January, 2009 00:17
Raffaele De Ritis said...

Mr.Flint,
sorry, I've mistaken Thompson with Powers', of course. Houdini's elephant was obviously Powers' Jennie.
The illusion was in the Hippodrome 1918 revue "Cheer Up".
I knew about this letter to Carter. Carter after Houdini introduced regularly the elephant illusion (by 30s), but with the more conventional stage trick (more or less the same of Doug Henning and Tihany). His contemporary Nicòla also did it but with a pigmy elephant, according to pictures I've seen. Thurston is said to have attempted an "appearing elephant" in the same years (it was called Dehli), but lasting only about a week.
The Houdini trick working is discussed in the mentioned Steinmeyer works, but before those it is analyzed in detail in a Gibson book: not "Secrets of Magic" but in "Houdini's Fabulous Magic".

15 January, 2009 15:32

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)