This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/28/2018
Houdini, Harry (Ehrich Weisz). Glass Negative of Houdini Outside Villa (Wiljalba) Frikell. 1903. Houdini stands outside the magician Wiljalba Frikell’s residence in Kotchenbroda, Germany. 5 x 7”. From the collection of Joseph Dunninger, and originally in Houdini’s own collection. Houdini wrote at great length of his visit to Frikell’s in The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (1908). Houdini arrives in 1903 hoping to interview the great magician, then retired, as to whether he had preceded Robert-Houdin in ushering in the golden age of magic by being the first popular magician to perform “pure sleight of hand” in discarding “cumbersome, draped stage apparatus, and to don evening clothes.” But Frikell, guarded and infirm, turns Houdini away that day. Houdini persists, “bombarding” Frikell with letters and clippings until the magician relents and agrees to meet him, yet as Houdini writes, “fate intervenes” when Houdini, finally returning to the house for his long-awaited interview, learns that Frikell had just died.