Bess Houdini - Biography

Biography

Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1876 to German immigrants Gebhard Rahner (a cabinet maker) and Balbina Rahner (née Bugel).

A popular myth has it that Bess and Houdini met when he was performing at her school and accidentally spilled acid on her dress. In reality, Bess was working at Coney Island in a song and dance act called The Floral Sisters when she was first courted by Houdini's younger brother, Theo (aka Theodore Hardeen). But it was the older Houdini brother, Harry, that she fell in love with and married on June 22, 1894. Bess and Harry worked as The Houdinis for several years before Houdini hit it big as The Handcuff King. But he and Bess continued to occasionally perform their signature trick, Metamorphosis, throughout his career. Bess also saw after their menagerie of pets, collected dolls, and made the costumes for Houdini's full evening roadshow. The Houdinis remained childless throughout their marriage. Bess's niece, Marie Hinson Blood, said Bess suffered from a medical condition that prevented her from having children.

After Houdini died on October 31, 1926, Bess opened a tea house in New York, and briefly performed a vaudeville act in which she froze a man in ice. In the 1930s she moved to Hollywood, California, and worked to promote Houdini's memory along with her manager and partner, Edward Saint. On Halloween 1936, Bess and Saint conducted a "Final Houdini Séance" on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. At the conclusion of the failed séance, she put out the candle beside a photograph of Houdini that was said to have burned for ten years. In 1943 she said "ten years long enough to wait for any man."

Bess Houdini died from a heart attack on February 11, 1943 while in Needles, California, aboard an eastbound train traveling from Los Angeles to New York City. She was 67 years old. Her family would not allow her to be interred with her late husband at the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York as she had been raised a Roman Catholic. She is interred instead at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.