At the conclusion of the failed séance, beside a photograph of Houdini, she put out the candle that was said to have burned for ten years. On Halloween 1936, Bess and Saint conducted a "Final Houdini Séance" on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. In the 1930s she moved to Hollywood, California, and worked to promote Houdini's memory along with her manager and partner, Edward Saint. Hence the Houdinis' secret phrase spelled out the word "BELIEVE". So the word "answer" on its own indicated "B", while the 22nd letter of the alphabet ("V") was represented by "answer answer". Each word or word pair equals a letter: A (or 1) was represented by PRAY, B (2) by ANSWER, C (3) by SAY, D by NOW, E by TELL, F by PLEASE, G by SPEAK, H by QUICKLY, I by LOOK and J (number 10, or 0 in combination) by BE QUICK. The other words correspond to elements of the secret spelling code they had devised to pass information during a mentalism act, with suitable pauses between cues. "Rosabelle" was the name of the song Bess sang in her act when they first met, and the word was also inscribed inside her wedding band. The code was: "Rosabelle – answer – tell – pray answer – look – tell – answer answer – tell." She moved to Inwood, Manhattan, and would try to contact Harry during seances, with a code that only the two of them knew about, to be sure that the spirit medium was not a fraud. Īfter 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. Bess's niece, Marie Hinson Blood, said Bess suffered from a medical condition that prevented her from having children. The Houdinis remained childless throughout their marriage. Bess also looked after their menagerie of pets, collected dolls, and made the costumes for Houdini's full evening roadshow. But he and Bess continued to occasionally perform their signature trick, Metamorphosis, throughout his career. The pair worked as The Houdinis for several years before Houdini hit it big as The Handcuff King. But it was the older Houdini brother, Harry, that she fell in love with and married on June 22, 1894. Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner was born in Brooklyn, New York (before New York City was consolidated), in 1876 to German immigrants Gebhard Rahner (a cabinet maker) and Balbina Rahner (née Bugel).īess 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 (a.k.a. Wilhelmina Beatrice " Bess" Houdini ( née Rahner Janu– February 11, 1943) was an American stage assistant and wife of Harry Houdini.
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