Summoning the Spirit

Kirk Baird

Saturday, Oct. 28, 2000 | 3:35 a.m.

It was 74 years ago on Tuesday -- Halloween -- when Harry Houdini passed away in a Detroit hospital.

Since then countless seances have been held to contact arguably the most famous magician who ever lived, including those by his wife, Bess, who tried for 10 years to reach him. So far no one has succeeded.

But that hasn't deterred magician/escape artist Dixie Dooley.

A longtime Las Vegas performer, the 45-year-old Dooley has tried every Halloween for 14 years to contact Houdini. And on Tuesday as part of his "Houdini Lives Again" show at the Plaza, he'll try again.

In a recent interview with the Sun, Dooley talked about contacting Houdini from beyond the grave and the impact he has had on his life.

Las Vegas Sun: How did Houdini die?

Dixie Dooley: He died of a ruptured appendix. A boxer asked him if he could take a blow to his stomach, which he was famous for being able to do. Normally he would brace and tighten the muscles of his stomach and allow a person to punch him. Houdini inadvertently was reading his mail and said, "Yeah, I can still do that," and the boxer hauled off and punched him before he had time to brace himself. It ruptured his appendix and peritonitis set in.

He didn't go to the hospital because his next performance was in the Garrick Theater in Detroit. He arrived there and he was running a 102-degree fever, and his entire system was poisoned and was shutting down. But he found out the theater was sold out and he decided to give an entire performance. He collapsed after the show and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors predicted he would live three days, and he struggled for seven days and passed away on Oct. 31, 1926, at 1:26 p.m. at Grace Memorial Hospital in room 401. He was 52 years old.

Sun: Why do you have the seance?

DD: Because of all the sprit mediums and people who claim they have communicated with Houdini and talked to him, we hold a legitimate seance every year under test conditions, where everything is throughly examined -- the bells, tambourine, the chalk, the chalkboard. The people are examined before they sit at the table. And they're supervised and watched to make sure there's no trickery. Also videotaped, in case something does happen, to see if there was some trickery involved. But that would be after the fact.

Sun: Do you think you will ever contact him?

DD: We give him a stage to do it and it's never happened, (but) if it does happen I want to be there. We've had mediums and spiritualists and a lot of people come in to attend the seances and still nothing has ever happened -- no materialization or no movement of things on the table.

Sun: When did your fascination with Houdini begin?

DD: Early on. I remember the first time I ever saw anything on Houdini I was terrified. I thought it was terrifying for someone to be locked into a water tank, the padlock locked from the outside. I thought I would never do anything like that ...

I always had a knack for escapes. And because you perform an escape, naturally someone will say, "Well, that's like Houdini." So that gradually gets you more interested in what Houdini was all about, what was his life was all about.

Sun: You said you had a knack for escaping. How did that come about?

DD: Just being locked in things and being able to get out of them. I also found that when I present escapes, just like Houdini did in his day, that I got a better reaction from that magic than I did some of the other magic. Not that the other magic is any weaker, but escapes are very strong to an audience. When you struggle inside of a straitjacket, you'll see the people in the audience start to grit and start to struggle with you. When you finally escape from a straitjacket, it's almost like they live through you -- they're exhausted.

Sun: Do you focus more on performing magic or escapes in your act?

DD: I'm a combination. I'm more of a general practitioner, because I'm capable of doing close-up magic, and Houdini was, too. He did a little bit of everything. I think a true magician is like that, or a true person who does the art of the deception. Legitimate art of deception is what we call it, because we make no bones about it: We're out there to fool you. It's not like we're tricking you and saying we're not. We're not liars; we're legitimate deceptionists.

There are two approaches to magic: To make the difficult look easy or to make the easy look difficult. Houdini was a master at making the easy look difficult and a master of letting you touch and feel things and know what's going to happen is impossible, rather than just staging it on stage with smoke and theatrics.

Sun: How many Houdini tricks can you do?

DD: I have no idea. I've never counted them. Over the years I've probably duplicated everything that Houdini has done, except for the legend-type things, like where he could hang from his ankles and pick up needles with this eyelids. Some of the those things are mythical.

Sun: Is there a Houdini trick you cannot perform?

DD: No. Never come across anything, other than allowing people to punch you in the stomach, which I don't think Houdini accomplished very well, since it was his demise, so to speak.