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Whether he was born in Appleton or not, Houdini did spend the first nine years of his life there. His real name was Ehrich Weiss, and he was the son of Appleton's first Reform rabbi, a Hungarian immigrant. Everyone in Appleton has heard about young Ehrich Weiss and how the night clerk at the Waverly Hotel taught him his first rope trick. Gus Zuehlke, today the chairman of Valley Bancorporation, remembers listening to his father spin tales about young Ehrich's daring escapes from the Fox River, which meanders its way right through the heart of town. "My father used to help him," asserts Zuehlke, and who's to say whether or not such stories are true?
To a youngster growing up in the 1870s, Appleton was probably a pretty interesting place. "Wisconsin had so many circuses back then," observes Oscar Boldt, president of the Boldt Holding Corp., "and when they unloaded the elephants, there was excitement, real excitement, the sort of excitement you could feed off for months." Today some kids in Appleton still feed off the excitement evoked by the name Houdini. Thirteen-year-old Bill Brehm, an aspiring magician, is one of them. "I'd like to know how he did some of his tricks," confides Brehm, who has started practicing Houdini-inspired handcuff escapes. "Like when he was handcuffed and got into a box and was thrown over the side of a bridge into a river. How did he get out? He was just an amazing person. Anyone who is a magician and dies on Halloween has got to be amazing."
"Houdini," reflects Dr. Thomas Loescher, Appleton's chief emergency- room physician, "was probably the greatest magician who ever lived: the drama, the presentation, the superb physical ability, the personality. I've always felt proud he was from Appleton. It's living in reflected glory, I guess." It wasn't until 1985 that the city finally got around to honoring its most celebrated citizen, dedicating its new downtown plaza in his honor. The house where the Weiss family used to live stood just to one side, notes William A. Brehm Jr., a card-carrying magician who is also the city's director of planning and development. "Our plaza," beams Brehm, young Bill's father, "is really Houdini's backyard. It's where he was stringing up clotheslines to practice as an acrobat."
The plaza's most striking feature is a large abstract sculpture that sits atop a raised brick platform as though it were on a stage. The piece bears the title of one of Houdini's most famous tricks: Metamorphosis. Re-enacted time after time, the routine by now is familiar. The magician's assistant is handcuffed and placed in a sack, which is tied and put into a trunk. The trunk is in turn secured with locks and chains. The magician, standing atop the trunk, briefly raises a curtain. Abracadabra. Suddenly, the magician's assistant stands in the place of the magician -- and when the trunk is unlocked, it is the magician who pops out of the sack, hands tightly manacled.
The speed of the change is what enraptures. Magician Doug Henning and his wife Debby observed Houdini's birthday by paying Appleton a visit last spring. Performing Metamorphosis right in front of the sculpture, they made the switch in a dazzling third of a second. Sculptor Richard Wolter, who lives in Appleton, was thrilled. Says he: "Magic brings to life the wonder our age somehow has lost."