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While designing Metamorphosis, Wolter immersed himself in Houdini literature. He even learned one of the Master's cornier routines. "What I do is I take a banana and hold it up to my brow, and I say, 'This banana is going to break into three pieces.' Lo and behold, when you peel the banana there are three pieces inside. It's a silly trick." Understandably, Wolter is a lot prouder of the sleight-ofhand that went into his sculpture. "See, I took this four-ton cube, and I set it on one corner, which was a trick in itself. Then, because I wanted people to use their imagination, I gave it only four sides. The next thing was to put this chain around it and at one end of the chain, a lock. So the lock is open. The box is open. The chain is flying. Houdini is free. Now, where did he go?"
The answer to that question, of course, lies buried with Houdini. Sidney Radner, the Massachusetts magician and escape artist who helped organize the seance, thinks no medium will ever succeed in contacting Houdini. At least one reason, says Radner, is that Houdini was no friend of spiritualists, offering a $10,000 reward to any medium whose tricks he could not expose. At the age of 52, dying of a ruptured appendix caused by the blows of an overzealous fan, Houdini made his wife Bess promise to hold an annual seance on the anniversary of his death. She did so for ten years; Houdini's fellow magicians have since continued the tradition. "Houdini would have loved it," reflects Radner, "because in challenging the mediums, we are doing what Houdini himself would have done."
The odd thing, muses Historian of Magic Morris Young, is that Appleton's seance did manage to conjure up the spirit of Houdini. "It was as though he was there, and he wasn't. At the very moment he didn't come back, his presence was felt very strongly. Everyone in that room was thinking about the man, trying to visualize him." Young found himself looking at an old poster portrait used to advertise Houdini's performances. After all these years, the eyes stare out at the world with a strange and startling intensity. "Looking at those eyes," says Young, "one still senses the force of Houdini."
Of all his tricks, perhaps Houdini's greatest was to transform Ehrich Weiss, the boy who lived in Appleton, Wis., into an enduring legend. And transformation, dear friends, is the essence of magic.