Houdini Meets Edna Ferber

In July of nineteen oh four, two future legends crossed paths in a drugstore in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Harry Houdini, already the world's most famous escape artist, had come home to the town where his family once lived. Waiting for him was an eighteen-year-old reporter, the first woman to write for the Appleton newspaper. Her name was Edna Ferber, and she would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize and write the novels behind Show Boat and Giant.

The young reporter pressed him. Don't you exaggerate, she asked, just a little, in your performances? Houdini answered that he failed to see how exaggeration would help him. Then, as they stood beside a coin-operated machine, he quietly slipped its lock free, handed it to her, and told her to give it back to the store owner. A small trick, and an unforgettable introduction.