Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part Two

Spirits & Sphinxes

Weird Tales magazine was apparently already in trouble when Harry Houdini (1874-1926) met J.C. Henneberger (1890-1969) in his Chicago office in February 1924. Henneberger must have seen a chance to capitalize on Houdini's name and fame by having him and it associated with his magazine. Maybe that would increase sales. And maybe Houdini saw an agreement between them as a chance to publicize his upcoming lecture tour of America. He wanted to talk about spiritualism, séances, and mediums. He wanted people to know that these things were (and still are) a scam, a hoax, and a great fraud.

What followed were three cover stories for Weird Tales written under Houdini's byline. Houdini also conducted a letters column called "Ask Houdini," which took the place of "The Eyrie" and ran in two installments, April and May/June/July 1924. I haven't checked this, but I believe "The Eyrie" was in every other issue of Weird Tales from March 1923 to September 1954. Only those two issues had something different. In any case, things didn't work out so well for Henneberger. Weird Tales foundered in mid-1924, and although he officially retained ownership of the magazine, he became indebted to others, including the men at the head of Cornelius Printing Company of Indianapolis. (I always like to point out that Weird Tales originated in my native city.) The quarterly issue of May/June/July was the last to appear until November 1924. By then, Edwin Baird, the first editor, had left, being replaced by Farnsworth Wright. Meanwhile, Houdini seemingly vanished, having moved on to another--apparently very successful--phase of his career.

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The FictionMags Index provides a list of Harry Houdini's magazine credits. I have adapted it as follows:

• Letter in The Sphinx: The Official Organ of the Society of American Magicians, Sept. 15, 1916.
• "The Thrills in the Life of a Magician" in The American Magazine, Sept. 1918.
• "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," a two-part serial in Weird Tales, Mar.-Apr. 1924.
• "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" in Weird Tales, Apr. 1924.
• "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" in Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924, ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft. Reprinted in Weird Tales in June/July 1939 as part of a series entitled "Weird Story Reprint." Houdini still got the byline, but an introduction to the story identifies Lovecraft as its true author. It's ironic that a man who exposed ghosts also had a ghost behind his story.
• "When Magic Didn’t Work" in Collier's, Apr. 18, 1925.
• "Tricks of Fake Mediums" in Liberty, Nov. 28, 1925.

Thanks to The FictionMags Index for compiling these credits and making this and so much more information available for the rest of us. (Houdini had other credits in The Sphinx. There is a website with indices to The Sphinx, but it's a commercial website, so I won't provide a link. You can find it on your own easily enough.)

Here are two more magazine credits, from Wikipedia:

• "How I Unmask the Spirit Fakers" in Popular Science, Nov. 1925.
• "How I Do My 'Spirit Tricks'" in Popular Science, Dec. 1925.

If you detect an air of skepticism and debunkery in these titles, you could be on to something.

Houdini had a famous difference of opinion with Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who, like the Cowardly Lion, believed in spooks, and yet, like Edgar Allan Poe, wrote great tales of ratiocination. Houdini and Doyle had first corresponded in 1920 while Houdini was touring in Great Britain. (It isn't clear to me when they actually met, although there is an extant photograph of them standing together like a Mutt-and-Jeff pair.) They became friendly, but that turned sour as Houdini continued in his work investigating and exposing frauds, mediums, hoaxers, and fakers. Doyle was well known for his belief in ghosts and fairies. You could call him gullible, perhaps in the extreme, while Houdini resided at the opposite end of the spectrum, for he was in fact powerfully skeptical of the whole business of spiritualism. Doyle saw Houdini's film The Man from Beyond (1921), though, liked it, praised it, and was mollified by it, for Houdini apparently had attempted an onscreen reconciliation of a sorts through his second-to-last picture. Good for Houdini.

To be continued . . .

In 1924, Houdini went on a twenty-four-date lecture tour of America booked by Coit-Albee Lyceum. His subjects were spiritualism, mediums, and séances. He also investigated mediums as a member of the Committee for Psychical Investigations organized by Scientific American. The poster or lobby card shown here is from 1924. It advertised something or other but I haven't found out what. But it was 1924, Houdini's name was still in the news and in American popular culture, and it shows the Great Sphinx of Egypt . . .

The Sphinx was "The Official Organ of the Society of American Magicians." Here is the cover for the March 15, 1924, issue, showing Houdini's picture flanked by hieroglyphics and the volume (XXIII) and number (One) enclosed in what you might call cartouches. By mid-March, Houdini was already on tour. (He had lectured in Birmingham, Alabama, on March 7 and 8, 1924.) Also by then, the first of three Houdini issues of Weird Tales had come out. His story, or article, "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," first of a two-part serial, was the cover story that month.

The Society of American Magicians held its 20th annual dinner at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City on June 6, 1924. Houdini was on the cover of the program along with the Great Sphinx of Egypt. The cover artist was Grant Wright. At about that same time, Houdini's book A Magician Among the Spirits (Harper & Brothers, 1924) came out. The subject was the same as in his lecture tour, that is, spirit fakers. According to Wikipedia, the uncredited co-author of A Magician Among the Spirits was C.M. Eddy, Jr., of Weird Tales fame. Like Houdini, Eddy had stories in the March, April, and May/June/July issues. Eddy's story for the triple-issue (cover shown below) was "The Loved Dead."

The theme and motif of the Sphinx returned in the May/June/July issue of Weird Tales and in Houdini's cover story, "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," actually by H.P. Lovecraft, a friend and sometime collaborator of Eddy. The cover art was by R.M. Mally, his or her last for "The Unique Magazine." (In fact, all three of the Houdini covers were by Mally.) After reading about Houdini's activities in 1924 and seeing all of these images, I think it pretty likely that Weird Tales was still seeking to capitalize on its association with Houdini, thus the Sphinx on the cover. Ancient Egypt and the pharaohs of Egypt were still in the public consciousness, too, after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in November 1922. In looking over the first thirteen issues of Weird Tales, I see that there were several stories and non-fiction fillers on those subjects. In this space, those will have to be subjects for another day.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley