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| Jon Oliver via WildAboutHarry.com |
Fields called him “friend Harry” when this picture was taken in Boston in 1924. But in reality, Fields spent his life seething with envy at Houdini’s success.
As Fields’ biographer Simon Louvish put it:
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| From Man on the Flying Trapeze by Simon Louvish. Click to enlarge. |
Fields and Houdini only appeared together once, and the great comedian had to settle for third place in the billing. Even Houdini gave it up in 1904 for the headliner at the London Hippodrome, Eugene Sandow, “the world’s most perfect man.”
As we know, Houdini himself was no slouch when it came to jealousy and envy. But that was only toward other magicians. He wrote favorably of Fields and he and Sandow became good friends.
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[Images via Google.]
Harry may have stolen his thunder, but the Beatles immortalized him in their famous song:
ReplyDelete"W.C. Fields Forever:
Fields is definitely an immortal! It's just wild to imagine those halcyon days of vaudeville when you had Houdini,
ReplyDeleteFields, Mae West, the Marx Bros., et al. all on the same stage.
Great stuff! The same biography, Man on the Flying Trapeze, mentions it was Easter of 1904 they appeared on the same bill at the London Hippodrome, just after the mirror handcuff escape.
ReplyDelete...and Jimmy Durante and Will Rogers. The likes of which will never happen again. They were all special.
ReplyDelete