Harry Houdini's watch for sale at Midtown jewelry store - Page Six
Harry Houdini. Master of magic. Escape artist. Did his hotshot disappearing act at the turn of the century. Tony Curtis played him in a movie, Adrien Brody on TV’s History channel. Maybe 10 films done on his life plus a Broadway musical’s been in the works.
He’s gone. At rest in Glendale, Queens. If all his tricks and shticks didn’t survive, what did was his 1914 gold pocket watch. The name’s engraved inside. (The Houdini name, not the Erik Weisz one at his birth in Budapest.)
So, to make Houdini’s watch disappear, forget sleight of hand. Try Midtown’s Aaron Faber jewelry store. Bring $45,000. The timepiece is legit.
We’re into magicians. I saw Russian-born Vitaly Beckman at the Westside Theatre, Penn & Teller on TV, and visited David Copperfield’s East Side triplex — he also owns Bahama island Musha Cay.
Comes now Ivan Amodei, the illusionist in residence at LA’s Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Nine years performing his mysteries, he’s created the new show “Secrets & Illusions.” And starts a national tour Oct. 6. And we’re getting him here before you can pull a camel out of a hat.
WAIT. More. McKittrick Hotel on West 27th is doing a “hypnotic dinner” called “The Lost Supper.” Guests get transported “to another time and place . . . in a mysterious journey into the subconscious” — whateverthehell that means.
Please try to pay attention
Everyone’s pushing something. Musicman Paul Shaffer’s praising jazz saxophonist Grace Kelly at Le Poisson Rouge . . . Brooklyn Youth Sports Club and Cinematic Music Group did something Saturday with Hip Hop Mike of Hot 97 plus performances by T-Pain and Smoke DZA. I don’t know them, but my impression is they don’t do opera . . . And in case you didn’t know, Don Cheadle is Donald Duck in “DuckTales,” which is having a season finale on Aug. 18 . . . Congratulations to Pietro Mosconi, whose Village restaurant Monte’s Trattoria celebrated 100 years. (He’s been there 35 years — he was not at the opening.) . . . Note: Wells Fargo, a k a Ills Fargo, buys multiple ads praising its benevolence — but as I reported in May, it refused to direct a $2,500 settlement offer to a charity feeding needy senior citizens when its customer wouldn’t sign away pages of rights.
Bits & pieces
Kyra Sedgwick and Superman — or Ching or whomever her “Closer” co-star Jon Tenney inhabited in the ’90s — hit a workshop of “The Connector” as part of New York Stage and Film’s Summer Program. It was at Vassar. In Poughkeepsie. Yes, I said Poughkeepsie . . . Glen Powell, another looker, is the only Yank in Netflix’s Brit production based on the 2008 novel “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society,” which is set in 1946. The thing’s due Aug. 10, and instead of sending Potato Peel Pie as their p.r. advance, they’ve delivered just the recipe. It’s all about the island of Guernsey. Yes, I said Guernsey.
Odds & ends
Meg Wolitzer’s 15-year-old book “The Wife” is now a movie about a woman in the shadow of a husband for whom she ghostwrites. She says: “Women in the workplace then were frowned on. It’s eerily relevant to today’s MeToo. Also, when people ask, ‘Who’s in your movie?’ I say ‘Glenn Close.’ That’s very cool.” . . . Will Arnett’s whole film, voice-over, comedy career “has been an accident.” His new animated film “Teen Titans Go! to the Movies”? His kids liked the TV show on which it’s based. “I heard lines that went over my kids’ heads. So when they called me for the movie, I said, ‘I already know about it.’ I’m lucky that way.”
Where else can you get all this info?
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
