Harry Houdini a boarding house on East 79th Street. He was joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross country runner in his youth. When Weiss became a professional magician he began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, after reading Robert-Houdin's autobiography in 1890. Weiss incorrectly believed that an "i" at the end of a name meant "like" in French. In
Melvyn Weiss and U.S. Attorney called the support for Weiss "unprecedented." Weiss was sentenced to 30 months of incarceration on Monday June 2, 2008. He served half of his sentence at the minimum security Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia, with the remainder served under home confinement. Weiss died on February 2, 2018, at his home in Boca Raton, Florida. He had been suffering from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Melvyn Weiss Melvyn I. Weiss (August 1, 1935 – February 2, 2018) was an American attorney who co-founded the well-known plaintiff class action law firm Milberg Weiss. Born in The Bronx, Weiss