Our New Name
“It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,” said Marlene Dietrich’s seductress in Shanghai Express. And no doubt it did. But here at the Shackle Report, changing our name was a simpler and quicker, if less lubricious process. We just went and swapped our old prefix, “Crawford & Cutler’s” for a snappier, yet more anonymous “the”.
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We feel much lighter for the change, and the act of re-naming ourselves brings us closer to our guru, Houdini, and to the principles of escapology and self-creation he embodies. He changed his birth name, Ehrich Weiss, to Harry Houdini, and married a woman who had changed her birth name, Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahmer, to Bessie Raymond (before becoming Bess Houdini). Also: The famous French magician whose name Houdini appropriated, Robert-Houdin, re-named himself. He was born Jean Eugene Robert in 1805 but added the surname of his wife, Josephe Cecile Houdin, to the end of his own for his stage act. Patriarchy takes a hit.