Sidney Hollis Radner

Sidney Hollis Radner (December 8, 1919 – June 26, 2011) was a rug salesman from Holyoke, Massachusetts, who owned one of the world's largest and most valuable collections of Harry Houdini artifacts. Radner was a 1937 graduate of Worcester Academy and matriculated to Yale College.

Biography

He was born on December 8, 1919, and attended Yale University.

Houdini's brother Theodore Hardeen considered Radner as his protégé. Hardeen died in June 1945, willed most of Houdini's collection to Radner.^[1]

Radner died of cancer in Holyoke on June 26, 2011, at the age of 91.^[2][3]

References

1. Murphy, Dean E. (October 29, 2004). "In Sadness, Prime Houdini Artifact Collector Puts Items on Auction Block". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-02-14. ... Mr. Radner, aka Rendar the Magician, owns one of the world's biggest and most valuable collections of Harry Houdini artifacts, including the Chinese Water Torture Cell, one of Houdini's signature props from 1912 until his death in 1926. Most of the items were given to Mr. Radner in the 1940s by Houdini's brother, another escape artist who went by the stage name Hardeen. Hardeen considered Mr. Radner, then a student at Yale with a reputation for jumping from diving boards in handcuffs, as his protégé. Until early this year, the collection was on display at the Outagamie Museum in Appleton, Wis., where Houdini's father was the town rabbi in the 1870s. But after a rancorous falling out between Mr. Radner and museum officials, the 1,000-piece collection was packed up and shipped here, where it will be auctioned on Saturday in the windowless back room at the Liberace Museum and on eBay. ...
2. The Telegraph obituary (June 27, 2011)
3. The New York Times obituary (June 27, 2011)