Sidney Hollis Radner

Sidney Hollis Radner (born in 1919) is a retired rug salesman from Holyoke, Massachusetts, who owned one of the world's largest and most valuable collections of Harry Houdini artifacts. Houdini's brother Hardeen (also an accomplished magician and stage artist) considered Radner, when he was a student at Yale University, as his protégé. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=In Sadness, Prime Houdini Artifact Collector Puts Items on Auction Block |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05EEDA133DF93AA15753C1A9629C8B63&sec=travel&spon=&pagewanted=all |quote=... 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 1940's 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 1870's. 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. ... |publisher=New York Times |date=October 29, 2004 |accessdate=2007-02-14 ]

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