Erik Weisz (March
24, 1874 – October 31, 1926), known as Harry
Houdini (/huːˈdiːni/ hoo-DEE-nee), was a Hungarian-American escape artist,
illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts.
Houdini first attracted notice in vaudeville in the United
States and then as Harry 'Handcuff' Houdini
on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up.
Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers,
straitjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside
sealed milk can with water in it.
In 1904, thousands watched as Houdini tried to escape from
special handcuffs commissioned by London's Daily Mirror, keeping them in suspense
for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw
himself to the surface, emerging in a state of near-breakdown. While many
suspected that these escapes were faked, Houdini presented himself as the
scourge of fake spiritualists, pursuing a personal crusade to expose their
fraudulent methods. As president of the Society of American Magicians, he was
keen to uphold professional standards and expose fraudulent artists. He was
also quick to sue anyone who imitated his escape stunts.
Houdini made several movies but quit acting when it failed
to bring in money. He was also a keen aviator and became the first man to fly a
powered aircraft in Australia, on March 18, 1910 at Diggers Rest, a field
roughly 20 miles (32 km) from Melbourne.
Early life
Erik Weisz was born in Budapest, Republic of Hungary to a
Jewish family. His parents were Rabbi Mayer Sámuel Weisz (1829–1892) and
Cecília Steiner (1841–1913). Houdini was one of seven children: Herman M.
(1863–1885), who was Houdini's half-brother by Rabbi Weisz's first marriage;
Nathan J. (1870–1927); Gottfried William (1872–1925); Theodore (1876–1945);
Leopold D. (1879–1962); and Carrie Gladys (1882–1959), who was left almost blind
after a childhood accident.
Weisz arrived in the United States on July 3, 1878, on the
SS Frisia with his mother (who was pregnant) and his four brothers. The family
changed their name to the German spelling Weiss, and Erik became Ehrich. The
family lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as rabbi of the
Zion Reform Jewish Congregation.
According to the 1880 census, the family lived on Appleton
Street in an area that is now known as Houdini Plaza. On June 6, 1882, Rabbi
Weiss became an American citizen. Losing his job at Zion in 1882, Rabbi Weiss
and family moved to Milwaukee and fell into dire poverty. In 1887, Rabbi Weiss
moved with Erik to New York City, where they lived in 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, Erik Weiss took several jobs, making his public
début as a nine-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion
cross country runner in his youth.
Magic career
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. However, "i" at
the end of the name means "belong
to" in Hungarian. In later life, Houdini claimed that the first part
of his new name, Harry, was homage to American magician Harry Kellar, who he
also admired, though it was likely adapted from "Ehri", a nickname for "Ehrich", which is how he was known to his family.
When he was a teenager, Houdini was coached by the magician
Joseph Rinn at the Pastime Athletic Club.
Houdini began his magic career in 1891, but had little
success. He appeared in a tent act with strongman Emil Jarrow. He performed in
dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as "The Wild Man" at a circus. Houdini focused initially on
traditional card tricks. At one point, he billed himself as the "King of Cards". Some – but
not all – professional magicians would come to regard Houdini as a competent
but not particularly skilled sleight-of-hand artist, lacking the grace and
finesse required to achieve excellence in that craft. He soon began
experimenting with escape acts.
In the early 1890s, Houdini was performing with his brother "Dash" (Theodore) as "The Brothers Houdini". The
brothers performed at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 before returning to New
York City and working at Huber's Dime Museum for "near-starvation wages". In 1894, Houdini met a fellow
performer, Wilhelmina Beatrice "Bess"
Rahner. Bess was initially courted by Dash, but she and Houdini married, with
Bess replacing Dash in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis". For the rest of Houdini's performing
career, Bess worked as his stage assistant.
Houdini's big break came in 1899 when he met manager Martin
Beck in St. Paul, Minnesota. Impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act, Beck advised
him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville
circuit. Within months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the
country. In 1900, Beck arranged for Houdini to tour Europe. After some days of
unsuccessful interviews in London, Houdini's British agent Harry Day helped him
to get an interview with C. Dundas Slater, then manager of the Alhambra
Theatre. He was introduced to William Melville and gave a demonstration of
escape from handcuffs at Scotland Yard. He succeeded in baffling the police so
effectively that he was booked at the Alhambra for six months. His show was an
immediate hit and his salary rose to $300 a week (equivalent to $10,987 in
2023).
Between 1900 and 1920 he appeared in theatres all over Great
Britain performing escape acts, illusions, card tricks and outdoor stunts,
becoming one of the world's highest paid entertainers. He also toured the
Netherlands, Germany, France, and Russia and became widely known as "The Handcuff King". In each
city, Houdini challenged local police to restrain him with shackles and lock
him in their jails. In many of these challenge escapes, he was first stripped
nude and searched. In Moscow, he escaped from a Siberian prison transport van, claiming
that, had he been unable to free himself, he would have had to travel to
Siberia, where the only key was kept.
In Cologne, Houdini sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who
alleged that he made his escapes via bribery. Houdini won the case when he
opened the judge's safe (he later said the judge had forgotten to lock it).
With his new-found wealth, Houdini purchased a dress said to have been made for
Queen Victoria. He then arranged a grand reception where he presented his
mother in the dress to all their relatives. Houdini said it was the happiest
day of his life. In 1904, Houdini returned to the U.S. and purchased a house
for $25,000 (equivalent to $847,778 in 2023), a brownstone at 278 W. 113th Street
in Harlem, New York City.
While on tour in Europe in 1902, Houdini visited Blois with
the aim of meeting the widow of Emile Houdin, the son of Jean-Eugène
Robert-Houdin, for an interview and permission to visit his grave. He did not
receive permission but still visited the grave. Houdini believed that he had
been treated unfairly and later wrote a negative account of the incident in his
magazine, claiming he was "treated
most discourteously by Madame W. Emile Robert-Houdin". In 1906, he
sent a letter to the French magazine L'Illusionniste stating: "You will certainly enjoy the article
on Robert Houdin I am about to publish in my magazine. Yes, my dear friend, I
think I can finally demolish your idol, which has so long been placed on a
pedestal that he did not deserve."
In 1906, Houdini created his own publication, the Conjurers'
Monthly Magazine. It was a competitor to The Sphinx, but was short-lived and
only two volumes were released until August 1908. Magic historian Jim
Steinmeyer has noted that "Houdini
couldn't resist using the journal for his own crusades, attacking his rivals,
praising his own appearances, and subtly rewriting history to favor his view of
magic."
From 1907 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with
great success in the United States. He freed himself from jails, handcuffs,
chains, ropes, and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope in sight of
street audiences. Because of imitators, Houdini put his "handcuff act" behind him on January 25, 1908, and began
escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can. The possibility of failure and
death thrilled his audiences. Houdini also expanded his repertoire with his
escape challenge act, in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to
hold him. These included nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into water),
riveted boilers, wet sheets, mail bags, and even the belly of a whale that had
washed ashore in Boston. Brewers in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and other cities
challenged Houdini to escape from a barrel after they filled it with beer.
Many of these challenges were arranged with local merchants
in one of the first uses of mass tie-in marketing. Rather than promote the idea
that he was assisted by spirits, as did the Davenport Brothers and others,
Houdini's advertisements showed him making his escapes via dematerializing,
although Houdini himself never claimed to have supernatural powers.
After much research, Houdini wrote a collection of articles
on the history of magic, which were expanded into The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin
published in 1908. In this book he attacked his former idol Robert-Houdin as a
liar and a fraud for having claimed the invention of automata and effects such
as aerial suspension, which had been in existence for many years. Many of the
allegations in the book were dismissed by magicians and researchers who
defended Robert-Houdin. Magician Jean Hugard would later write a full rebuttal
to Houdini's book.
Houdini introduced the Chinese Water Torture Cell at the
Circus Busch in Berlin, Germany, on September 21, 1912. He was suspended
upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water,
holding his breath for more than three minutes. He would go on performing this
escape for the rest of his life.
During his career, Houdini explained some of his tricks in
books written for the magic brotherhood. In Handcuff Secrets (1909), he
revealed how many locks and handcuffs could be opened with properly applied
force, others with shoestrings. Other times, he carried concealed lockpicks or
keys. When tied down in ropes or straitjackets, he gained wiggle room by
enlarging his shoulders and chest, moving his arms slightly away from his body.
His straitjacket escape was originally performed behind
curtains, with him popping out free at the end. Houdini's brother (who was also
an escape artist, billing himself as Theodore Hardeen) discovered that
audiences were more impressed when the curtains were eliminated so they could
watch him struggle to get out. On more than one occasion, they both performed
straitjacket escapes while dangling upside-down from the roof of a building in
the same city.
For most of his career, Houdini was a headline act in
vaudeville. For many years, he was the highest-paid performer in American
vaudeville. One of Houdini's most notable non-escape stage illusions was
performed at the New York Hippodrome, when he vanished a full-grown elephant
from the stage. He had purchased this trick from the magician Charles Morritt.
In 1923, Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America's oldest magic
company. The business is still in operation today.
He also served as president of the Society of American
Magicians (a.k.a. S.A.M.) from 1917 until his death in 1926. Founded on May 10,
1902, in the back room of Martinka's magic shop in New York, the Society
expanded under the leadership of Harry Houdini during his term as national
president from 1917 to 1926. Houdini was magic's greatest visionary: He sought
to create a large, unified national network of professional and amateur
magicians. Wherever he traveled, he gave a lengthy formal address to the local
magic club, made speeches, and usually threw a banquet for the members at his
own expense. He said "The Magicians
Clubs as a rule are small: they are weak ... but if we were amalgamated into
one big body the society would be stronger, and it would mean making the small
clubs powerful and worthwhile. Members would find a welcome wherever they
happened to be and, conversely, the safeguard of a city-to-city hotline to
track exposers and other undesirables".
For most of 1916, while on his vaudeville tour, Houdini had
been recruiting – at his own expense – local magic clubs to join the S.A.M. in
an effort to revitalize what he felt was a weak organization. Houdini persuaded
groups in Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City to join. As had
happened in London, he persuaded magicians to join. The Buffalo club joined as the
first branch, (later assembly) of the Society. Chicago Assembly No. 3 was, as
the name implies, the third regional club to be established by the S.A.M.,
whose assemblies now number in the hundreds. In 1917, he signed Assembly Number
Three's charter into existence, and that charter and this club continue to
provide Chicago magicians with a connection to each other and to their past.
Houdini dined with, addressed, and got pledges from similar clubs in Detroit,
Rochester, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cincinnati and elsewhere. This was the
biggest movement ever in the history of magic. In places where no clubs
existed, he rounded up individual magicians, introduced them to each other, and
urged them into the fold.
By the end of 1916, magicians' clubs in San Francisco and
other cities that Houdini had not visited were offering to become assemblies.
He had created the richest and longest-surviving organization of magicians in
the world. It now embraces almost 6,000 dues-paying members and almost 300
assemblies worldwide. In July 1926, Houdini was elected for the ninth
successive time President of the Society of American Magicians. Every other
president has only served for one year. He also was President of the Magicians'
Club of London.
In the final years of his life (1925/26), Houdini launched
his own full-evening show, which he billed as "Three Shows in One: Magic, Escapes, and Fraud Mediums
Exposed".
Notable escapes
Daily Mirror challenge
In 1904, the London Daily Mirror newspaper challenged
Houdini to escape from special handcuffs that it claimed had taken Nathaniel
Hart, a locksmith from Birmingham, five years to make. Houdini accepted the
challenge for March 17 during a matinée performance at London's Hippodrome theatre.
It was reported that 4000 people and more than 100 journalists turned out for
the much-hyped event. The escape attempt dragged on for over an hour, during
which Houdini emerged from his "ghost
house" (a small screen used to conceal the method of his escape)
several times. At one point he asked if the cuffs could be removed so he could
take off his coat. The Mirror representative, Frank Parker, refused, saying
Houdini could gain an advantage if he saw how the cuffs were unlocked. Houdini
promptly took out a penknife and, holding it in his teeth, used it to cut his
coat from his body. Some 56 minutes later, Houdini's wife appeared on stage and
gave him a kiss. Many thought that in her mouth was the key to unlock the
special handcuffs. However, it has since been suggested that Bess did not in
fact enter the stage at all, and that this theory is unlikely due to the size
of the six-inch key. Houdini then went back behind the curtain. After an hour
and ten minutes, Houdini emerged free. As he was paraded on the shoulders of
the cheering crowd, he broke down and wept. At the time, Houdini said it had
been one of the most difficult escapes of his career.
After Houdini's death, his friend Martin Beck was quoted in
Will Goldston's book, Sensational Tales of Mystery Men, admitting that Houdini
was tested that day and had appealed to his wife, Bess, for help. Goldston goes
on to claim that Bess begged the key from the Mirror representative, and then
slipped it to Houdini in a glass of water. It was stated in the book The Secret
Life of Houdini that the key required to open the specially designed Mirror
handcuffs was six inches long, and could not have been smuggled to Houdini in a
glass of water. Goldston offered no proof of his account, and many modern
biographers have found evidence (notably in the custom design of the handcuffs)
that the Mirror challenge may have been arranged by Houdini and that his long
struggle to escape was pure showmanship. James Randi believes that the only way
the handcuffs could have been opened was by using their key, and speculates
that it would have been viewed "distasteful"
to both the Mirror and to Houdini if Houdini had failed the escape.
Milk Can Escape
In 1908, Houdini introduced his own original act, the Milk
Can Escape. In this act, Houdini was handcuffed and sealed inside an oversized
milk can filled with water and made his escape behind a curtain. As part of the
effect, Houdini invited members of the audience to hold their breath along with
him while he was inside the can. Advertised with dramatic posters that
proclaimed "Failure Means a Drowning
Death", the escape proved to be a sensation. Houdini soon modified
the escape to include the milk can being locked inside a wooden chest, being
chained or padlocked. Houdini performed the milk can escape as a regular part
of his act for only four years, but it has remained one of the acts most
associated with him. Houdini's brother, Theodore Hardeen, continued to perform
the milk can escape and its wooden chest variant into the 1940s.
After other magicians proposed variations on the Milk Can
Escape, Houdini claimed that the act was protected by copyright and in 1906,
brought a case against John Clempert, one of the most persistent imitators. The
matter was settled out of court and Clempert agreed to publish an apology.
Chinese water torture
cell
Around 1912, the vast number of imitators prompted Houdini
to replace his milk can act with the Chinese water torture cell. In this
escape, Houdini's feet were locked in stocks, and he was lowered upside down
into a tank filled with water. The mahogany and metal cell featured a glass
front, through which audiences could clearly see Houdini. The stocks were
locked to the top of the cell, and a curtain concealed his escape. In the
earliest version of the torture cell, a metal cage was lowered into the cell,
and Houdini was enclosed inside that. While making the escape more difficult –
the cage prevented Houdini from turning – the cage bars also offered protection
should the front glass break.
The original cell was built in England, where Houdini first
performed the escape for an audience of one person as part of a one-act play he
called "Houdini Upside Down".
This was done to obtain copyright protection for the effect, and establish
grounds to sue imitators – which he did. While the escape was advertised as "The Chinese Water Torture Cell" or
"The Water Torture Cell",
Houdini always referred to it as "the
Upside Down" or "USD".
The first public performance of the USD was at the Circus Busch in Berlin, on
September 21, 1912. Houdini continued to perform the escape until his death in
1926.
Suspended
straitjacket escape
One of Houdini's most popular publicity stunts was to have
himself strapped into a regulation straitjacket and suspended by his ankles
from a tall building or crane. Houdini would then make his escape in full view
of the assembled crowd. In many cases, Houdini drew tens of thousands of onlookers
who brought city traffic to a halt. Houdini would sometimes ensure press
coverage by performing the escape from the office building of a local
newspaper. In New York City, Houdini performed the suspended straitjacket
escape from a crane being used to build the subway. After flinging his body in
the air, he escaped from the straitjacket. Starting from when he was hoisted up
in the air by the crane, to when the straitjacket was completely off, it took
him two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. There is film footage in the Library
of Congress of Houdini performing the escape. Films of his escapes are also
shown at The Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
After being battered against a building in high winds during
one escape, Houdini performed the escape with a visible safety wire on his
ankle so that he could be pulled away from the building if necessary. The idea
for the upside-down escape was given to Houdini by a young boy named Randolph
Osborne Douglas (March 31, 1895 – December 5, 1956), when the two met at a
performance at Sheffield's Empire Theatre.
Overboard box escape
Another of Houdini's most famous publicity stunts was to
escape from a nailed and roped packing crate after it had been lowered into
water. He first performed the escape in New York's East River on July 7, 1912.
Police forbade him from using one of the piers, so he hired a tugboat and
invited press on board. Houdini was locked in handcuffs and leg-irons, and then
nailed into the crate which was roped and weighed down with two hundred pounds
of lead. The crate was then lowered into the water. He escaped in 57 seconds.
The crate was pulled to the surface and found still to be intact, with the
manacles inside.
Buried alive stunt
Houdini performed at least three variations on a buried
alive stunt during his career. The first was near Santa Ana, California in
1915, and it almost cost him his life. Houdini was buried, without a casket, in
a pit of earth six feet deep. He became exhausted and panicked while trying to
dig his way to the surface and called for help. When his hand finally broke the
surface, he fell unconscious and had to be pulled from the grave by his
assistants. Houdini wrote in his diary that the escape was "very dangerous" and that "the weight of the earth is killing".
Houdini's second variation on buried alive was an endurance
test designed to expose mystical Egyptian performer Rahman Bey, who had claimed
to use supernatural powers to remain in a sealed casket for an hour. Houdini
bettered Bey on August 5, 1926, by remaining in a sealed casket, or coffin,
submerged in the swimming pool of New York's Hotel Shelton for one and a half
hours. Houdini claimed he did not use any trickery or supernatural powers to
accomplish this feat, just controlled breathing. He repeated the feat at the
YMCA in Worcester, Massachusetts on September 28, 1926, this time remaining
sealed for one hour and eleven minutes.
Houdini's final buried alive was an elaborate stage escape
that featured in his full evening show. Houdini would escape after being
strapped in a straitjacket, sealed in a casket, and then buried in a large tank
filled with sand. While posters advertising the escape exist (playing off the
Bey challenge by boasting "Egyptian
Fakirs Outdone!"), it is unclear whether Houdini ever performed buried
alive on stage. The stunt was to be the feature escape of his 1927 season, but
Houdini died on October 31, 1926. The bronze casket Houdini created for buried
alive was used to transport Houdini's body from Detroit to New York following
his death on Halloween.
Film career
In 1906, Houdini started showing films of his outside
escapes as part of his vaudeville act. In Boston, he presented a short film
called Houdini Defeats Hackenschmidt. Georg Hackenschmidt was a famous wrestler
of the day, but the nature of their contest is unknown as the film is lost. In
1909, Houdini made a film in Paris for Cinema Lux titled Merveilleux Exploits
du Célèbre Houdini à Paris (Marvellous Exploits of the Famous Houdini in
Paris). It featured a loose narrative designed to showcase several of Houdini's
famous escapes, including his straitjacket and underwater handcuff escapes.
That same year Houdini got an offer to star as Captain Nemo in a silent version
of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, but the project never made it into
production.
It is often erroneously reported that Houdini served as
special-effects consultant on the Wharton/International cliffhanger serial The
Mysteries of Myra, shot in Ithaca, New York, because Harry Grossman, director
of The Master Mystery also filmed a serial in Ithaca at about the same time.
The consultants on the serial were pioneering Hereward Carrington and Aleister
Crowley.
In 1918, Houdini signed a contract with film producer B. A.
Rolfe to star in a 15-part serial, The Master Mystery (released in November
1918). As was common at the time, the film serial was released simultaneously
with a novel. Financial difficulties resulted in B. A. Rolfe Productions going
out of business, but The Master Mystery led to Houdini being signed by Famous
Players–Lasky Corporation/Paramount Pictures, for whom he made two pictures,
The Grim Game (1919) and Terror Island (1920).
The Grim Game was Houdini's first full-length movie and is
reputed to be his best. Because of the flammable nature of nitrate film and
their low rate of survival, film historians considered the film lost. One copy
did exist hidden in the collection of a private collector only known to a tiny
group of magicians that saw it. Dick Brookz and Dorothy Dietrich of The Houdini
Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, had seen it twice on the invitation of the
collector. After many years of trying, they finally got him to agree to sell
the film to Turner Classic Movies, who restored the complete 71-minute film.
The film, not seen by the general public for 96 years, was shown by TCM on
March 29, 2015, as a highlight of their yearly 4-day festival in Hollywood.
While filming an aerial stunt for The Grim Game, two
biplanes collided in mid-air with a stuntman doubling Houdini dangling by a
rope from one of the planes. Publicity was geared heavily toward promoting this
dramatic "caught-on-film"
moment, claiming it was Houdini himself dangling from the plane. While filming
these movies in Los Angeles, Houdini rented a home in Laurel Canyon. Following
his two-picture stint in Hollywood, Houdini returned to New York and started
his own film production company called the "Houdini
Picture Corporation". He produced and starred in two films, The Man
from Beyond (1921) and Haldane of the Secret Service (1923). He also founded
his own film laboratory business called The Film Development Corporation (FDC),
gambling on a new process for developing motion picture film. Houdini's
brother, Theodore Hardeen, left his own career as a magician and escape artist
to run the company. Magician Harry Kellar was a major investor. In 1919 Houdini
moved to Los Angeles to film. He resided in 2435 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, a
residence owned by Ralph M. Walker. The Houdini Estate, a tribute to Houdini,
is located on 2400 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, previously home to Walker himself.
The Houdini Estate is subject to controversy, in that it is disputed whether
Houdini ever actually made it his home. While there are claims it was Houdini's
house, others counter that "he never set foot" on the property. It is
rooted in Bess's parties or séances, etc. held across the street, she would do
so at the Walker mansion. In fact, the guesthouse featured an elevator
connecting to a tunnel that crossed under Laurel Canyon to the big house
grounds (though capped, the tunnel still exists).
Neither Houdini's acting career nor FDC found success, and
he gave up on the movie business in 1923, complaining that "the profits are too meager".
In April 2008, Kino International released a DVD box set of
Houdini's surviving silent films, including The Master Mystery, Terror Island,
The Man From Beyond, Haldane of the Secret Service, and five minutes from The
Grim Game. The set also includes newsreel footage of Houdini's escapes from
1907 to 1923, and a section from Merveilleux Exploits du Célébre Houdini à
Paris, although it is not identified as such.
Aviator
In 1909, Houdini became fascinated with aviation. He
purchased a French Voisin biplane for $5,000 (equivalent to $163,500 in 2023)
from the Chilean aviators José Luis Sánchez-Besa [Fr] and Emilio Eduardo Bello,
and hired a full-time mechanic, Antonio Brassac. After crashing once, he made
his first successful flight on November 26 in Hamburg, Germany.
The following year, Houdini toured Australia and brought
along his Voisin biplane with the intention to be the first person to fly in
Australia.
Melbourne people will shortly have an opportunity of
witnessing the ascent of a flying machine, for Houdini, whose Voision [sic]
bi-plane has arrived, has determined to make a flight before his season closes
at the [New] Opera House [in Melbourne, at the end of March]. The 60 to 80
horse-power motor used is of the E.N.V. pattern. The machine has been erected
at Diggers' Rest. Table Talk, March 3, 1910.
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