Houdini: A Life Worth Reading (3 page)

While touring with a medicine show in Kansas, Houdini tried a new moneymaking tactic, that of “speaking to the spirits.” Spiritualism was a growing trend, with crowds paying conjurers to speak with their dead. Houdini, recognizing the simple tricks used to deceive naïve crowds into thinking that their deceased loved ones were reaching out from beyond the grave, made money with these performances, but soon abandoned them. He felt it was wrong to take advantage of vulnerable people who were mourning the loss of family and friends.

While Houdini enjoyed periodic flashes of fame due to his escapes from police stations, and the Houdini’s performance of “Metamorphosis” was often a show-closer, he and Bess remained poor and relatively unknown. In 1898, the Houdinis returned to New York, exhausted from life on the road. While staying with his mother, Houdini, desperate to make a living that didn’t involve the beer hall circuit, created a catalog for a magic school, in which he offered to teach pupils his escape tricks. Seriously considering getting out of the magic performance business, the Houdinis went to the Chicago area in December of 1898 to fulfill some previously agreed-to contracts. While performing in a beer hall in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Houdini was discovered by Martin Beck, a powerful manager who ran a circuit of vaudeville theaters.

Martin Beck was a big name in the vaudeville circuit, booking for a group of major theaters known as the Orpheum Circuit. Vaudeville was a popular form of entertainment for middle-class American families of the time, consisting of shows performed in nice theaters, for which tickets were somewhat costly. A show usually consisted of eight to ten novelty acts, including acrobats, comedy routines, and a variety of talent and magic demonstrations. Vaudeville was considered a classier form of entertainment than that found in beer halls and dime museums, and a tour with a vaudeville show involved staying for one to two weeks at the same theater, performing only twice a day. For Houdini and Bess, who were accustomed to constant travel and performing up to fourteen times a day, performing in vaudeville was a luxurious life.

Houdini’s brother Dash later credited Martin Beck as being the manager who made Houdini famous. Originally a German actor, Beck had become the owner of several vaudeville theaters. He excelled at recognizing not only talent but also at knowing how to present it to audiences. Beck also was able to manage Houdini’s mercurial moods and frequently unreasonable demands. As he told Houdini from the beginning, he was determined to make Houdini a big name. He recommended that Houdini ditch his card tricks and smaller illusions and focus on performing his escapes. Houdini rearranged his act to include a needle-swallowing trick, Metamorphosis, and various innovative escape tricks, including escapes from thumb-cuffs, leg irons, and double-springed handcuffs. He continued to challenge police in stations around the country to try to restrain him inside their cells and in their best cuffs, agreeing to be stripped naked, searched, and to have his mouth taped shut in order to prove that he wasn’t hiding any tools. In San Francisco he challenged local officials to place him in a straitjacket, the formidable reverse coat used to restrain criminally insane individuals. He escaped in less than ten minutes. Often Houdini’s body was left bloody and bruised from the contortions and exertions of these escapes, but Houdini’s trademark determination prevailed over these small injuries.

Beck made good on his promise to take care of Houdini. Beck steadily increased Houdini’s salary and made careful plans for the development of his fame around the country and the world. Houdini, who had been making next to nothing on the beer hall circuit, began under Beck at sixty dollars a week, advancing to almost four hundred dollars a week by the end of his first year under Beck’s management. At that time, that amount of money made Houdini a very rich man. He bought Bess extravagant gifts and sent money home to his mother, to whom he was devoted.

Houdini continued the rigorous daily practice of his tricks and hunted for new innovations. His ego also grew. He began to have serious disagreements with Martin Beck, scoffing at the percentage of profits that Beck took and complaining about lower-paying gigs that Beck had booked before Houdini achieved great fame. Beck managed Houdini’s ego well. He did not back down in the face of Houdini’s ungrateful demands. Beck planned a European tour for Houdini, followed by a return to the States, where he wanted Houdini finally to become recognized in New York City.

While in Europe, Houdini filled out a passport application, reporting that he had been born in Appleton, Wisconsin. Many biographers say that this fiction was symbolic of Harry Houdini’s goal of erasing his poverty-stricken childhood as the child of a disadvantaged immigrant family.

Vaudeville began in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It grew out of other types of variety shows such as medicine shows, burlesque acts, and minstrel shows, among others. It was short-lived, lasting only into the early part of the twentieth century.

Vaudeville was characterized by its diversity. Each “show” held a variety of acts. It had dialogues (short, often comical, plays), juggling, pantomime, singing, jokes, dancing, contortion acts, and many other performances.

Houdini’s magic act, especially in its early stages, fit in as well as anything in the hodgepodge environment of vaudeville. His later tricks, which required more time to complete and strange settings (such as a bridge or boiler) would not have fit in. Neither would Houdini’s ego have worked well in vaudeville had it survived as a popular form of entertainment. As he grew more famous, he became more interested in being the star of the show. But, for a start, vaudeville allowed him to hone his talents and become familiar with performing for an audience. It also allowed him access to professional performers.

After reading this chapter, you will know more about

• The Nude Cell Escape:
  Part magic, part scandalous nudity, this trick performed in police stations helped Houdini drum up publicity.
  

• Early lawsuits:
  When Houdini sued a newspaper for slander, a lucky break might have ensured his victory.
  

• Houdini’s disdain for imitators:
  Not satisfied with being the best, Houdini often humiliated magicians who claimed his prowess with handcuffs for themselves.
  

• The international view of Houdini:
  Germany loved him, Paris was ambivalent, and Russia allowed him despite strong anti-Semitic sentiments.
  

Houdini arrived in London believing that bookings were waiting for him.
He was enraged to find out that the international agent that Beck referred him to had failed to have anything ready. Houdini set out to drum up publicity by challenging the Scotland Yard police to confine him. He managed to get himself booked at the famous London theatre the Alhambra. London audiences loved his act, and Houdini quickly became famous there. However, he had to work harder to spread his fame into the English countryside, as the managers of theaters at various villages felt that his magic act did not fit what the family audiences of the time wanted. Houdini doggedly performed auditions for managers, until word of his unique tricks spread and he became a headliner in the country villages as well. He also advertised himself by performing the Nude Cell Escape at police stations in the small villages of the countryside. In one particularly famous performance in Sheffield, Houdini escaped from the high security unit where one of London’s most famous murderers, Charles Pace, had been imprisoned.

For Houdini’s onstage performances, he wore the formal dress of the time: a stiff, high collar, a white dickey, and a black dress coat. Bess frequently assisted him, wearing black knickerbockers. Houdini’s brother Dash sometimes assisted as well or instead. Frequently there was a physician contracted to be backstage or onstage in case of emergency. Houdini performed his handcuff escapes behind a curtain, over which the audience could sometimes see his head, or else in a “cabinet” or “ghost house,” a construction made to conceal Houdini’s techniques from the audience.

Houdini’s stage manner was something he studied and practiced almost as much as his magic. He worked hard to engage the audience and win them over to his side, presenting tricks with careful showmanship. He frequently made jokes that seemed self-deprecating, while also carefully building the tension in his audience members to keep them spellbound. He involved the audience in every way possible, an original tactic at the time.

In 1901 Houdini arranged with Beck to be let out of his contract. He became his own manager. In 1902, he introduced a new trick: the Packing Case Escape. A packing case was essentially a large crate that merchants of the time used for shipping. This act was a twist on the Metamorphosis trick. Houdini would arrange for a local store to provide the crate, and then would have assistants nail him into the crate onstage. Inspectors selected from the audience would verify its complete closing. The secret to Houdini’s escape involved his ability to noiselessly disassemble the crate from the inside; Bess or another ally would direct the nailing shut of the crate such that one wall of the crate was less enforced. Many nails would be hammered into the top of the crate, creating the impression that it was sealed very tight all around. But, since Houdini did not come out of the top of the crate, this did not affect his ability to escape. Audiences loved this trick, and in one particular performance in Glasgow, Scotland at the Zoo-Hippodrome theatre, the crowd filled the theater and the streets outside to see it.

As part of his publicity campaign, Houdini frequently offered a reward to the public to anyone who could cuff him so that he could not escape. He did specify that he would only be cuffed by regulation, unaltered equipment. One experience that haunted him occurred in the working-class city of Blackburn, England. There, a young body-builder by the name of Hodgson challenged him to escape from powerful cuffs with which he had tampered. Goaded by the young man’s scorn, Houdini accepted the challenge despite the tampering. Hodgson, who was knowledgeable about anatomy, cuffed Houdini in a torturous way that cut off his circulation and caused great pain. After fifteen minutes of working on the cuffs, Houdini explained that his circulation had been cut off and asked Hodgson to allow him a break from the cuffs for it to return. Hodgson refused. Houdini returned to the torturous struggle, and after almost two hours, emerged free from restraints, his body bloody and torn.

Hodgson, however, scorned Houdini’s efforts in a public interview shortly after the performance, saying that he had evidence that Houdini had cut himself out of the cuffs with the help of Bess and his brother Dash, who were onstage with him. Enraged, Houdini changed his plans so that he could return to Blackburn to rebut these charges. Even though he returned to Blackburn on later tours, he always faced Hodgson-supporters who booed him while onstage and challengers who tried to defeat him using damaged cuffs.

In perhaps one of his most-talked-about escapes, a representative from the
London Daily Mirror
, a popular newspaper, came onstage during one of Houdini’s performances and told him of a famous pair of handcuffs made by a British blacksmith. The handcuffs had taken the blacksmith five years to make, and were probably the most sophisticated restraints in existence at the time. Only one person, a famous lock-picker, had ever been able to open the cuffs, a feat that took him forty-four hours. Houdini accepted the challenge to escape from these cuffs, and the event was scheduled to take place four days later at a major London theater called the Hippodrome.

When the night finally arrived, the Hippodrome was packed. Houdini explained that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to open the cuffs, but that he would try his best. He disappeared behind the curtain, appearing once after twenty-two minutes to look at the cuffs in a better light and again after another thirteen minutes to ask for a glass of water. The house manager gave Houdini a cushion to sit on because Houdini reported that his knees were hurting. Houdini disappeared back behind the curtain. After an hour of working on the cuffs, he came out from behind the curtain, looking so disheveled and exhausted that some say that Bess became overwhelmed with emotion and had to leave the theater. He asked to be unlocked just to take off his coat, as he was perspiring heavily. The
Mirror
representative refused to uncuff him unless he admitted defeat. Frustrated and defiant, Houdini managed to get a penknife out of his shirt pocket with his mouth, which he used to cut the coat to shreds, removing it. The audience went crazy. Ten minutes later, Houdini emerged from behind the curtain, uncuffed.

Modern magicians and biographers believe that Houdini must have arranged this trick in collaboration with the
Daily Mirror
in order to gain publicity for both. Lock experts say that there is no way that the cuffs could have been opened without a key, and that Bess must have brought one to Houdini in the glass of water, or else it was put in the cushion that was given to him. Many believe that Houdini designed the famous cuffs himself, and simply waited an hour behind the curtain, coming out to demand water and to cut himself out of the coat for effect. In any case, the performance made Houdini the talk of London for a long time, and Houdini fanned the flame of this publicity by offering one hundred guineas to anyone who could escape the same handcuffs. One young man with exceptionally small hands who could have maneuvered out of the cuffs accepted this challenge, but was stumped when Houdini simply asked him to open the cuffs without being cuffed. By the end of his time at the Hippodrome, worn down from excitement and work, Houdini became ill with a cold that had him in bed for twelve days.