The Secret Life of Houdini (25 page)

As each minute passed, the excitement in the hall became more and more palpable. Hodgson kept a wary eye on Bess and Theo, Harry’s brother, who were both anxiously awaiting the escape on the stage. After fifteen minutes, the canopy was lifted and Houdini was seen to be lying on his side, still bound. There was some concern that he had fainted, but he was able to communicate that he wished to be lifted to his knees. Hodgson refused the request, and the audience began to boo and hiss him. Theo interceded and lifted his brother to his knees. The curtain was lowered again.

Twenty minutes later, Houdini asked that the curtain be lifted.

“My arms have been quite numb and drained of blood due to the inordinate tightness of the chains,” Houdini declared. “I would request that the irons be unlocked for a minute so that my circulation could be restored.”

“This is a contest, not a love match,” Hodgson growled. “If you are beaten, give in.”

The auditorium erupted with shouts and calls. Dr. Bradley, a member of the committee, stepped into the cabinet and examined Houdini.

“Mr. Houdini’s arms are quite blue and I feel that it is tantamount to cruelty to keep him chained up as he is for any longer amount of time,” the doctor pronounced.

“This is a bet,” Hodgson laughed derisively. “Cry quits or keep on.”

Houdini raised his head. “If the audience will indulge me with some more time, I will be happy to continue this contest,” Houdini said. The audience, as one, cheered.

The orchestra played for the next fifteen minutes. The curtains of the cabinet periodically fluttered from what seemed to be feverish activity inside. Just then, Houdini popped his head out of the curtain and the music stopped.

“I have freed one of my hands, and I will now take a short rest before proceeding further,” he said.

Most of the audience cheered encouragingly, but a few hostile voices were raised.

“You must remember, ladies and gentlemen, I did not state the time that it would take me to get them off. These handcuffs have been plugged.”

As the clock showed eleven-thirty, the huge crowd began to get a bit impatient.

“Give it up!” someone cried out.

“Keep on, Houdini. You’ll do it,” another countered.

A few minutes later, Houdini popped his head out of the cabinet again.

“Both of my hands are free, and it will not be long before I will be free altogether,” he said.

By now, some of the audience had begun to think that Houdini had met his match. And when his brother approached the cabinet to give him a word of cheer, some of the crowd began booing. Apparently Houdini told Theo that he was thirsty, because a cool glass of water was provided him. Then he addressed the audience again from his cabinet.

“I beg you to show a little more patience. Every one of these locks has been changed, and this is making it all the more difficult to get free,” Houdini pleaded.

The crowd turned on Hodgson again. Later, he would claim that he had spied a key in one of the locks, but right then a police sergeant advised him that for his own safety he should leave the premises.

The orchestra played on. At ten minutes to twelve, with no warning, the cabinet’s curtain flew open and Houdini staggered out. He threw the last of his shackles to the floor of the stage as a loud shout went up. Houdini’s shirt had been torn from the cuff to the shoulder. His wrists and biceps were bleeding profusely. He could barely muster the strength to stand erect. He seemed semi-conscious. The vast audience stood up and cheered for fifteen straight minutes.

Finally they stilled as Houdini raised an arm.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have been in the handcuff business for fourteen years, but never have I been so brutally and cruelly ill-treated. I would just like to say again that the locks were plugged.”

“Where’s Hodgson?” someone screamed.

“Why is he not here to offer his congratulations?” another yelled out.

The huge crowd cheered wildly as Bess, his brother, and some of the committeemen helped Houdini off the stage.

The next day Houdini met with a reporter from
The Blackburn Daily Star
. Houdini again charged that the cuffs had been plugged and that pulley blocks had been added to the shackles. Then he pulled up his sleeves and showed the newspaperman his arms. They were both hideously blue and swollen, with large chunks of flesh torn out. Houdini explained that because the chains had been pulled so tight, portions of his arm had been fastened in as the fetters were locked. He had no choice but to tear out the chunks of his flesh to get free.

Two years later, on November 1, 1904 Houdini met with another reporter, this one from
The Halifax Evening Courier
. “I noticed on Houdini’s arms several scars, as though some tiger had clawed him,” he wrote. “He [explained that he] had simply been in Blackburn and had been put in manacles which would have made an executioner wince. The gentleman who did the trussing business had superabundant strength.”

One reason why audiences identified so strongly with Houdini was that he was willing to go as far as it took to effect his escapes, scars be damned. Every handcuff, every leg iron, every chain represented his potential Waterloo. His reputation was laid on the line nightly; he could not let himself fail. It wasn’t just his own honor that he was defending. Houdini had single-handedly created an entire genre of entertainment, something he called the “Challenge Handcuff and Escape Act.” And right from its inception, imitators came forth and began to attempt to duplicate his methods. “Harry’s success had inspired a hord[e] of imitators and most of them were terrible. Harry wasn’t worrying much about the few good ones but he felt that the bad ones were going to sour the public on the whole escape business,” his brother Theo wrote.

The ruthlessness with which Houdini set out to defend his domain would, at times, make the distinction between bad and good imitators superfluous. Shortly after Houdini arrived in London, he had taken out large ads in several London papers warning rival bookers that he had “fully patented” his handcuff act and would “positively prosecute any and all managers playing infringements or colorable imitations.” If a manager cared to investigate further, he would have found that the ad was just a bluff. Houdini had
applied
for the patent, but his refusal to allow the government patent office to publish the specifications of his handcuff act ultimately made them classify his patent application as “Abandoned.”

If Houdini had legal threats ready to counter unscrupulous managers, he was planning quite a different strategy for the imitators themselves. Houdini’s friend William Robinson had called him an old fighter—“I believe you would rather scrap than eat.” If there was fighting to be done, Houdini could think of no one better to bring over to Europe than his former performing partner and bigger, younger brother Theo, described by their friend Joe Hyman as a “harum-scarum, hell raisin’ boy” who could “fight like a wildcat.” Theo’s credo was: “if you are in a fight hit the other guy first.”

While Houdini was performing for the first time in Berlin, he cabled Theo in New York, “Come over. The apples are ripe.” By the time that Theo had reached Berlin, Houdini had duplicated his entire escape act—right down to handcuffs, substitution trunk, and a girl assistant—and had bookings set up for his brother. Houdini had even chosen a new name for Theo. It wasn’t the first time. In their childhood, Houdini had nicknamed his younger brother “Dash.” When Dash joined his act, he was dubbed a Brother Houdini. He was back to Dash after Houdini replaced him with Bess. When he summoned him to Europe, at first he considered dubbing him “Hardeeni,” but thinking there might be confusion with his own name, he quickly changed it to “Hardeen.” “We were very quickly in strong competition with each other, and we built up the competition as a grudge fight,” Hardeen remembered. “We made no secret of the fact that we were brothers but we did keep secret not only the fact that we were good friends but that Harry had set me up in business!”

Houdini and his bigger, younger brother Theo, who he renamed “Hardeen.”
Library of Congress

Hardeen also made no secret of the fact that he was there to run interference for his brother with his other would-be rivals. On November 18, 1901, Hardeen wrote Albert Hill, who performed under the name of Hilbert, warning him that they were aware that he was “working both mine and my brother’s tricks.” Hilbert got the message, writing back, “Please accept my assurance that I will make no pretence to originality. I may add that I desire to carefully avoid any conflict with either yourself or your brother.”

Other imitators were not that lucky. Harry dispatched both his brother and another escape artist named Hangeros to bust up a rival’s act. Hangeros sent Houdini back a report, noting that he would be “very sore from the kicks I got,” which pained him so “I did not sleep much last night…They gave me a good beating,
three
(3) large lumps on my head…My Glasgow overcoat is ruined…but thats not near as bad as the punching and kicking I got.” Still, Hangeros was undeterred. “I havent weakened. I’ll go after any cuff faker you name any time. This is the first time I was ever beat up badly in my life—I can stand a few more.”

In Germany, Houdini’s imitators were even more brazen, some even using variations of his name, like Harry Rudini, Harry Blondini, or Harry Mourdini.

Houdini routinely carried “handcuff-king-defeaters”—special cuffs that he used against rival escape artists that worked but were very difficult to escape from. Kolar, an American escape artist who knew Houdini from his dime museum days in Chicago, maintained that Houdini never showed up a fellow escape man unless they “first tried to ‘do’ him.” One of those who tried to “do” him was an eccentric handcuff man named Kleppini, who didn’t have an abundance of talent but made up for that by festooning his jacket with phony medals. He even had gold letters embroidered around his collar that read, “The Champion of All Champions of Handcuff Kings.”

Houdini was touring Holland in June of 1902 when a friend sent him a clipping that Kleppini, who was performing with a German circus, was advertising that not only had he escaped from Houdini’s handcuffs but that the Great Houdini had been defeated by Kleppini’s irons. Enraged, Houdini took a leave of absence and rushed to Essen Ruhr, where he had his hair fixed to look old and glued a fake mustache onto his lip. Then, filling up a small grip with “handcuff-king-defeaters,” he traveled to Dortmund to confront Kleppini.

The disguised Handcuff King took a seat in the circus audience and waited until Kleppini began his spiel. When his rival claimed to have defeated Houdini, he leapt to his feet and screamed, “Not true.”

“And how would you know this, old man?” Kleppini said.

“I am in the know,” Houdini countered.

“Would you care to wager that I am right?” Kleppini asked.

With that, Houdini took a flying leap to the center ring.

“You say I am not telling the truth. Well, look!” he screamed, pulling off his mustache. “I am Houdini!”

Houdini offered five thousand marks if Kleppini would allow himself to be handcuffed. He also offered to escape from Kleppini’s Chinese pillory. After a lot of back and forth haggling, the circus manager refused to back Kleppini with a five-thousand-mark deposit and Houdini returned to his seat. A large portion of the audience, disgusted by Kleppini’s misrepresentations, left the arena.

The next morning the business manager of the circus visited Houdini. He proposed that Houdini and Kleppini stage a one-night duel, but Houdini refused. He did consent to testing Kleppini with a set of cuffs. After the challenge was announced, Kleppini tried to contact Houdini, but Houdini shunned his calls. Then the manager returned and asked Houdini which cuffs he would use. Houdini laid out twelve cuffs and told the manager he could choose one to his own liking. He selected a pair of French letter cuffs that opened when the correct letters were selected.

“Which word opens this cuff?” the business manager inquired innocently.

After securing a promise that he wouldn’t tell Kleppini, Houdini told him that by spelling out the French word
CLEFS
, which meant “keys,” the cuffs would open.

The manager took the cuffs, ostensibly to show them to the circus’s owner.

The night of the challenge, Houdini entered the ring with his bag of cuffs. He unpacked the dozen cuffs and, as expected, Kleppini pounced on the French cuffs.

“I will open these cuffs. I challenge Houdini to lock them on me,” Kleppini shouted. “I’ll show him that it is us Germans who lead the world.”

Houdini took the cuffs and secured them on Kleppini’s wrists. Then he addressed the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you can all go home. I do not lock a cuff on a man merely to let him escape. If he tries this cuff until doomsday, he cannot open it. To prove this, though the regular closing time of the circus is 10:30, I will allow him to remain here until 2:30
A.M.
”

Kleppini went into his cabinet at nine
P.M.
He still hadn’t escaped a half an hour later, when the headlining ballet feature came on. By eleven
P.M.
almost the entire auditorium had cleared out, but Kleppini was still sequestered. Enraged, the circus owner screamed, “Out with Kleppini,” and some stagehands were ordered to topple the cabinet. Still manacled, Kleppini scurried into the dressing room as the remainder of the audience left in disgust.