The Secret Life of Houdini (62 page)

Taking no chance on failing to make a huge opening splash, Houdini debuted the film at the Times Square Theater in New York in April of 1922, and trotted out one of Powers’s elephants to reprise his Vanishing Elephant illusion. A few weeks later, when the film opened wide, he sent out three separate touring troupes to play on the same bill as the movie. With all the hoopla, the film didn’t draw very well. The critics were kind but noted that the film had a schizophrenic quality about it; as a melodrama it was adequate, with one rescue scene from the rapids leading to Niagara Falls absolutely top notch. The problem was that the film was reaching for literary and spiritual import too. “The trouble is that the resumption of high literary meaning in the rest of the story is all bosh. So the net effect is pretty unsatisfactory. Serial melodrama and screen uplift won’t mix,” the
Variety
critic opined.

Houdini’s moguldom came to an abrupt end with the release in November of 1923 of
Haldane of the Secret Service
. He came up with another great promotional campaign, including thousands of doorknob tags that read, “This lock is not
HOUDINI
-proof. He could pick it as easily as you pick a daisy. See the Master-Man of Mystery
HOUDINI
in
Haldane of the Secret Service
. A picture that will thrill you to your marrows.” Despite the promotion, the reviews were brutal and the audiences were sparse. Even
Variety
was forced to note, “Perhaps the renown of Houdini is fading, or more probably the Broadway managers were wise to how bad a film this one is…. There is only one [escape], and that is a poorly staged affair showing the star free himself from a giant water mill…instead of going in for his specialty Houdini waltzes around in a tuxedo and dress suit.”

A little picnic on the movie set. They obviously weren’t serving Harry’s favorite repast.
From the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook

Haldane
was the death knell of the Houdini Picture Corporation. Succeeding productions were shelved and the company dissolved. In retrospect, Houdini’s involvement in movies, financially speaking, was a nightmare. He had to sue the Williamson Brothers twice, once to recoup a $2,500 promissory note for money he had advanced them, the second time for back salary from a movie that never got made. He wound up in litigation over his fifty percent share of the profits for the hugely successful
Master Mystery
. When he branched out on his own and took charge of the productions, his quirky sensibility and attempt to run away from the elements that made him successful onstage doomed their success. The only positives from Houdini’s involvement in motion pictures were that it spread his fame worldwide and greatly increased his vaudeville salary, ironically at a time when he had no real interest in performing again.

“I believe magicians are much much too honest to succeed away from our own business
and this is not a jest
,” he wrote his friend Goldston. “We are so busy with illusionary material that the businessman in a legal way out-trades us.” Now, nearly fifty, and with his best days as an escape artist behind him, he had squandered a fortune and suffered his greatest failure yet. It was time for a metamorphosis.

From the collection of Ricky Jay

A
TLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY—JUNE
18, 1922.

The curtains were drawn, fluttering from time to time with the gentle caress of the sea breeze. There was a writing pad on the table in the living room of the suite, along with two ordinary pencils. The medium was sitting in front of the pad. To her side sat her husband, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the world’s most famous mystery writer, the man who created Sherlock Holmes. He bowed his head.

“Almighty, we are grateful to you for this new revelation, this breaking down of the walls between two worlds. We thirst for another undeniable message from beyond, another call of hope and guidance to the human race at this, the time of its greatest affliction. Can we receive another sign from our friends from beyond?” Doyle recited.

He reached out and gently touched his wife’s hands, as if he were transferring power to her. Taken by their sincerity, Houdini closed his eyes and meditated on religious thoughts, so he could help as much as possible.

Lady Doyle suddenly seized a pencil and began to strike the table with her hand.

“This is the most energetic the forces have ever come,” she said.

She seemed to almost resist the agency that was making her hand quiver as she poised the pencil over the pad, but then she seemed to relent and the pencil began to move, as if on its own.

“Do you believe in God?” Lady Doyle asked. It was a cautionary question, to ensure that an evil spirit had not taken control of her.

Houdini desperately sought to contact his dead mother (pictured with Houdini). Lady Doyle facilitated it.
From the collection of Kenneth M. Trombly

As if in answer, her hand beat the table three times, which was an affirmative response.

“Then I will make the sign of the cross,” she said, and she drew a cross on the top of the pad.

Sir Arthur soothed her as she began to write, as if he was admonishing the spirit to be gentle with her.

The pad began to fill up with frenzied scribbling, page after page.

“Who is standing alongside of Houdini?” Sir Arthur inquired. “Is it Houdini’s mother?”

The medium struck the table three times. She continued to frantically fill up page after page, with Conan Doyle tearing off the pages, one by one, and passing them to Houdini.

He began reading.

“Oh, my darling, thank God, thank God, at last I’m through—I’ve tried, oh so often—now I am happy. Why, of course, I want to talk to my boy—my own beloved boy—Friends, thank you, with all my heart for this. You have answered the cry of my heart—and of his—God bless him—a thousand fold, for all his life for me—never had a mother such a son—tell him not to grieve, soon he’ll get all the evidence he is anxious for—Yes, we know—tell him, I want him to try to write in his own home. It will be far better so.

“I will work with him—he is so, so dear to me—I am preparing so sweet a home for him which one day in God’s good time he will come to—it is one of my great joys preparing it for our future—I am so happy in this life—it is so full and joyous—my only shadow has been that my beloved one hasn’t known how often I have been with him all the while, all the while—here away from my heart’s darling—combining my work thus in this life of mine.

“It is so different over here, so much larger and bigger and more beautiful—so lofty—all sweetness around one—nothing that hurts and we see our beloved ones on earth—that is such a joy and comfort to us—Tell him I love him more than ever—the years only increase it—and his goodness fills my soul with gladness and thankfulness. Oh, just this, it is me. I want him only to know that—that—I have bridged the gulf—That is what I wanted, oh so much—Now I can rest in peace.”

Houdini leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath.

Sir Arthur looked at Houdini. “Why don’t you ask her a question? Some test so that you will be certain that this really is your dear mother.”

“I don’t know if the spirit will answer direct questions,” Lady Doyle cautioned.

“Ask her if she can read your mind,” Sir Arthur suggested.

Houdini didn’t even have the time to get that question out of his mouth, when Lady Doyle grabbed the pad and began to write furiously.

“I always read my beloved son’s mind—his dear mind—there is so much I want to say to him—but—I am almost overwhelmed by this joy of talking to him once more—it is almost too much to get through—the joy of it—thank you, thank you, thank you, friend, with all my heart for what you have done for me this day—God bless you, too, Sir Arthur, for what you are doing for us—for us over here—who so need to get in touch with our beloved ones on the earth plane—

“If only the world knew this great truth—how different—life would be for men and women—Go on, let nothing stop you—great will be your reward hereafter—Good-bye—I brought you, Sir Arthur, and my darling son together—I felt you were the one man who might help us to pierce the veil—and I was right—Bless him, bless him, bless him, I say from the depths of my soul—he fills my heart and later we shall be together—oh, so happy—a happiness awaits him that he has never dreamed of—tell him I am with him—just tell him that I’ll soon make him know how close I am all the while—his eyes will soon be opened—Good-bye again—God’s blessing on you all—”

It had taken nine years but Houdini’s mother had finally contacted him.

An ex-physician and a current magician among the spirits, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meets Houdini.
Conjuring Arts Research Center

That the creator of the world’s most rational and analytic materialist, Sherlock Holmes, would embrace a religion that viewed itself as the antidote to that moribund philosophy would seem odd, but Conan Doyle’s conversion came after years and years of spiritual inquiry.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Scotland on May 22, 1859 to Charles and Mary Doyle, both religious Catholics. His father was a visionary artist who early in Arthur’s life descended into alcoholism and mental illness and was repeatedly institutionalized. Growing up in poverty, Arthur became extremely close to his mother, who sent him to Jesuit schools. Doyle rebelled against the strict teachings of the Church, but he sought alternative outlets for his spirituality, even while studying medicine. In 1880, he attended his first Spiritualist lecture, while his father was undergoing his horrific descent into madness. The next year he graduated medical school and set up a small practice. Business was slow so he began to write short stories. He delved into esoteric spiritual practices like mesmerism and Theosophy, and began experiments in telepathy. His successes opened him up to the possibility of psychic phenomena, and in 1887, the same year that his first Sherlock Holmes story was published, he attended a séance of an elderly male medium. He was so impressed that he wrote a letter to a Spiritualist magazine proclaiming that the séance “showed me at last that it was absolutely certain that intelligence could exist apart from the body.”