The Secret Life of Houdini (8 page)

Somewhere during those early years, he learned an astounding effect where he would swallow a large number of needles, ingest a long piece of thread, and, after an examination of his mouth, pull out the long thread with the needles dangling from it. The “needles” would become a mainstay of his act for his entire life.

One particularly alluring performer was the beautiful Evatima Tardo, who would allow herself to be bitten on her bare shoulder by a rattlesnake, be impaled on a makeshift cross, and have her face and neck used as a cushion for dozens of pins. Her amazing tolerance for pain and resistance to poison came from an incident in her childhood in Cuba when she was bitten by a fer-de-lance, the most poisonous snake in the hemisphere. Houdini was smitten both by her beauty and her showmanship; while undergoing some of these tortures, she would blithely laugh and sing. Her end was grisly, however. Although immune to pain and poison, she fell victim to love and bullets, dying in a double-murder-suicide love triangle.

Financially, the stint with the circus was a godsend. Houdini made extra money selling soap and toiletries to the other performers, and Bess pulled in two extra dollars by singing the songs from the official circus songbook that was for sale. Since they didn’t have expenses to speak of, Houdini was able to bank their entire income (minus the $12 he’d religiously send to Cecilia each week). But on this tour they had one of their first major flare-ups. Houdini had “forbidden” Bess to go see a show in the town that the troupe was currently playing. She was adamant, and Harry told her that if she “disobeyed” him, he would “send her home.” She ignored him, so he burst into the theater, carried her out, and “spanked” her. Dividing their savings, he took her to the train station and bought her a ticket to Bridgeport, where her sister lived.

As the train was about to pull out, he handed her their small dog.

“I always keep my word. Good-by, Mrs. Houdini,” he said, mockingly tipping his hat.

Bess was hysterical the whole ride to Bridgeport. When she got to her sister’s, she was fawned over and Houdini was cursed, but she just wanted to beg his forgiveness and go back to him. At two
A.M.
the doorbell rang and Bess got her chance.

She rushed to the door where Houdini stood and fell into his arms.

“See, darling, I told you I would send you away if you disobeyed, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t fly after you and bring you back.”

The chastened couple returned to the circus and vowed not to let their private disputes impinge on their professional responsibilities again.

With the circus season over, Houdini had managed to save some money, so when Henry Newman, his cousin on his mother’s side, approached him with an opportunity to buy a partnership in a touring burlesque company for which he was doing the advance work, Harry became an entrepreneur, part owner of the American Gaiety Girls.

Although the Houdinis got good notices for their Metamorphosis, the burlesque segments of the show got mixed reviews. They toured the Northeast until the end of January and resumed a swing through New England in March. During the February hiatus, Houdini managed to join up with another burlesque company and perform a turn as “Professor Morat,” a European hypnotist, who put a man in a trance and then demonstrated that he was impervious to pain by allowing the audience to jab pins and needles into the soft parts of the man’s anatomy. Morat also hypnotized several subjects from the audience and had them do ridiculous things under the influence, much to the delight of the rest of the crowd. Back with the Gaiety Girls in March, and desperate to pull in larger box offices, Houdini and his partners even brought in a female wrestler who would wrangle with local male volunteers (up to 122 pounds) in a very surrealistic performance. But by the end of April, the Gaiety Girls came to an ugly end with the manager of the troupe arrested for fraud and the performers stranded in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. It was a blow to the entrepreneurial dreams of Harry, but, in some ways, it was just as much a blow to his younger brother Leopold, who would routinely escape from his medical school studies to tag along with the traveling troupe until “that illustrious Prof Morat gave him a kick in the pants and sent him home, because he had to go to college and preferred to look at the nice padded shapes of those beautiful burlesquers.”

Desperate for work and with debts to pay off, the Houdinis traveled to Boston at the end of May to work with Marco the Magician for a tour of the Maritime Provinces in Canada. Marco was in reality the mild-mannered Edward J. Dooley, a church organist from Connecticut who had saved for years to take out a large magic show patterned after his idol, Alexander Herrmann, Compars’s younger brother, the most famous living magician at that time. He was, in some ways, the first of a succession of father figures to Harry. Houdini was even introduced to the audience as Marco’s son-in-law and “successor,” and his Metamorphosis with Bess was a showstopper. But business lagged because a performer named “Markos” had traveled this route the previous summer and had ruined the audience with a night of horrid, amateurish magic. By the beginning of July, the Marco show went bust.

The only real memorable thing about this half-year was that, desperate to make his mark in show business, Houdini started to perform handcuff escapes, first as a refinement of Metamorphosis, then as a vehicle to promote the shows, and eventually as the beginning of a pure escape act. At the end of September 1895, Houdini had bought a handcuff escape act (basically a ring of handcuff keys) from W. D. LeRoy, a Boston-based magician turned magic dealer. The act itself had been created by a brilliant inventor named (ironically) B. B. Keyes. Determined to improve Metamorphosis, Houdini began to fetter his hands with handcuffs instead of rope or braid. On November 8, 1895, he even offered to use a pair of borrowed handcuffs from an audience member for the effect, much as he would sometimes borrow a jacket from the audience and put it on right before he entered the trunk, the jacket magically being worn by Bess when she was brought out.

Cognizant of the fact that most people not only didn’t own their own pair of handcuffs but also probably had never even handled a pair and certainly didn’t know much about cuffs, chains, or shackles, Houdini came up with the brilliant idea of promoting his shows by challenging the unassailable authorities in the field of restraint—the police. Unlike his previous monetary “prize” challenges, here Houdini was not challenging others to prove themselves, now he was defying the authorities to keep him subjugated. On November 22, Houdini walked into the police station in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and offered to escape from any handcuffs they could place on him. And he did, freeing himself from both the modern and “old-time” police bracelets. This dramatic challenge and escape naturally got much attention in the newspapers. He repeated this publicity stunt in every city for the rest of the tour.

By March of 1896, the ante had been raised. After an exhibition of escaping from handcuffs in the New Britain police station, Houdini announced that he would “release himself” from any pair of handcuffs that were brought to the show. Houdini had hit on a surefire way of demonstrating his prowess. If the audience couldn’t come with him to his exhibitions in the police stations, he would bring the authorities onstage.

On June 10, responding to announcements that Houdini would test “anything in St. John [New Brunswick] that could bind him,” Officer Baxter and private citizens Arthur McGinley and John McCafferty strode onstage laden with heavy chains, handcuffs, and leg irons. They wrapped the chains around his body and handcuffed Houdini with his hands behind his back. At the same time they shackled his feet. Helped into his small curtained cabinet that he called his “ghost box,” he took only minutes to emerge a free man. It was such a marvelous performance that many in the audience were convinced that he was “in league with the spirits.”

A few weeks later, at the Academy of Music in Halifax, after an announcement had been made that Houdini could release himself from any handcuffs that might be brought onstage, Sergeant Collins came forward with police handcuffs and with the assistance of Mr. Urnan, the chef at the Halifax Hotel, trussed the magician into an impossible-looking contorted position. It took him a little more than a minute to free himself. The performance was billed as “Escape from Dorchester.” The seeds of Houdini’s world-famous challenge handcuff act had been sown.

Houdini’s police challenges never failed to generate press, but he knew from his experience with circus parades that outdoor spectacles were instrumental in generating word-of-mouth publicity for those who might not read a daily newspaper. On a pleasant summer day in Halifax, Houdini invited the press, local dignitaries, and any curious bystanders to convene on a highway outside of town to see him make an escape that had never been attempted before. All of the local reporters showed up, one even accompanied by the owner of his paper. After all, who would want to miss seeing this young magician free himself after he had been tied onto the back of a horse like some Wild West desperado? After exchanging pleasantries with the group, Houdini mounted his steed. First his hands were tied behind his back and then the horse’s trainer bound Houdini’s feet together under the horse’s belly.

From then on things began to go downhill fast. Houdini had specified that he wanted the most docile beast they had in the stable, but whether by accident or malicious design, the trainer had brought a frisky, young, barely broken colt. Not used to having someone tied to its back, the horse began to buck furiously. There was no danger that Houdini would be thrown by the animal, but the very real possibility existed that the creature would just drop to the ground and try to roll its burden off, which would have crushed its human cargo.

Then the horse switched tactics altogether. To the dismay of Houdini, and the assembled press and local luminaries, the colt just took off at a breakneck pace down the road. Now there was no way that Houdini could effect his escape, not until the horse had been thoroughly tired out. It wasn’t until they rode for a few more miles that Houdini was able to work at the ropes and free himself. The only problem was that nobody was there to see it—the newsmen were halfway back to their offices by then, joking about the ridiculous stunt.

Houdini had made a rare miscalculation by not trying out the escape beforehand, but he learned a valuable lesson: You don’t practice in public. Plan ahead and be prepared for all contingencies.

Houdini started the straitjacket escape in
1899
. This is a movie still taken twenty years later.
From the collection of Roger Dreyer

The insane asylum patient lay still for a few seconds, his sweat pouring onto the canvas-padded floor. The only sound you could hear in the small cell was his staccato panting. If not for the fury in his eyes, you might have thought that he was finished. But he wasn’t.

Suddenly he started rolling over and over and over again, like a crazed dervish, kicking the floor as he twirled, every muscle in his body straining against the restraint. It looked like he was trying to lift his arms over his head, but it was all in vain. But still he struggled.

“It’s really much better than the restraint muffs we formerly used,” Dr. Steeves said, peering at the man through the small, barred window. “By crisscrossing the arms in front and strapping them securely in the back, the poor fellow has no chance of hurting others. Or himself. It’s really the most modern device we have. We call it the straitjacket.”

Dr. Steeves turned away from the small window.

“Now if we proceed down this corridor…”

Houdini really hadn’t heard a word the doctor said. He was still staring through that little window, entranced. Not because he was empathizing with the patient, although he had a soft spot in his heart for the weak and infirm. No, he was fascinated with the mechanics of the restraint device.

Now if he were only able to dislocate one arm at the shoulder joint, I bet that would give him enough slack to eventually get his arms free. But he’d need some solid foundation to place the elbow…
.

That night Houdini hardly slept at all. During the few moments that he managed to doze off, all he dreamt of were straitjackets, maniacs, and padded cells. The rest of the time he wondered how the audience would react to seeing a man bound into a straitjacket effect his freedom.

The very next morning Houdini called Dr. Steeves and borrowed one of the canvas jackets. By the end of the week, Houdini was escaping from a straitjacket onstage.

As creative as Houdini was, he still hadn’t really learned how to sell his escapes, except for the Metamorphosis, of course. When he retreated into his ghost box, and managed to writhe and twist until he could get that infernal straitjacket off, the audience didn’t know what to think, and they certainly missed all the drama. It wasn’t until 1904 that his brother Theo hit upon the idea of performing the straitjacket escape in full view of the audience, a simple but brilliant conception that Houdini immediately embraced.