The Secret Life of Houdini (36 page)

The French magic community was justly outraged at Houdini’s defilement of their national hero and immediately came to Robert-Houdin’s defense and started to attack Houdini in their journals.

All that was missing was a challenge. Not for long. By the next issue of
Conjurer’s
, the last to have an installment, Houdini had given up any pretense that this fight wasn’t personal. “In the Robert-Houdin articles we fairly revolutionized the history of magic,” Houdini frothed. “Robert-Houdin has been uncrowned as the king of conjuring and automata, and the crown has been distributed, bit by bit, among the earlier magicians to whom it rightfully belonged. Men on two continents who once proclaimed Robert-Houdin as magic’s hero now refer to him as the Prince of Pilferers,” he lied.

Robert-Houdin, the great master and source of Houdini’s name.
Conjuring Arts Research Center

Debate over
The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin
raged for years. The book wasn’t entirely without merit. As a history of magic, Houdini did find some new, interesting information through his discovery of rare clippings, broadsides, and images that went back about one hundred years, but the book’s anecdotes and analyses are riddled with errors and outright lies. The question remains—why?

Houdini was an intelligent man who understood human nature. His career attests to that. We know that it’s not out of character for Houdini to lash out against his perceived enemies. He did that his entire life, taking aim and doing damage to imitators and those who might have insulted him or his family. None of those episodes even come close to his animosity toward a long-dead magician to whom he owed an enormous debt and who, unlike his imitators and enemies, couldn’t defend himself. Even though he had publicly denounced his former mentor, he never once broke faith with Robert-Houdin’s theories and repeatedly emulated, by his actions, his once-revered role model.

It’s too simplistic to say that Houdini was brainwashed by the bitter old Alexander Heimburger, who fed him a steady diet of lies about the French magician he never met. It’s charitable to suggest that this coterie of old, long-forgotten, unsuccessful magicians, who poisoned him with respect toward Robert-Houdin, stirred pity in him. Perhaps attacking the elegant French magician became a way to claim glory for them who, in Houdini’s mind, might have stood in as surrogates for his own father, another revered old man who never received the recognition and acclaim that his son felt the world owed him.

One intriguing theory proposed by Ricky Jay, eminent magic historian, paraphrases Gore Vidal: For Houdini it wasn’t enough to succeed; others had to fail. He felt he must discredit his mentor in order to make himself seem greater. Even so, his attack on Robert-Houdin was wrong. It also backfired. Robert-Houdin is still considered preeminent, and Houdini’s twisted agenda permanently discredited him as an historian.

The controversy over
The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin
never touched Houdini the Superman. That creation remained safe and bulletproof. But cut through the chains, peel off the layers of mythology, and you’ll find an uneducated boy bearing a grudge—a dark venom that permanently stained Harry Houdini the man.

With his immersion into historical and literary pursuits, it seemed that Houdini was finally going to make good on his longstanding desire to retire from the grueling work of being an escape artist. As soon as he put out his first issue of
Conjurer’s Monthly
, his old sidekick from the Professor Marco days, Bert Kilby, wrote him and timidly asked him if Houdini would sell his act to him, since he had heard from the professor that Houdini was in New York publishing a magazine and was “going to give up the business.” He added that he would never have even asked his question had he not heard that Houdini was about to retire.

Houdini had been threatening retirement, even in print. In the premiere issue of his magazine, in an article called “Tricks with Handcuffs,” Houdini rationalizes that it’s all right to tip some of his handcuff methods “as I claim to have the honor of having placed on the market an act or performance by which many an individual is now making a livelihood, whilst I am about to retire.” On November 4, 1907, he told
The Kansas City Post
that these were his farewell dates in America. He planned to leave for Europe in May of 1908, fulfill his commitments for two years, and then “it will be to retire to private life and conduct my research in the field of magic.” Ten days later, he wrote his old friend Dr. Waitt and told him he was certain he’d play Boston again before sailing for Europe but “perhaps the
LAST TIME
!”

By the end of 1907, the audiences seemed to be becoming inured to Houdini’s myriad escapes. By now they knew that handcuffs, leg irons, straitjackets, packing cases, locked and roped trunks, glass boxes, coffins, and even giant footballs couldn’t contain him. On January 6, 1908, Houdini began an engagement at the Columbia Theatre in St. Louis. The next day his mother came for a visit, and she stayed a little over a week. Perhaps it was his desire to make up for all the time lost with her, maybe it was just fatigue from the last three years on the road, and maybe it was just the audience’s perception that Houdini was back with the same old material, but the box office receipts were drastically down. On January 20, two weeks into his scheduled four-week run, manager Tate called Houdini down to his office.

Tate motioned for him to have a seat. Houdini warily sat down.

“I suppose you know why I called you in,” Tate said.

“No, not really,” Harry lied.

“Well maybe you can’t see it from your little cabinet, but there are a helluva lot of empty seats out there,” Tate growled.

“Well, it has been cold…” Houdini started.

Tate slammed some papers down on his desk.

“It didn’t stop Eva Tanguay from selling out in Chicago,” he said, and bolted up from his chair and walked around his desk to where Houdini was sitting.

“I don’t know how you can do it. But you better come up with something quick. You have two more weeks here, and if this keeps up, you are not worth a $5 bill to me.”

Houdini just stared straight ahead. Tate’s words had cut him as badly as Hodgson’s brutal chaining. Perhaps he was closer to retiring than he thought. Houdini got up out of the chair.

“I hope you are mistaken, Mr. Tate,” he said.

T
HE AUDIENCE GASPED AS THE MAGICIAN
disappeared from sight into the oversize milk can, water splashing over the edge from the displacement. Time was of the essence, so his assistants rapidly affixed the metal cover. Grabbing the locks from the six audience members who were onstage surrounding the can, they rapidly locked the cover down. The cabinet was pulled out, surrounding the can, and the curtain was drawn. Now all that was left was the escape. Or else a death by drowning.

What the hell? Why isn’t this moving? Is this some sick trick?

He was pounding on the inside of the can more and more frantically. The can itself was gimmicked, the neck consisting of two walls, an outer and an inner. The lid had been locked to the outer neck. So all the performer had to do was to push up on the top of the can and the whole outer neck (and locked-on lid) would telescope up and off. What he didn’t know was that the can had been dropped by stagehands as it was being unloaded from the truck prior to the performance. Its side had been dented enough so that the two nested necks couldn’t slide. Now he was truly locked inside a milk can filled to the brim with water.

The orchestra played and the audience waited. And waited. After two minutes, one of the assistants sensed that something was dreadfully wrong. He peered into the cabinet. The can was undisturbed. Frantic now, he overturned the cabinet and rushed to unlock the padlocks.

The committee from the audience just got in the way. They meant well, but they confused things, and now the keys to the individual locks were all mixed up. Meanwhile, the audience, realizing that something dreadfully wrong had happened, was in a state of frenzy. And now, to compound things, the magician’s wife rushed onto the stage, hysterical.

Houdini’s Milk Can escape.
From the collection of Tad Ware

Precious seconds ticked away as the correct combination of locks and keys was found. Finally the locks were all opened, and the assistant ripped the lid off the can. The seemingly lifeless magician was pulled out of the can and laid on the floor, the water cascading all over the stage. By then, thankfully, the theater curtain had come down, and a house doctor rushed up and began to administer artificial respiration. The escape artist was partially revived and rushed to the local hospital, where he told the doctors that in more than ten years of performing this escape, this was the first time that he had failed to free himself. It was also the last. Royden Joseph Gilbert Raison de la Genesta, who performed as simply “Genesta,” died in that hospital shortly after admission. He died in 1930, performing the magic effect that had resurrected Houdini’s career in 1908.

With the Milk Can escape, Houdini was able to bring to the stage the element of the real risk of death that was present in his outdoor handcuffed jumps into bodies of water. This was a crucial turning point, not only for him but also for the magical arts in general. Other than bullet catching, which despite its real bullets and real guns was still usually perceived by the audience as a “trick,” real, palpable, life-and-death danger had never been presented as a dreadful consequence of a performance on the magician’s stage.

Genesta’s tragic death was not the only mishap incurred performing the Milk Can. Hardeen came close to death in the can. One night he fainted inside it, and his two assistants had to literally cut slits in the bottom of the container with a fire ax and then pull him out, unconscious. After a few days’ rest, he was back in the can and performed the effect until he died at age sixty-nine.

Houdini might have thought that he would dissuade imitators by conceiving of such a dangerous effect, since it took him months of rigorous physical training before he would attempt the feat. Always blessed with a prodigious ability to hold his breath for prolonged lengths of time, Houdini began practicing and routinely broke the three-minute mark. On December 17, 1907, he did a trial run of the effect without adding water to the can, calling it “an escape from a galvanized liquid air can.” He was trying it out both on his audience and, more important, on Bess, who had just returned from New York where she had undergone an operation. “She saw me do the can trick, thinks it is great. I offered her ten dollars if she could tell me how it was done. She failed to fathom trick.
GOOD
,” he wrote in his diary.

Houdini’s new great effect was being developed by his friend Montraville M. Wood, a brilliant inventor and past associate of Thomas Edison. Wood did an entertaining show, displaying his innovations on the Chautauqua lecture circuit. He was a Chicago area resident, and his inventions spanned from the two-button electrical light switch to a new type of torpedo and a gyroscope that would assist pilots so they could fly at night or in windy conditions. He also touted the use of a monorail to span long distances and worked on a way to allow wallpaper to store enough light during the day that it could illuminate rooms at night. Houdini and Wood exchanged numerous letters during this early phase of development of the can, and Wood would later come up with eight different methods for Houdini to escape from the can after it had been thoroughly examined by audience members.