The Secret Life of Houdini (40 page)

There was an immediate rush to the bank. Two working men and a policeman flung off their coats and plunged in, hoping to save the madman when he came to the surface. He appeared presently with his arms freed from the chains, and before the police could reach him was rescued by a boat which put out from the opposite bank. On reaching shore he jumped into the motor, and was driven on.

The police, however, discovered Houdini’s identity, and he is said to be prosecuted for being improperly dressed and for bathing in the Seine during prohibited hours.

What the paper didn’t report was that Houdini had hired a film crew to film the entire episode. By June, Houdini had incorporated the films into his turn and had choreographed his act to perfection. When it was time for his performance, the house lights were dimmed and two short films were shown, one of his Rochester bridge jump, the other his dive into the Seine. Then the lights came up, the curtain slowly rose, revealing a shiny zinc water can surrounded by several pails, all guarded by three imposing-looking uniformed assistants standing at attention. As the drama intensified, without even a word being spoken, Houdini strode onto the stage to a standing ovation.

After two solid weeks, the high winds had finally died down, and the mechanic, a small, stout Frenchman named Brassac, had cleared the plane to attempt a takeoff. The German army officers made their last inspection of the Voisin biplane—one of the few Voisins in the world. Reportedly, there were only a couple dozen aviators in the world at the time, so this was an excellent opportunity for the German regiment stationed at the Hufaren parade grounds in Wandsbek, a small town outside of Hamburg, to learn the rudiments of aviation, a technology that the military knew would be an essential component of future warfare.

The Voisin was an interesting-looking aircraft. It resembled a big box kite, thirty-three feet long by about six feet broad with four vertical panels, dividing the main surface into four large cells. Its wingspan was nearly thirty-three feet. The rudder was off to the rear of the plane, nested in a six-foot-square box-shaped tail, connected to the plane by four outriggers. This particular Voisin had been souped up with a state-of-the-art E.N.V. 60?80 horsepower engine, and it had a steel-shafted single aluminum eight-foot propeller that was capable of 1200 revolutions per minute. There were no ailerons on the craft since the Wright Brothers had patented those devices, so the rudder functioned both to stabilize as well as steer the aircraft.

The pilot settled in the cockpit and adjusted his goggles. His cap was worn backwards, the style of all aviators at that time. Brassac spun the propeller and the engine started. All was set. Smoothly the plane taxied for a bit on the ground and then lifted up into the air. The German soldiers cheered lustily. Suddenly, after just a few seconds in the air, the plane nose-dived and plummeted to the ground.

Brassac and some of the soldiers rushed to the wreckage. The front end of the plane had taken most of the impact, not a good omen for the pilot. Ironically enough, the rear panels that surrounded the rudder were totally intact, as were the side canvas panels, both of which were emblazoned with large letters that spelled “
HOUDINI
.”

H
OUDINI WALKED AWAY FROM HIS FIRST
flying mishap with his dignity more injured than anything else. Although he would write in his diary, “I smashed the machine. Broke Propeller all to hell,” the plane itself and, most important, the engine, had sustained little damage. A new propeller was ordered from Paris and arrived in two weeks. Houdini counted the days until he could once again attempt his first successful flight.

His interest in the nascent field of aviation had become almost an obsession. In 1903, just six years before Houdini purchased his plane, Orville Wright had achieved the first sustained, controlled flight in a heavier-than-air, powered aircraft. It took another three years until that feat was duplicated in Europe by Houdini’s acquaintance Alberto Santos-Dumont, flying 722 feet in Paris. By 1908, Houdini already saw the possibility of incorporating the airplane into one of his spectacular outdoor stunts. He told a London reporter that he offered $5,000 for the use of one of the early Wright Brothers’ planes. His plan was to be handcuffed and flown over London, where he would parachute from the plane, escape from the manacles on the way down, and land safely in Piccadilly Circus. The scheme was scrapped when no safe way to parachute from the aircraft could be devised.

By 1909, great strides were being made in aviation. Houdini was in London on July 25, when a Frenchman named Louis Blériot became the first man to fly across the English Channel by airplane. He had been taught to fly by Houdini’s future engineer, Antonio Brassac, who also designed the monoplane that made the trip from Calais to Dover Castle in thirty-six and a half minutes. For his efforts he received a $5,000 prize, just one of many offered by Houdini’s friend Alfred Charles Harmsworth, who now owned and used the title Lord Northcliffe. Northcliffe’s interest in aviation had grown proportionately to his wealth and power. A few weeks later, Houdini, along with a half-million other cheering spectators, attended the weeklong First International Air Meet in Reims, France. It was the social event of the year as royalty, government officials, military experts, and the crème de la crème of European society watched the daredevil fliers pilot their odd-looking flying machines.

Houdini over Hamburg.
From the collection of Kenneth M. Trombly

Houdini was transfixed watching, as he would later describe it, “the aeroplanes floated about the sky like albatross soaring above some floating food.” He was immediately determined to buy one but uncertain of which type. Looking down the list of events, he saw a mechanic’s race listed, and deducing that they were certainly in the know, he watched carefully as Antonio Brassac piloted a plane owned by a man named Rougier to first place. That plane, a Voisin, attracted Houdini’s interest. He had been set to buy a Curtiss biplane, which had won the speed race, but it didn’t appear to be as safe as the Voisin. “I remembered I was but a timid bird, and I wanted to take no chances at the start,” Houdini recalled.

At the same time, Houdini was designing his own aircraft. He had sent Montraville M. Wood, one of the mechanical geniuses who labored behind the scenes for Houdini, schematics for a small airplane, but Wood could not get it to work. Wood was more optimistic about a larger plane that he was testing and was grateful to get clippings and news reports about the latest in flying machine technology from Houdini in Europe.

In November, Houdini, who was playing in Hamburg, attended the opening day of Aviation Week and watched as a French mechanic named Pequet flew a Voisin airplane. While he was soaring high in the sky, flames started shooting off his plane, and seconds later, his benzine tank exploded. Pequet began to glide down to Earth, but when he was still twenty feet from the ground, he was forced to leap from his craft as the flames threatened to envelop him. He suffered minor injuries to his chest from the fall. Still, Houdini was impressed. “That machine is mine,” he thought.

A few days later, it was. Houdini had located an exact replica of Pequet’s biplane, perhaps even the very craft he had seen at Reims. It was built by the Voisin Brothers. Houdini paid $5,000 for it and then ponied up a bit extra to import Antonio Brassac, who was so attached to the plane that he had “sobbed like baby” on the news that it had been sold to Houdini. With Brassac on hand to assemble the machine and to instruct the fledging pilot, Houdini was poised to become the twenty-fifth man to conquer the air in a powered craft.

First, he had to find a place to fly. There were few airports then, so Houdini entered into an arrangement with the commander of the German army troops at Wandsbek, near Hamburg. In exchange for using the Hufaren parade grounds as an airfield, Houdini would instruct the German soldiers in the mysteries of flight. And for six hundred and fifty marks, Houdini could rent a shed to serve as a hangar for his Voisin.

Now all he needed was for the weather to cooperate. Brassac was bizarrely maternal toward his craft, and he was loath to have Houdini attempt to fly if there were any traces of wind. For the first few weeks, they experienced stormy German winter weather, and Houdini was forced to sit behind the wheel with the plane in the shed, familiarizing himself with the fairly simple controls. When the steering wheel was pushed forward, the plane would ascend; pulled back, it would descend. The rudder was controlled by a foot pedal. There was also a choke to the side of the steering wheel that controlled the engine.

On the first windless morning, Houdini had his accident. After the new propeller arrived and the weather cooperated, Houdini tried again. On November 26, 1909 the magician made a successful flight over the parade grounds, witnessed by fewer than fifty people. He didn’t stay aloft too long, but it was long enough for photographers to record the event. Houdini duly dispatched pictures of the flight and of him in the plane, surrounded by German soldiers, to publications around the world. Three days later, he took out a $25,000 life insurance policy with the Albingia Company of Hamburg. On the back of the policy, Houdini recorded, “This is the first insurance ever taken out re accident in an aeroplane. I had to pay 10 marks (about 25 cents) every time I made a flight.”

It was a sensible move. Flying was very dangerous then. On September 7, a few weeks after the Reims show, the French pilot Eugene Lefebvre crashed his Wright Model A and earned the unenviable distinction of being the first pilot of a powered aircraft to die while flying. A little over a month later, at the same airfield in France, a student pilot named Richet turned his Voisin completely over and fell sixty feet to the ground. The plane was totaled and Richet was lucky to only break a thigh and have one of his eyes gouged out.

Besides being diverting entertainment for high society, whose members flocked to the air shows to see the young daredevils take their lives in their hands, controlled, powered flight in an airship had profound implications for the future of warfare.

The emergence of smaller aircraft made the reliance on massive balloons for military applications obsolete. By 1909, a Wright Model A or a Voisin was capable of sustained flights long enough to produce aerial surveillance. A few years later, pilots were able to accurately drop explosives on targets, giving planes offensive capabilities in conflicts.

Houdini’s friend Lord Northcliffe had been interested in aeronautics and aviation since 1889 and was convinced that aviation would play a major role in the next world conflict. In February of 1909, he traveled to France to see the Wright Brothers exhibit their flying machine. Appalled at England’s failure to send military representatives, he wrote his friend Lord Haldane, who was Britain’s secretary of state for war, decrying the fact that the British government was lagging in aviation research and development.

The correspondence continued for months; sensing a bureaucratic logjam, Northcliffe began to take his own measures to influence public opinion and force a sense of urgency on his government, the most ingenious of these being large cash incentives, through his newspapers, for completed flights. When he paid £1,000 to the French aviator Blériot for winning a contest for the first pilot to fly from France to England, it was a masterful way to further his agenda. The ensuing publicity created a storm of controversy about how vulnerable England was to an air attack from a neighboring country.

By 1916, Northcliffe had paid out over $95,000 in such prizes. (In the United States, newspapers followed his lead and also offered prize money for flights.) He also traveled extensively in Germany and France, reporting back to the war secretary on the state of aviation progress.

As 1910 approached, Northcliffe was faced with a large dilemma—how to help mold public opinion favorably to support aerial exploration and research. One way to accomplish that would be by encouraging the world’s most famous daredevil to fly his own biplane with his name emblazoned on it.

Tonight was the Malwa’s gala costume ball and Houdini, in his crumpled formal suit, was feeling a little bit out of place. Of course, he didn’t dare disappoint Bess, who had been so excited about the event that she had spent hours working on her costume. She was dressed as a fairy queen. In fact, Harry had dutifully donned his evening clothes most every night of their journey and escorted Bess to the ballroom so she could dance. Tonight was no exception. She had been dancing up a storm most of the night with the captain of the ship, and now she had come back to their table to refill her champagne glass. The next thing Houdini knew, his wife had passed out, tumbling to the floor. He sprang to his feet, picked her up, and carried her straight out of the ballroom to bed.

Houdini downplayed the incident in his diary. “Bess fainted near me,” he wrote. “I picked her up and took her to bed. First time she ever did such a thing. Think she has overexcited herself working on clothes, and she danced with the Captain, who danced only one way.” Houdini may have been in denial about Bess’s drinking or he may have had an eye on posterity as he penned his entries, but his notion that his wife could have overexcited herself designing her ball costume speaks volumes of the gap between them at this point in their relationship. While Bess was sewing sequins and fashioning a fairy wand, Houdini was wondering how he and his flying machine were going to get through another twenty-one days at sea until they reached Australia.