The Secret Life of Houdini (47 page)

“Mother, do you remember the promise I made Father years ago that I would always look after you and make your days as comfortable as he made them for you? Well, Mother, I am now able to fulfill that promise. Hold out your apron,” he said.

And with that, Harry poured a glittering stream of gold in his mother’s apron, fulfilling the rabbi’s deathbed prophecy.

Mrs. Weiss looked with astonishment at the treasure in her lap and tears welled up in her eyes. She hugged her son, and, just as he had done countless times as a child, he lay with his head on her breast. They both wept for joy.

It was the greatest thrill of Houdini’s life.

L
A-DIES AND GEN-TLE-MEN,” HE BEGAN IN
his stentorian voice, with a crisp, staccato delivery. “In introducing my latest invention—the Wa-ter

Torture Cell—although there is nothing supernatural about it, I am willing to forfeit the sum of $1,000 to anyone who can prove that it is possible to obtain air inside of the Torture Cell when I am locked up in it, in the reg-u-lation manner, after it has been filled with water.”

The stark, severe-looking mahogany-and-glass box that was sitting on the stage certainly looked like it lived up to its name—the Chinese Water Torture Cell. Just the sight of the apparatus was enough to give you shivers and make you believe, as one critic noted, that you were about to witness a ritual sacrifice. And now Houdini walked briskly up to the cell, which was flanked on both sides by his assistants, who were wearing slick black rubber coats over their customary ceremonial officer’s coats, making them look like unhooded executioners.

“I will first thoroughly explain the apparatus, and then I will invite a committee to step upon the stage to examine everything to see that things are just as I represent. The cover is made to fit into the steel frame which prevents it from being opened even if it were not locked. The steel grill acts for the double-fold purpose of con-densing the space inside of the Torture Cell—which at the same time prevents my turning around even were I capable of drawing both my feet through the cover.

“In front, a plate of glass for self-protection. Should anything go wrong when I am locked up—as it’s absolutely impossible to ob-tain air—one of my assistants watches through the curtains, ready in case of emergency, with an ax, to rush in, de-molish-ing the glass, allowing the water to flow out, in order to save my life. I honestly and pos-itively do not expect any accidents to happen…. But we all know, accidents
will
happen—and when least expected.

“The bands of steel form an impromp-tu cage held to-gether with padlocks that enclose the same. I would like to invite eight, ten, or twelve gentlemen to kindly step up on the stage. I assure you I have no confederates, and any gentleman is perfectly welcome. A staircase at your service on this side of the stage, and now is your op-por-tunity. I thank you for your attention.”

With that, Houdini gestured toward the staircase and the volunteers slowly made their way to the stage. The men circled the apparatus, inspecting every part of it. While they did this, Houdini quickly exited the stage and shortly after came back wearing a blue bathing suit underneath a robe.

“Are you quite satisfied?” Houdini asked.

One of the men suspected that the floor underneath the cell might contain a trapdoor.

“Choose any part of the stage you like and I’ll have the cell removed to it,” Houdini offered.

The man picked a spot, and the assistants moved it to the man’s satisfaction. Then the slicker-wearing attendants began to fill up the cell with water, both from large buckets and a hose that poured a continuous stream.

Houdini took off his bathrobe.

“I am ready!” he shouted. “Begin!”

Houdini lay down flat on his back on a mat while audience members adjusted his feet in the stocks and snapped that first set of locks in place. A steel frame was then passed around his body. They then hooked a number of ropes to the steel frame, and Houdini was slowly pulled up, feetfirst, and suspended, upside down, over the top of the torture cell.

Houdini was going to go headfirst into the enclosure.

There was a dramatic pause, and Houdini drew a number of deep breaths. With two assistants, one on each side of the cell, guiding him in, the magician was slowly lowered in the cell, displacing water onto the stage as it poured over the sides of the cell.

Then things got frantic. They quickly snapped the second set of locks on the stocks that held his feet secure in place. The steel frame was crossed in front and locked, and the cabinet’s curtains were drawn all around the cell.

The orchestra broke into a stirring rendition of “The Diver.” The audience, as one, was holding its breath. To the side of the curtain, Franz Kukol stood with an ax, in case an accident did happen. After forty seconds that seemed like an eternity, there was a slight rustling of the curtains. The committee and the audience stared as one. And then suddenly the curtains were ripped open and Houdini jubilantly bounded out of the cabinet. He was dripping wet, his eyes were bloodshot, there was even a speck of foam on his lips, but he was free.

Houdini in the foot stocks before he’s hoisted up and lowered into the Chinese Water Torture Cell.
From the collection of Roger Dreyer

The audience jumped to its feet and shook the walls with its applause. Quickly, the top of the cell was unlocked and removed, and Houdini scampered to the top of the tank and sat on its lip, playfully splashing his feet in the water to prove that the water hadn’t been drained. The audience cheered even more lustily now as the curtain closed.

The Water Torture Cell, or Upside Down, as Houdini called it in private, was one of the greatest magic effects ever produced. Houdini first performed it in Berlin at the beginning of his fall 1912 season, but the cell itself had been in storage in London since April 29, 1911. On that day, Houdini debuted the new escape at a special matinee at the Hippodrome in Southampton, England. Legend has it that there was only one spectator in the audience since the show was unadvertised, and the price of admission had been set at one guinea—a great sum back then. What that audience member saw was a playlet in one act and two scenes entitled
Challenged
or
Houdini Upside Down
. To protect what would become Houdini’s greatest theater piece, he copyrighted it as a play instead of patenting it as a magical effect.

Houdini defeats even scary monsters.
From the Granger Collection

The Upside Down was the daring water-based escape that Collins had been working on since he joined the company. Hardeen later claimed that the cost of producing the cell was more than $20,000 back in 1911. Yet after Collins and Houdini had perfected it and it had been copyrighted, the mysteriarch waited almost a year and a half to perform it as part of his show. When he finally did, it was an immediate smash, “without doubt the greatest spectacular thing ever witnessed on the stage,” Houdini wrote Goldston with his characteristic modesty. Now at last he had conceived of a death-defying stunt that his imitators couldn’t duplicate. Or so he thought. Ernst Babst and Ernst Schwandtke, two German impresarios, became frequent visitors at Houdini’s Circus Busch shows and several times volunteered as committee members to get a closer look at the apparatus. When Houdini moved on to Bremen to play another circus, his dressing room was broken into “to steal my act,” he wrote. Sure enough, as soon as Houdini left Germany, an attractive woman named Miss Undina began performing the Upside Down, under the management of the two Germans. Houdini’s lawyers obtained a quick injunction and a subsequent court ruling turned Undina right side up for good.

Perhaps to deter future female imitators (who being smaller than most men would find it easier to do the necessary contortions to escape from the Upside Down), Houdini decided to create and control his own competition once again. On November 28, he hired a woman named Wanda Timm at a rate of 150 marks per month for a one-year term. Performing under the name of Miss Trixy (which was the same name that Houdini had used for Hardeen’s original assistant), Wanda and her duplicate cell made a big hit in Germany, Denmark, France, and Russia.

In January of 1913, Houdini returned to England, ready to debut his sensational new effect there. First, he fired a warning salvo in the pages of the
Strand
. “I wish to warn Managers and the Profession in General that I have invented another sensation
viz.
THE WATER TORTURE CELL
which is the greatest feat that I have ever attempted in a strenuous career and hereby wish to give notice that I have
SPECIAL LICENCE FROM THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN
(granted May 2nd, 1912) as a Stage Play and I will certainly stop anyone from infringing on my rights.”

Even the Water Torture Cell wasn’t enough for Houdini. He continued to reprise other challenges from his strenuous career. In Hull, he escaped from a seabag, an old-time leather-and-canvas super straitjacket meant for mutineers or drunken sailors. His only condition for the escape was that no ropes should be fastened around his neck because of the danger of strangulation. It took him twenty minutes to get free. The next day a reporter interviewed Houdini and suggested that his face was showing the strains of his feats. Houdini matter-of-factly replied that in the light of the amazing amount of pressure that he put on himself, he didn’t expect that he would live long.

Houdini rehearsing the Upside Down. He’s using the version without the inner cage.
From the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook

After only performing the Upside Down in England for a month, Houdini already began orchestrating “re-challenges” of it. On February 3, in Leeds, an author named S. R. Campion challenged Houdini after he had seen the magician perform the Water Torture Cell. Although he wrote Houdini that his performance of the Upside Down was “excellent,” he challenged Houdini to redo the escape under the following conditions:

1. That I use my own locks which are not to be seen until the night of the performance.
   
2. That the iron cage be discarded.
   
3. That the cell be put on any part of the stage that I desire.
   
4. That the water be clean.
   
5. That I supertend [sic] the whole of the operation with the exception of your work in the cabinet.
   
6. That you release yourself in
   four minutes
   .
   
7. That the locks be exactly as I leave them.