The Man Who Dared Police to Hold Him
Imagine a performer walking into a police station and daring the officers to lock him up. That was Harry Houdini's calling card. On tour in Europe, he billed himself as Harry "Handcuff" Houdini. In each city, he challenged local police to put him in shackles and lock him in their jails. He was often stripped and searched first.
His European break came in 1900 in London. He showed an escape from handcuffs at Scotland Yard and baffled the police so well that a theater booked him for six months. His pay rose to $300 a week.
In Moscow, he escaped from a Siberian prison transport van. He claimed that if he had failed, he would have had to ride all the way to Siberia, where the only key was kept.
From Erik Weisz to Harry Houdini
Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest on March 24, 1874. His family moved to the United States in 1878 and settled in Appleton, Wisconsin. They changed their name to Weiss, and Erik became Ehrich. As a child, he made his public debut as a nine-year-old trapeze artist called "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air".
He took his stage name from the French magician Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, whose autobiography he read in 1890. The "Harry" likely came from "Ehri", his family nickname.
Success was slow. He worked in dime museums and sideshows and billed himself as the "King of Cards". Some magicians saw him as only an average sleight of hand performer. In 1894 he met Bess, who became his wife and stage partner. His big break came in 1899, when manager Martin Beck told him to focus on escapes.
Sealed in a Milk Can
Imitators soon copied his handcuff act. So on January 25, 1908, Houdini moved on to something bolder. In his Milk Can Escape, he was handcuffed and sealed inside an oversized milk can filled with water. He then escaped behind a curtain. He even invited the audience to hold their breath with him while he was inside.
Posters warned "Failure Means A Drowning Death", and crowds loved it. He only did the act regularly for four years, yet it is still one of the stunts most tied to his name.
In 1912 he replaced it with the Water Torture Cell. His feet were locked in stocks, and he was lowered upside down into a glass-fronted tank of water. He held his breath for more than three minutes. He simply called it "the Upside Down".
The Daily Mirror Challenge and Other Stunts
In 1904, London's Daily Mirror newspaper challenged him to escape from special handcuffs. It claimed a locksmith had spent five years making them. About 4,000 people and more than 100 journalists came to watch. The attempt dragged on for over an hour. At one point, Houdini held a penknife in his teeth to cut off his coat. After an hour and ten minutes, he walked out free and wept as the crowd cheered. Many modern biographers believe the long struggle was pure showmanship.
He loved big public stunts. He was strapped into a straitjacket and hung upside down from tall buildings, drawing tens of thousands of onlookers. In New York in 1912, he was nailed inside a packing crate weighed down with lead and lowered into the East River. He escaped in 57 seconds.
Pilot, Film Star and Fraud Hunter
Houdini was never just an escape artist. In 1909 he bought a French Voisin biplane. The next year he took it to Australia, and on March 18, 1910, at Diggers Rest in Victoria, he made one of the first powered airplane flights ever made in that country. Oddly, after that tour, he never flew again.
He also starred in several silent films, but he quit the movie business in 1923, complaining that "the profits are too meager". On stage, he was for many years the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville. He once made a full-grown elephant vanish in New York.
In the 1920s, he worked to expose fake mediums who took advantage of grieving families. He served on a Scientific American committee that offered a cash prize for proof of supernatural powers. Nobody ever won it.
