Because he put himself in peril.

I don't know exactly how he contacted the outside but they knew it was going wrong and they hacked him out of the thing, ripped the thing apart and took him out. Perhaps that experience so much scared him that he spent a lot of the rest of his life trying to be sure he could overcome it and survive it. And Houdini nodded that he could. But I am still waiting for someone to make a documentary and actually interview Houdini and actually show us how he was able to disappear , where did he go when he was invisible?

NARR: At age eighteen, Ehrich joined up with a friend to form a simple magic act performing sleight of hand tricks. He really did.

Harry was now an international star. SILVERMAN: He was thinking of getting out of magic but he went to fulfill a contract that he had in Minneapolis.

He got through. With the death of millions during World War I, spiritualism was flourishing. In 1904, he staged an event with London's biggest newspaper, The Daily Mirror. Don B. Wilmeth The organizers of the Worlds Fair expected the fair, the exposition, to be the great draw. Two minutes. Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library RANDI: They ministered to him, but they pretty well knew that he was doomed.

William H. McIlhany

And there is the striking way this one extraordinary performer embodied the deep desire for escape among tens of thousands of his fellow new Americans. In the wonderful picture of him at about the age of 16, he has a chest full of medals, one of which he won for a cross-country race in New York.

So hehe didnt just do an act.

He struck me as just one big muscle, with a controlled center somewhere.

RANDI: He was in effect what we would call today a mother's boy.

Ehrich became Harry. NARR: But no matter how much he prepared, there was always risk.

He always called them "my two girls.". He was born Ehrich Weiss in Budapest in 1874.

And one way he did that with the Milk Can was to say to them, "At the moment that I put my head beneath the water, I want you all to take a deep breath and hold your breath as long as you possibly can. : All of Houdinis escapes involved a lot of pain. Every escape carried some risk, and each performance took a physical toll.

"Houdini was really twice married," notes biographer Ken Silverman. "This wire changed my whole life's journey, " he later wrote.

I'm David McCullough. But in the movie business, Harry had met his match. I mean, he was married to Bess, and then in a way also married to his mother. He would be lifted up, upside-down, hanging from the lid. Harry promised to slow down, but he couldnt. I think Houdini probably knew that his career as a stage performer might be limited. Les merveilleux exploits de Houdini Paris (1909), 1925 radio address on spiritualism (transcript), Houdini on the Bible, Freud, spirits, and spells, Houdini The Man Who Walked Through Walls (1959), The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini (1993), Houdini!!! He got through.

For days, the Mirror fed the public every detail about a set of handcuffs that were guaranteed impossible to pick.

Here we had sort of a man-sized aquarium.

He had placards mounted onto handles and he would employ perhaps 20 people to carry these through the street. RANDI: I've had people actually ask me whether Houdini was a real person or whether he was like Sherlock Holmes, a fictional creation.

NARR: The first time he used handcuffs on stage, he knew he was on to something.

And on the train he developed a very high fever.

He was afraid that that would show Houdini really how the cuffs could be opened.

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin

He was inspired by spiritualist shows in which the performers would enter a cabinet locked in handcuffs. He found someone to share it with the following year when he met eighteen year old Beatrice Rahner. And you see his mother, just a small figure in a huge crowd of people waving good-bye to the boat. He didnt think the escape act could maintain a continuity that an audience would come to see just that.

After years of performing with his wife, Bess, in circuses, traveling medicine shows, and dime museums -- the lowest branches of show business -- Houdini began to wow the crowds on the vaudeville circuit with his handcuff escapes.

Theres a story that when he was young, he was swimming in the river.

Bess timed him as he stayed under for up to three minutes.

Danielle Dell'Olio

And then suddenly, dripping, he would appear from the cabinet. They would tie every piece of his body with ropes and chains, so it would be absolutely impossible to get out of it.

2000 All rights reserved It was one just great big hype.

You couldnt get anywhere near the East River.

Oh my darling, thank God, thank God, at last I'm through.

He made them feel important, I think.

Many, many times.

Beck saw that an escape act could be an act in itself.

This was an OK documentary.

Must find some other way of doing this." NARR: At age eighteen, Ehrich joined up with a friend to form a simple magic act performing sleight of hand tricks. In 1900 Harry and Bess toured England and Europe.

Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations

He didnt like people at all.

NARR: Harry addressed Bess adoringly as "Sweetie, Wifie, Mine," saying he had a "bessyful of love awaiting her."

SILVERMAN: In the wonderful picture of him at about the age of 16, he has a chest full of medals, one of which he won for a cross-country race in New York. But Houdinis act had suspense.

I mean, up to 100,000 people.

DOCTOROW: He was so insanely devoted to what he was doing, so disciplined that the ultimate insanity of his life never occurred to him. Ehrich's father was fired by his congregation for being too "old world."

Mark Steele Here I am left alone at the station." He was worn out and in great pain.

Cinematography Houdini saw the potential in the actual escape.

Its something you cant replace with anything else.

After a three week courtship, they married.

This was someone very wrapped up in himself. SILVERMAN: Its generally not appreciated that Houdini, almost from the beginning, really, wanted to get out of the escape business. DE-VAL: He had a small air space at the top of the can, the lid was slightly domed.

It was poison. They would tie every piece of his body with ropes and chains, so it would be absolutely impossible to get out of it.

Intern

They did circuses.

To us, he was a superman. It was so real, the way it was performed.

People were standing on the seawall. As soon as he took a gulp of that air, it wasnt air. Houdini then pulled a pure Houdini stunt. Harry referred to her as a saint, as an angel. Thats about it.

"Houdini escaped from your jail today at 10:30." DOCTOROW: He was enacting over and over again the same impulse that brought people from foreign countries here in the first place: to escape from social hierarchy, to escape from poverty, to escape from injustice.

And Houdini had reached it.

When Harry later pasted the program into his scrapbook, he moved The Houdinis into the headliner's position. And he gave them little recipes, jotted things down for them to help them build their physique.

David Condon

And it is something that gave Harry a goal in is life, to please Cecelia, his mother.

Did the government test him for high energy levels?

And to see Houdini actually escape seemingly from impossible things, they thought that maybe it gave them a glimmer of hope that maybe they could do the same. He was so insanely devoted to what he was doing, so disciplined that the ultimate insanity of his life never occurred to him.

How did the world's greatest escape artist escape from handcuffs, ropes, straitjackets and milk cans?

They preyed on poor people.

NARR: Harry worked the press just as skillfully as he worked his locks. NARR: Harry had long wanted to be seen as a scholar like his father.

RANDI: Harry referred to her as a saint, as an angel. With a heady assortment of entertainment choices at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, many probably missed nineteen-year-old Ehrich Weiss, a.k.a.

E. L. DOCTOROW, Writer: Desperation was the theme of his life.

No one may ever be better, or should be for that matter. Archive Films There was always this feeling that not only would he want to escape from the freezing river, or the coffin, or the milk can, but that he had to escape from the stage as well, and be seen in the real world as a historical figure and not just a stage illusionist.

It was one just great big hype.

And I got to know him rather well and I was fascinated by him. NARR: It was on the streets of New York that Ehrich found a way to make his mark.

He was in effect what we would call today a mother's boy. Theyd spend their last dollar to hear the voice of a loved one.

He was a great failure in the films.

I think actually a few people did.

Bess was a German Catholic immigrant, lively and funny, part of a song-and-dance act called the Floral Sisters. DE-VAL: At the time, at the turn of the century, it was important that people in America came to England, because thats where itit mattered most to be successful.

The great Harry Houdini, escape artist extraordinaire, is our story, and, I must say, as one of the many who've known the bliss of a boyhood fascination with magic, I love this film.

NARRATOR: He was our greatest showman. Library of Congress

It was the kind of relation Houdini had with other people too. Michael Bacon

Publicity

Maureen Barden

NARRATOR: He was our greatest showman.

Physicians later found widespread infection from a burst appendix.

NARR: When Harry introduced the Milk Can Escape, he played on his audiences' deepest fears. NARR: Harry addressed Bess adoringly as "Sweetie, Wifie, Mine," saying he had a "bessyful of love awaiting her. Mandy Patinkin narrates.

Musicians Ed Hill Collection ".

American Jewish Archive It was a strategy Harry had picked up at the circus. He seemed to have control over every muscle in his body. Houdini really grew to hate it. He was sweating profusely.

The secret is actually not the best part of it, it's the presentation. His pajamas said "HH." By one account, when he got the news he was performing in Copenhagen, I think, he fainted dead away.

Thousands of people would stand outside and watch this phenomenon. In public, he confronted our greatest fears and always emerged victorious.

Archive Photos

: The crowds were absolutely immense. Conan Doyles wife offered to hold a sance to reunite Houdini with his mother.

Tony Pastors in New York was the really first big date that the Houdinis had. DE-VAL: Houdini came to town, and you knew Houdini was in town. But he seemed to wiggle out of it. Before Houdini could prepare, the young man struck him a painful blow.

Sync Sound

A Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. film

"Hereafter I intend to work entirely with my brain," he wrote in his diary.

He can frown, he can look wooden, and he can look quizzical.

They pulled very hard on his body. Chicago Historical Society Bess was a German Catholic immigrant, lively and funny, part of a song-and-dance act called the Floral Sisters.

And Houdini said his mother knew almost no English. SILVERMAN: There was a connection to the audience's sense of the modern, too. "That will do," mumbled Houdini.

On the evening of their 25th wedding anniversary, he left her a note,"We have starved and starred togetherI love you and I know you love me.

NARR: Houdini publicized his appearances by visiting the local jail where he convinced the police to lock him up and let him try to escape. NARR: In major cities all over the country. John E. Allen, Inc.

He had people that he disliked if not hated, all of his life, simply because they had slighted him. Hed become something much more than just a Vaudeville entertainer.

His fame grew.

. He had an affair with Jack London's widow, Charmian.

Costumes

NARR: For more than an hour, the audience sat riveted waiting for Houdini to appear. It instilled terror. I mean, hedhed come into Milwaukee and some packing case firm -- or some piano maker would say, "Well lock you in our piano and nail the lid shut, and you get out." NARR: The people Houdini hated the most were the imitators who had plagued him since the beginning of his career. COPPERFIELD: After you evolve in a foreign country and youre welcomed back into your adopted America, you know, thats -- can be nothing better than conquering something that was unconquerable for yourself. There are many, many pictures of him visiting graves, usually the graves of other magicians.

SILVERMAN: Houdini was really twice married. SILVERMAN: Hes a sort of slob.

He would hang by his ankles in a tank full of water, with the lid padlocked.

It's really amazing marketing.

The footage is great historical stuff in good condition, worth watching. SILVERMAN: His idea was, he would have himself filmed doing his escapes, then he wouldnt have to do them any more.

He fractured his ankle performing the water torture cell escape in Albany. And certainly part of thethe interest in it has to do with some kind of masochistic pleasure. Library of Congress That story always fascinates me, because so many of Houdinis greatest stunts are really underwater escapes. It is likely he had been suffering from appendicitis for several days before the punch. Some of them would even leave the audience because they couldn't bear the suspense. He then withdrew into a cabinet he called a ghost house and the audience waited.

RANDI: He went on that evening and gave the show, and the next day he left for Detroit by train.

And there was no clue to the method that he used.

Greg McCleary & Geof Thurber

And shed take a brush on occasion and scrub his knuckles, because he was not too careful about his personal appearance

SILVERMAN: All of Houdinis escapes involved a lot of pain. Gaffer

RANDI: Since his father was a rabbi, a learned person, Houdini tried to become a learned person in spite of the fact that he had very little basic education.

Chas Norton She was a very good caring nurturing person. It goes from his beginnings to his death in 1926 from a burst appendix, Well worth watching.

Music by

NARR: In 1900 Beck sent Harry and Bess on a brief tour of England.

He was absolutely immense egoist.

NARR: It was on the streets of New York that Ehrich found a way to make his mark. In 1925, he launched a one-man show on Broadway that featured magic tricks, escapes, and exposs of spiritualists.

Chris Spriano NARR: The first time he used handcuffs on stage, he knew he was on to something.

While the audience believed that spirits were playing instruments and making objects fly around, Houdini knew immediately it was a trick. Coordinating Producer

Now, when Houdini, who many times had done this trick, went into the can and come up to the top, he then found that little space that literally saved his life many, many times, that was full of CO2 from the beer.

NARR: Houdini escaped from a roll-top desk, a huge envelope, a giant football, even a creature from the deep. But Houdinis act had suspense. He would call on volunteers from the audience to participate in a mock seance. None larger.

Appalled by the exercise and incensed over the exploitation of his grief, Harry embarked on a vigorous crusade against spiritualists, declaring, "It takes a flimflammer to catch a flimflammer." And they wouldnt be aware of the fact that he was now out.

How he started, how he got to his histpric position and how he got into, and under the skin of, spiritualists an spiritualism.

Thats where -- Everyone from America came to England.

With the recent showing of Houdini and Doyle as a television series, I enjoyed seeing the archival story of Houdini's amazing skills.

"I do not know whether I will get out or not," he said.

NARR: But Houdini's strongest obsession was death. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley He had struggled for six years and was still Dime Museum Harry. The performers had gotten out of their handcuffs.

Original content 2002-2022 John Cox. The New York Historical Society There were entertainment venues on virtually every block of the city, concert saloons, variety theatres, dime museums.

It would be great publicity for them and great publicity for Houdini. the magic of picking locks with your feet, or swallowing keys and chucking them back up, or dislocating your shoulders to escape straight jackets.

The audience just went berserk.

Rosebush Enterprises and Lee Jacobs Productions That kind of self assertion appealed to people.

Where did his powers come from. (mother's voice) Houdini was fascinated by mutilation. As you can imagine, there were so many ways by slight of hand and such that he could actually be in that cell with sufficient tools that, after hed studied the lock, he knew how to manipulate it.