Born Ehrich Weiss in 1874, the man who took the stage name Harry Houdini pushed himself to his human limits as one of the most daring escape artists and stunt performers in recorded history.
His search for novelty obsessed him; he allowed the mechanics of handcuffs to obsess him, waking up at 5 a.m. to take apart different pairs for years. He was also ruthless to competitors, sowing rumors in the press about how other escape artists used cheap tricks to accomplish their feats.
Houdini didn’t rise to fame simply because he took on grander risks and public stunts; he had a very specific and intense set of guiding principles. He harshly judged those in show business who were dishonest, preying upon vulnerable crowds with false promises. The Houdini act was sleight-of-hand, not supernatural, and he let his audiences know this. He really, really hated the spiritualist movement, after reading books debunking its methods and even trying out those dirty tricks himself for a short time.
Houdini had strong opinions after working years as a traveling performer, and wasn’t shy about sharing them. Personally, I wouldn’t represent myself with any of these characteristics if I were trying to channel the spirit of this esteemed escape artist this Halloween (the 97th anniversary of his death). Maybe you should put down the Ouji board altogether when it comes to “Harry Houdini, the Handcuff King.”
Here are seven major pet peeves of Harry Houdini:
1. Sleek Marketing Language: Erich Weiss was born in Hungary, and his large and loving Jewish family emigrated to the United States in the 1870s. The Weisses valued education and especially the study of the Torah, and English was not the language spoken in the new family home in Appleton, WI. (The Weisses spoke German at home.)
Erich learned English from peers, like schoolmates. Later, he adopted the cadence and vocabulary of coworkers at the factory he briefly worked at. (In fact, it was during work at a necktie factory that he befriended a hobbyist magician and learned some tricks. After that, the 16-year-old’s fate was seemingly sealed.)
When the man who became Houdini spoke English on stage, he used notably “coarse” language. Houdini’s early biographer, William Lindsay Gresham, records him as calling out to prospective audiences at Coney Island: “As youse can see, I ain’t got nothing up my sleeve.”
Apparently, when early-career Houdini was told that he should speak in a more “proper” way (specifically dropping the word “ain’t”), the artist refused.
2. Charlatans and Con Artists: Houdini built his reputation with traveling circuses and vaudeville troupes, which admittedly do not have the most stellar reputations for honesty. Still, throughout his life, the Handcuff King insisted of his exploits: “Everything I do is done by purely natural means. I make no claim to supernormal power whatsoever.” (Gresham, page 56).
Houdini aligned himself with magicians and illusionists. He was at peace with his acts utilizing the concept of “tricks” – meaning, the audience knew that these were tricks. At the end of his life he went so far as to testify in Congress against the “frauds” of the Spiritualist movement, who claimed to truly have supernatural powers to communicate with the deceased loved ones of living audience members, desperate and willing to pay any price for closure.
3. Specifically, Spiritualism and Mediums: Early in his career, Harry and his wife Bess performed with traveling medicine shows on the East Coast and American Midwest. After a while they couldn’t deny it: The most popular acts, which made the most money, were spiritualist seances. Harry had already read the infamous book, anonymously published in 1922, that discredited psychics, seances, and the spiritualist movement in general.
While he may have found this kind of act distasteful, Houdini did briefly perform as a psychic early in his career. Bess pretended to be a Coat Room Girl and went through the pockets and possessions of audience members, then sent this information to her husband to use on stage and convince his viewers of his mystical powers. He was apparently effective as a psychic, but he didn’t last long. He left to act in theatre for one season before booking another gig escaping from handcuffs once again (Gresham, pages 56-59). This experience seems to have only set Houdini against the Spiritualists for the rest of his life.
4. Showbiz: Right before his big break (though of course he couldn’t know this), Houdini faced the classic artist’s dilemma: Should he keep struggling to invent new daring escape artist acts, when he and Bess were paid barely enough to eat? He knew he worked hard and obsessed over his craft, but years of touring had not paid them adequately. Harry and Bess were still living paycheck-to-paycheck.
In a moment of doubt, he explored the opportunity to work at a handcuff factory. The job was offered by his brother-in-law, as an attempt to keep the artist’s greatest interest alive. Should Erich Weiss return to care for his chronically ill wife and mother in poor health?
Ultimately, he decided to give showbiz one last chance, though he was weary of it all. It was then, in 1905, that Houdini received a cable that he’d been booked to tour the East Coast for six weeks to earn $5,000. This was the big break that almost didn’t happen, if Houdini had retired (Gresham, pages 122-125). From then on, Houdini was always paid well to perform his act.
5. Authority: While Harry and Bess Houdini were newlyweds working as a traveling act (Bess as his assistant on stage), they toured New England with The Welsh Brothers Mighty Cavalcade and Giant Attraction. This traveling circus performed a Sunday show just outside Providence, RI, and then every performer was promptly arrested by the sheriff as Sunday performances were illegal. But the Handcuff King wasn’t behind bars for long; Houdini broke out of his own jail cell with one of Bess’s hairpins (Gresham, page 36).
6. Cheating: Before he was a household name, Houdini had to be his own carnival barker, recruiting crowds for paid performances by demonstrating some escapades for free. Often, this meant walking up to the nearest police officer and challenging them to slap their handcuffs on him at that moment. Once ’cuffed, Houdini drew and worked a crowd as he broke out. This early public promotion of Houdini’s act was perhaps not intended to antagonize local police in every city he visited. But antagonize them, it did.
Soon, police stations were inviting Houdini to their precincts to attempt to crack their handcuffs, while also locking him inside their jail cells. The city of Chicago extended him this invitation, and he agreed to be manacled inside a jail cell.
This escape proved impossible. Only when Houdini announced he was defeated did an officer come forward to admit that the lock had been jammed with birdshot, fine leaden gun pellets. There was no way to open them, and the escape artist had to be sawed out (Gresham, page 66).
The dishonesty of this trick rattled Houdini. Didn’t these officers respect their own handcuffs? He hated seeing a tool wasted – the cuffs could never be used again.
This was also a learning experience. From then on, Houdini only allowed handcuffs on his wrist that could be demonstrably closed and opened in front of him and his live audience.
7. The Easy Way Out: Houdini was not the only escape artist working in America during his early career; he was usually not the only escape artist being advertised in any given city he visited. Sometimes he would watch other acts and invent ways to copy their tricks while raising the stakes or making them more complicated.
It was a standard at the time for escape artists on stage to be concealed by a curtain as they worked their ways free. Houdini raised the stakes for everyone in this profession by breaking out of boxes or handcuffs without a curtain, plainly seen on stage in front of a live audience. In Boston, he debuted a glass case he’d commissioned from a glass factory in Pittsburgh, specifically to hold him in place and keep him in view during his escapes (Gresham, pages 144-145).
Houdini’s most famous tricks evolved from here: first, a series of dangerous bridge jumps. Then, a return to locks and handcuffs, this time while he was submerged underwater or encased in a glass container full of water. “The Miraculous Milk Can,” which was purposefully crafted to look like the cans of milk available in that time, used padlocks to trap Houdini in place, wholly under water. Houdini escaped in just under three minutes, a feat that catapulted him to national fame. (If you must know, the top of the can had breathing holes, and the locks were never truly held in place [Gresham, pages 150-155]).
What did Houdini like?
This list of dislikes also reveals some of Houdini’s loves: his wife Bess, who was at his side until his death; advertising in print media as well as in-person, drumming up interest in his act with free street performances; and, perhaps, his own mystique and reputation. No escape artist or “mysterious entertainer” (Houdini’s description of himself to Congress in 1924) had ever blitzed the local press like he had. He also was a trailblazer in securing corporate partnerships and sponsors; his glass milk can was always introduced as his own custom order from the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, who paid him to advertise for them as he performed.
No “mentalist” would unseat Houdini for holding the record of the most newspaper clips about his act until “The Amazing Dunninger” launched his own press campaign a few decades after Houdini’s death. But Joseph Dunninger was the first to admit that he had studied the tricks and press savvy of Harry Houdini, and only continued this legacy (Gresham, page 271).
Possibly the most fun way Houdini channeled media interest in cultivating his own legend was his collaboration with H.P. Lovescraft for a fictionalized story about a kidnapped magician who must escape from a deep hole near the Great Sphinx of Giza. “Under the Pyramids” appeared in the February 1924 edition of Weird Tales, and should be taken as literally as any other fable of Harry Houdini ever told about his life and mysterious exploits.
