Eventually the czarina became suspicious of Philipp’s sway over her husband and Okhrana agents stationed in various parts of Europe began a full-fledged investigation into Philipp, revealing that he was a Turkish ex-convict charlatan. At first the czar dismissed these allegations, but when his own personal physician ridiculed Philipp’s production of the spirits of the czar’s two predecessors, Philipp was exiled to Paris. This is exactly when Houdini arrived in Russia.
According to an article in The Chicago Herald shortly after Houdini’s death, Chicago Probate Judge Henry Horner, who went on to become governor of Illinois in 1933, revealed that Houdini had informed him that he was asked to become an advisor to Czar Nicholas’s court on three separate occasions. The first time was during Houdini’s stay in Russia in 1903. Houdini’s introduction to the royal family was made by the Okhrana through the Grand Duke Sergius, whose official title was Military Governor of Moscow. Under the patronage of Sergius, who must have known that Houdini was merely a conjurer and not a holy man, Houdini’s powers so amazed the czar and his family that he was asked to replace Philipp as the czar’s close confidant. Houdini rejected his entreaty, claiming that he wanted to show his art to the entire world. Two years after Houdini left Russia, his friend the grand duke was literally decapitated by two bomb-wielding left-wing revolutionaries.
Around the same time, the czarina came under the sway of an itinerant peasant faith healer named Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin’s ability to heal young Prince Alexi, who suffered from hemophilia, gave him sway over the royal family and his influence in the court was considerable. Rasputin’s dissolute lifestyle was chronicled in almost daily secret reports by the Okhrana, but even the secret police’s chief had to marvel at Rasputin’s hypnotic powers. “His influence is so great that even the old secret agents of my department fall under his sway in a few days.”
Rasputin made many enemies, foremost among them Nicholas’s prime minister Peter Stolypin. Stolypin presented many of these secret police reports to Nicholas, but the czar was loath to remove the man who his wife held responsible for the life of the sickly prince. In September of 1911, Stolypin was assassinated by a radical who feared that Stolypin’s reforms would forestall the revolution. The opposition to Rasputin’s power grew and in 1912, Houdini was contacted by the czar’s court officials to come to Russia and depose the faker. Houdini considered making the trip, but never did.
Rasputin met a grisly fate on December 30, 1916 when he drank several glasses of poisoned wine and ate pastries laced with potassium cyanide, courtesy of a faction of the royal family. When the poison was not enough to kill him, he was shot by Prince Felix Yusupov, stabbed repeatedly, and finally drowned in the icy Neva River. Shortly after, Houdini was again contacted by the czar and asked to replace Rasputin. Houdini had had enough of the man who he deemed “as helpless as an infant.” He was pessimistic about the ability of the royal family to enact desperately needed reforms in Russia. “Any radical change would mean that too many grand dukes would lose their jobs,” Houdini quipped to the press in 1905. He was prescient. On March 15, 1917 Nicholas was forced to abdicate and on July 17, 1918 he and his family were shot by a Bolshevik firing squad and then dragged to the basement of the house they had been confined in and stabbed with bayonets.
From the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook
9
The Challenge of the Mirror
HOUDINI CLOSELY EXAMINED THE MANACLES. HE didn’t like what he saw.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my challenge stipulated that I could escape from regulation restraints, but I am afraid to say that these cuffs have been tampered with. The iron has been wrapped with twine, the locks have been altered, and various other expedients have been adopted to render my escape that much more difficult,” Houdini said.
Most of the audience cheered sympathetically for Houdini. A few people registered their disappointment.
“Mr. Houdini, if you would care to read your own notices, you would see that I stipulated that I would bring and use my own irons. This is precisely what I’ve done,” William Hope Hodgson, the proprietor of the Blackburn School of Physical Culture, announced dramatically. There was a smattering of cheers for the local son.
Houdini pondered the situation.
“Although Mr. Hodgson is going beyond the challenge, I am quite willing to go on with this contest provided you allow me a little extra time in which to deal with these unusual difficulties.”
Houdini was roundly cheered by the 2,500 people who had packed Blackburn, England’s new, beautiful Palace Theatre on October 24, 1902. He had performed two shows already that night, at seven and nine. Now it was a little after ten, and the audience was primed for the showdown. Hodgson, a twenty-four-year-old town resident who had studied judo and bodybuilding while serving in the merchant marines, had taken up Houdini’s standard offer of £25 to any challenger who could cause him to fail to escape from regulation handcuffs used by the police of Europe and America.
Hodgson and his assistant, a giant hulk of a bodybuilder, began the torturous process of fettering the escape artist. First they affixed a pair of irons over one of Houdini’s upper arms. They passed the chain behind his back and pulled it painfully tight and then pinioned his elbows closely to his sides. They repeated this procedure with another pair of cuffs on his other arm and padlocked both of them behind him, which had the effect of pulling Houdini’s arms stiffly toward his back. Then they fastened a pair of chained cuffs to his wrists and tightened them to the point where Houdini’s arms were simultaneously being pulled both backward and forward. The zeal with which the strongman assistant tackled this job led to a protest from Houdini.
“There is no stipulation in the challenge that my arms should be broken,” Houdini said, to the delight of the crowd.
“His challenge clearly says that he would iron you himself,” an audience member shouted out. “Where’s the fair play?”
A murmur of assent rose from the audience and Hodgson was compelled to dismiss his assistant. A second pair of handcuffs was fastened to Houdini’s wrists, both pairs being padlocked securely. Still the entrepreneur wasn’t finished. He helped Houdini kneel down and then he passed the chain of a pair of heavy leg irons through the chains that held Houdini’s arms together at the back. The leg irons were fastened to his ankles and then a second pair was added and they were both locked together. Houdini “looked for all the world as a trussed fowl” one newspaperman wrote. Hodgson and the committeemen, who had been drawn from the audience, then assisted Houdini to his cabinet. The curtains were drawn, the orchestra began to play “up-to-date musical selections,” and the battle commenced.
As each minute passed, the excitement in the hall became more and more palpable. Hodgson kept a wary eye on Bess and Theo, Harry’s brother, who were both anxiously awaiting the escape on the stage. After fifteen minutes, the canopy was lifted and Houdini was seen to be lying on his side, still bound. There was some concern that he had fainted, but he was able to communicate that he wished to be lifted to his knees. Hodgson refused the request, and the audience began to boo and hiss him. Theo interceded and lifted his brother to his knees. The curtain was lowered again.
Twenty minutes later, Houdini asked that the curtain be lifted.
“My arms have been quite numb and drained of blood due to the inordinate tightness of the chains,” Houdini declared. “I would request that the irons be unlocked for a minute so that my circulation could be restored.”
“This is a contest, not a love match,” Hodgson growled. “If you are beaten, give in.”
The auditorium erupted with shouts and calls. Dr. Bradley, a member of the committee, stepped into the cabinet and examined Houdini.
“Mr. Houdini’s arms are quite blue and I feel that it is tantamount to cruelty to keep him chained up as he is for any longer amount of time,” the doctor pronounced.
“This is a bet,” Hodgson laughed derisively. “Cry quits or keep on.”
Houdini raised his hea
d. “If the audience will indulge me with some more time, I will be happy to continue this contest,” Houdini said. The audience, as one, cheered.
The orchestra played for the next fifteen minutes. The curtains of the cabinet periodically fluttered from what seemed to be feverish activity inside. Just then, Houdini popped his head out of the curtain and the music stopped.
“I have freed one of my hands, and I will now take a short rest before proceeding further,” he said.
Most of the audience cheered encouragingly, but a few hostile voices were raised.
“You must remember, ladies and gentlemen, I did not state the time that it would take me to get them off. These handcuffs have been plugged.”
As the clock showed eleven-thirty, the huge crowd began to get a bit impatient.
“Give it up!” someone cried out.
“Keep on, Houdini. You’ll do it,” another countered.
A few minutes later, Houdini popped his head out of the cabinet again.
“Both of my hands are free, and it will not be long before I will be free altogether,” he said.
By now, some of the audience had begun to think that Houdini had met his match. And when his brother approached the cabinet to give him a word of cheer, some of the crowd began booing. Apparently Houdini told Theo that he was thirsty, because a cool glass of water was provided him. Then he addressed the audience again from his cabinet.
“I beg you to show a little more patience. Every one of these locks has been changed, and this is making it all the more difficult to get free,” Houdini pleaded.
The crowd turned on Hodgson again. Later, he would claim that he had spied a key in one of the locks, but right then a police sergeant advised him that for his own safety he should leave the premises.
The orchestra played on. At ten minutes to twelve, with no warning, the cabinet’s curtain flew open and Houdini staggered out. He threw the last of his shackles to the floor of the stage as a loud shout went up. Houdini’s shirt had been torn from the cuff to the shoulder. His wrists and biceps were bleeding profusely. He could barely muster the strength to stand erect. He seemed semi-conscious. The vast audience stood up and cheered for fifteen straight minutes.
Finally they stilled as Houdini raised an arm.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have been in the handcuff business for fourteen years, but never have I been so brutally and cruelly ill-treated. I would just like to say again that the locks were plugged.”
“Where’s Hodgson?” someone screamed.
“Why is he not here to offer his congratulations?” another yelled out.
The huge crowd cheered wildly as Bess, his brother, and some of the committeemen helped Houdini off the stage.
The next day Houdini met with a reporter from The Blackburn Daily Star. Houdini again charged that the cuffs had been plugged and that pulley blocks had been added to the shackles. Then he pulled up his sleeves and showed the newspaperman his arms. They were both hideously blue and swollen, with large chunks of flesh torn out. Houdini explained that because the chains had been pulled so tight, portions of his arm had been fastened in as the fetters were locked. He had no choice but to tear out the chunks of his flesh to get free.
Two years later, on November 1, 1904 Houdini met with another reporter, this one from The Halifax Evening Courier. “I noticed on Houdini’s arms several scars, as though some tiger had clawed him,” he wrote. “He [explained that he] had simply been in Blackburn and had been put in manacles which would have made an executioner wince. The gentleman who did the trussing business had superabundant strength.”
One reason why audiences identified so strongly with Houdini was that he was willing to go as far as it took to effect his escapes, scars be damned. Every handcuff, every leg iron, every chain represented his potential Waterloo. His reputation was laid on the line nightly; he could not let himself fail. It wasn’t just his own honor that he was defending. Houdini had single-handedly created an entire genre of entertainment, something he called the “Challenge Handcuff and Escape Act.” And right from its inception, imitators came forth and began to attempt to duplicate his methods. “Harry’s success had inspired a hord[e] of imitators and most of them were terrible. Harry wasn’t worrying much about the few good ones but he felt that the bad ones were going to sour the public on the whole escape business,” his brother Theo wrote.
The ruthlessness with which Houdini set out to defend his domain would, at times, make the distinction between bad and good imitators superfluous. Shortly after Houdini arrived in London, he had taken out large ads in several London papers warning rival bookers that he had “fully patented” his handcuff act and would “positively prosecute any and all managers playing infringements or colorable imitations.” If a manager cared to investigate further, he would have found that the ad was just a bluff. Houdini had applied for the patent, but his refusal to allow the government patent office to publish the specifications of his handcuff act ultimately made them classify his patent application as “Abandoned.”
If Houdini had legal threats ready to counter unscrupulous managers, he was planning quite a different strategy for the imitators themselves. Houdini’s friend William Robinson had called him an old fighter—“I believe you would rather scrap than eat.” If there was fighting to be done, Houdini could think of no one better to bring over to Europe than his former performing partner and bigger, younger brother Theo, described by their friend Joe Hyman as a “harum-scarum, hell raisin’ boy” who could “fight like a wildcat.” Theo’s credo was: “if you are in a fight hit the other guy first.”
While Houdini was performing for the first time in Berlin, he cabled Theo in New York, “Come over. The apples are ripe.” By the time that Theo had reached Berlin, Houdini had duplicated his entire escape act—right down to handcuffs, substitution trunk, and a girl assistant—and had bookings set up for his brother. Houdini had even chosen a new name for Theo. It wasn’t the first time. In their childhood, Houdini had nicknamed his younger brother “Dash.” When Dash joined his act, he was dubbed a Brother Houdini. He was back to Dash after Houdini replaced him with Bess. When he summoned him to Europe, at first he considered dubbing him “Hardeeni,” but thinking there might be confusion with his own name, he quickly changed it to “Hardeen.” “We were very quickly in strong competition with each other, and we built up the competition as a grudge fight,” Hardeen remembered. “We made no secret of the fact that we were brothers but we did keep secret not only the fact that we were good friends but that Harry had set me up in business!”
Houdini and his bigger, younger brother Theo, who he renamed “Hardeen.”Library of Congress
Hardeen also made no secret of the fact that he was there to run interference for his brother with his other would-be rivals. On November 18, 1901, Hardeen wrote Albert Hill, who performed under the name of Hilbert, warning him that they were aware that he was “working both mine and my brother’s tricks.” Hilbert got the message, writing back, “Please accept my assurance that I will make no pretence to originality. I may add that I desire to carefully avoid any conflict with either yourself or your brother.”
Other imitators were not that lucky. Harry dispatched both his brother and another escape artist named Hangeros to bust up a rival’s act. Hangeros sent Houdini back a report, noting that he would be “very sore from the kicks I got,” which pained him so “I did not sleep much last night…They gave me a good beating, three (3) large lumps on my head…My Glasgow overcoat is ruined…but thats not near as bad as the punching and kicking I got.” Still, Hangeros was undeterred. “I havent weakened. I’ll go after any cuff faker you name any time. This is the first time I was ever beat up badly in my life—I can stand a few more.”
In Germany, Houdini’s imitators were even more brazen, some even using variations of his name, like Harry Rudini, Harry Blondini, or Harry Mourdini.
Houdini routinely carried “handcuff-king-defeaters”—special cuffs that he used against rival escape ar
tists that worked but were very difficult to escape from. Kolar, an American escape artist who knew Houdini from his dime museum days in Chicago, maintained that Houdini never showed up a fellow escape man unless they “first tried to ‘do’ him.” One of those who tried to “do” him was an eccentric handcuff man named Kleppini, who didn’t have an abundance of talent but made up for that by festooning his jacket with phony medals. He even had gold letters embroidered around his collar that read, “The Champion of All Champions of Handcuff Kings.”
Houdini was touring Holland in June of 1902 when a friend sent him a clipping that Kleppini, who was performing with a German circus, was advertising that not only had he escaped from Houdini’s handcuffs but that the Great Houdini had been defeated by Kleppini’s irons. Enraged, Houdini took a leave of absence and rushed to Essen Ruhr, where he had his hair fixed to look old and glued a fake mustache onto his lip. Then, filling up a small grip with “handcuff-king-defeaters,” he traveled to Dortmund to confront Kleppini.
The disguised Handcuff King took a seat in the circus audience and waited until Kleppini began his spiel. When his rival claimed to have defeated Houdini, he leapt to his feet and screamed, “Not true.”
“And how would you know this, old man?” Kleppini said.
“I am in the know,” Houdini countered.
“Would you care to wager that I am right?” Kleppini asked.
With that, Houdini took a flying leap to the center ring.
“You say I am not telling the truth. Well, look!” he screamed, pulling off his mustache. “I am Houdini!”
Houdini offered five thousand marks if Kleppini would allow himself to be handcuffed. He also offered to escape from Kleppini’s Chinese pillory. After a lot of back and forth haggling, the circus manager refused to back Kleppini with a five-thousand-mark deposit and Houdini returned to his seat. A large portion of the audience, disgusted by Kleppini’s misrepresentations, left the arena.
The Secret Life of Houdini Page 17