Houdini’s response to his good friend’s death was fascinating. On April 5, he wrote his friend and father figure Harry Kellar, the freshly retired master illusionist, now noncritically called “dean” of American magicians, that “it seems as if there were something peculkar [sic] about the whole [Robinson] affair.” Then two weeks later, Houdini announced that he would do the Bullet Catch at a joint benefit for the SAM hospital fund and the Showman’s League of America on April 21, at the Hippodrome. Whether Houdini was merely exploiting the tragedy to get press (which he received) or whether, as was reported in M-U-M, the official organ of the SAM, he was “dissuaded by management of Hippodrome from taking up this dangerous feat,” he ultimately didn’t perform the effect that night.
When news filtered out to Kellar in California that Houdini was even considering doing the Bullet Catch, the magician fired off a warning salvo to Houdini on May 1:
Now, my dear boy, this is advice from the heart.DON’T TRY THE D—N Bullet Catching trick no matter how sure you may feel of its success. There is always the biggest kind of risk that some dog will “job” you. And we can’t afford to lose Houdini. You have enough good stuff to maintain your position at the head of the profession. And you owe it to your friends and your family to cut out all stuff that entails risk of your life. Please, Harry, listen to your old friend Kellar who loves you as his own son and don’t do it.
Kellar’s view on the risk involved in Houdini doing the Bullet Catch is telling. He isn’t worried about the gun malfunctioning. For him, doing the Bullet Catch would expose Houdini to some “dog” who was out to physically assault, or even murder, him.
When the United States declared war against Germany on his birthday in 1917, Houdini immediately went into action. For most of 1916, while on his vaudeville tour, Houdini, at his own expense, had been recruiting local magic clubs to join the SAM in an effort to revitalize what he felt was a moribund organization. Working with Oscar Teale, an eccentric old ex-magician and Spiritualist exposer, another in a succession of father figures in Houdini’s life, Houdini persuaded groups in Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City to come aboard. Now, a day after war was declared, Houdini introduced a resolution at the Society of American Magicians’ meeting that was unanimously passed that “its members collectively and individually do hereby tender their loyalty to the President of the United States of America and express a desire to render such service to the country as may be within their province.” Teale dispatched the resolution via letter to President Wilson.
Houdini led the war efforts of magicians by example. On June 2, Houdini was nominated for president of the SAM and elected unanimously without opposition. Taking control of the house organ, M-U-M, Houdini began filling the pages with news of the SAM members’ contributions to the war cause, and even reproduced an article from The New York Times that described how the U.S. government was actively seeking magicians and mystifiers to aid in the wartime effort.
Fellow magicians took up Houdini’s call. Archie Engel, a Washington, D.C., magician, became a secret agent for the Treasury Department during the war. Dr. Maximillian Toch, a chemist and New York City SAM member, was put in charge of the military’s camouflage division and, working with other magicians, he developed the battleship gray formula used by the U.S. Navy. Toch’s chemical expertise was also used in devising ways to transmit secret messages. Eventually, a camouflage section of the Regular U.S. Army Engineers was formed and the SAM members from all over the country enlisted in it and shared their expertise for the war effort. An amateur magician named Dr. Charles Mendelsohn, who was an expert cryptographer, was put in charge of deciphering German codes for the U.S. Military Intelligence Division. Even before we entered the war, the Department of Justice hired a magician named Wilbur Weber to do counterintelligence on German spies who were operating in the Northwest. He used his magic tour as a cover for his spying activities.
Heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey about to deliver a right to Houdini’s jaw as boxer Benny Leonard holds back the escape king, all in the name of entertaining the troops. From the collection of Roger Dreyer
Houdini seemed energized by the prospect of serving his country. “I register tomorrow for enlisting. Hurrah, now I am one of the boys,” he wrote Goldston back in London. “When I see your flag flutter it makes my old heart flutter, but when I see them flutter together, your and our flag, well, there is too much to be said.” Canceling his entire fall vaudeville season, Houdini began to devote his full time to entertaining troops and raising money for the war effort. In June, the National Vaudeville Association staged a benefit featuring the greatest aggregation of stars ever assembled, including Sophie Tucker, Eva Tanguay, Eddie Foy, and Jim Corbett. Houdini made a side wager that he would register the greatest hit of the evening and he won his gamble when he made his entrance into the Hippodrome accompanied by a company of U.S. Marines. The ovation was enormous and then Houdini enlisted some army officers to strap him into a straitjacket. He made his escape in one minute, twenty-three seconds, a new record for him.
In July he embarked on a series of fund-raising benefits for the Red Cross, and then dashed from camp to camp entertaining the troops. And when Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo began to finance the U.S. war effort by issuing “Liberty Bonds,” Houdini became one of his most determined fund-raisers, in one case by literally selling the shirt off his back. During a Hippodrome appearance, a man in the audience offered to buy $1,000 in bonds if the magician could get out of his shirt in thirty seconds. By the time the audience counted six, Houdini was waving his torn shirt above his head. “I’ll buy another $1,000 bond if you will give me that shirt,” the audience member screamed, and went home with his prize. Within a year, Houdini had sold a million dollars’ worth of bonds. By some accounts, by war’s end the total reached two million dollars’ worth.
When Houdini performed at military camps, he made sure to include his “Money for Nothing” routine, where he seemingly materialized a succession of $5 gold pieces out of thin air. Each coin produced was presented to a boy heading overseas. In this manner, over time, Houdini personally gave away more than $7,000 (which today would be about $250,000). This same year, he also contributed money to build a hospital ward that he dedicated to his mother.
The closest Houdini got to waging war was on the propaganda front. He gave numerous interviews recounting how he had forced the kaiser into a public apology when he was touring Germany. He even used the German manacles that he escaped from before the German court in his lectures to U.S. soldiers. In another article, he wrote that he had been an “advocate of war” with Germany dating back to his first European tour. In his official bios, he excised all mention of his early flights in Germany, attributing them instead to Australia. In private, he fretted that the German soldiers he had taught to fly might kill American boys, so he destroyed all the photographic evidence of those lessons that he could. To underscore his fervent patriotism, Houdini went out of his way to tell people that he was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, even often gratuitously adding that “fact,” along with his invented birth date, to his signature.
Houdini’s desire to help the war cause and his long-standing commitment to honoring his elders in the world of magic coalesced on November 11, when Houdini orchestrated a Carnival of Magic extravaganza to benefit the families of the Americans who had been killed when the Antilles, a transport ship that was on its way back to the United States after bringing soldiers to France, had been torpedoed by a German sub. Organizing “the biggest magical feat recorded in the history of magic,” he persuaded Dean Harry Kellar to come out of retirement one last time and perform.
After Kellar finished his routine, he informed the audience that since he would never again appear onstage, he wished to present Houdini with all of the apparatus he had used that night. But then Houdini one-upped Kellar. Refusing to allow the dean to walk off the stage in his final exit, he signaled for four magicians, who carried out a large, decorated chair. Kellar
was forced to sit in the sedan chair as twenty-four magicians escorted by twenty-four “fair women” walked on the stage with military procession, accompanied by a like number of stage assistants, each carrying a large basket of flowers. As they bombarded Kellar with the flowers, the 125-piece Hippodrome band broke into a stirring version of “Auld Lang Syne,” as the sold-out audience stood up and serenaded the magician. Kellar, “weeping like a child,” was finally carried off the stage by his magician honor guard, bathed in another shower of flowers.
Houdini with the great past master and dean of magicians Harry Kellar.Library of Congress
With the new year, Houdini transformed his war work from entertaining to educating. In February, he wrote Secretary of War Newton Baker and offered to conduct classes in extrication from ropes, handcuffs, and even shipwrecks. He began his classes during intermissions of Cheer Up, a patriotic show that Houdini joined at the Hippodrome. A room was set up and officers could telephone in and make appointments to bring their regiments in for the instructions. According to Billboard magazine, the theater was “daily besieged by hosts of boys in khaki.”
By June of 1918, a mere fourteen months after war was declared, Houdini had sacrificed more than $50,000 between lost salary and his own out-of-pocket expenditures in his ongoing war efforts. In a letter to R. H. Burnside, the manager of the Hippodrome, he recounted his efforts that helped “buy ambulances” and raised funds for the Liberty Bond campaign. “My heart is in this work, for it is not a question of ‘Will we win’ or ‘Will we lose.’ We must win, and that is all there is to it.”
“La-dies and gen-tle-men. Perhaps you have al-rea-dy heard of the fame and ac-comp-lish-ments of my very spesh-ul guest,” Houdini intoned. “Allow me to in-tro-duce Jen-nie, the daughter of Barnum’s Jumbo, who is the world’s first known vanishing el-e-phant!”
The first inkling that something special was about to happen came when a dozen or so Hippodrome stagehands, dressed in circus livery, wheeled a huge cabinet that had been painted to resemble a circus cage out onto the enormous stage. They placed the cabinet about fifteen feet from the rear backdrop and nearly forty feet from the apron of the stage. One end of the trailer had a circular window, covered by curtains. On a command from Houdini, the men pulled the curtains back, revealing a series of bars running across the window from top to bottom, adding to the cagelike effect of the enclosure. At the other end of the box was a set of double doors, each with a half-circled curtained window. The men opened the doors and pulled a ramp into place at the opening.
Thanks to the enormous backstage area at the Hippodrome, Jennie was able to rush out onstage in a full trot, led by her trainer. The giant pachyderm, which was almost eight feet tall and scaled in at more than five tons, looked ominous as she circled Houdini a few times, her head swiveling from side to side in time with her thunderous short steps. When she finally came to a stop next to the magician, she positively dwarfed him, but her ferocity seemed somewhat muted by Houdini’s touch of placing a baby-blue ribbon around her neck and an oversize fake wristwatch attached to her left hind leg.
“As you can see, Jen-nie is dressed up like a bride,” Houdini quipped. “Though she weighs over ten thousand pounds, she is gentle as a kit-ten. To demonstrate her tran-quil nature, Jennie will now give me a kiss.”
On cue, the elephant sidled up to Houdini, lifted her huge trunk, and leaned her face down to the magician’s. Houdini rewarded her with a handful of block sugar.
Houdini bonds with Jennie before he makes her disappear. From the collection of Kenneth M. Trombly
“I think that Jen-nie may be the single largest contrib-u-ting factor to the sugar shortage,” Houdini joked. “Perhaps there will be more sugar for us after she disappears.”
“Now Jen-nie, say good-bye to the audience,” he commanded, and Jennie waved her head and trunk on cue. As the orchestra broke into a march, the trainer led her up the ramp into the trailer. The stagehands immediately closed the back doors and pulled both the back and front curtains shut. Since the trailer had been positioned sideways, they then took up positions at each end of the enclosure and, with the aid of a block and tackle, slowly moved the huge box a quarter turn so that the circus “cage” front windows faced the center of the audience.
Houdini signaled for the music to stop.
“Although she is a very large beast, she will literally vanish in the space of a few seconds, so I want you to watch very closely,” Houdini warned.
A drumroll commenced. Houdini clapped his hands and the stagehands rushed to either end of the enclosure and pulled aside the curtains on each end.
“As you can plain-ly see, the a-ni-mal is complete-ly gone!” Houdini intoned.
And he was right. The stagehands, some of whom were dressed as circus clowns, peered through the box and under it. And the audience members who sat in the center sections could look straight through the box and see the Hippodrome’s brightly lit backdrop. The elephant had disappeared.
There are magicians and magic historians who claim that Houdini, while a brilliant escape artist, was at best a mediocre magician. An escape artist, by definition, is a magician. Escapes are just another branch on the tree of magic; they are not a tree unto themselves. They are a form of magic in that they have not only an effect but also a secret method. His escapes notwithstanding, Houdini was still brilliant as a magician even if some said he wasn’t graceful like Howard Thurston, or that he lacked the urbanity of Charles Carter. But Harry Kellar, dean of magicians, said, “He is a grand man when you know him and he stands head and shoulders above all other magicians of our time.” Houdini mystified other magicians too. “I hear Carter has been in to see me half a dozen times and as yet hasn’t properly doped out the elephant illusion,” Houdini boasted to Kellar. Even today there is no consensus as to how he managed to do it.
If some magicians thought the Vanishing Elephant wasn’t good magic, the press and the public certainly did. The spectacle received rave reviews. “So Mr. Houdini puts his title of premier escape artist behind him and becomes The Master Magician,” Sime Silverman wrote in Variety. William Hilliar, in his magic column for Billboard magazine, waxed poetically: “Houdini’s prodigious presentation of perfect prestidigitation at the New York Hippodrome, where twice daily he causes a huge elephant to vanish in thin air in about ten seconds, has amazed New York…. When a magician can become the big feature of the Hippodrome Show of Wonders, and he is billed like a circus, the art is certainly on the boom. What are you going to do next, Harry?”
What was next would have to wait. Originally booked for two weeks, Houdini’s elephant mystery drew so many people to the Cheer Up revue, which had been running for a month before he even joined the show, that his run was extended to an amazing nineteen weeks, the longest engagement in one theater in Houdini’s career. That Houdini would present what he called the largest illusion in magic history at the Hippodrome was quite fitting. With a seating capacity of more than five thousand and a stage that could comfortably contain an entire circus, re-creations of warring armies, water ballets, diving horses, and a five-hundred-person chorus, it was the largest and grandest theater in New York. It’s a testament to Houdini’s genius as a magician that he was able to hold a capacity crowd spellbound as he performed not only the largest illusion, with the aid of Jennie, but one of the smallest, his Needles.
To Houdini’s mind, his success in presenting the largest illusion in magic history was revitalizing the entire art. All aspects of magic interested him. He made voluminous notes on every field. Although only considered a top card expert in his own mind, he did associate with the crème de la crème, occasionally even hosting the likes of Henry Gavin, aka Arthur Finley, still considered by many to be the most skilled card expert of all time. “Magic is now the vogue,” he wrote Kellar. “My efforts are bringing it back into style…. The public are commencing to like magic, and actually demand same. Good. Twill make it good for Thurston and all other illusionists.”
Embol
dened by his triumph as a grand illusionist, Houdini dreamed of opening his own magic theater, inspired by the Parisian theater of Robert-Houdin of sixty years earlier. He found a small theater near Times Square that held three hundred, and Houdini hoped to entirely remodel it to look like an Egyptian temple, similar to Maskelyne & Cooke’s Egyptian Hall in London. He hoped to employ in his new “Temple of Mysteries” state-of-the-art electronics such as “talking machines” that could be set in motion by the weight of a patron as he stepped on certain spots on the floor. Houdini claimed to have the backing of a few prominent Broadway producers, including Oscar Hammerstein and Charles Dillingham, who created the Cheer Up show, but in the end, the money-men were too savvy to try to finance such an ambitious project as the war raged.
That wasn’t the only disappointment Houdini was facing as 1918 began. His business venture, the Film Development Corporation, was hemorrhaging money, and Houdini was trying to stem the flow with large cash infusions from his savings. Between Houdini’s outlays and his sacrifices for the war effort, he was facing a cash crisis for the first time since his sideshow days. It was so bad that he was forced to curtail additions to his growing library. Commenting on a theater collection that had just gone up for sale, Houdini told Kilby that “if I had been flush would have spent a great deal more.”
The Secret Life of Houdini Page 38