A CRlllC AT LAR.GECHAIN ME UP
Harry Houdini and the art of escape.
BY Dbl.YID DENBYI
n 1908, Harry Houdini-"The
World's Handcuff King and Prison
Breaker'-needed a new act. He was
thirty-four and had worked in show
business for fifteen years. He had toured
all over the United States, playing cir-
cus sideshows, vaudeville houses, and
packed theatres of the OIJ>hewn Cir-
cuit. & a beginner, he had performed
with trained monkeys and fat ladies; a
few years later, he did his tricks in a
tuxedo with a boutonniere. In Europe,
he had pulled off such stunts as escap-
ing (in 1903) from the "Siberian Trans-
port Cell," a metal safe on wheels that
was used to haul political renegades off
to prison. It was a time of intense anti-
Semitism in Russia, and Houdini, who
was Jewish, wanted to flummox the tsa-
rist politsiya. Indeed, he was an affront
to authorities everywhere. He had con-
qw:n:d inspectors from Berlin and Scot-
land Yard, who chained him up and
then watched, bewildered, as he broke
free.. But now, having spent most of the
previous five years in Europe, he had
to conquer America all over again. Never
a great illusionist, he lacked mystery
and atmosphere; his stagecraft was or-
dinary. & a mentalist, he would have
been shamed by today's master,Derren
Brown. With a pack of cards in his
hands, Houdini couldn't kiss the hem
of the late Ricky Jay's rolled-up sleeve.Houdini challenged the ultimate reality of death, rislt.ing it over and OfleT'.
In St. Louis, Houdini and his assis-
tanti; dragged onto the stage a sixty-gal-
lon milk can, a Wgc:rvcrsion of the ones
delivered to grocery stores. They filled
it with water, the excess slopping over
the sides as Houdini climbed in. There
is a photograph of the act in which
Houdini's unsmiling face sticks out
above the can (his knees were pulled
up to his chest). Members of the local
police-with helmets reaching down
around their ears and impressively ugly
mustaches--stand to the side, looking
like nothing so much as the baffit:d cops
who harassed Charlie Chaplin a few
years later. The top of the can was pad-
locked, with Houdini submerged in the
water--in later versions, done as pro-
motional stunts, it was milk or beer.
The curtain was drawn, and, after a
minute or two, the crowd would be-
come fretful. He was holding his breath
as he tried to get out. What ifhe didn't?
"Failure means a drowning death," as
posters advertising the event warned.
Magic challenges our sense of what's
real; Houdini wanted to challenge the
ultimate reality of death, by risking it
over and over. That risk, he later wrote,
is what "attracts us to the man who
paints the flagstaff on the tall building,
or to the 'human :fly,' who scales the
walls of the same building. If we knew
that there was no possibility of either
one of them falling or, if they did fall,
that theywouldn't injure themselves in
any way, we wouldn't pay any more at-
tention to them than we do a nurse-
maid wheeling a baby carriage. There-
fore, I said to myself; why not give the
public a real thrill?" He depended on
tricks, but the possibility of an accident
or a miscalculation or a clumsy assis-
tant was tangible enough.
Even befure the milk-can stunt, Hou-
dini had gone :further than other ma-
gicians. Starting in San Francisco, in
1899, he often stripped naked in his
handcuff routines. He was short but
handsome, beautiful, even, with a wide
brow, glittering dark eyes, and muscu-
lar arms, shoulders, and thighs. He would
appear at some grim local jail or state
prison, take off his clothes, and, to es-
tablish that he wasn't hiding something
on his person, undergo an intrusive in-
spection by a local medical examiner or
police surgeon. He would then have
himself locked in a cell, encumbered1l£ NEY )()MfR, MAl\01 30 , 1020 67