Houdini

                  If someone were to ask me to name a magician, the first person to come to mind would most likely be Harry Houdini.  I am probably not alone.  With his illusions and death defying escapes, Houdini is still thought of as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, magicians of all time.  If he weren’t, people would not still be writing books about him or making movies.  I have even heard talk of a Broadway musical.  None of this would be happening if Houdini were not an important part of our history and culture.

                The most recent Houdini oriented work I have experienced is the miniseries that aired on the History channel.  Starring Adrien Brody as Houdini, the miniseries takes the viewer through Houdini’s adult life starting around the time he meets his wife Bess (Kristen Connolly) to his death.  There are some childhood moments mixed in to understand where Houdini came from, but there are not many.  Instead the series concentrates on Houdini’s early struggles to make a name for himself and how drastically his life changes once he does.

                When the series first begins, not many people know who Houdini is.  This of course is not what Houdini wants and he has to figure out a way to make himself better known.  His solution is to get himself handcuffed, repeatedly.  Houdini decides to travel around and convince people to lock him up in handcuffs and jails.  He then tells them he will escape from whatever they have locked him up in, amazing all witnesses in the process.  At first people think he’s crazy, but they go along with it.  As Houdini escapes time and time again, he becomes known as a great escape artist.  So his adventure begins.

                With his reputation on the line, Houdini cannot stop at just escaping from handcuffs and jails.  He has to make his escapes more exciting.  If he doesn’t, people will lose interest and Houdini will be back where he started.  Which is why he enlists the help of an assistant, Jim Collins (Evan Jones), to help him create more daring escapes.  Each escape is more dangerous than the one before, which terrifies Bess, but exhilarates Houdini.  He always feels the need to top himself, but it takes him a long time to realize that it is not just his life that he is putting at stake.

                As his fame rises, Houdini is presented with new opportunities to use and display his skills.  One of those opportunities is espionage.  The American government asks Houdini to go to Europe and conduct a tour including performances for their enemies.  While there Houdini is supposed to learn, and sometimes steal, information and bring it back to America and its allies.  Houdini agrees and he finds himself easily obtaining information because no one thinks of him as anything other than a performer.  People talk openly around him never thinking what they say will be reported to someone else and used against them.

                After Houdini’s espionage experience, he returns home and continues to create and perform increasingly dangerous stunts.  Eventually Bess has had enough.  She is already smoking and drinking in an effort to calm her nerves while he risks his life for entertainment, but when he fails to tell her an important detail to one his stunts, Bess lets him have it.  This shakes Houdini up as he is afraid to lose Bess, which would be worse than losing his career.  He agrees to tone down his act and no longer put his life in danger.  This works for awhile, but eventually the escape acts creep back in.  Except this time, they seem to have Bess’s consent, or at least her full knowledge of what is going on.  It helps keep them together and their marriage strong which Houdini desperately needs when his mother dies.

                Houdini was always close to his mother.  Even when he was a child he wanted to take care of her.  With his fame and fortune, Houdini is able to do that easily as an adult, but he cannot keep her from dying.  When she does die, Houdini falls apart.  The one who has always supported him no matter what is gone and there is nothing he can do to bring her back.  There are mediums who claim they can put Houdini in contact with his mother, but he finds them all to be fake.  This angers Houdini and he sets out on a mission to reveal the mediums for who they really are one by one.  He even offers a challenge to the mediums.  He will give a cash prize to any medium whose tricks he cannot uncover.  Only then will he be satisfied that there true mediums in the world.

                Of course this mission does not go over well with the spiritualists.  He is ruining their way of life by exposing their secrets.  Something must be done to stop him, but nobody quite knows how.  Houdini figures out every trick they can conjure.  Nobody is safe and Houdini proves time and time again the mediums are fakes and preying on those in grief.  It isn’t until his own death that the mediums get a reprieve, but for most of them it is too late.  Houdini revealed them to be the frauds that they are and the chance of recovery is slim.

                The series ends with the death of Harry Houdini.  He collapses on stage after his infamous punch to the stomach and is taken to the hospital.  While there the doctors cannot figure out a way to save him and Houdini dies after telling Bess he will always be around.  This leads Bess to hold séances for years after Houdini’s death, but she never comes in contact with her husband again.  That makes for a pretty sad ending, if you ask me.

                Now, as this miniseries was made mostly for entertainment, I’m pretty sure it is not 100% accurate.  I know there is some dispute about whether or not the espionage ever happened.  As I am not an expert on Harry Houdini, I cannot say yes or no.  I certainly think it’s possible that he could have spied for the government.  With his fame he certainly would be able to find opportunities to come into contact with high up people.  It’s not that much of a stretch to think he would take what he overheard or was said to him back to the American government if they asked him to.  Even if Houdini wasn’t a spy, the scenes in the series made me wonder about celebrities being sent overseas for various events and performances.  Who else throughout history could have really been a spy in disguise?

                Something I hope that was not made up or embellished is the role Bess played in Houdini’s life.  She was so important to him (although I do hope the affairs he had are fictional) and the viewers were finally able to see that.  In most Houdini things I have experienced Bess gets lost in the shuffle.  She’s mentioned in the beginning of his career and then in his death.  The rest of the time she somehow disappears.  In the series we see how much of a constant she was in Houdini’s life and how in some ways, by her objecting to things, she was the one who kept him alive.

                Another person that is usually lost is Jim Collins.  I had never heard of him before this.  In the series Jim is the true mastermind behind the stunts.  If Houdini wants to do something, Jim is the one to figure out how to do it.  While I do not know if this is fully the case in real life, I am glad to see Mr. Collins finally get the credit he is due.                             

                Other than the personal relationships, I found how Houdini did his tricks to be absolutely fascinating.  As with most things, the answer to how he escaped was usually very simple.  There really wasn’t much of a trick to it.  I especially liked when the image on the screen would turn into the action of an inside of a lock as it opened.  That was always so interesting to see how the lock worked.  I could, however, have done without some of the inside of the stomach scenes as well as the skeleton dislocating its shoulder.  The dislocating shoulder I couldn’t even look at.  Yes, I really did not need to see that one.

                 After watching this miniseries I cannot say I am going to run out and get every book ever written about Harry Houdini.  Nor am I going to watch every movie and special.  But I will say I have a new appreciation for the man and I especially do for those who were around him.  Someone as driven and obsessed with being on top as Houdini was would make for a very difficult man to live with.  It must have taken a lot for Bess and Jim to stick around and put up with Houdini’s antics and moods, but they did.  I have a feeling Houdini was better for it, because without them, I suspect we would not have the man we know as Houdini.