The Life, Times and Fame of Harry Houdini, Part I

“Hold your breath with me.”

Imagine, dear reader, it is September 21, 1912. You are seated inside the world-famous Circus Busch, the Madison Square Garden of Berlin, Germany. The place is packed. It is standing room only, and there is no room left to stand. Everyone is here to see the King of Handcuffs, the World’s Greatest Escape Artist, the one and only … Harry Houdini.

So far, he has dazzled the crowd with astonishing illusions and thrilling escapes. Now he stands before the audience as his assistants bring out something no one has ever seen before. A tank made of steel, wood and glass filled to the top with water. A new escape, the most perilous and audacious of his long and illustrious career.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “I take great pleasure in introducing my latest invention … the Water Torture Cell!”

The crowd gasps. No one knows exactly what a Water Torture Cell is yet, but it sounds ominous enough that a gasp seems appropriate.

Houdini continues, “I claim it is absolutely impossible for anyone to obtain air inside of this Torture Cell when locked up in it. In front, you will notice a plate of glass, placed there for my protection. Should anything go wrong when I’m locked up, one of my assistants will rush in with an axe to demolish the glass, allowing the water to flow out and save my life. I positively and honestly do not expect any accident to happen. But we all know accidents will happen, and when least expected.”

Translation: “I might die, so you’re gonna wanna see this.” The crowd is now on the edge of their seats.

After a few members of the audience inspect the Water Torture Cell to make sure it’s inescapable, it begins.

Houdini’s ankles are locked in a restraint. He is then hoisted into the air by his ankles. He commands the crowd, “Hold your breath with me.” He inhales deeply, and so do you. Unlike you, Houdini is lowered upside down into the water. You pull out your pocket watch. The band begins to play.

His assistants lock the top of the tank and lower a curtain so you cannot see what’s happening. A minute has already passed. Then a minute and 30 seconds.

You can feel your body struggling for air, and you just can’t hold your breath a moment longer. You exhale and gasp for air. Houdini, assuming he is still alive, has bested you.

You look at your pocket watch. A minute and forty seconds have gone by. Two minutes. The seconds keep ticking on, but there’s no sign of Houdini. Three minutes and 30 seconds. Four minutes. Five minutes.

The crowd is getting restless, anxious. You begin to suspect you may have paid very good money to watch a man drown. Whispers in the crowd grow into murmurs, which swell until someone shouts, “Smash the glass! Give him air! Have you no mercy?”

The audience is losing their minds … no mortal man could possibly hold their breath for that long.

Finally! His assistants pull back the curtain to reveal Harry Houdini breathing deeply, dripping wet, sitting on top of the tank. The crowd erupts. The man who can escape anything has escaped certain death once more!

Houdini could hold his breath for a very long time. Our guess is he didn’t need to. Not that the escape was easy, but Houdini was more than smart enough to stack the deck in his favor.

He was the ultimate showman, the greatest to ever play the fame game. Harry Houdini always delivered a spectacle, always ready to risk his reputation and his life to achieve the seemingly impossible.

When asked by a reporter why he did it, Houdini said, “I want to be first, so I have struggled and fought. I’ve done and abstained. I have tortured my body and risked my life to have one plank on the stage where the imitators cannot come.”

Commanding attention has never been easy, but we’d argue it was just as difficult back then.

Houdini wasn’t just competing with other magicians. There was vaudeville, which he had been a part of, circuses, sideshows, theater, nickelodeons, opera, ballet, Wild West shows, dance halls, pool halls and arcades, jazz clubs and live music of all kinds, baseball (and there were way more minor league teams back then), football, boxing and horse racing. There were amusement parks like Coney Island. If you wanted to be entertained, all you had to do was leave your house.

It was an age of showmanship, and Harry Houdini was one of the biggest stars in the world.

When he was 12 years old, long before he was Harry Houdini, Erich Weiss left home to join the circus. This was back in 1886, when joining the circus was a reasonably viable career option. Erich, dutiful son that he was, wanted to help support his struggling family. He tried to be a trapeze artist and a strongman. Eventually, he trained as a magician. He was also fascinated by locks — he had been a locksmith’s apprentice for a while — and he had become really, really good at opening them. He would become even better.

Fast forward a few years, and Houdini and his wife, Bess, began touring with a vaudeville show. They’d perform in a lineup with jugglers, musicians, dancers, comedians and so on. Despite his reputation today, back then he was an okay magician treading water in an ocean of great ones. The Houdinis had one big illusion — the metamorphosis illusion — and his act was mostly cards and close-up magic. Unlike most magicians, however, Houdini could escape from handcuffs and other restraints, which brought the house down. That’s when vaudeville manager Martin Beck took him aside and told him to focus on escapes. So he did. Houdini and Bess became the headlining act, and eventually they struck out on their own.

To drum up publicity for his shows, he challenged the local constabulary to lock him up in their handcuffs and shackles. Houdini would escape in minutes. He escaped from jail cells. In Moscow, the local police locked him in a prison transport wagon heading to Siberia. He was out in less than an hour, something no actual prisoner had ever been able to do. Reporters were always nearby. The police were not thrilled, but the public loved it, and his stunts sold a shedload of tickets.

To keep the crowds coming, he ramped up the spectacle. In July of 1912, thousands of people gathered on the shores of the East River in Manhattan to witness one of his more daring public escapes.

Standing on a barge, surrounded by reporters, Houdini was handcuffed, his feet were shackled, and his assistants placed him in a weighted, wooden crate. The crate was padlocked, tied securely with rope, nailed shut and lowered into the river. It all looked very dangerous and impossible.

Houdini surfaced less than two and a half minutes later, looking none the worse for his efforts. The crate was hauled to the surface and examined. The locks were still locked. The crate was still nailed shut. The ropes remained in place. Inside the crate were Houdini’s handcuffs and shackles. It was as if he had simply dematerialized. The crowd roared. Houdini sold a lot of tickets.

Three years later, Houdini performed his first suspended straitjacket escape in downtown Kansas City, right in front of the offices of the Kansas City Post.

Reporters, editors and photographers had a front row seat as Houdini was hoisted by his ankles and dangled a hundred feet in the air. A huge crowd had gathered to watch him thrash violently and eventually wriggle free. Reporters wrote their stories. Houdini sold a lot of tickets.

What does any of this mean for you?

Be fearless. Do not be afraid to take bigger, smarter swings. If you have to dangle your brand upside down 100 feet in the air while it wriggles out of a straitjacket, do it. Volvo Trucks did.

Be peerless. Houdini’s career only began to take off when he did things rival magicians couldn’t or wouldn’t. Look at what your competitors are doing, and do something different. As long as you back it up with a great product, incredible service and a fantastic brand experience, you’ll be golden.

Be relentlessly you. Look like you. Sound like you. Walk and talk like you. For years, decades.

Harry Houdini died 99 years ago on Halloween, October 31, 1926. He was only 52. Next week, we’ll explore part two of his story.

See you then.

Sources!

Escape Secrets – PBS
Harry Houdini Amazes the Cleveland Police – Cleveland Police Museum
Harry Houdini made history right here in Kansas City – Martin City Telegraph
Houdini and The Circus Busch – Slow Travel Berlin
How did Houdini do his deeds – legendary illusionist’s secrets revealed – Metro
Houdini first went overboard 106 years ago today – Wild About Houdini
Houdini’s 15 Most Audacious Tricks and Escapes Ranked – The Daily Magician
The Epic Tale Of Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture Cell – The Daily Magician