March 16, 2020 • 35 mins
Harry Houdini, a name synonymous with magic. The innovator of escapism, known the world over, the secrets to his performances remain unknown to this day. How did a poor jewish immigrant from Budapest virtually invent the art of self liberation? What drove Houdini as an inventor, performer and debunker of spiritualism?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Harry Houdini
is still today the most famous of magicians and escape artists,
a man who was an original innovator of the area
(00:22):
of escapism as a form of skill and entertainment. He
invented numerous feats of self liberation and the intricate apparatus
to perform them. Secrets of how they were done remain
even today. What drove Hudini to become such a successful escapist.
(00:45):
I'm Dr Gail Saltz and you're listening to Personology. Joining
me today are Ben Bolan and Noel Brown, hosts that
the I Heart podcast Ridiculous History, a show that dives
into some of the weirdest stories from across the span
of human civilization. Harry Hoddini was born in eighteen seventy four,
(01:12):
not as Harry Houdini, but as Eric Weiss. And he
was not from Appleton, Wisconsin, as he portrayed himself, not
the American apple pie guy and magician of his later
public persona, because actually he was born in Budapest to
poor Jewish parents. His is a story of classic immigrant escape,
(01:33):
but from humble origins. Houdini became world renowned as a
magician and an escape artist. I think the piece about
escapism is especially important, not just because of what he did,
(01:56):
but because he escaped the life that he was going
to have. And I think that theme of needing to
escape is something that plagued him, if you will, for
his entire life in a way. And I also love
your notion of escapism, because not only you know, is
he known as a as a great escape artist. Like
you said, he was able to escape this life, but
(02:16):
the idea of escapism is like being entertained, and that's
a big part of what he his legacy is, as
well as being a fantastic entertainer. He escaped his life
in Budapest partially because it was actually a life of poverty.
He was born into a pretty destitute Family's father was
Mayor Samuel Weiss. He put himself forward as a rabbi
(02:40):
and actually Eric, his son Harry, said, you know, I'm
the son of a rabbi, But he really wasn't even
a rabbi. I mean, like he didn't go to rabbinical school.
There was no training. He's sort of a self invented rabbi.
He was really by trade a soap maker and to
be clear, also not a mayor of anything, right, that
was his mayor of anything, not a mayor, not actually
(03:03):
a rabbi. He was a guy just trying to make
it and and really not making it, who brought his
family to the US to try to have a better life.
And probably you guys can testify to this. At Appleton,
Wisconsin in eighteen seventy four or thereabouts, was not exactly
a hubbub or like a swanky place to live. It
(03:24):
was a place you picked because you know, you could
afford to live there, because there was really kind of
nothing there. I guess we shall also add here that
part of the engine propelling the family to Wisconsin is
the anti Semitism in Eastern Europe at the time. For
the historical context this is eighteen seventy four. This is
not a friendly time for the Jewish population of Eastern Europe.
(03:49):
There's a lot of oppression, of course, uh, scads of
racism and in almost every aspect of life. So going
from a place where are actively persecuted to a place that, Okay,
maybe it's not the Big Apple, maybe it's not New York,
maybe it's just Appleton. Even in Appleton, it wasn't that
(04:10):
great to be a Jew? I mean even even still,
maybe it was better than in Europe, but there weren't
very many of them. And the reason actually his father
was able to be a rabbi was that essentially there
were a few Jewish families there and they just kind
of needed someone to like lead the way. Interestingly, the
father never learned to speak English. She spoke only Hebrew
(04:33):
and German, making it hard for them to actually have
a whole lot of success. To some degree, that may
have propelled Eric to feel that he probably at some
point would need to escape from even this escape because
you know, they weren't going to go very far. They
were really struggling to make it. And his mother, Cecilia,
(04:55):
he was hugely attached to. I mean, you look up
mama's Boy, and really Harry Houdini kind of exemplifies a
mama's boy in the sense that you know, even even
later when he marries, he talks about the two girls
in his life, his favorite two girls, and it's always
his mother. Into some degree, his his wife is kind
(05:17):
of second fiddle there, but he watched her struggle, yeah,
and poverty as well, and he really wanted to make
life better for his whole family. He leaves home and
tries to do whatever he can to figure out how
to make some money. Eric is short, stout, strong, athletic,
(05:42):
actually pretty smart. At age nine, he tries to become
a trapeze artist. He has some idea of flying through
the air, doing tricks, entertaining people, and making this a
means of making a living. Oh that's right, right, Eric
Prince of the Air, I believe was the title he
(06:04):
was using. So this is fascinating too. There's a parallel
between Houdini and his father at this time because Mayor
began calling himself a rabbi. He was sort of a
self appointed or self taught rabbi in his opinion, and
around this time Houdini is also becoming a magician by
(06:25):
teaching himself. Right, he was a pretty voracious reader from
what I understand. Yes, he was a voracious reader. He
taught himself by reading, but he also was very physical,
like he participated in track and gymnastics, and so it
was almost like a melding. This is a very important
theme as well escapism. But also he's really highly creative.
(06:49):
For example, around this time when he's Eric Prince of
the air. There's a magician, a French magician named Robert Houdin,
who is making his way and probably one of the
first or earlier magicians that's getting any sort of notice.
You may wonder where did Eric Weiss get the idea
to change his name to Harry Houdini. Eric Houdin has
(07:12):
already put this idea in Eric's head. Here he is
being a trapeze artist. Here he is putting himself forward
as prince of the air. And he starts to take
all these disparate ideas and put them together as who
does he want to be? Is this the point that
Eric runs off and joins the circus. I imagine it
made his father very proud. At about age twelve in
(07:33):
those days, you know, again you didn't have money, You're
trying to make things work. We don't really know what
happened to him, but he resurfaces at age thirteen in
New York City, meets his father who has come there,
and they're they've got nothing, like they're living in a
boarding house essentially, they're trying to work like in a
necktie factory, and his younger brother joins into He has
(07:55):
a younger brother, Theodore that's called dash, and the brothers
come together and say, let's try to be an act.
Let's try to be the brothers. He's very driven at
this point by wanting to show his mother to some
degree that he can succeed and wanting to have her
not keep living in poverty. And it is around this
(08:18):
time that yes, he's like, okay, I'm going to join
the circus again. As you mentioned, not something that would
make a rabbi father terribly happy, but but a rabbi
father who who's not making it as a rabbi didn't
necessarily have a lot of say in the matter. He
did something that I was unfamiliar with because I'm not
(08:39):
a you know, an expert on stage magicians. He actually
purchased magic tricks, which is not a thing I knew
you could do. You can buy magic tricks from other magicians.
So he started investing in magic early on as well,
or at least by the time they were the brothers.
Houdini very entrepreneurial. Clearly this was part of you know,
(08:59):
his make up is how could he essentially be a
businessman even as he was being a magician. Um, I
didn't know that he bought magic tricks. But that does
sound very astutely entrepreneurial of him, since he couldn't constantly
be the only one doing everything. But it was at
about this time, like he's around twenty, he's doing circus acts.
(09:22):
And by circus acts, let's be clear, he's there's no
Barnamin Bailey, there's no there's no big Apple circus. This
is like you know, in people's glorified backyards or unused
space in a neighborhood. These aren't big circuses. But he
is meeting all of these curious people who also participate
in circus acts. And that's actually how he met his wife, Bess,
(09:45):
who was only eighteen. She was one of a group
of sisters who were doing an act. They called themselves
the Flora Sisters. He married her after three weeks pretty quick.
Bess was Catholic, came from a Catholic family. Actually for
best this was sad because her mother actually never spoke
(10:06):
to her again. Essentially was so distraught and angry that
she married a Jew. That was essentially the end of
her relationship with her parents. But she was absolutely crazy
about Eric, who's now harry and he is clearly quite
besotted with her and she became his assistant. Actually, so
that is where he started with, I'm doing tricks and
(10:30):
this is my quote, beautiful assistant, and that's got a
lot of stage appeal, right, People enjoy seeing that they
sort of understand that format. I believe she was also
singing as part of the act, which surprised me because
you know, usually when we think of a magician's assistant,
they're holding things, they're bringing props on and off stage,
(10:51):
getting sought in half potentially. Yeah, they're appearing to hopefully appearing,
hopefully appearing to. So this is a question, um, is
would this have been one of the early examples of
an attractive female assistant or was that kind of a
tried and true part of the showmanship at this point. Well,
actually there was some of that already going on. Um.
(11:12):
The departure for best, which is interesting is that and
this probably had something to do with the fact that,
as I said, she came from a Catholic family and
that Harry was from a Jewish family, and that none
of them felt that she should be displaying her wears
as it were. So in fact, even though she was
his assistant, she did not like some of the other
(11:32):
assistants who were bubbling up dress in a glamorous way.
She did not dress in a revealing way. It was
not supposed to be super I Candy. It was really
that she was assisting him sort of part of the
intensity of the magic or the entertainment or the tricks.
In fact, if you look at photos of her, she's
(11:55):
in pretty conservative garb and almost like athletically conservative for
those days. But Harry, he does recognize exactly what you
guys are referring to, that people want to see shocking things,
and he understands that at a at a gut level,
and so he starts coming into before the act. He
appears with virtually no clothes on to demonstrate, for example,
(12:20):
I've got no keys in my pockets, or I'm not
keeping anything on my person that could help me get
out of this escape. That's obsensively what it's for. But
in fact he understands on a certain level being exhibitionistic
and all that that means is something that will draw
people in and get them to spend money to see this,
(12:42):
want to see this because people by nature are voyeuristic.
He understood that I want to objectify the guy too much,
but he's in shape. You know, he cuts a handsome figure.
There's a Hubba Hubba to this, and he liked that.
That was important to him. He wanted to be Hubba Hubba,
and part of upping the anti I guess in his
tricks was to be admired and to be remembered, which
(13:06):
later will become very important in what drives him in
this direction, up and up and up to do more
and more. This is interesting too, because when you're talking
about how he's escalating stuff, how he's being exhibitionistic, it's
not just a matter of check out my sweet pecks.
He's also doing some kind of social engineering or publicity
stunts when he approaches police stations and says, okay, guys,
(13:32):
try to handcuff me, and let's do it in public
and see what happens. I thought that was interesting because
when you're talking about how he is always doggedly seeking
ways to escalate the show and the experience, he started
taking it off of the stage. I don't know if
you can go to police stations and do that today. No,
(13:52):
I wouldn't think so, but I mean, you know, he
definitely took it more into the realm of like exhibitionism
and almost like a weird hybrid of of magic and
performance art, where he'd you know, hang himself from cranes
and do these death defying escapes and put himself physically
in harm's way. I think that was the that was
the big kicker there, and more importantly, put himself in
the local newspaper before his actual show happened. Right, he
(14:18):
was a master marketer of himself, which was really like pr.
Before there was pr, that wasn't a field, and branding
wasn't a thing, so before that even existed in some
sort of concretized way. He understood that, and that's exactly
what he was doing. That he was marketing himself. And
he understood a lot of things about human nature. And
(14:39):
maybe because he understood this about himself, that we are voyeurs.
We like sado masochism, you know, we like to see
they got to the edge of death and then made
it somehow, or we like to see people to some
degree harming themselves or like little forms of violence and
hold our breath. And to some degree both of those
(15:01):
sadism and masochism, those are like normal human drives. And
whether he understood that about himself and therefore interested in
about other people, or just understood that other people would
be drawn in by that. He played to all of
those psychological mechanisms of the public that worked for him
in spades. We're going to take a quick break. When
(15:25):
we get back, we'll dive into Houdini's conflict with purported
prefayers of the supernatural. He was always sort of fighting
against being associated with spiritualism, which was on the rise
(15:49):
concurrently with his career. I wonder if there's some insight
we can look at as to why he had such
a deep antagonism towards this this kind of stuff. That's right.
We actually did an episode in Ridiculous History about his
ghost detective Rose Macknburg, who he he'd actually send her
ahead of him on his tour stops to debunk these
(16:12):
spiritualists or mediums or whatnot. The amount of money that was,
you know, spent on mediums in those days was staggering.
Like you know, with inflation, it would have been just
like millions and millions of dollars. Uh. And you know,
of course, very much hoax. You know, almost nine times
out of I mean, I don't know, like depending on
where you stand, I would say maybe ten times out
(16:33):
of ten. But in the you know, in the context
of the story, it was all about him coming to
town and then exposing these people as frauds with the
homework that his assistant had done. And that was another
kind of brilliant marketing ploy. If you think about it,
(16:59):
that is just possible. But I would argue it's deeper
than that. It is marketing, but and it is pr
and the and he has a genius with this. But
his antagonism really takes a serious turn, a harder edge
(17:21):
after the death of his mother. Well, there are two
issues in terms of his intensity of his feeling about
spiritualism and what did he have to do about it.
He was really an athlete, and his tricks weren't just tricks.
They were athletic feats. It wasn't like a total sleight
of hand. He learned from people in the circus how
(17:41):
to use his toes, from people who were in the
circus who had no arms, how to use his toes
so he could put a key between two toes. These
were real feats of flexibility, of strength, of holding his breath,
of you know, using body parts that an't usually used
like that, dislocating things. So in the words. What he
(18:04):
was doing for him was real, nothing as opposed to
what he felt that the spiritualists were doing, which was
truly a trick and it was an affriend to him.
But in addition, he became very conflicted and revved up
(18:26):
about this because his mother was the singular most important
person to him, the single most loved person, probably more
than his wife, and he was really devastated at the
loss of her, and the idea being dangled that she
could be somewhere he could reconnect with her must have
(18:47):
been a huge draw. And to see all of the
other people who also had longings like he did, believe
they were connected or spend all their money and trying
to be connected must have toyed with how he felt
about this whole movement. That's right. I kind of forgot
that it started with him having hope and being fascinated
(19:10):
by it as a means to reconnecting, and then feeling
that betrayal I imagine, or just realizing that it was
all just kind of smoking mirrors. To be duped in
this way for a man like this was actually really
enraging anybody who worked with him. He made sign an
agreement he demanded complete loyalty, like in the days before
(19:33):
anybody did such things. He had people signing documents that
they would not speak of anything in the right. He
was the earlier, the earliest days of that um So
he had a paranoia about him of being betrayed. Another
primer if you think about it, for you know, going
in and having the hope that he was going to
connect with his mother and actually believing that this could
be so, and then feeling duped. He's working from personal grief, right,
(19:57):
and he is working to also exercise critical thinking and
skepticism in a way that he likely considered a public service. Right.
He was helping people, but also he was helping himself
because you know, in the mind of the American public
and the global public, even uh, someone who is an
(20:19):
escape artist or doing stage magic is often lumped in
with someone who's practicing as a medium or a clairvoyant
of some sort. So he's not just doing what he
thinks is the right thing. There is that ulterior motive
of great publicity, but then there's this third motive which
is differentiating himself in the marketplace. You know what I mean.
(20:42):
I love that you point out that these are athletic feats,
and I lit up when I heard you at the
very beginning say he was kind of a mama's boy,
because I don't think a lot of people know how
much personal emotional heft went into his vendetta against spiritualism.
And also I think he profited from this, maybe not
(21:06):
necessarily financially, but in the eye of the public, he
profited from this, not just because he was involved in
ghost hunting or ghostbusting, but because he was also just
on his own, really genuinely, amazingly talented. Gosh, she's he's
only twenty six when he starts touring Europe. And another
(21:27):
thing to think about in terms of, you know, the
spiritual say yes, we're going to be able to reach
your mother, and then he knows that even though they're saying, oh,
it's her, and she's speaking this way, and she's saying
these things which he knows she she never would do,
so he knows this is false. At about the same
time it starts dawning on him. How is he gonna
(21:48):
achieve immortality? He's been very driven on on fame and
maybe even had a thought that you know, if you
can speak to the dead and that they're still there,
that essentially you don't really die, and it's it's possible
that this experience of being told she's there and then
realizing you're you're being duped and she's not there, and
in fact death is quite final and there will be
(22:09):
no crossing the boundary. Whether that may have revved up
his need to figure out how to achieve enough fame
or more fame to have immortality in a certain way.
I wonder this because it's aid about the same time
that he starts doing other things like film, he starts
(22:31):
traveling around, he starts doing things that aren't about his
physical prowess but are seem more directed towards being so
famous that you're remembered a legacy, right, yes, but a
big legacy that making you immortal in some way. That
started happening at about the time that he really became
disillusioned and angry about spiritualism, and that became a big
(22:55):
driver for him in the things that he started doing
at that point, and to some degree eve and in
the risks that he started taking, which will prove to
be a big deal in terms of his ultimate demise.
Let's take a break here, be right back. You've heard
(23:26):
us allude to some of Houdini's specific tricks or acts. Uh,
he is the father of escapism, a someone who can
legitimately say they are an escape bologist. When he began
his career, he was doing sort of card tricks, coin tricks,
that kind of stuff. But as he became this internationally
(23:47):
famous escape b oologist or magician, his tricks were things
like being able to get out of handcuffs, being able
to get out of straight jackets. This is where we
see the danger levels increasing at a precipitous and then
ultimately I believe a fatal rate. You know. I think
that his early life of essentially escaping Budapest and then
(24:10):
escaping Appleton and essentially leaving escaping his family of poverty
and going out on his own, these psychological themes probably
had something to do with his choice of direction, that
he would become an escapist when there wasn't such a thing,
right this. I locked myself in this tank, in this water,
(24:30):
in this river, I'm lowered by a crane in the river,
in the box, and then I have to get out,
I have to escape in psychological paralouance. Who would say
it was overdetermined that he would choose and move in
that direction and choose such a thing. To this day,
magicians don't know. No one knows how he made an
elephant disappear. Many of the things, it's ultimately been understood
(24:56):
how he did what he did, and they were very
athletic doings. But at least it's known he made an
elephant disappear. Nobody can figure out how he did that,
what was the setup for that trick? From a stage perspective,
(25:22):
Judini performs this Vanishing Elephant act at the Hippodrome Theater
in New York because understandably they need a big room,
right this has the world's largest stage at the time.
All he needs is a huge cabinet, team of twelve
other people and an elephant. The audience was able to
see inside the cabinet. You would be able to look
(25:44):
at it and tell that there wasn't, you know, an
easy exit or hidden door or something. But then once
they closed the cabinet and reopened it, boom. The five
time eight foot tall elephant is called insane today. If
we saw that, we would say insane. I think even
more insane is the idea that magicians today aren't don't
(26:07):
know how Houdini pulled that off. How that actually happened,
which is fascinating, which is very different from the dramas
that he would create around other sorts of tricks or
you know, escape performances that he did. Whereas you point out,
he would come to town generate this tremendous publicity by
going to the police station and saying, strip me naked,
(26:30):
put me in the cell, do your best, and then
they would all leave, and then he would a be
out having escaped, and he would have moved other prisoners
around from different cell to different cell. It would be
astonishing in some short period of time how he'd clearly
opened many cells, and then that would RaSE up everybody
(26:52):
in the town, who would then of course want to
pay for a ticket to see whatever he was going
to do on stage. You know what we think of
the Chinese water torture cell, im my original in all
(27:17):
of these things can function as sort of a metaphor
for his own genesis and origin story. They all have
an element of torture in them. He's putting himself in
a torturous situation. So whether he's being held inside water
the water torture cell, whether he's being hung upside down
(27:40):
in a straight jacket. They all have this theme of
torture in them. There was something in him I think
that felt tortured actually in some way. There are a
lot of things that we could posit as to why
torture resonated so much for him, But that theme really
runs across all of his work. Where do you think
(28:00):
it stemmed from a lot of performers who need the
kind of accolades and admiration that Harry Houdini seemed to
need do actually have underneath that tremendous insecurity, maybe not
self loathing, but like a real doubting as to whether
they measure up. I mean, here is a man who
(28:20):
was Jewish, he was five four, didn't have money when
they came to Wisconsin. It wasn't good to be a Jew.
There's a power in taking over the persecution yourself. And
Houdini also tried his hand at acting as well, which
is a much less dangerous way to get that attention
that you were craving as the fourth of six children.
(28:42):
I think those were mostly disappointments to him. He tried,
he hung out with like Chaplain, He tried to be
with the celebrities, be in the films and use that
to be more revered, be more famous, be more immortal,
but it didn't really work out for him. It may
have only fueled his his security further. To be honest,
many people in acting in general struggle with a lot
(29:06):
of narcissism, not as a dirty word, but narcissism meaning
actual insecurity and needing to create things around you to
try to make you feel more special because you actually
feel less special. He continued to be willing to take
certain risks to keep pursuing this, and ultimately that is
essentially what killed him. So he used to have this
(29:29):
thing where he would tell people that they could punch
him in the stomach because he has abs of steel.
He was incredibly fit, and he was credibly athletic. Part
of his deal was to say, you can hit me
and you're gonna be amazed. You know, you talk about
somebody insecure, what do they have to say? I'm the strongest,
I'm the best, I'm the toughest. That was a big
(29:51):
stick of his and unfortunately and ultimately didn't work out
very well for him. He was going to be doing
a performance, apparent he wasn't feeling that great he was,
he was laying down McGill's student was was with him,
was sketching him. Actually, He and another student said, hey,
we understand that you have abs of steel. Can we
(30:13):
give you a pop? And he said, oh, sure, fine,
but hadn't prepared himself and the way that I guess
he normally did. The student hit him a couple of times,
really hard in the abdomen. He clearly had pain. It
wasn't a nothing for him, but much in his usual
stoic and the show must go on, and I am
(30:33):
the toughest style. He went on. He did the show.
He clearly was having a lot of pain. He continued
through the week saying he didn't need medical attention, he
would just get through it. It would be okay. And
by the time he did seek medical care, which was
about a week later, he was diagnosed as having late
stage appendicitis, which essentially means he had a rupture appendix.
(30:55):
And this was in the day and age of no antibiotics,
So even though they did to surgeries to try to
save him with no antibiotics, ultimately that was the end
of his life. He died. It's unclear whether the ruptured
appendix is something that was true true and unrelated to
getting socked in the stomach or whether something was brewing
(31:18):
and getting punched, you know, put him over the edge.
But at the end of the day, it really is
was his style of I'm the toughest that unfortunately undid him.
This leads us to a tragic posthumous note, at least
for me, in the story of Houdini. It's that after
(31:39):
he does ultimately pass away, for years after his his death,
in his surviving spouse Best attempts to contact him through seances.
That is sad, and it was really a promise that
(32:00):
she made, really to him, that she would try on
the anniversary of his death, which actually, if you think
about it, this is pretty crazy, right. He died on Halloween,
which is weird in of its own right, so every
Halloween Best would host a seance and try to reach him.
She did stop ten years later, having had no success,
(32:24):
but she did try for ten years something that he
really wanted and is kind of amazing. Even more when
you think about the husband wife relationship, because where do
you think that Harry was buried next to his mama
(32:44):
at Jewish cemeterary and at Jewish cemetery where ps his
wife could not be buried because she was Catholic. She
never converted. Huh, that wasn't really a thing. You had
to be by blood jew and she could not be
with him, but that was his choice to be buried
next to his mother Jewish cemetery. And yet she tried
(33:06):
for for ten years to reconnect to Harry, but sadly
could not. I think it's interesting that his kind of
the same swagger and bravado that made him a great
showman and made him willing to take all these risks
is ultimately what kind of undid him. Ultimately, you know,
(33:27):
he was just human after all. I guess essentially, I
mean achieved really what he wanted, which was a certain infamy.
Right today, if we talk about magicians, he would be
number one, I think, top of the list, even though
we have amazing magicians around today, but everybody remembers Harry Houdini,
and that was clearly incredibly important to him, and I think,
(33:49):
in fairness deserved. He did create something that really didn't
exist before him. Escapism wasn't a thing, it was new.
What he made for that he does go down in history,
and that was his goal. He's probably one of the
most famous people who's done the come on bro, hit
me move in history and uh while it. While it
(34:13):
didn't work out, he has such a legacy. People who
don't speak English or you don't have any interest in magic,
know the name Harry Houdini. So I I agree with you.
I believe that ultimately, while imperfect, he was successful in
fighting against his mortality, he really created something that um
(34:36):
we all in a way benefit from the idea that
one could escape the jaws of death. Well, that wraps
up this episode. I want to thank Ben Bolan and
Noel Brown for joining me on this episode. If you
like what you heard, you should check out their show
(34:56):
Ridiculous History. It's got some great stories from history and
it's a lot of fun. If you want more for me,
you can check out my book The Power of Different
The Link between Disorder and Genius, or tweet me at
doctor Gayl Saltz thanks for listening. Personology is a production
(35:20):
of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Doctor Gayl
Saltz and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The Associate producer is Lowell Berlanti. Editing music and mixing
by Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Harry Houdini
is still today the most famous of magicians and escape artists,
a man who was an original innovator of the area
(00:22):
of escapism as a form of skill and entertainment. He
invented numerous feats of self liberation and the intricate apparatus
to perform them. Secrets of how they were done remain
even today. What drove Hudini to become such a successful escapist.
(00:45):
I'm Dr Gail Saltz and you're listening to Personology. Joining
me today are Ben Bolan and Noel Brown, hosts that
the I Heart podcast Ridiculous History, a show that dives
into some of the weirdest stories from across the span
of human civilization. Harry Hoddini was born in eighteen seventy four,
(01:12):
not as Harry Houdini, but as Eric Weiss. And he
was not from Appleton, Wisconsin, as he portrayed himself, not
the American apple pie guy and magician of his later
public persona, because actually he was born in Budapest to
poor Jewish parents. His is a story of classic immigrant escape,
(01:33):
but from humble origins. Houdini became world renowned as a
magician and an escape artist. I think the piece about
escapism is especially important, not just because of what he did,
(01:56):
but because he escaped the life that he was going
to have. And I think that theme of needing to
escape is something that plagued him, if you will, for
his entire life in a way. And I also love
your notion of escapism, because not only you know, is
he known as a as a great escape artist. Like
you said, he was able to escape this life, but
(02:16):
the idea of escapism is like being entertained, and that's
a big part of what he his legacy is, as
well as being a fantastic entertainer. He escaped his life
in Budapest partially because it was actually a life of poverty.
He was born into a pretty destitute Family's father was
Mayor Samuel Weiss. He put himself forward as a rabbi
(02:40):
and actually Eric, his son Harry, said, you know, I'm
the son of a rabbi, But he really wasn't even
a rabbi. I mean, like he didn't go to rabbinical school.
There was no training. He's sort of a self invented rabbi.
He was really by trade a soap maker and to
be clear, also not a mayor of anything, right, that
was his mayor of anything, not a mayor, not actually
(03:03):
a rabbi. He was a guy just trying to make
it and and really not making it, who brought his
family to the US to try to have a better life.
And probably you guys can testify to this. At Appleton,
Wisconsin in eighteen seventy four or thereabouts, was not exactly
a hubbub or like a swanky place to live. It
(03:24):
was a place you picked because you know, you could
afford to live there, because there was really kind of
nothing there. I guess we shall also add here that
part of the engine propelling the family to Wisconsin is
the anti Semitism in Eastern Europe at the time. For
the historical context this is eighteen seventy four. This is
not a friendly time for the Jewish population of Eastern Europe.
(03:49):
There's a lot of oppression, of course, uh, scads of
racism and in almost every aspect of life. So going
from a place where are actively persecuted to a place that, Okay,
maybe it's not the Big Apple, maybe it's not New York,
maybe it's just Appleton. Even in Appleton, it wasn't that
(04:10):
great to be a Jew? I mean even even still,
maybe it was better than in Europe, but there weren't
very many of them. And the reason actually his father
was able to be a rabbi was that essentially there
were a few Jewish families there and they just kind
of needed someone to like lead the way. Interestingly, the
father never learned to speak English. She spoke only Hebrew
(04:33):
and German, making it hard for them to actually have
a whole lot of success. To some degree, that may
have propelled Eric to feel that he probably at some
point would need to escape from even this escape because
you know, they weren't going to go very far. They
were really struggling to make it. And his mother, Cecilia,
(04:55):
he was hugely attached to. I mean, you look up
mama's Boy, and really Harry Houdini kind of exemplifies a
mama's boy in the sense that you know, even even
later when he marries, he talks about the two girls
in his life, his favorite two girls, and it's always
his mother. Into some degree, his his wife is kind
(05:17):
of second fiddle there, but he watched her struggle, yeah,
and poverty as well, and he really wanted to make
life better for his whole family. He leaves home and
tries to do whatever he can to figure out how
to make some money. Eric is short, stout, strong, athletic,
(05:42):
actually pretty smart. At age nine, he tries to become
a trapeze artist. He has some idea of flying through
the air, doing tricks, entertaining people, and making this a
means of making a living. Oh that's right, right, Eric
Prince of the Air, I believe was the title he
(06:04):
was using. So this is fascinating too. There's a parallel
between Houdini and his father at this time because Mayor
began calling himself a rabbi. He was sort of a
self appointed or self taught rabbi in his opinion, and
around this time Houdini is also becoming a magician by
(06:25):
teaching himself. Right, he was a pretty voracious reader from
what I understand. Yes, he was a voracious reader. He
taught himself by reading, but he also was very physical,
like he participated in track and gymnastics, and so it
was almost like a melding. This is a very important
theme as well escapism. But also he's really highly creative.
(06:49):
For example, around this time when he's Eric Prince of
the air. There's a magician, a French magician named Robert Houdin,
who is making his way and probably one of the
first or earlier magicians that's getting any sort of notice.
You may wonder where did Eric Weiss get the idea
to change his name to Harry Houdini. Eric Houdin has
(07:12):
already put this idea in Eric's head. Here he is
being a trapeze artist. Here he is putting himself forward
as prince of the air. And he starts to take
all these disparate ideas and put them together as who
does he want to be? Is this the point that
Eric runs off and joins the circus. I imagine it
made his father very proud. At about age twelve in
(07:33):
those days, you know, again you didn't have money, You're
trying to make things work. We don't really know what
happened to him, but he resurfaces at age thirteen in
New York City, meets his father who has come there,
and they're they've got nothing, like they're living in a
boarding house essentially, they're trying to work like in a
necktie factory, and his younger brother joins into He has
(07:55):
a younger brother, Theodore that's called dash, and the brothers
come together and say, let's try to be an act.
Let's try to be the brothers. He's very driven at
this point by wanting to show his mother to some
degree that he can succeed and wanting to have her
not keep living in poverty. And it is around this
(08:18):
time that yes, he's like, okay, I'm going to join
the circus again. As you mentioned, not something that would
make a rabbi father terribly happy, but but a rabbi
father who who's not making it as a rabbi didn't
necessarily have a lot of say in the matter. He
did something that I was unfamiliar with because I'm not
(08:39):
a you know, an expert on stage magicians. He actually
purchased magic tricks, which is not a thing I knew
you could do. You can buy magic tricks from other magicians.
So he started investing in magic early on as well,
or at least by the time they were the brothers.
Houdini very entrepreneurial. Clearly this was part of you know,
(08:59):
his make up is how could he essentially be a
businessman even as he was being a magician. Um, I
didn't know that he bought magic tricks. But that does
sound very astutely entrepreneurial of him, since he couldn't constantly
be the only one doing everything. But it was at
about this time, like he's around twenty, he's doing circus acts.
(09:22):
And by circus acts, let's be clear, he's there's no
Barnamin Bailey, there's no there's no big Apple circus. This
is like you know, in people's glorified backyards or unused
space in a neighborhood. These aren't big circuses. But he
is meeting all of these curious people who also participate
in circus acts. And that's actually how he met his wife, Bess,
(09:45):
who was only eighteen. She was one of a group
of sisters who were doing an act. They called themselves
the Flora Sisters. He married her after three weeks pretty quick.
Bess was Catholic, came from a Catholic family. Actually for
best this was sad because her mother actually never spoke
(10:06):
to her again. Essentially was so distraught and angry that
she married a Jew. That was essentially the end of
her relationship with her parents. But she was absolutely crazy
about Eric, who's now harry and he is clearly quite
besotted with her and she became his assistant. Actually, so
that is where he started with, I'm doing tricks and
(10:30):
this is my quote, beautiful assistant, and that's got a
lot of stage appeal, right, People enjoy seeing that they
sort of understand that format. I believe she was also
singing as part of the act, which surprised me because
you know, usually when we think of a magician's assistant,
they're holding things, they're bringing props on and off stage,
(10:51):
getting sought in half potentially. Yeah, they're appearing to hopefully appearing,
hopefully appearing to. So this is a question, um, is
would this have been one of the early examples of
an attractive female assistant or was that kind of a
tried and true part of the showmanship at this point. Well,
actually there was some of that already going on. Um.
(11:12):
The departure for best, which is interesting is that and
this probably had something to do with the fact that,
as I said, she came from a Catholic family and
that Harry was from a Jewish family, and that none
of them felt that she should be displaying her wears
as it were. So in fact, even though she was
his assistant, she did not like some of the other
(11:32):
assistants who were bubbling up dress in a glamorous way.
She did not dress in a revealing way. It was
not supposed to be super I Candy. It was really
that she was assisting him sort of part of the
intensity of the magic or the entertainment or the tricks.
In fact, if you look at photos of her, she's
(11:55):
in pretty conservative garb and almost like athletically conservative for
those days. But Harry, he does recognize exactly what you
guys are referring to, that people want to see shocking things,
and he understands that at a at a gut level,
and so he starts coming into before the act. He
appears with virtually no clothes on to demonstrate, for example,
(12:20):
I've got no keys in my pockets, or I'm not
keeping anything on my person that could help me get
out of this escape. That's obsensively what it's for. But
in fact he understands on a certain level being exhibitionistic
and all that that means is something that will draw
people in and get them to spend money to see this,
(12:42):
want to see this because people by nature are voyeuristic.
He understood that I want to objectify the guy too much,
but he's in shape. You know, he cuts a handsome figure.
There's a Hubba Hubba to this, and he liked that.
That was important to him. He wanted to be Hubba Hubba,
and part of upping the anti I guess in his
tricks was to be admired and to be remembered, which
(13:06):
later will become very important in what drives him in
this direction, up and up and up to do more
and more. This is interesting too, because when you're talking
about how he's escalating stuff, how he's being exhibitionistic, it's
not just a matter of check out my sweet pecks.
He's also doing some kind of social engineering or publicity
stunts when he approaches police stations and says, okay, guys,
(13:32):
try to handcuff me, and let's do it in public
and see what happens. I thought that was interesting because
when you're talking about how he is always doggedly seeking
ways to escalate the show and the experience, he started
taking it off of the stage. I don't know if
you can go to police stations and do that today. No,
(13:52):
I wouldn't think so, but I mean, you know, he
definitely took it more into the realm of like exhibitionism
and almost like a weird hybrid of of magic and
performance art, where he'd you know, hang himself from cranes
and do these death defying escapes and put himself physically
in harm's way. I think that was the that was
the big kicker there, and more importantly, put himself in
the local newspaper before his actual show happened. Right, he
(14:18):
was a master marketer of himself, which was really like pr.
Before there was pr, that wasn't a field, and branding
wasn't a thing, so before that even existed in some
sort of concretized way. He understood that, and that's exactly
what he was doing. That he was marketing himself. And
he understood a lot of things about human nature. And
(14:39):
maybe because he understood this about himself, that we are voyeurs.
We like sado masochism, you know, we like to see
they got to the edge of death and then made
it somehow, or we like to see people to some
degree harming themselves or like little forms of violence and
hold our breath. And to some degree both of those
(15:01):
sadism and masochism, those are like normal human drives. And
whether he understood that about himself and therefore interested in
about other people, or just understood that other people would
be drawn in by that. He played to all of
those psychological mechanisms of the public that worked for him
in spades. We're going to take a quick break. When
(15:25):
we get back, we'll dive into Houdini's conflict with purported
prefayers of the supernatural. He was always sort of fighting
against being associated with spiritualism, which was on the rise
(15:49):
concurrently with his career. I wonder if there's some insight
we can look at as to why he had such
a deep antagonism towards this this kind of stuff. That's right.
We actually did an episode in Ridiculous History about his
ghost detective Rose Macknburg, who he he'd actually send her
ahead of him on his tour stops to debunk these
(16:12):
spiritualists or mediums or whatnot. The amount of money that was,
you know, spent on mediums in those days was staggering.
Like you know, with inflation, it would have been just
like millions and millions of dollars. Uh. And you know,
of course, very much hoax. You know, almost nine times
out of I mean, I don't know, like depending on
where you stand, I would say maybe ten times out
(16:33):
of ten. But in the you know, in the context
of the story, it was all about him coming to
town and then exposing these people as frauds with the
homework that his assistant had done. And that was another
kind of brilliant marketing ploy. If you think about it,
(16:59):
that is just possible. But I would argue it's deeper
than that. It is marketing, but and it is pr
and the and he has a genius with this. But
his antagonism really takes a serious turn, a harder edge
(17:21):
after the death of his mother. Well, there are two
issues in terms of his intensity of his feeling about
spiritualism and what did he have to do about it.
He was really an athlete, and his tricks weren't just tricks.
They were athletic feats. It wasn't like a total sleight
of hand. He learned from people in the circus how
(17:41):
to use his toes, from people who were in the
circus who had no arms, how to use his toes
so he could put a key between two toes. These
were real feats of flexibility, of strength, of holding his breath,
of you know, using body parts that an't usually used
like that, dislocating things. So in the words. What he
(18:04):
was doing for him was real, nothing as opposed to
what he felt that the spiritualists were doing, which was
truly a trick and it was an affriend to him.
But in addition, he became very conflicted and revved up
(18:26):
about this because his mother was the singular most important
person to him, the single most loved person, probably more
than his wife, and he was really devastated at the
loss of her, and the idea being dangled that she
could be somewhere he could reconnect with her must have
(18:47):
been a huge draw. And to see all of the
other people who also had longings like he did, believe
they were connected or spend all their money and trying
to be connected must have toyed with how he felt
about this whole movement. That's right. I kind of forgot
that it started with him having hope and being fascinated
(19:10):
by it as a means to reconnecting, and then feeling
that betrayal I imagine, or just realizing that it was
all just kind of smoking mirrors. To be duped in
this way for a man like this was actually really
enraging anybody who worked with him. He made sign an
agreement he demanded complete loyalty, like in the days before
(19:33):
anybody did such things. He had people signing documents that
they would not speak of anything in the right. He
was the earlier, the earliest days of that um So
he had a paranoia about him of being betrayed. Another
primer if you think about it, for you know, going
in and having the hope that he was going to
connect with his mother and actually believing that this could
be so, and then feeling duped. He's working from personal grief, right,
(19:57):
and he is working to also exercise critical thinking and
skepticism in a way that he likely considered a public service. Right.
He was helping people, but also he was helping himself
because you know, in the mind of the American public
and the global public, even uh, someone who is an
(20:19):
escape artist or doing stage magic is often lumped in
with someone who's practicing as a medium or a clairvoyant
of some sort. So he's not just doing what he
thinks is the right thing. There is that ulterior motive
of great publicity, but then there's this third motive which
is differentiating himself in the marketplace. You know what I mean.
(20:42):
I love that you point out that these are athletic feats,
and I lit up when I heard you at the
very beginning say he was kind of a mama's boy,
because I don't think a lot of people know how
much personal emotional heft went into his vendetta against spiritualism.
And also I think he profited from this, maybe not
(21:06):
necessarily financially, but in the eye of the public, he
profited from this, not just because he was involved in
ghost hunting or ghostbusting, but because he was also just
on his own, really genuinely, amazingly talented. Gosh, she's he's
only twenty six when he starts touring Europe. And another
(21:27):
thing to think about in terms of, you know, the
spiritual say yes, we're going to be able to reach
your mother, and then he knows that even though they're saying, oh,
it's her, and she's speaking this way, and she's saying
these things which he knows she she never would do,
so he knows this is false. At about the same
time it starts dawning on him. How is he gonna
(21:48):
achieve immortality? He's been very driven on on fame and
maybe even had a thought that you know, if you
can speak to the dead and that they're still there,
that essentially you don't really die, and it's it's possible
that this experience of being told she's there and then
realizing you're you're being duped and she's not there, and
in fact death is quite final and there will be
(22:09):
no crossing the boundary. Whether that may have revved up
his need to figure out how to achieve enough fame
or more fame to have immortality in a certain way.
I wonder this because it's aid about the same time
that he starts doing other things like film, he starts
(22:31):
traveling around, he starts doing things that aren't about his
physical prowess but are seem more directed towards being so
famous that you're remembered a legacy, right, yes, but a
big legacy that making you immortal in some way. That
started happening at about the time that he really became
disillusioned and angry about spiritualism, and that became a big
(22:55):
driver for him in the things that he started doing
at that point, and to some degree eve and in
the risks that he started taking, which will prove to
be a big deal in terms of his ultimate demise.
Let's take a break here, be right back. You've heard
(23:26):
us allude to some of Houdini's specific tricks or acts. Uh,
he is the father of escapism, a someone who can
legitimately say they are an escape bologist. When he began
his career, he was doing sort of card tricks, coin tricks,
that kind of stuff. But as he became this internationally
(23:47):
famous escape b oologist or magician, his tricks were things
like being able to get out of handcuffs, being able
to get out of straight jackets. This is where we
see the danger levels increasing at a precipitous and then
ultimately I believe a fatal rate. You know. I think
that his early life of essentially escaping Budapest and then
(24:10):
escaping Appleton and essentially leaving escaping his family of poverty
and going out on his own, these psychological themes probably
had something to do with his choice of direction, that
he would become an escapist when there wasn't such a thing,
right this. I locked myself in this tank, in this water,
(24:30):
in this river, I'm lowered by a crane in the river,
in the box, and then I have to get out,
I have to escape in psychological paralouance. Who would say
it was overdetermined that he would choose and move in
that direction and choose such a thing. To this day,
magicians don't know. No one knows how he made an
elephant disappear. Many of the things, it's ultimately been understood
(24:56):
how he did what he did, and they were very
athletic doings. But at least it's known he made an
elephant disappear. Nobody can figure out how he did that,
what was the setup for that trick? From a stage perspective,
(25:22):
Judini performs this Vanishing Elephant act at the Hippodrome Theater
in New York because understandably they need a big room,
right this has the world's largest stage at the time.
All he needs is a huge cabinet, team of twelve
other people and an elephant. The audience was able to
see inside the cabinet. You would be able to look
(25:44):
at it and tell that there wasn't, you know, an
easy exit or hidden door or something. But then once
they closed the cabinet and reopened it, boom. The five
time eight foot tall elephant is called insane today. If
we saw that, we would say insane. I think even
more insane is the idea that magicians today aren't don't
(26:07):
know how Houdini pulled that off. How that actually happened,
which is fascinating, which is very different from the dramas
that he would create around other sorts of tricks or
you know, escape performances that he did. Whereas you point out,
he would come to town generate this tremendous publicity by
going to the police station and saying, strip me naked,
(26:30):
put me in the cell, do your best, and then
they would all leave, and then he would a be
out having escaped, and he would have moved other prisoners
around from different cell to different cell. It would be
astonishing in some short period of time how he'd clearly
opened many cells, and then that would RaSE up everybody
(26:52):
in the town, who would then of course want to
pay for a ticket to see whatever he was going
to do on stage. You know what we think of
the Chinese water torture cell, im my original in all
(27:17):
of these things can function as sort of a metaphor
for his own genesis and origin story. They all have
an element of torture in them. He's putting himself in
a torturous situation. So whether he's being held inside water
the water torture cell, whether he's being hung upside down
(27:40):
in a straight jacket. They all have this theme of
torture in them. There was something in him I think
that felt tortured actually in some way. There are a
lot of things that we could posit as to why
torture resonated so much for him, But that theme really
runs across all of his work. Where do you think
(28:00):
it stemmed from a lot of performers who need the
kind of accolades and admiration that Harry Houdini seemed to
need do actually have underneath that tremendous insecurity, maybe not
self loathing, but like a real doubting as to whether
they measure up. I mean, here is a man who
(28:20):
was Jewish, he was five four, didn't have money when
they came to Wisconsin. It wasn't good to be a Jew.
There's a power in taking over the persecution yourself. And
Houdini also tried his hand at acting as well, which
is a much less dangerous way to get that attention
that you were craving as the fourth of six children.
(28:42):
I think those were mostly disappointments to him. He tried,
he hung out with like Chaplain, He tried to be
with the celebrities, be in the films and use that
to be more revered, be more famous, be more immortal,
but it didn't really work out for him. It may
have only fueled his his security further. To be honest,
many people in acting in general struggle with a lot
(29:06):
of narcissism, not as a dirty word, but narcissism meaning
actual insecurity and needing to create things around you to
try to make you feel more special because you actually
feel less special. He continued to be willing to take
certain risks to keep pursuing this, and ultimately that is
essentially what killed him. So he used to have this
(29:29):
thing where he would tell people that they could punch
him in the stomach because he has abs of steel.
He was incredibly fit, and he was credibly athletic. Part
of his deal was to say, you can hit me
and you're gonna be amazed. You know, you talk about
somebody insecure, what do they have to say? I'm the strongest,
I'm the best, I'm the toughest. That was a big
(29:51):
stick of his and unfortunately and ultimately didn't work out
very well for him. He was going to be doing
a performance, apparent he wasn't feeling that great he was,
he was laying down McGill's student was was with him,
was sketching him. Actually, He and another student said, hey,
we understand that you have abs of steel. Can we
(30:13):
give you a pop? And he said, oh, sure, fine,
but hadn't prepared himself and the way that I guess
he normally did. The student hit him a couple of times,
really hard in the abdomen. He clearly had pain. It
wasn't a nothing for him, but much in his usual
stoic and the show must go on, and I am
(30:33):
the toughest style. He went on. He did the show.
He clearly was having a lot of pain. He continued
through the week saying he didn't need medical attention, he
would just get through it. It would be okay. And
by the time he did seek medical care, which was
about a week later, he was diagnosed as having late
stage appendicitis, which essentially means he had a rupture appendix.
(30:55):
And this was in the day and age of no antibiotics,
So even though they did to surgeries to try to
save him with no antibiotics, ultimately that was the end
of his life. He died. It's unclear whether the ruptured
appendix is something that was true true and unrelated to
getting socked in the stomach or whether something was brewing
(31:18):
and getting punched, you know, put him over the edge.
But at the end of the day, it really is
was his style of I'm the toughest that unfortunately undid him.
This leads us to a tragic posthumous note, at least
for me, in the story of Houdini. It's that after
(31:39):
he does ultimately pass away, for years after his his death,
in his surviving spouse Best attempts to contact him through seances.
That is sad, and it was really a promise that
(32:00):
she made, really to him, that she would try on
the anniversary of his death, which actually, if you think
about it, this is pretty crazy, right. He died on Halloween,
which is weird in of its own right, so every
Halloween Best would host a seance and try to reach him.
She did stop ten years later, having had no success,
(32:24):
but she did try for ten years something that he
really wanted and is kind of amazing. Even more when
you think about the husband wife relationship, because where do
you think that Harry was buried next to his mama
(32:44):
at Jewish cemeterary and at Jewish cemetery where ps his
wife could not be buried because she was Catholic. She
never converted. Huh, that wasn't really a thing. You had
to be by blood jew and she could not be
with him, but that was his choice to be buried
next to his mother Jewish cemetery. And yet she tried
(33:06):
for for ten years to reconnect to Harry, but sadly
could not. I think it's interesting that his kind of
the same swagger and bravado that made him a great
showman and made him willing to take all these risks
is ultimately what kind of undid him. Ultimately, you know,
(33:27):
he was just human after all. I guess essentially, I
mean achieved really what he wanted, which was a certain infamy.
Right today, if we talk about magicians, he would be
number one, I think, top of the list, even though
we have amazing magicians around today, but everybody remembers Harry Houdini,
and that was clearly incredibly important to him, and I think,
(33:49):
in fairness deserved. He did create something that really didn't
exist before him. Escapism wasn't a thing, it was new.
What he made for that he does go down in history,
and that was his goal. He's probably one of the
most famous people who's done the come on bro, hit
me move in history and uh while it. While it
(34:13):
didn't work out, he has such a legacy. People who
don't speak English or you don't have any interest in magic,
know the name Harry Houdini. So I I agree with you.
I believe that ultimately, while imperfect, he was successful in
fighting against his mortality, he really created something that um
(34:36):
we all in a way benefit from the idea that
one could escape the jaws of death. Well, that wraps
up this episode. I want to thank Ben Bolan and
Noel Brown for joining me on this episode. If you
like what you heard, you should check out their show
(34:56):
Ridiculous History. It's got some great stories from history and
it's a lot of fun. If you want more for me,
you can check out my book The Power of Different
The Link between Disorder and Genius, or tweet me at
doctor Gayl Saltz thanks for listening. Personology is a production
(35:20):
of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Doctor Gayl
Saltz and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The Associate producer is Lowell Berlanti. Editing music and mixing
by Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
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