Decades after his death,
magic fans and plebes alike are fascinated by the life
of one of the world's greatest entertainers, Harry Houdini. Born Eric Weisz in Hungary,
Houdini made a career out of doing weird
[BLEEP] and getting paid for it before people knew
that was a thing you could do. Here are some of Harry
Houdini's exploits. Before we get started,
be sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel
and leave some comments. Ahh, magic. Let the show begin. Harry had a long affair
with film, a relationship to deep and passionate
to be a fling but not as committed
as a marriage. He starred in two
Hollywood pictures, produced and starred in
two more films in New York, and founded a film
lab before turning his back on the industry. In The Master Mystery,
Houdini played Quentin Locke, a Justice Department agent
who got into a fistfight with Q the Automaton. Houdini was like the 20s
version of Kyle Reese. If you were a cop in turn of
the century New York City, the last thing you wanted was
Harry Houdini publishing a book explaining how to
slip out of handcuffs, escape prison, and all manner
of other illegal ass [BLEEP].. In 1906, Houdini released
The Right Way to Do Wrong, which detailed his criminal
exploits such as breaking out of a police station. To make sure readers
didn't misconstrue the purpose of his book,
Houdini included this message. It does not pay to
lead a dishonest life, and those who read this book,
although it will inform them the right way to do wrong,
all I have to say is one word and that is don't. In 1895 when Keaton was six
months old and named Joseph Frank Keaton, he fell
down a flight of stairs in his family home. Houdini happened to be hanging
out with the Keaton family that night, who were all
vaudeville performers and picked up baby Buster,
who was completely fine despite his tumble
down the steps. Understandably
impressed, Houdini remarked Keaton could
really take a buster. And from then on,
the future film star was known as Buster Keaton. In 1909, he really
got into aviation and bought a French
Voisin biplane for $5,000. He hired a mechanic and
taught himself how to fly. After a minor crash,
Houdini dusted himself off and flew over Germany for a few
minutes watched by about 100 gaping German spectators. Look up in the skies,
it's Harry Houdini. A year later, he
became the first person to fly over Australian
soil, where he buzzed around for almost eight whole minutes. Crikey! He filmed that flight,
and in doing so became the first person to
ever be recorded flying. After that, Houdini put the
plane in storage in England and never flew again. Of all the magic
tricks and feats of endurance Houdini
performed, he must have really like burying
himself alive because even though he failed-- I mean, almost killed
himself on his first attempt to do so in front of a group in
1915, he kept trying to do it. Houdini was
absolutely fascinated with the idea of being buried
alive before an audience. After his first attempt,
he was chained in a coffin and submerged in a
swimming pool, where he stayed for 90 minutes. The coffin was watertight. He used control breathing
to avoid suffocation. This was done quite
publicly in New York City and apparently done again a
few months later in Worcester, Massachusetts. Still that wasn't good
enough for Houdini, so he devised a way to be buried
alive onstage using a glass vault and glass coffin so the
audience could see everything until he was completely
covered in a ton of sand. According to the
common narrative, he was going to perform
this escape in 1926 but died before he could. However, a letter unearthed
in 2014 allegedly written by Houdini to fellow magician
James S. Harto attests he performed feat
in September of 1926 under the name
Mystery of the Sphinx. You've probably heard that
Houdini was punched to death. That's not entirely accurate. See, Houdini had a weird
thing about getting people to punch him as
hard as they could, and in 1926, he was
punched one time too many by a man named J.
Gordon Whitehead, whose fault this most certainly is not. But Harry didn't just
keel over and die. The story goes
something like this. Whitehead approached Houdini
asking for permission to punch him as Houdini
claimed, hitherto correctly, that his abs could
withstand any fist. Whitehead got permission
and gut hammered Houdini, who was in a reclined
position before he could prepare for the hit. Ugh, that's going
to leave a mark. Despite excruciating pain,
Houdini went ahead with a show that night. Houdini was already running a
fever and had a broken ankle, so he probably
figured what the hell. The next day Houdini
was in awful condition. A physician examined
him before a performance and told him he had
acute appendicitis that required immediate surgery. But Houdini said, no. After the show he
went to the hospital where he had his
appendix removed. It had burst by
the time he finally sought treatment likely helped
along by Whitehead's knuckles. Houdini died one week later. When World War I
broke out, Houdini didn't lock himself up in a milk
jug until the battles ended. Instead he decided to
stump for the military. He helped sell war
bonds and went to Europe to show American soldiers how
to escape German handcuffs. On the homefront,
Houdini performed reviews to boost morale including
one called Cheer Up and another during which he
pulled an eagle named Abraham Lincoln from an American flag. Everyone has some kind
of personal goal in life. Houdini's was
traveling around the US debunking mediums who insisted
they could contact people in the afterlife. He went so far as to
cancel shows in order to put mediums on
blast who he felt were taking advantage of people. He sometimes brought the
editor of Scientific America and a panel of
scientists with him to publicize the
fraudulent psychics. And why? For the same reason Fox
Mulder works the X Files, he wanted to believe. He wanted to find the genuine
article, proof of life after death, the
ultimate escape trick. In 1924, Houdini
travel to Boston to meet Mina Margery Crandon and
prove she was full of [BLEEP].. Crandon, a beautiful
and charming woman, made a name for
herself channeling the spirit of her brother,
a crass jackass who threw random objects
at people including a megaphone, for
whatever reason, spoke in a thundering voice,
and was allegedly able to pass on messages from the dead. In post-World War I,
post-Spanish flu epidemic America, many including
Houdini, yearned to talk to departed loved ones. The day of the seance,
Houdini tightly bandage one of his legs to make his
skin especially sensitive. He suspected he as
a guest of honor would be seated next
to Crandon and hoped he could use his leg to feel
the movements of her body in order to figure out how
she was hoodwinking people. The move paid off as Houdini,
in the dark of the seance, felt Crandon using her
leg to pull objects from under her chair to wing
them around the room, a ploy to convince customers
a ghost was among them. Houdini went to a
second seance Margery held and caught her levitating
a table by wearing it on her head. Layer when describing
her malarkey, he said it was the slickest
ruse I've ever detected. If you were doing weird stuff in
the early 20th century, things like wearing a straight
jacket underwater or writing about barbarians
fighting snake gods, you kind of had to
associate with HP Lovecraft, the spookiest flame war
lovingest writer in America. Turns out at least
one manuscript on spiritualism Houdini
made available to audiences at his shows was ghost written
by Lovecraft or sort of. In 1926, Houdini
commissioned Lovecraft to write The Cancer
of Superstition, a 31-page piece tracing
superstition through the ages. As a genuine proto
troll, Lovecraft didn't write most
of the manuscript but instead farmed it
out to buddy CM Eddy. He pulled stuff like
that all the time. His literary peers either
loved him or hated him. Either way, he was
always first throw shade. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
creator of Sherlock Holmes, was really into magic
and spiritualism, so much so he broke up
his bromance with Houdini when the latter started busting
up seances in the early 1920s. Before the relationship
fell apart, the two were so close they
went on vacations together. Doyle had always
believed in spiritualism, but after his eldest
son passed away, his interest in the occult
became a full on obsession. His wife was a
self-proclaimed medium. When Houdini exposed crackpot
fake psychic Margery Crandon as a fraud, the author
took personal offense and unfriended him
the old fashioned way, by telling the newspapers. Houdini lashed back, and
the once great friends engaged in a press feud. And we bet Lovecraft
was just laughing it up over a serial the whole time. To be fair, Houdini
probably had a lot of enemies in the
magic community, but there was one
guy he was at odds with for most of his career. Howard Thurston,
Houdini's nemesis, wasn't just performing
a parallel magic. He was also trained
by the same guy who trained Houdini, Harry Keller. Keller picked Thurston over
Houdini to carry on his legacy as the most magical
man in the world. So what, thought Houdini. Did Thurston almost
drawn himself to make people forget they
spent their hard earned money to watch a guy lie to them? Nuh uh. So why? Here's the thing. Houdini apparently wasn't much
of a magician or a showman whereas Thurston was a fantastic
entertainer and extremely talented magician. At least so says Jim
Steinmeier, author of the tellingly titled The Last
Great Magician in the World. Thurston's showmanship
and ability to levitate a woman in mid-air
during an extravagant 2 and 1/2 hour show is what
earned him Keller's blessing. So why is Houdini the one the
world remembers years later? In part because he
successfully vanished an elephant in front of
thousands and also because he risked killing
himself every night in the name of entertainment. Houdini was one of the most
famous men of his time. He had a lot of admirers
and more than a few haters. Like a lot of high
volume celebrities, he didn't want to talk
to most of the people who wanted to talk to him. But instead of just ignoring
those who wanted his ear, he sent notes informing the
recipient that he was working and didn't have time to
deal with their shenanigans. His default response
to those who wished to speak to
him before a show read, the note has
been rushed to you under the stress of business and
written in the dressing room. So, yeah. Houdini was in the building,
but you weren't going to be able to talk to him. He mastered the art of
escaping awkward conversations. If you're going to be a willing
part of something as decadently nerdy as the Society
of American Magicians, you definitely want
to be president. Houdini joined the
society in 1903 and was made president in 1917. He held that position
until his death in 1926. Who was ever going to try
and take it from him alive? Howard Thurston, Houdini's
more talented and less famous nemesis, served
as vice president of the organization during
Houdini's presidency and as president from 1927
to '29, a far shorter span than Houdini's nine-year tenure. But having made the most magical
man in the world probably made up for it. What do you think of Houdini? Let us know in the comments
below and check out some of these other videos
of our Weird History. Subscribe to Weird
History, so says Houdini.
