Dan Snow's History Hit - Harry Houdini

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Harry Houdini is perhaps the most famous entertainer to have ever lived. He wowed his audiences with sensational feats of physical endurance and illusions that were as shocking as they were impressive. What was it that made him such a captivating performer? What controversies swirled around this intriguing character? And was any of the magic real...? Joe Posnanski, an award-winning sports journalist and author of The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini joins Dan to talk about these questions and more.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Harry Houdini, the escape artist, the magician,

one of the most famous performers of the 20th century. In many ways, he helped carve out that role as a global megastar performing all over the planet. He once broke out of handcuffs that the Daily Mirror newspaper in the UK took five years to make. He liked to throw himself in a human-sized milk can, fill it up with water, and then escape from it while audience members held their breath. He would arrive in town and insist on being thrown into the cells by the local police from which he would always escape. And his favourite trick was hanging himself up by his feet from a crane, high dangling over the street below in a straitjacket and then wriggling his way out. But who was he and how did he do

these things? How did he escape from the huge box, drop deep underwater with 200 pounds of lead in it, and then swim to the surface? How did he do those things? Well, we're going to get an answer right now. Joe Posnanski is an award-winning sports journalist. He is a columnist for NBC Sports. He's an author. He's written a book about Houdini called The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini. And he's going to tell me all about that man who was born Eric Weiss in 1874 in Budapest, Hungary. What an extraordinary life story it is. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Joe, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. It's great to be here. Why Houdini? What is it about Houdini that you find so compelling? You know, I think for me, the journey began with this question, which is why do we still know who this guy is? Why a hundred years after, you know, almost a hundred years after his death, more than a hundred years after he was one of the most famous people in the world, why do we still care? Why do we still know who he is? He was a magician. He was an

escape artist. He was not somebody who you would expect to just cross through the years. And yet, to this day, we know Houdini. We still talk about Houdini. We talk about other people being like Houdini or anytime anybody escapes from anything, anytime a dog escapes from the yard. We call the dog Houdini dog. So that was what fascinated me was what was it about this guy that would cross over a hundred years that we would still be talking about him? Well, before we answer that question, which I want you to do for me, buddy, tell me just what was his upbringing? Who was the child? Well, the child was, of course, not Harry Houdini, but instead his name was Eric Wise. And he was born in Budapest, but he grew up in Wisconsin and would say all of his life that he

was born in the United States, born in Wisconsin, born in Appleton, Wisconsin. And he always considered that to be his true hometown. He was the son of a rabbi, a rabbi who had a very difficult time finding work as the years went on. And young Eric, we don't know that much about him. We know he was very much into sports. We know that he was very poor. We know he ran away from home for extended periods of time. And then we know he ended up in New York and was working in a factory when he joined up with a friend and they started doing this magic act that was quite unsuccessful. But what we know about him was that he had this great ambition to be something larger than life. And where that came from, seeing his upbringing is actually, it's hard to see. It's hard to see why somebody who grew up in

Wisconsin, moved around a lot, never had any money, but something was always driving him to become this larger than life figure that he eventually became. And was live performance, theatricals, the spectacular, was that a big thing in the 19th century? When you think of the music halls, the theaters, the seances, it felt like it was kind of of its time. Yeah, very much of its time. People were, of course, this is long before anything that we would consider to be mass communication, right? This is before even radio, but long before television, obviously the internet. And so this was all about live performance. It was all about, if you were trying to make a living in the entertainment business, it was about traveling from town to town and

performing. And the way people would perform was one of the things that I wouldn't say surprised me, but that I did not know as much about as I would find out, is there were all sorts of very crazy acts that people would take on the road. I mean, there were musicals and plays, but also there were strong men and women who could lift large amounts of weight. And there were all sorts of things that people considered to be entertainment in those days that I don't know that we would find particularly entertaining today. And of course, what Houdini ended up doing was performing more than anything. I mean, we call him a magician and he did perform magic and love magic. But really,

what he did was escape from things that people challenged him to escape from. People would come with their own special handcuffs or boxes or bags and they would dare him to escape. And that was really the act when Harry Houdini was at his very peak. What was his big break? It's really two different big breaks, because he finally broke after years in the United States in 1899 or so. There was a theater owner who ran several theaters who basically gave him his big chance, and he developed a break. But from a worldwide perspective, becoming Harry Houdini, the person that we know today, it was going to England in 1900 that changed everything for him. And he went to England

pretty much as an unknown, pretty much had to start over. And yet within a very short period of time, became the toast of London and started traveling all over Europe. And that's really when he became this big star. Give me some of his most famous escapes. Well, of course, later in his life, he started inventing escapes, right? So the water torture chamber, which is probably his most famous escape. He didn't really develop that until much later in his career. And that was him hanging upside down in a water cell and escaping behind a curtain, essentially. Nobody really saw him escape. Similarly, he escaped from the milk jug, same thing. They would fill it with water and he would go. And so those were some of his early escapes.

But the escapes that I love the best, the one that I consider the best and most famous for me is his escape from the mirror cuffs, which happened in England in 1904 when he was challenged by the Daily Mirror to escape from these inescapable pair of handcuffs. There's a whole wonderful legend behind how they found these handcuffs. There was this one locksmith had created what he was going to consider the best pair of handcuffs ever made, the most inescapable

pair of handcuffs ever made. And so they brought him to Harry Houdini and challenged him to escape from them. And it's a very wonderful story of him in front of this crowd. And he took him two hours, three hours, and he finally escaped from it. And it was a huge story and a huge moment. What I love the most about that one is that basically, if you want to look and find, you can find out how he did everything he did. Like you can find out the secret of the water torture cell. You can find out the secret of the milk jug. You can find out all of his secrets, but not quite this one. This is the one escape that even more than 100 years later,

we're not 100% sure. People have theories about how he did it and they're convinced they're right, but then somebody else will have a different theory. It is the one true mystery, I think, of Harry Houdini's life that we have not yet solved. And so I love that the most. You listen to Dan Snow's history,

talking about Houdini, more coming up. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit. Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway. Visit Chief Poetin as he prepares for war with the British. See Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists. And uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence,

slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race, I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone.

Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Was he a genius at escaping? Was it all fake with the little catches and tricks and things like that? Or did he just have a particular

kind of brain for this? I think the answer is in the middle. Of course, there were many, many tricks that he had and used. And particularly toward the end of his life, when he was doing the same escapes over and over again, those were escapes that he had perfected and they were specially built. Dan, it's very funny to think about now, but it was an incredibly bold move in 1910, 1911 to go in front of this crowd and say, here is this water torture cell that I built. You've never seen anything like this. And I'm going to escape from it. And people were going to be wowed by this. It's sort of like, well, of course you're going to escape. You built it, you know? So I think by that point in his career, he was doing something that was pretty repetitive and something that had tricks that are easily found. But there's no question he had a mind for this. I mean, during his sort of heyday in my mind, which is the late 1900s, early 1910s, he was doing a different kind of escape every single night. People were challenging him every town he would go into with some sort of weird new, like one person invented a beer barrel for him to escape from. And another person invented a football, like a giant leather football from him to escape from.

And he had to come up with solutions, not by himself, but with his team. He had to come up with ways to actually escape from each and every one of these things. So I would say there was a little genius in the way he did it. And I would say that he carried that genius on. But I would also add one other thing, which I'm sure we'll talk about, which is what his true genius was. And his true genius was self-promotion. There has never been, I don't think in the history of the world, even coming to today, even to the Kardashians, anyone who was better at promoting himself than Harry Houdini was. It's such a great sell. It's like wherever he goes, he gets the local police to lock him in

the lockup and then he escapes. And then everyone's come and see the show. Like, of course, he was amazing. Amazing. Brilliant. I mean, some of the most famous escapes that he made, the ones that people would see, like if you go on the internet and search Harry Houdini, you'll see him escaping from straitjackets while hanging upside down over these cities. Like he would be on a crane and they would hang him upside down and he would escape. And those were free. Those were not part of the show. That was to get people to come to the show. So he would go to Washington, D.C. or he would go to London or he would go to New York. He would set it up. He would hang upside down, always near a newspaper office, always. That was a big key for him was to make sure the press was there. And he would hang upside down, always near a newspaper office, always. That was a big key for him was to make sure the press was there.

And he would hang upside down and escape from a straitjacket, which was not hard for him to do. And there'd be tens and 50,000 people, 60,000 people. Traffic would be stopped. Everybody would be going, what's going on? Why can't I go anywhere? And it was, oh, Harry Houdini is here. And then, of course, the show would be packed that night. What I love about him is he was always very rude about magic and the occult

as well. People said, well, clearly he's using it. And he's like, nope, I'm not. And he was very robust about that. Yeah. A big part of, especially his later life, was unmasking people that he felt were cheating the public, right? By saying that they were using the occult, they were using magic. And it was a very big thing for him to always say, no, what I do is natural. There's nothing, you know, I'm not trying to fool you. I'm not trying to trick you. But of course, at the same time, of course, he was trying to fool people and trick people. And some of his marketing merchandise and marketing press would talk about Harry Houdini, the miracle man and that kind of thing. So he wasn't completely away from that. But it was a very, very big thing for him, especially toward the end of his life to unmask

people he felt were cheating the public by giving them false hope that they could talk to the dead or could somehow connect them with their lost loved ones. And that was really the last six or seven years of his life. That was as important to him as magic was. Did he ever get caught out? Did he ever get thrown in a cell in Jacksonville Beach in Florida or Basingstoke in England and not get out or almost drown himself? Very early in his career, he was in Chicago and he was given a pair of handcuffs that he could not escape from. And as it turned out, those handcuffs were plugged. It was sort of a cheat, but he thought he was ruined. He literally thought because it made the papers that Harry Houdini had not escaped and he wasn't famous yet, not at that level. So he really worried about it. He really worried that his career was over.

It was a constant panic for him that one day all of this would end and he would no longer be famous. He would no longer be Harry Houdini. And so that was a big part of his life was that constant fight A big part of his life was that constant fight against that idea that it would someday end for him. He had a very famous battle with somebody in London where this person had really tied him up in a dramatic way and violent way. Eventually, he escaped. And there was a big fight, whether he cheated to escape, whether his wife helped him escape, his brother helped him escape. And there was a big fight about it. But as usual, he ended up winning the battle and coming out triumphant because that was always the way it had to end for Harry Houdini. But you think oftentimes you would get outside help. There were definitely tricks as well as natural ability. Yeah, I think so. I don't know how much outside help he ever

really needed. But yes, of course, he had an assistant who really was not only an assistant in terms of helping him there, but an assistant in helping him develop these escapes and develop his magic. And he would definitely use that help. He would use anything. That's the key, I think, to understanding Houdini is the rules were all for everybody else. He was going to get out no matter what it took. And if he needed somebody to come in and cut him

out, then that's what would happen. And he figured out a way to cover it up later. How did Harry Houdini die? Of all of the things that I wrote about, astonishingly, people still think, many, that I wrote about, astonishingly, people still think, many, many people still think that Harry Houdini died in the water torture cell trying to perform that trick because that was how it ended in the movie Houdini with Tony Curtis. Tony Curtis died in the water torture cell and that is not how he died at all. But the real way he died, they didn't want to put that in the movie because they thought it was too embarrassing for him. Essentially, about two weeks before he died, he was in Canada and he was talking to a couple of college students. And a college student came in and said, oh, I've always heard that you can withstand any blow to the stomach, which is very interesting because there's nothing on

record that ever shows Houdini having actually said that. At no point had Houdini really ever challenged anybody to hit him in the stomach. And yet this guy challenged him and Houdini was never one to turn down a challenge. And Houdini said, yes, of course I can withstand it. And the guy said, well, I would like to hit you in the stomach. And Houdini said, yes, of course, I can withstand it. And the guy said, well, I would like to hit you in the stomach. And Houdini said, well, I don't think that's a great idea. And the guy kept saying, oh, it would be a great honor. And so Houdini started to get up and brace himself for the blow to the stomach. And while he was getting up, the guy hit him in the stomach, like repeatedly.

He hit him like two or three times in the stomach. It definitely took his breath away. He kind of held up his hand and he said, that's enough. And he was in great pain afterward. And what he did not know at the time is that he had acute appendicitis already happening. I mean, that's what we believe. There are those who believe the punches in the stomach

caused the appendicitis, which I guess is technically possible. But it's more likely that he already had appendicitis. But he was the great Houdini, so he would never admit it. And he got worse and worse. And people kept insisting, go to the hospital. You need to go. And had he gone to the hospital and had his appendix removed, even in 1926, that was not a difficult surgery and he would have survived. But he refused to go.

And by the time he went, he had collapsed on stage and was in horrible shape. By the time he got to the hospital, it was too late. And he died six days later. So the punch in the stomach plays a huge role because that's probably the reason he refused to go to the hospital. As you said at the beginning, it's so strange that he is still so famous. Yeah. Why do you think that is? And did he give us this world that we live in now of like super famous global rock stars who perform in different fields, but are kind of recognized all over the world. I think the second part of that is true. I just think he was the first rock star in the world, the first worldwide rock star. And not to say there weren't famous people, of course,

there were famous composers and famous writers, but fame for the point of being famous, fame for the sole purpose of fame, that kind of starts with Houdini. And if you look at what his act was, that does not feel like the sort of act that can make you famous around the world. And yet, of course, it did. And I think the reason he has lasted so much is I think he tapped into something that is very much universal. And that is this idea of escape, this idea of being able to escape from whatever circumstances arise around you, right? And so for him, of course, it was escaping from a box, escaping from handcuffs, escaping from a jail. But for the rest of us, it's escaping from circumstances, it's escaping from problems. And I think that's a universal feeling. And here in the United States, when an American football quarterback is surrounded by a

lot of people and he somehow gets out of it, the announcers will say, there he is, he's Houdini. And, you know, there in Europe, when a soccer team comes back from a 2-0 deficit in the final seconds, what a Houdini,. What a Houdini. They pulled a Houdini. And this is across the board. I will tell you, when I first started writing the book, I created a Google News search. Well, every day I would get buzzed, where was Houdini named, mentioned around the world? I would get the news stories where Houdini was mentioned around the world. And that's been five years ago. There's somewhere, somehow, and sometimes it's in India and sometimes it's in Australia and sometimes it's in London and sometimes it's in San Francisco. Somewhere, somebody's talking about Houdini or Houdini comes up in some way, shape or form.

And I think that's mind blowing. But I really think it comes down to this notion of escape and that power of escape. Brilliant, man. Well, I'm going to let you escape from me now. You can do a Houdini. So thank you very much for coming on this podcast, Joe. Tell everyone what your book's called. The book is called The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini, and hopefully it's available where you buy books. Joe Posnanski, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.