Houdini Becomes an International Star

In the spring of 1900, 26-year-old Houdini, exuding confidence as “The King of Handcuffs,” left for Europe in the hopes of finding success. His first stop was London, where Houdini performed at the Alhambra Theater. While there, Houdini was challenged to escape from Scotland Yard’s handcuffs. As always, Houdini escaped and the theater was filled every night for months.

The Houdinis went on to perform in Dresden, Germany, at the Central Theater, where ticket sales broke records. For five years, Houdini and Bess performed throughout Europe and even in Russia, with tickets often selling out ahead of time for their performances. Houdini had become an international star.

Houdini’s Death-Defying Stunts

In 1905, the Houdinis decided to head back to the United States and try to win fame and fortune there as well. Houdini’s specialty had become escapes. In 1906, Houdini escaped from jail cells in Brooklyn, Detroit, Cleveland, Rochester, and Buffalo. In Washington D.C., Houdini performed a widely publicized escape act involving the former jail cell of Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President James A. Garfield. Stripped and wearing handcuffs supplied by the Secret Service, Houdini freed himself from the locked cell, and then unlocked the adjoining cell where his clothes were waiting -- all within 18 minutes.

However, escaping just from handcuffs or jail cells was no longer enough to get the public’s attention.

Houdini needed new, death-defying stunts. In 1907, Houdini unveiled a dangerous stunt in Rochester, N.Y., where, with his hands handcuffed behind his back, he jumped from a bridge into a river. Then in 1908, Houdini introduced the dramatic Milk Can Escape, where he was locked inside a sealed milk can filled with water. The performances were huge hits. The drama and flirting with death made Houdini even more popular.

In 1912, Houdini created the Underwater Box Escape. In front of a huge crowd along New York's East River, Houdini was handcuffed and manacled, placed inside a box, locked in, and thrown into the river. When he escaped just moments later, everyone cheered. Even the magazine Scientific American was impressed and proclaimed Houdini’s feat as "one of the most remarkable tricks ever performed."

In September of 1912, Houdini debuted his famous Chinese Water Torture Cell escape at the Circus Busch in Berlin. For this trick, Houdini was handcuffed and shackled and then lowered, head first, into a tall glass box that had been filled with water. Assistants would then pull a curtain in front of the glass; moments later, Houdini would emerge, wet but alive. This became one of Houdini’s most famous tricks.

It seemed like there was nothing Houdini could not escape from and nothing he could not make audiences believe. He was even able to make Jennie the elephant disappear!

World War I and Acting

When the U.S. joined World War I, Houdini tried to enlist in the army. However, since he was already 43-years old, he was not accepted. Nonetheless, Houdini spent the war years entertaining soldiers with free performances.

When the war was drawing to a close, Houdini decided to try acting. He hoped that motion pictures would be a new way for him to reach mass audiences. Signed by Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount Pictures, Houdini starred in his first motion picture in 1919, a 15-episode serial titled The Master Mystery. He also starred in The Grim Game (1919), and Terror Island (1920). However, the two feature films did not do well at the box office.

Confident it was bad management that had caused the movies to flop, the Houdinis returned to New York and founded their own film company, the Houdini Picture Corporation. Houdini then produced and starred in two of his own films, The Man From Beyond (1922) and Haldane of the Secret Service (1923). These two films also bombed at the box office, leading Houdini to the conclusion that it was time to give up on moviemaking.

Houdini Challenges Spiritualists

At the end of World War I, there was a huge surge in people believing in Spiritualism. With millions of young men dead from the war, their grieving families looked for ways to contact them “beyond the grave.” Psychics, spirit mediums, mystics, and others emerged to fill this need.

Houdini was curious but skeptical. He, of course, had pretended to be a gifted spirit medium back in his days with Dr. Hill’s medicine show and thus knew many of the fake medium’s tricks. However, if it were possible to contact the dead, he would love to once again talk to his beloved mother, who had passed away in 1913. Thus Houdini visited a large number of mediums and attended hundreds of séances hoping to find a real psychic; unfortunately, he found every one of them to be a fake.

Along this quest, Houdini befriended famous author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a devoted believer in Spiritualism after having lost his son in the war. The two great men exchanged many letters, debating the truthfulness of Spiritualism. In their relationship, Houdini was the one always looking for rational answers behind the encounters and Doyle remained the devoted believer. The friendship ended after Lady Doyle held a séance in which she claimed to channel automatic-writing from Houdini’s mother. Houdini was not convinced. Among other issues with the writing was that it was all in English, a language Houdini’s mother never spoke. The friendship between Houdini and Doyle ended bitterly and led to many antagonistic attacks against each other in newspapers.

Houdini began to expose the tricks used by mediums. He gave lectures on the topic and often included demonstrations of these tricks during his own performances. He joined a committee organized by Scientific American who analyzed claims for a $2,500 prize for a true psychic phenomena (no one ever received the prize). Houdini also spoke in front of the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting a proposed bill that would ban telling fortunes for pay in Washington D.C.

The result was that even though Houdini brought about some skepticism, it seemed to create more interest in Spiritualism. However, many Spiritualists were extremely upset at Houdini and Houdini received a number of death threats.

Death of Houdini

On October 22, 1926, Houdini was in his dressing room preparing for a show at McGill University in Montreal, when one of the three students he had invited backstage asked if Houdini really could withstand a strong punch to his upper torso. Houdini answered that he could. The student, J. Gordon Whitehead, then asked Houdini if he could punch him. Houdini agreed and started to get up off a couch when Whitehead punched him three times in the abdomen before Houdini had a chance to tense his stomach muscles. Houdini turned visibly pale and the students left.

To Houdini, the show must always go on. Suffering from severe pain, Houdini performed the show at McGill University and then went on to do two more the following day.

Moving on to Detroit that evening, Houdini grew weak and suffered from stomach pain and fever. Instead of going to the hospital, he once again went on with the show, and collapsed offstage. He was taken to a hospital and it was discovered that not only had his appendix burst, it was showing signs of gangrene. The next afternoon surgeons removed his appendix.

The next day his condition worsened; they operated on him again. Houdini told Bess that if he died he would try to contact her from the grave, giving her a secret code - “Rosabelle, believe.” Houdini died at 1:26 p.m. on Halloween day, October 31, 1926. He was 52-years old.

Headlines immediately read “Was Houdini Murdered?” Did he really have appendicitis? Was he poisoned? Why was there no autopsy? Houdini’s life insurance company investigated his death and ruled out foul play, but for many, uncertainty regarding the cause of Houdini’s death lingers.

For years after his death, Bess attempted to contact Houdini through séances, but Houdini never contacted her from beyond the grave.