The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini
Episode Stats
Summary
In his new book, "The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini," Joe Posnanski explains why a sports writer should write a biography about one of the greatest magicians of all time. And why he chose to do so.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Quick, think of a famous magician. Dimes to donuts you just thought of Harry Houdini.
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Though it's been almost a century since his death, Houdini still occupies a prime place
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in the cultural imagination and my guest today explains why in his book, The Life and Afterlife
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of Harry Houdini. His name is Joe Posnanski and we begin our conversation with Houdini's
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childhood, how he mythologized it and carved a path out for himself with a desire to not
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be like his father. We then discuss Houdini's early days as a magician, the trick he honed
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that helped make his name, and the outsized importance of that name in his fame and legacy.
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We then explore how escape artistry became Houdini's calling card and why it resonated
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so much with the public. We get in the way Houdini brought an athlete's physicality and
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mindset to his performance and how the difference between magic and escape artistry can be described
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as the difference between the impossible and the amazing. From there we turn to the fact
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that Houdini was and wasn't interested in money, his insatiable ambition and drive for
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fame, and how the turn he took later in life towards debunking spiritualism kept him in
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the public eye. We're in a conversation with why some modern magicians downplay Houdini's
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talent while he yet remains an enduring cultural icon amongst the public. After the show's over,
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check out the show notes at awim.is slash Houdini.
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So you are a sports writer, but you've also written a biography of Harry Houdini and his
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impact on our culture. What led a sports writer to write a biography about this famous magician?
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Yeah, it's a good question. One that I ask myself all the time. I think for me, it began as many
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things do with sports. I was approached about writing a book about Babe Ruth. I had done,
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I think this was my fifth book and my previous four were all sports books. And there was sort of
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this feeling that maybe I should try to take on this big biography, that this was maybe the next step
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for me. And so I was approached about doing this book about Babe Ruth, and I had to say it did not
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interest me at all. I just felt like that was well-covered ground. And there was another book
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in the works at the time by a friend of mine, Jane Levy. So it wasn't something that interested me,
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but I still thought about it. And I thought, well, if I did do a Babe Ruth book, what would it be about?
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And what interests me about Ruth ended up being the same exact thing that interests me about
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Harry Houdini. It is that he's still with us in so many ways, that people still think about him,
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talk about him. He's considered the greatest of all time by many people. I'm talking about Babe Ruth.
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And so that interests me. Why is that? We don't really feel that way about many things from the 1920s,
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many people, from the 1920s. And so I kind of came up with this thought in my mind about wonder and
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how much we crave it, even in today's time. And I thought, I'd like to write that book. That book
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sounds interesting to me, but I don't think Ruth is the right guy to do it. And I've been sort of this
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very behind-the-scenes magic fan for many years. And I thought, you know, this book should be about
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Harry Houdini. Who better represents my thoughts here on somebody who survives, thrives a hundred
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years or so after his death? People still talk about him. People still know him. People still
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consider him the greatest. And he's just in the news every day in some form or another. And so I
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thought, that's the story I want to tell, if I can tell this story about Harry Houdini and why we
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still care about him. All right. So Houdini is obviously a character that's larger than life.
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He's become a metaphor almost for lots of different things. Sure. So it's kind of hard to unpack,
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like, okay, what's the real Harry Houdini, right? Like what's the story? What's the myth? And what is
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the actual Harry Houdini? So let's talk about like, what is childhood? Like, what do we know about
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Houdini's childhood? And were there glimpses when he was a boy that he would become this icon in
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like Western culture? It's really hard to say because so much of what we know about his childhood,
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we only learned after the fact. It was not the childhood he ever talked about. Harry Houdini was
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insistent on never being really associated with the character that he was before he named himself
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Harry Houdini, right? He was Eric Weiss. That was his birth name. He came to America when he was four
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years old. He was brought over and ended up in Appleton, Wisconsin. His father was the first
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rabbi at the temple in Appleton before losing his job. And his childhood is essentially very,
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very bleak. It's a family that had no money, that was really running away from, you know,
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people collecting rent and food, you know, for his entire childhood, essentially. He ran away from
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home when he was 12. And he worked very, very hard to cover up that part of his life. He wanted Harry
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Houdini to be this larger than life character, like you say. And that was very important to him from
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the very start. So he created this mythology about Houdini, who was born in America, who had this
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mystical ability to escape from things, even as a boy who, you know, stole his mother's apple cake when
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he was, you know, just barely a toddler. Even though she locked it up, he figured out how to
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get into the lock. And, you know, these were the myths that he told about himself again and again
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and again. And so, you know, there are stories about him being interested in becoming an entertainer.
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He worked for a brief time with a circus. He probably ran away from home at 12 to join the circus.
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So it seems like there was definitely this idea of performing in front of people was something that I
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think was always with him. But I don't know that we could really look at his childhood if we see his
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true childhood and see what he was going to become. I mean, he definitely created the person that is
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And, you know, something that I thought was interesting, it wasn't until like the 1970s that they finally
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figured out he wasn't born in Appleton, Wisconsin, that he was born in Budapest.
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That's how pervasive the myth was. Like he was able to convince so many people that he was like, well,
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it's true though. Harry Houdini was born in Appleton, Wisconsin. Eric Weiss was born in Budapest.
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That's right. No, that's exactly, you said it exactly right. It's interesting. There were really,
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it was not something people felt like they even needed to check, right? I mean, who would lie about
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where they were born? And why would you? Especially once you achieved the international worldwide fame of
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Harry Houdini, what difference does it make, right? But for Houdini, it was so important that
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when you trace back his life, you trace back to this all-American boy, this all-American childhood,
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he was not ashamed of the family being poor. He would talk about that some, but he never talked
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about being born, you know, being an immigrant. He never talked about, you know, not having this sort
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American childhood that people could recognize. That was so important to him. And you're right,
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for many, many years, there was actually, as I write about in the book, in the 1970s, there was a
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committee put together by a magic organization that spent a year looking into him. They called it the
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Houdini Birthplace Committee. And they literally spent a year looking into where Harry Houdini was born,
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finding insurance papers and wills and all these other things to fully say that he was born in
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Budapest and not born in the United States. And that's, you know, 50 years after his death. So
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it was pervasive and it was really important to Houdini to make it that way.
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Well, let's put Houdini on the therapist's couch and talk about his influence, the influence his father
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and mother had on him throughout his life. Can you talk a little bit about that?
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Sure, sure. I mean, and we are, we are playing a little bit of therapist and Houdini has always
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intrigued therapists, particularly because of the very, very close relationship he had with his
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mother, which was even in his time, very famous. You know, he would call his mother his sweetheart and,
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you know, the most important woman in the world to him, even after he had been married to Bess for many
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years. So that has been, you know, that's pretty well covered ground. I mean, it is no question that
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Houdini basically wanted to create his success in large part to support his mother, to make his
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mother proud, to achieve these things that he felt like his father never did for her. And so that is
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interesting. But I've always been, you know, at least since writing this book, I've been at least
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as interested in the, you know, what his father's impact was. His father, as I mentioned, was a rabbi
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and, you know, was the first rabbi in Appleton, Wisconsin. So there was some success there, but it
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was really fleeting. And he spent the rest of his life after he was let go trying to find work. And he
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was very unsuccessful. I mean, he tried to be, you know, various things. He tried to be, you know,
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many things as a rabbi. He tried to, you know, to do all kinds of, he sold, tried to sell Jewish books
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and various other things, but also worked in factories. I mean, he was always, he was kind
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of a drifter when it came to trying to find work. And I don't know that it was anything other than
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bad luck, bad timing, you know, being in the wrong place. I don't know that it was something that
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related to him not, you know, having the ambition. It just seemed like he was defeated by life.
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And for me, that is really interesting when you look at Houdini, because Houdini,
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as he grew older, came to represent, in my mind, the exact opposite of his father. He always found
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work and he always was fighting for money. And he always was pushing to support his mother. And he
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was always, I think, afraid of becoming in any way, shape or form what his father was. And so I've
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always thought, even though he would say very respectful things about his father, he would
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talk about how his father was the smartest person he ever knew and the greatest writer he'd ever knew
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and all these other things. I think the way he lived his life is pretty direct as opposition to
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It's an archetypical story then in a lot of, you see that in a lot of famous great men.
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They're just basically trying to be the opposite of their dad.
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Well, so Houdini, he ran away to the circus, had a penchant for being an entertainer. When did he
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first start practicing magic? And then I guess maybe it'd be useful to talk about, like, what was
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the state of magic when Houdini started to get into the business?
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Well, there were magicians. Obviously, this was long, long, long before television or radio or
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movies or anything. So, you know, these were magicians who would go from town to town and
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perform some of them on, you know, very small stages. There were a few fairly big stage magicians.
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As best we can tell, it was in New York that Houdini started to get interested in magic. And
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this was after he ran away from home, perhaps tried to join the circus. We don't know exactly
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what the running away from home thing was about. Even Houdini would say that he didn't even remember
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exactly what his motivations were. But after running away from home, he ended up in New York and his
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father joined him there. And he worked in a factory that created neckties. And that was really when it
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seems like he fell in love with magic, probably through the reading of a book by the guy who
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would end up being his hero and also, in many ways, his nemesis, Robert Udan, who is even now widely
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called the father of magic. And Robert Udan was this magician. He was gone by the time that Houdini
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was reading his autobiography. But he was this very, very famous stage magician who, to this day,
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gets credit for so many things that magicians still do, you know, dressing up in evening clothes,
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tuxedos, that kind of thing, you know, creating various kinds of stage magic. And Houdini read this
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biography and it clearly did have an enormous impact on his life. And he was probably at that point
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interested enough in magic that he was doing a few things. He had a friend within the necktie factory
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who also liked magic. And after they read the book, both of them read this autobiography,
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they decided to create a magic act that they would try to make a living doing magic in small shows in
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various places. And because, you know, and I'm sure we'll come back to the name, but they named
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themselves after Robert Udan. They thought it was pronounced Houdin. They added an I to the end of his
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name, thinking that I would make, there are different reasons that have been given for why they added
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the I. Some said it's because, you know, they wanted to make it sound exotic. And some thought an I in
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Italian means it's somebody you want to be like. And they call themselves the Houdini brothers. And of course,
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his name was Eric Weiss. They called him Ari. So he changed that and Americanized that to Harry. And that's how
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And the name is interesting because Houdini, it's something about the name. It's like you always remember it.
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Like it's hard to forget. What do you think is going on there?
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It's just, it's, it's just the perfect magic name. I mean, you know, I don't think a couple of kids
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at the time fully appreciated. I think the name is a very, very big part of the success that he would
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have. It's, it really is an unforgettable name. There's something mystical about it, something
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exotic and foreign a little bit about it, but yet it's, it's, you know, it's not like you see it and
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have trouble pronouncing it or anything. It's, it's, it's always there. And I think it was a big
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part of, you know, as, as the years would go on, he would fight for the name a little bit. He, he
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actually had to tear away the name from his friend who, who might've been the one who actually came up
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with it. They actually had a big fight over the name and, uh, and then other people would start
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using some version of that name. You know, people who were, were imitators of Houdini would call
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themselves various other things that sounded like Houdini. And so the name was just always a
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very, very big part of, of who he was. And, and I do think that, you know, you look back at some of
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these incredible magicians at the time who were, you know, probably just as popular as he was,
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but something about their names, you know, just doesn't quite carry through the years the way the
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name Houdini does. So he started this act with his buddy or the Houdini brothers.
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Did they, was there an act that put them on the map and kind of put Harry Houdini on the path to
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Well, the, the answer is yes and no. I mean, they were not very successful and soon the friend left
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because they were not successful. And then Houdini's own brother joined the act, the, the,
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his friend's brother joined the act and eventually Bess, who even before she ended up being his wife
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joined the act. So, so numerous different people tried to be the Houdini brothers or the Houdini
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act, or later on, it was just Harry Houdini and, and assistant, whatever, whatever the case may be.
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But with, with the, the act itself, it was not very successful, but there were already signs
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of it becoming successful and signs of Houdini, what Houdini would become as the years went on.
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And my favorite of those was this one act that he called metamorphosis and metamorphosis was,
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you know, it, it, it could be fairly easy explained. Somebody is essentially tied up
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and put, you know, all sorts of handcuffs and rope and, and tied up and locked up.
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And at the beginning, this was Houdini's assistant who was tied up. But, but as the act went on,
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Houdini realized that he needed to be the one who was tied up, which is obviously a very big part
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of what Houdini would become, but he would get tied up and then they would put him inside of a,
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of a giant bag with a drawstring at the top. They would tie the drawstring. Sometimes Houdini would
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wear, would ask somebody in the crowd to wear, if he could wear his jacket. So he would put on a
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stranger's jacket before getting tied up. And then they would put this bag with, with the tied up
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Houdini inside of a, of a chest, a magic chest. They would lock that chest on many different sides,
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obviously always showing that there was no possible way to escape. And then the assistant,
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originally his friend, later his wife would say to the crowd, okay, watch the effect. It's going to
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happen fast. It's going to happen in the count of three. And she would count one, two, and she would
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lift up this curtain that they had. And then Houdini would say three and pull down the curtain
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and he was out. And, and, you know, of course this was, this was a very fun act, but the best part of
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it was that at that point they would then unlock the chest, which of course took time to do all of
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this. And then they would pull down the bag and there would be his wife in all the ropes,
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in all the handcuffs wearing the stranger's jacket. So that was, that was metamorphosis and it was not
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necessarily a new act. I mean, it really borrowed from a lot of different things that had already
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been out there, but they made it new. He made it new. He made it because if it was so fast and it was
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so shocking to, to see on the count of three, there's Harry Houdini, you know, already out of this,
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out of this chest, the speed of it was, was such a big part of it and people liked it. And, and he
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did get some very good reviews for it, but it really did not lead to success. It just led him
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on the path that eventually led him to success. Right. So that prefigures that, that trick
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metamorphosis prefigures what he became famous for when that was being an escape artist. And I think
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people, they often associate escape artistry with magic because Houdini was considered a magician,
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but they're, they're kind of separate genres. So first, like, how did he make that transition
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from magic to escape artistry? And, you know, what was his first escape trick?
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Well, he always blended the two, particularly in his younger days, he wanted to be a magician. He
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didn't necessarily, you know, later on he would, he would say, oh, you know, magicians are a dime a
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dozen, but escape artists are, you know, the, the rare, this rare thing, but that's not how he wanted
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to be. And, and really all of his life, he was utterly fascinated with magic. And by magic,
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we're talking about card tricks. We're talking about illusions. We're talking about, you know,
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levitation or, or, you know, making something appear or disappear. He was always in love with
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those sorts of things and would, would do magic throughout his life. And I, you know, there might
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have been a little resentment later in life, not certainly when he was at the top of his game,
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but later in life that people didn't appreciate him as a magician as much as they appreciated him
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as an escape artist. But he always had this escape part of his, of his act. And when he was very young,
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he came upon this idea of going whatever town he was in. And these were usually at that, at that time,
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very, very small towns, most of them in the Northeast. He would, before the show, he would go
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to the local jail and ask them to allow him to put him in handcuffs and put him in a jail cell
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and see if he could escape. And he would try to bring reporters out there. And this was,
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you know, I've said many times, this is long before social media. So this was the original,
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you know, Instagram. This was the original, you know, Snapchat where you're, you're essentially
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trying to reach out to lots and lots of people through some sort of, you know, really, I think,
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kind of a TikTok stunt, right? I mean, this is what he tried to do, trying to escape from these
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jails. And, and they let him do it, you know, not everybody, but, but a lot of these places were
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intrigued enough by the idea that they let him do it. He was always successful, at least in the early
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days. And so that was a big part of his act. And, you know, it was, it was separate from the magic
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that he was doing, but he saw it all as one thing in those days. Later, you know, after many years of
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failure for him, he came to realize that, you know, as much as he loved the magic, it was really the
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escape artistry that was, that was his calling card. And, and that was the thing that was going to
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make him world famous. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Why do you think the escape artistry was like so appealing to like,
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why, why were people drawn to it? What, why did it become such a huge phenomenon?
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I think there, you know, at different stages of his career, I think the reason is a little bit
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different. I think early on the notion of escape to this day is so powerful in our minds. I mean,
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this is, you know, I know we'll get to this point of the answer to my question, which is why does
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Houdini still last? Why do we, why do we still care about him? And I think the reason, one of those
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reasons is that we're just as fascinated by impossible escapes now as we ever were. And, and,
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you know, you can see that proof every single day when you look at a newspaper somewhere in the world,
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there is a dog that gets out of a yard and nobody knows why, or there's a,
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a person who escapes from prison and nobody knows how. And, and those people inevitably
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are called Houdini in, you know, in the, in the papers, in my world of sports, Houdini is a,
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you know, constantly being, you know, used for a quarterback who gets out of a, you know,
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an impossible situation or a pitcher who gets out of a bases loaded jam. We, we, we call them Houdini.
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And so I think that infatuation that we have, that fascination that we have with escape was always a
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big part for him. Later, he was also cheating death. So it was this combination, not only of
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escape, which was, you know, the thing that, that really drove his early success. And later it was,
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you know, him being underwater, him being, you know, in a dangerous place, getting buried alive. I mean,
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this was suddenly this thing became about cheating death and, and that took him to an entirely
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different level. And the other thing too, I thought it was interesting. The distinction between magic
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and escape artistry, magic, it's supposed to look effortless, painless, but Houdini realized what
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people want to see is like physical struggle. And he made his acts like it was very physical. And he's
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it's kind of, I think it ties in with your sports writing. He was almost an athletic event. Like he was
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trying to show that he was really, really working hard. It wasn't magic. It was like Houdini physically
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escaping from this stuff. No, that's a hundred percent. Right. I found so many sports analogies. You
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know, he was an athlete when he was young, he was a boxer, he was a swimmer, he was a runner, you know,
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had life been different for him, he might've gone into an athletic path. So he was an athlete and I've,
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I believe, and maybe, you know, I've talked to people in magic about this and some of them,
00:23:57.140
have said, yeah, you know, that's just the sports writer and you talking. But I believe that so
00:24:01.560
much of what made Houdini successful was this athletic, not just the athletic prowess that he
00:24:07.300
had, but this athletic mindset that he had the earliest, you know, when once Houdini became famous,
00:24:13.680
so he, this really happened right at the turn of the century, 1899, 1900, once he went to, to Europe,
00:24:20.920
this is when he became famous. And for, you know, five to 10 years of his fame, his most famous
00:24:28.260
elements of his magic were challenges. People would challenge him to get out of something that
00:24:34.440
they created, whether it was handcuffs they invented or a box that they built or a, or a,
00:24:39.860
you know, an envelope, a football, every single night, he would take on these challenges and he
00:24:46.960
would always escape. He would always win. And, and this was the, this was the act. I mean, this was,
00:24:52.660
this was at the heart of it. And, and it was a different show every night because it was a
00:24:56.380
different challenge every night. That feels like sports to me. I mean, that feels like, Hey, I'm the,
00:25:02.100
I'm the world heavyweight champion, uh, come out every, any night and, and try to beat me. And,
00:25:07.500
you know, so I, I really do feel like that so much of the escape stuff, particularly the stuff when he
00:25:15.960
was accepting challenges really is directly related to sports. The, the other thing that you, that you
00:25:22.120
said, the original name of the book, at least in my mind was the amazing and the impossible. That was,
00:25:29.060
that was what I was going to call the book. Nobody liked it because it doesn't have Houdini's name in it.
00:25:34.060
It doesn't really make sense if you don't, if you don't know the context, but it comes from a quote
00:25:38.200
from a magician who I, we were talking and I said to him, you know, something about Houdini and he
00:25:45.200
said, you know, Houdini was not a magician. He was an escape artist, exactly like what you said.
00:25:49.820
And I said, well, what's the difference? And he said, well, magic is doing the impossible.
00:25:56.820
There is no possible way that you can make, you know, even the smallest version, you can make that coin
00:26:03.800
disappear. You can make that card, you know, show up in my pocket, even the simplest, it's impossible.
00:26:11.140
And what Houdini did was not impossible. It was escaping from these, from these different,
00:26:16.960
you know, challenges, but it wasn't impossible. It was, it was different. And I said, well,
00:26:22.280
I guess that's true, but you know, look, this guy escaped from, you know, they would throw him in the
00:26:27.920
water inside of, inside of caskets and, and bury him alive and, and, and do all of these other
00:26:33.920
things. I mean, that feels pretty impossible. And he said, no, that's the difference. That's amazing,
00:26:39.380
but it's not impossible. And I think that's the difference between, you know, sort of this escape
00:26:45.980
thing that Houdini made, you know, world famous and magic is, is that it's amazing what Houdini did
00:26:54.140
when he did escapes, but you wouldn't say it was impossible. You know, speaking to the athleticism
00:26:58.980
of Houdini, you had a picture in the book of him, like in a, a swimsuit. It's a singlet basically,
00:27:03.500
and chained up and his legs are just huge. Like they're just, it looks like he like he's, he squats
00:27:08.940
every day. Super muscular. I mean, just, you know, he was, he was a small man in height, but he was so
00:27:17.420
powerful and so flexible in order to do many of these escapes. He had to, he had to get himself in
00:27:25.260
these, in these crazy positions, but he was, he was very, very powerful. He used to go around,
00:27:31.340
speaking of challenges, he loved challenges of any kind. He would take on challenges. He used to have
00:27:36.480
this one challenge where he would see somebody reading a mystery and he would say, tell me, like,
00:27:43.360
read me a paragraph from three places in the book and I'll tell you who the murderer is. Like he,
00:27:48.420
he, he was, he lives for challenges. And one of the challenges was that he would go up to people
00:27:53.740
and he would say, let's, let's see who has bigger biceps. I mean, this was like, this was like a point
00:27:58.840
of pride for him. So he was, he was, yeah, he was absolutely a very, very powerful guy.
00:28:04.100
And in some of these challenges too, he would do naked. Like he'd go to a jail and was like,
00:28:07.480
I'll strip my clothes and you can search me and I'll do this escape act in the buff.
00:28:12.460
And even back then people were like, this is pretty weird. Uh, and even Houdini,
00:28:16.560
he was kind of a prude, like he wasn't, but he was willing to do that.
00:28:20.440
Yeah. I mean, well, it just shows you the ambition of Houdini. I mean, he,
00:28:24.640
it came across the idea at one point, somebody had said, well, he's just hiding keys. You know,
00:28:31.820
I mean, I'm sure more than one person said that he's just hiding them. And he said, I, I,
00:28:36.080
I'm not hiding them and I can prove it. I would, I would do an escape in naked. I, I absolutely,
00:28:41.760
I am not hiding any keys. And at some point the challenge came and, and he did it naked.
00:28:49.540
And then he realized that this was, this was something that, that, uh, yeah, there was,
00:28:55.840
there was a, it's weird, but there was a real power to him doing these, these escapes naked. So
00:29:02.580
he, he went to a photo studio in St. Louis and took photos of himself in chains. This is the ones that
00:29:09.140
people have undoubtedly seen there. There's some of the most famous photos in American
00:29:13.240
pop culture history, uh, of him in chains, basically just wearing a, you know, just a
00:29:19.080
bathing suit of some kind. He's, he's almost entirely naked. And, and this is what he would
00:29:23.900
do. Uh, he would always, he would always say, okay, I'm just strip me down. And, and, you know,
00:29:29.660
because he knew that whatever his secrets were, they did not have anything to do with him hiding a
00:29:35.720
key in a pocket or something like that. I mean, he, he had his own methods. And so he was,
00:29:41.280
he was willing to do whatever it was taken. And it was, you know, he, he was not opposed,
00:29:45.940
even though he was a prude, he was not opposed to being a little bit scandalous if it meant getting
00:29:50.820
a bigger audience. So he had a lot of famous escape acts. He had the, you know, just basically
00:29:56.020
handcuffs. There's a lot of handcuffs challenges that are really famous, right? What was like the,
00:29:59.880
his most famous escape act? And do we still know, do we know how he did it?
00:30:05.800
Well, there, there, there are a couple of escape acts that in my mind are the most famous. I mean,
00:30:11.120
I think most people would tell you that the most famous escape for him was the water torture cell,
00:30:16.240
which he invented. And essentially he would be, you know, taken by the ankles, he'd be put in,
00:30:23.960
you know, strapped in, lifted up and dropped upside down into a tank filled with water.
00:30:30.740
And then they would lock the top of it and Houdini would escape from this, from this water
00:30:35.940
torture cell. And, and that was his most famous. It is the one that you still see people do some
00:30:41.560
version of today. And the answer is we kind of do know how he did it. I don't really write about
00:30:49.680
that. I mean, I do mention something in the book that might interest people about that,
00:30:54.060
but we kind of know how he did it. The one that interested me the most, as I was writing about
00:30:59.840
this book is a very famous escape. It's, it's just a pure handcuff escape, but a very famous escape
00:31:05.480
called the mirror cuffs, which was more than, you know, much more than a hundred years ago. It was
00:31:10.740
1906 or 1904. And essentially these were handcuffs that were brought to him by the daily mirror,
00:31:18.100
the newspaper in London. And they were supposedly built by this, this great locksmith who had spent
00:31:27.740
five years trying to build the most inescapable handcuffs ever built. And there's a, it's a very,
00:31:34.780
very famous story about him wanting, you know, trying to refuse the challenge, but then of course,
00:31:41.540
accepting it and going on stage and, and him being on stage for essentially an hour and a half,
00:31:46.540
you know, doing various different things and, and he keeps coming out. You know, he was, he used to do
00:31:52.540
all of his escapes behind a curtain or inside something he would call a little, a little ghost
00:31:57.760
house. He had like a little, a little place on stage so people couldn't see him. And three or four
00:32:03.140
times during this act, he came out and people cheered, but he wasn't out of, of the cuffs. He,
00:32:10.380
he, you know, came out once to ask for a pillow and he came out once saying he needed lights. And
00:32:15.000
anyway, it was, it was a very involved escape. And eventually he gets out and the place goes
00:32:22.660
absolutely crazy. And it's, you know, it might be the most famous escape in magic history. And that
00:32:29.200
one is super cool because we don't know how he did it. I mean, we, there are many, many people that
00:32:34.120
have come up with theories about it, including me, but we don't know for sure. And we never will know
00:32:39.100
for sure. And Houdini himself never told anybody or, or, or if he did, it was, it was something that
00:32:47.460
he told them to keep a secret to their, to the grave. One of my favorite little stories about the
00:32:52.080
mirror cuffs, which still exist. They, you can still, you can't see them because David Copperfield has
00:32:58.300
them in his museum in Las Vegas, which is not open to the public, but it is open to researchers.
00:33:04.400
A few people have been there. I was there. I got to see it there. It's, it's incredibly cool,
00:33:09.460
but there's a very famous story about them that his wife got the mirror cuffs after,
00:33:14.400
after he was gone and a magician came over and said, Oh, there are the mirror cuffs. Can I open them?
00:33:21.060
And she said, no, nobody ever opens them. They're never to be opened. And so, so I've always loved that.
00:33:27.420
That's, that to me is really cool that there's still this mystery from more than a hundred years
00:33:32.160
ago that still exists today. So one of the themes that you see throughout your book,
00:33:36.340
I think you did a good, did a good job capturing is the ambition of Harry Houdini and this guy,
00:33:41.620
he was making money hand over fist and one of the most famous people in the world, but yet he lived
00:33:46.580
a really modest lifestyle. You know, people described him as dressing like a bum, his taste and food were
00:33:50.900
really simple. So if it wasn't money, what was driving Houdini his entire life?
00:33:56.040
Well, what's interesting is he was interested in money, but not interested in it for money's sake.
00:34:03.300
He just wanted to be the highest paid. That was incredibly important to him. And he had
00:34:07.780
terrible fights with promoters throughout his life because he felt like they were cheating him.
00:34:14.040
They weren't giving Houdini his, his, his fair, his fair due. So he wanted money, but he didn't care
00:34:20.840
for money. He wanted fame because that's how it related to money. And so his ambition for fame
00:34:30.340
was, you know, it was utterly insatiable. There, there was no, there was no amount of fame that he
00:34:37.760
could get that was enough. And, and not only that, there was no amount of fame he could reach where he
00:34:44.280
didn't have a constant and persistent fear that he was going to lose it. I mean, this was, this was
00:34:50.860
his, his thing. And, and, and so, you know, he would, he would, he, when he had his money, he would
00:34:58.040
spend so much of it on promoting himself. That was, that was where so much of his money went. He also
00:35:04.600
spent a lot of money on magic books, magic tricks. He was a, he was a tremendous collector,
00:35:10.200
not only of magic, but mostly of magic, but also other things. He was always a scrapbook keeper.
00:35:16.360
It's kind of a interesting elements of, of him as a, as a little bit of a, of an amateur historian,
00:35:22.860
but most of the money he would spend, he would spend on, on making sure that he was even more
00:35:27.660
famous next week. And, and so he would, he was constantly, you know, out there trying to get
00:35:34.340
reporters to do more things about him. He was constantly creating new and scarier illusions.
00:35:40.200
To try to, to try to get more famous. He went into the movies very early on in the silent film
00:35:46.340
stage to try to get more famous. That, I think that was his, I wouldn't say, maybe it was, I was
00:35:53.460
going to say, I wouldn't say that it's the only thing, but maybe it was, he had a singular ambition
00:35:58.160
for fame. And I don't know, I guess there are people that we could think of that are like that now,
00:36:03.540
but, uh, there's no question that what he wanted was for everybody to not only know Harry Houdini,
00:36:10.460
but respect him and admire him and, and think of him as the greatest in whatever field he was in.
00:36:16.880
Yeah. So he kind of, he's, he did a lot to contribute to sort of the celebrity culture
00:36:20.720
that we have today. Yeah. Yeah. And this kind of ties into with what, you know, the Babe Ruth
00:36:25.420
connection, because Babe Ruth, one of the reasons like we know so much about him is that he had,
00:36:30.180
you know, PR people who created this persona of the Babe and Houdini did something similar,
00:36:36.360
but he did it himself. Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, it's, it's really interesting because
00:36:41.120
Babe Ruth did not really engineer his own fame. It was really the sports writers who did,
00:36:48.340
and they did it because they love the story, you know, they love the Babe and love the story. And,
00:36:54.960
and, and, and it, it, it made so much sense for them. You know, they were out there trying to,
00:37:00.740
to, to make a living as well. And, and people ate up Babe Ruth's story. So, so that was a big part,
00:37:06.420
but you're right with Houdini, it was all self-driven. I mean, as, as the years went on after his death,
00:37:13.740
there have been many, many people who have picked up the, uh, you know, picked up the banner. And of
00:37:18.360
course, that's a very big part of my book is writing about all of these people who have been
00:37:22.100
fascinated by Houdini through the years. But when he was alive, that was him literally, you know,
00:37:28.420
sending his clips to every newspaper in the country, making sure that he had advanced people
00:37:33.940
in every town that would be able to tell him, you know, how he was going to break through in Boston
00:37:38.760
or Washington or Philadelphia or New York or wherever he was going. And, and so, yeah, he was,
00:37:44.560
it was really self-driven for him. So something that happened later on in his career is he got into the
00:37:51.120
business of debunking spiritualist. Yes. For those who aren't familiar with spiritualism,
00:37:55.160
can you give us sort of a brief summary of the movement and then talk about Houdini's involvement?
00:37:59.200
Because he, at one point early on in his career, he did, he dabbled in spiritualism.
00:38:02.960
He did. He did. The spiritualist movement is, is really fascinating. And, and, you know,
00:38:07.800
there are many other books and I would recommend if people are interested in it there, it's very,
00:38:13.120
very interesting. I give a very brief, but hopefully interesting, uh, you know,
00:38:18.960
explainer of how spiritualism came about. It basically began with these sisters who claimed
00:38:25.060
that they could talk to the spirit in their home and, and, you know, they would do it through a
00:38:30.020
series of knocks where they would ask questions and, and this spirit would respond with various knocks.
00:38:36.300
And, and eventually they created a whole code and, and a way for, for the, uh, for the spirit to,
00:38:42.500
to, to actually talk to them. And in, through these, you know, however many knocks they did or the
00:38:47.500
pattern of the knocks. And, and this created a, quite a phenomenon in, in this is, you know,
00:38:53.700
well before Houdini, 20, 30, 40 years, uh, before he was even born. But this, this spiritualism is
00:39:00.600
really what led directly to, to much of what Houdini did as an escape artist, which is a whole
00:39:07.440
other element of this thing. That's kind of fun. This, the idea of escaping from, uh, ropes and
00:39:13.660
boxes and this sort of thing actually began with spiritualism and shows that were not about escape,
00:39:20.460
but more about trying to prove that spirits were with them when there was actually these people
00:39:26.320
who had escaped from ropes and were actually doing the work themselves. Anyway, this led to a huge
00:39:31.480
movement. And obviously there is long been, it always will be, I suppose, this fascination of,
00:39:36.940
can we reach out to, to those we have lost? Can we reach out to the, to the dead? And,
00:39:42.020
and spiritualism was particularly powerful after traumatic, tragic events. I mean, it was, uh,
00:39:50.740
after World War I, which is when Houdini really was out there debunking it. It had, it had found a new
00:39:56.500
life. It had found a new life at a big life after the civil war, which is, which is when it really
00:40:01.360
started to become so big in America. So Houdini, when he was very young and a performer with his wife,
00:40:09.400
he actually did a little bit of, you know, these seances where he would have claimed to be able
00:40:15.940
to talk to these people's, uh, you know, dead relatives and, and ask them questions. And,
00:40:21.360
and, you know, he, he, he was quite good at it, uh, because, because he would, he would walk through
00:40:27.420
cemeteries and learn secrets and talk to people in town and, and find out things that he supposedly
00:40:33.480
could never know. He was very good at that, but he hated it. Even from the very start,
00:40:38.520
he felt like he was, he was, this was, he was, he was always fine with fooling people. He was always
00:40:44.460
fine with, with, uh, convincing people something that wasn't true, but it had to be to entertain.
00:40:50.980
It had to be a positive thing. And, and he felt like this was really taking advantage of people in
00:40:56.980
pain. And so he really hated it. And then after his mother passed away through a, through a long
00:41:04.000
series of, of, of different things, it eventually led to him saying, not only did he, did he hate it
00:41:10.160
and would never take part of it, but he felt like it was his responsibility to unmask all of these
00:41:16.460
people, show how they did it and prove that spiritualism did not exist. It became a huge part
00:41:23.040
of his, of his show. It, it became a big part of his life. He actually spoke to Congress
00:41:28.060
at one point about it. I mean, it was, it was a very big part of, of the last few years of Harry
00:41:33.320
Houdini. In typical Harry Houdini fashion, not only like, yeah, he was definitely righteous about it.
00:41:37.840
Like he definitely was sincere about it, but this also helped his fame and celebrity. Right. Yeah.
00:41:42.900
Well, and that's the interesting thing. Uh, when you look at Houdini's career, whenever he needed
00:41:48.180
something so he could stick, get back on top, he found it, you know, and, and so when the escape
00:41:55.520
act started to lose a little bit of the audience, he really created this, this idea of death and
00:42:02.200
danger in his act. And when that started to fade a little bit, although that never fully faded,
00:42:07.740
but when it started to fade a little bit, he, you know, he really did not have the success he wanted
00:42:13.000
in the movies. This spiritualism thing, I think you said it exactly right. I think it was very
00:42:18.340
legitimate. It was, it was not an act. He wasn't doing it just to be famous, but it did make him
00:42:24.120
famous again. And, and there's no question he, he liked playing that up. So yeah, he was, he was
00:42:30.020
somebody who I think always did follow where his instincts took him, but he, those instincts also
00:42:36.040
always took to putting him back on top in the entertainment world. All right. So Houdini, uh,
00:42:42.020
I think people know how he dies. It's sort of a myth or this sort of well-worn story. He
00:42:46.480
take part in a challenge. Uh, some guys said, I heard you let anyone sock you in the stomach as
00:42:52.280
hard as they can. And he gets punched in the stomach, wasn't ready for it. And then a couple
00:42:56.740
of days later he dies from the punch. I mean, is that what do we, do we know of like that the
00:43:00.960
punch is what did him in or was there some sort of underlying cause that the punch may have
00:43:04.760
exacerbated? Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm more on that line. I think he already, uh, had appendicitis
00:43:10.940
and was already, you know, quite ill when, when the punch happened, but I do think it
00:43:15.980
exacerbated it. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it was, it was really quickly afterward. And so
00:43:21.480
when people say, did the punch kill him? My answer is sort of yes, but not because I think
00:43:28.460
it created the peronitis that eventually killed him. But I think he was so embarrassed by the
00:43:35.340
fact that somebody's punch could create pain that he simply refused to get treatment. If he
00:43:40.600
had gotten treatment afterward, he would, he would have, even, even in those days with the medical
00:43:45.000
knowledge they had, then they would have removed his appendix and he would have been okay,
00:43:49.040
but he refused. He kept at, he kept performing. And like you say, it was five, five, six days later,
00:43:55.880
he was in Detroit and he was gone, you know? So, so it was, I don't think the punch itself created
00:44:02.880
the thing that killed him, but I do think the punch was a very, very big part of his death.
00:44:08.560
But how do you think the way he died? How did that influence his legacy?
00:44:13.120
Well, there's no question. It had a huge influence. I mean, he died young. I mean,
00:44:17.060
that's always, you know, that's the James Dean, you know, theory, I think, right? That dying young
00:44:23.020
is, is always going to sort of push the legacy. He died on Halloween. That's, you know, that's,
00:44:30.100
there's something powerful about that. He died at a time when he was doing all of this
00:44:35.840
spiritualism debunking. So death was so much a part of who he was anyway. And so it was,
00:44:44.120
I think his death was a very, very big part of, of why he lived on. And, you know, the,
00:44:49.940
to me, the biggest part of why he lived on is because his wife, Bess, wouldn't let him die. I mean,
00:44:54.220
she, she basically spent the next 20 years after his death or more promoting Harry Houdini and,
00:45:02.220
and eventually getting a movie made about him with Tony Curtis that gave him an all new life in,
00:45:08.260
in the 1950s. So, so I think that's the biggest reason, but yeah, you know, dying in a weird way
00:45:14.980
on Halloween when he was young and, and sort of still in his prime was, was definitely a big part
00:45:20.960
of, of why he still matters. So in this book, you talk to magicians today who all of them said
00:45:27.660
at one point, like Houdini was the guy that got them into magic. They saw, uh, they read a Houdini
00:45:32.720
book when they were a kid, they saw a Houdini poster and they're like, that's what I'm going to do.
00:45:37.260
But all of them kind of concurred that Houdini wasn't much of a magician. He was okay. There were,
00:45:43.340
there were better magicians, but nonetheless, Houdini is still this archetypal magician.
00:45:47.460
So how did this sort of okay magician become the archetypal magician?
00:45:52.640
Well, you know, I, I like my friend, magician, Joshua J says he, he said, you know, is,
00:46:01.140
is Bob Dylan the greatest, you know, performer songwriter ever? I mean, you, you could argue,
00:46:07.600
maybe he is, you could argue, maybe he isn't, but there's no question that the times were perfect
00:46:13.660
for him, you know, coming up in the sixties, exactly at that time in that world, when he could
00:46:20.260
have that sort of stage was a big part of why Bob Dylan became, you know, something larger than
00:46:25.800
life. And, and his argument is Houdini had the same thing that, that he, he came along at exactly
00:46:31.700
the right time. What he did, the escapes that he did made him, you know, had him stand out.
00:46:38.840
Even at a time where there were better magicians, there was nobody who was Houdini. There was nobody
00:46:43.520
who took up all the oxygen that Houdini did. And the way he spoke to people, you know, the way his,
00:46:49.000
his act spoke to people was different. You know, there were, there were other people who were,
00:46:54.280
who were, you know, very famous magicians, but that's what they were. And Houdini was not as
00:46:58.780
easy to classify. So I think that's a big part of it. The thing I find utterly fascinating and
00:47:06.040
interesting is that so many of these magicians, exactly as you say, you know, somewhere very,
00:47:13.880
very early on in the process of them realizing that they, that they were in love with this idea
00:47:20.360
of creating magic, creating wonder, every one of them just about at some point very early on
00:47:27.580
came upon Houdini because he is the most famous magician even now. So they came upon him,
00:47:33.160
they came to understand him and they, he was part of their journey into magic. Every one of them,
00:47:40.220
I think would say that somewhere along the way, Houdini was there, was there. But then as they
00:47:46.360
get on in magic, they come to realize that like laymen, which is what they call the rest of us,
00:47:53.700
we're the, we're the muggles, right? The ones that, that don't, that don't know anything about magic.
00:47:58.920
We all just think Houdini was the greatest everything. You know, the average person thinks
00:48:03.060
Houdini was the greatest magician because he's the one magician you've heard of.
00:48:06.120
So there's a little resentment that comes along from this, you know, there's a resentment that,
00:48:11.580
and, you know, so I, I got a lot of people in magic who said, ah, he was, he was not only not a
00:48:17.440
particularly good magician, he was a terrible magician. I mean, there, there, there are those
00:48:21.920
that think he was, he was actually a hack when it came to, to doing card tricks or doing various
00:48:27.800
other illusions and that he was not a magician at all, that he was a stunt man. And, and,
00:48:33.120
and there's a real resentment that builds up. And I think that's just inevitable when you're the
00:48:37.900
biggest and you're the most famous and, and, and people just attach everything in magic to
00:48:44.200
a certain person, the way that I think people do with magic and Houdini. Uh, I think that resentment
00:48:50.400
is absolutely natural. And why do you think Houdini still captivate people today? Like,
00:48:55.980
and you talk, even in the book, I love you just like, just count all the things that are named
00:48:59.980
after Houdini in the popular culture. Why is that? Well, I think there are, you know,
00:49:05.900
a bunch of different reasons, some that we've already gone over the name and, and the way he
00:49:10.700
died and, and the fact that he was such a larger than life figure, the myth that he created,
00:49:16.960
the way that we appreciate escape even now and, and, and find ourselves enthralled by,
00:49:23.180
by the idea of escape. But I, I think that there's something that is sort of people like,
00:49:30.940
there are not a lot. I mean, there are, I don't want to say that it's, it's not a big community.
00:49:35.580
There is a community of people in America that love magic. Right. But I think there are lots of
00:49:41.140
people who like it, like magic. They're, they're not huge magic fans, but they, they'll see magic on
00:49:48.020
America's got talent or, or they'll, they'll, you know, see a magician perform at their, at their
00:49:53.860
kid's birthday party or something. And they're like, this is fun, right? This is, this is interesting
00:50:00.860
and fun. And if you see a good magician, you don't, you don't appreciate that really is an art form.
00:50:06.740
I mean, at the, at the highest levels, it's, it's an extraordinary art, but you don't realize that
00:50:12.500
you're, you're just watching it. It's just fun. It's just fun stuff. And so because I think so
00:50:18.900
many people are drawn to that fun, Houdini is the guy. It's, I mean, if you're, if you're interested
00:50:25.460
in magic, if you're a kid and you're interested in magic, the book in your school library is going
00:50:30.580
to be about Houdini. And the, the first person that somebody is going to say to you, you're going
00:50:35.300
to say, oh, you know what? Magic is kind of cool. What's, what's the story with magic? They're going to
00:50:39.060
be like, oh, well, let me tell you about Harry Houdini. He, he reached a level, I think that
00:50:44.160
makes him sort of synonymous with magic for so many people. And I know there are lots of people
00:50:50.600
in magic who are not, they don't love that. They wish that, that some of the other great magicians
00:50:56.440
would get their say. And, and there are a lot of great magicians today. You know, some that people
00:51:01.540
know, I mean, Penn and Teller and David Copperfield and David Blaine, and there are a few that people
00:51:07.180
know, and there are a bunch who are just extraordinary artists who do things that
00:51:12.260
Houdini could never have dreamed of doing, who are completely or virtually unknown. And, and I think
00:51:18.760
that, that that's just sort of how it has to be. I think magic is, is something it's a, it's, it is a
00:51:24.520
world all its own. But I think that for people who are, who are just intrigued by it, who are just
00:51:30.240
interested by it, which is kind of everybody or most people I know have at least some connection,
00:51:36.300
you know, their, their, their uncle did magic tricks or something. They have some connection
00:51:40.900
to magic and for them, it will always be Houdini. I mean, he's, that's, that's just where Houdini
00:51:48.580
Well, Joe, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:51:53.120
Well, the book they should be able to find everywhere. I hope it's called the life and
00:51:56.400
afterlife of Harry Houdini. And I think it is, you know, you can get the paperback and get the
00:52:01.840
hardcover, you can get the audio book, which is, which is really good. I didn't read it.
00:52:06.100
So it's, it's really, it's really good. As far as my work goes, I've got a book coming out
00:52:11.320
this fall called the baseball 100, where I went back to my world of sports and did a countdown of
00:52:17.500
the hundred greatest baseball players ever. It is a mammoth. It is 300,000 words. It is this mammoth
00:52:24.680
book as I tell the stories of these hundred players and hopefully tell the history of baseball through
00:52:29.460
these hundred players. I'm online. I'm on Twitter at Jay Posnanski. And, and I'm a senior writer
00:52:35.920
for the athletics. So you can find me there as well. I'm, I'm around, I'm around, I think.
00:52:42.540
All right. Well, Joe Posnanski, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:52:46.540
My guest here is Joe Posnanski. He's the author of the book,
00:52:48.940
The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores
00:52:52.280
everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website,
00:52:54.900
joeposnanski.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash Houdini.
00:52:58.980
We can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic.
00:53:08.720
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:53:12.100
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00:53:42.340
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