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Kaleidoscope 194x.xx.xx Houdini Special
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Kaleidoscope 194x.xx.xx Houdini Special
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Mike Ward
A pleasant good day, everyone. This is your host, Mike Ward with Kaleidoscope. They said we have the flexibility of an eel to the lies of a cat and a bizarre genius that enabled him to smear fetters. He shed police handcuffs merely by tapping them in the right place. He could release himself from dungeons in less time than it took to lock him up, and for 25 years he astounded audiences by his escape. He was buried in sealed coffins, sewed up in canvas bags, stuffed in the milk cans and beer barrels, even riveted in a boiler. He always got out, one way or another. The fifth child of an immigrant rabbi, Eric White ran away from home in Appleton, Wisconsin at 12 and spent a wandering apprenticeship holding odd jobs as blacksmith's helper, necktie cutter and locksmith's assistant. Locks fascinated him, and he practiced picking them with a 2 inch piece of wire until he knew all their secrets. How did he do it all? A question mark still punctuates any inquiries into his magic art, and we tell you the story on today's program of Kaleidoscopes. The Story of the Great Houdini. Eric White began to give conjuring exercises, exhibitions in beer halls and sideshows when he was about 15 years of age. The slender youth with steel blue eyes and black curly hair billed himself as Cardo or Eric the Great. The routine sleight of hand illusions with rabbits, silk hats and playing cards. He gradually added such novelties as wiggling out of trick boxes and slipping free from rope ties. At a country fair, the sheriff drew out a pair of handcuffs and asked, do you think you could get out of these, Bob Houdini said, I'll try. He slipped behind a screen and reappeared a minute later with the open handcuffs dangling from his wrist. This trick became the backbone of his act and the basis of his international fame as the Handcuffed King. Eric White was 17 when he came across the Memoirs of Robert Houdin and was so impressed that he decided to call himself Houdini to model himself on a great French magician And as the same spread, Houdini entered a sort of non stop competition with most of the world's jailers, locksmiths and not experts. The London Daily Miller challenged him to break out of handcuffs, and which a blacksmith had labored for five years. Houdini obliged before a cheering audience of 4000 in Boston. A sportsman wagered $6000 that he could tie Houdini securely. He spent 45 minutes swabbing the magician from head to foot in hundreds of yards of heavy fish line. It took Houdini an hour and a quarter to wriggle out of this cocoon. Covered with bruises. Locked naked in a jail cell in Washington D.C. he was out in two minutes flat. He then proceeded to open other cell doors and change the prisoners around just for the fun of it. He broke into another cell where his clothing had been left and appeared fully dressed in the warden's office just 15 minutes after he had been loc. Houdini might have become a most dangerous criminal. He would open an ordinary office safe in no time at all. To solve a more elaborate type of vault lock, he invented a small device which resembled a voltmeter. He would merely stand in front of the safe, operate his machine, then presto, pulled the door open. Long before his death, he destroyed this machine, feeling it might fall into the hands of unscrupulous persons. To ensure capacity audiences, Houdini often gave a free public exhibition when beginning a new engagement, one nearly ended in disaster. Houdini was scheduled to leak into the Detroit river and free himself from handcuffs underwater. But on the appointed day, the river was frozen solid. Houdini insisted on going ahead. The workmen cut a hole in the ice. Spectators packed the riverbank while police snapped handcuffs on his wrist. A shout went up as he plunged into the icy water. Tense silence followed as minutes passed. 2, 3, 4, 5. Finally, a rope was lowered into the water and a diver prepared to go down. But just at that moment, Houdini's head bobbed up through the hole. He had been under the water for 8 minutes. SA on Kaleidoscope the story of the great Harry Houdini. And so once again, the question was asked, how did he do it? A question mark still punctuates any inquiry into Houdini's magic fire to stay underwater for eight minutes. But the handcuffs had been no problem. But the current had swept him downstream. Houdini knew that between the ice and the water was an air state of about 1/2 inch. By floating on his back and keeping his nose in this breathing space, Houdini managed to get enough oxygen to to keep him alive until he found the hole in the ice.
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Mike Ward
On another occasion, an English brewmaster challenged Houdini to escape from a metal barrel filled with air. Houdini had made hundreds of escapes from all sorts of cans and containers filled with water or milk but not air, and then was asked to get into the barrel filled with beer. Sometimes he was handcuffed, doing these stunts or hanging head down with his ankles in irons. But he was a teetotaler, and the ale fumes were too much for him. He just managed to pry the lid off and was slipping back stupefied when his assistant pulled him out. The secret of Houdini's escape is still a secret. He was always fearful that criminals might learn details, but there are certain clues to his methods. He always had a tick lock, sometimes hidden in his mouth or nostrils, sometimes cemented to the sole of his foot. There seems to be no doubt that he could swallow steel bars and files of considerable size, regurgitating them when necessary. Perhaps the most important ingredient of his skill was his phenomenal muscular control. At the age of nine, he could pick up needles from the floor with his eyelids while hanging by his heels. Later he acquired wonderful control of the muscles of his throat and stomach. This was the basis for one of his most successful tricks, wherein he appeared to swallow a hank of thread and a package of needles, and later brought up 100 needles neatly spaced on 200 yards of thread. Houdgini could make his wrists and ankles bigger when shackles were being applied, then relax them to normal size to make his escape. His feet were like a second pair of hands. At dinner parties, he sometimes tied a dozen tight knots in a piece of string, dropped it on the floor, slipped off his shoes and socks, and untied the knots with his toes. He trained like an athlete for underwater escapes. For months he practiced submerging in the bathtub, timing himself with a stopwatch, gradually increasing his endurance. Not until he was able to stay under for four minutes did he feel ready for public demonstrations. To prepare for immersions and freezing water, he took progressively colder baths until he could climb into an iced tank that would chill a polar bear. For escapes from safes and field caskets, he learned to utilize a limited supply of oxygen by breathing very slowly and making no unnecessary movements. My chief task has been to conquer fear, he once said. But I manacled and nailed securely within a weighted packing case and thrown into the sea or when I am buried alive under six feet of earth, it's necessary to preserve absolute serenity of spirit. I have no work with great delicacy and lightning speed. If I grow panicky I am lost, and if something goes wrong, I am lost unless all my faculties are working on high, free from mental strain. The public sees only the thrill of the accomplished trick. They have no conception of the torturous self training that was necessary to conquer fear. A most remarkable man the Derek White A Republic known as Harry Houdini surprisingly simple methods were employed by Houdini in many of its day delusions. For example his feat of walking through a brick wall. Volunteer union bricklayers would erect in full view of the audience, a solid brick wall 10ft high, 12ft long and a foot thick. The foundation of the wall was a steel beam mounted on casters. The beam was scarcely two inches above the floor. Screens were set up on opposite sides of the wall. Underneath the wall was a heavy seamless rug. A committee of 12 from the audience tested the wall, examined the rug and made certain there was no way for Houdini to get under, over or around the obstruction. He then went behind the screen on one side, called out now I'm going. And 30 seconds later cried, here I am. From the other side of the wall. When he called now I'm going, stage hands released a trap door directly beneath the wall and the rug sagged several inches enough to let agile Harry slither under the wall. Yet the trick was performed so cleverly that not even rival magicians hit upon the Toward the end of his career, Harry Houdini embarked on a crusade against fake spiritualist mediums who in the post war period fattened on a susceptibilities of bereaved widows and desolate parents. And as a lecturer he demonstrated that he could reproduce all the spirit riding, table lifting and ghostly apparitions of the mediums or to any medium giving proof of genuine psychic power. Houdini offered $10,000 and there were plenty of contestants, but no winners. As a member of the Scientific Americans Committee for the Investigation of Spiritualism, Houdini played a leading part in laying bare frauds which had taken from thousands their money and driven more than a few to the madhouse. He exposed the notorious Marjorie of Boston, demonstrating that she obtained her spookiest effects by means of megaphones, descended from wires and by ringing theory bells with a two foot ruler concealed on her person. Yet while rending this curtain of fraud, Houdini possessed a curiosity about the possibility of communication between the world of the dead and the living. He entrusted certain secret messages to his wife with the understanding that he would try to repeat them after death. The occasion which brought Houdini into final disrepute with most of the professional research men in the psychic field was an investigation of the famous physical medium Marjorie, wife of Dr. L.R.G. clandon, a 16 years professor of surgery at Harvard University Medical School. Conducted by the Scientific Americans. The investigating committee was composed of impeccable scientists and psychologists, including Gardner Murphy, director of Menninger foundation. And he asked to be added to the committee if the seances continued. The committee became increasingly doubtful of Genie's feeling towards and scrupulousness of the whole situation, not to say impartiality, and made public statements the fact. For by that time Houdini's reputation was at stake. If distinguished men could prove him wrong in his accusations, the whole country would have a chuckle at his expense. And to be laughed at with one thing he could never accept. Moreover, his enemies, the spiritualists, or so he considered them, would also have a field day. Actually, many spiritualists had defended Houdini, being more eager than anyone else to have their ranks cleared abroad. And so history has resulted, reported many stories on the possibility of Houdini coming back to give his answer. Did he or did he not? And so this was the state of ferment in the year 1926, when Houdgini died, using a widely publicized message that if there were anything to claim for survival, who would get through to his wife's battery that occurred message would only see the cipher. That this curious last message would have anything to do with the future of a medium would have seemed a far fetched idea at the time. However, the Houdini virus was contagious and other magicians also broke out in eruptions against spiritualism and mediumship. Among the best known of all the magicians was a man by the name of Howard Thurston. Thurston was a tall, suave and handsome man whom had always been considered a thorough gentleman. Therefore, it was a surprise when in 1927 the old New York world ran a story to the effect that Thurston claimed he had exposed over 300 mediums, that spiritualism had broken up Holmes at the Old Time Saloon, and that he had a gadget resembling a watch case in which he has concealed a rubber spook that could be blown up and operated in such fashion that it could almost duplicate all the phenomena of a seance.
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Mike Ward
One of the leading mediums of the time was a man whose name was Arthur Ford, and he asked the world to let him answer the story, but the newspaper hierarchy refused. There was nothing particularly newsworthy about Arthur Ford, but the United Press association indicated that they would carry his reply if he made a good story. Now how could Ford make a good story of fraudulent accusation of fraud? He brought over the fact that magicians such as Houdini and Thurston kept on issuing open challenges to mediums, offering $10,000 for the production of any stunt that could not be reproduced by trickery. Ford felt there had been enough talk and that someone should make some kind of public appearance, someone who would carry some weight. Therefore, when a friend of Ford suggested that he turned the tables and offer $10,000 to Thurston if he could prove his charges, Ford was held back by only 10,000 degrees of and this was the beginning of Arthur Ford's interest in the answer of Eric White. For many years, Houdini's mother said, my son waited for one word, which I was to send back. He always said that if he could get it, he would believe Conditions have now developed in the family which make it necessary for me to get my code word through before he can give his wife the code he arranged for her. If the family acts upon my code word, he will be free and able to speak for himself. Mine is the word forgive. Capitalize that and put it in quotation mark. His wife knew the word, and no one else in the world knew of it. Ask her if the word which I've tried to get back all these years is not forgive. I tried innumerable times to say to him, now that he is here with me, I Am able to get it through tonight. I give it to you and Beatrice Houdini will declare it true. This message was received by Arthur Ford through mediumship. And when he awakened, the group told him about this extra message which had been slipped in. Ford was not much interested. Houdini supposed exposition of mediums and always the annoyance of them was paramount in the mind of Ford. He thought of Houdini is a wonderful magician with an otherwise bigoted mind and a colossal conceit. And he didn't care to have anything to do with him. However, the men at the sitting wanted to give Mrs. Houdini her message. Ford particularly valued the judgment of Francis Fast and agreed. Therefore, on the following day, a copy of the message was taken to Mrs. Houdini. She was completely amazed and as newspaper files attest, made a public statement over her signature. That was the sole communication received among thousands up to this time that contained the one secret key word known only to Houdini, his mother and herself. And so to Mr. Ford, she wrote. Today I received a special delivery letter signed by members of the First Spiritualist Church to testify to a purported message from Houdini's mother received through you. Strange that the word forgive is the word Houdini awaited in vain all his life. It was indeed the message for which he always secretly hoped. And if it had been given to him while he was still alive, it would, I know, have changed the entire course of his life. But it came too late. Aside from this, there are one or two trivial inaccuracies. Houdini's mother called him Eric. There was nothing in the message which could be contradicted. I might also say that this is the first message which I have received among thousands which is an appearance of truth. Sincerely yours, Beatrice Houdini. Well, that one word, forgive, was not the whole of the mother's message to her daughter in law. But the rest was of an intimate family nature which concerned Mrs. Houdini and her husband's relative. In that first seance, the last thing the spirit guide of Ford was purported to say about Houdini's mother was simply, she is going now. And she says that since this message has come through it, it will open a channel for another. The other to which you referred was a pact Houdini had made with his wife. He had sworn to get a message through to her if such a thing as survival should prove real. The message was to be based upon a 10 word code which they had used in one of their early shows and which no one but himself and his wife had ever known. The press had given considerable coverage to this agreement. And in the months following his death, interested persons in various parts of the world were constantly purporting to have received a message from Houdini. And just as regularly, Mrs. Houdini disclaimed the messages. It was a poor month when there was no newspaper mentioned of Houdini in his code. After the message from Houdini's mother, no further word came for several months. To be sure, no one made any attempt to follow up. Then, In November of 1928, the first word of Houdini's own message came through in a sitting for a group of friends none of knew, none of who had known Houdini. The spelling out of the entire message took a portion of eight separate sittings covering a period of two and a half months. The guide's method for Ford was to announce the word as he got it, no matter what else he happened to be talking about, and then apparently to wait until there was another word and make another opportunity. One night the spirit guide for Ford announced, the first word is Rosabell and it's going to unlock the rest. A fortnight later a second word was added. Now a third sitting. The guide said, here is a lady I've been working with for a long time, but the only word I can get from her tonight is look. This is the six word of the code. The citizens presumed that the lady to whom he had referred was Houdini's mother. Still later the guide asked for four new words and these words were added. Roosevelt, answer, pray and tell. At the next of the last sitting, the guide said, let me give you the words from the beginning because I have to work hard at them. His last comment was, this man tells me now that he has put the next five words which explain these in French. I have not got them yet. I want to give you the other words because working on French words I may forget the others. And so at the final sitting, the guide said, this man who is communicating tells me it has taken him three months working out of the confusion to get these words through and that at no time has he been able to do anything without his mother's help. Tell that is the last word. You now have 10 words. Go over them carefully. It has been a hard job getting through, but I tell you, he says, fairly shouting they are right now he wants to dictate the exact message you are now having to his wife. The time was asked. It was 9.23pm the guide said that this was to be noted also that the medium was in deep transition. The medium's pulse was at that very moment 63. Which he asked to have verified. Also. He wanted the names of those present set down. The guide then continue with great exactness. A man who says he is Harry Houdini. But whose real name was Eric Weiss. Is here. And wishes to send to his wife, Beatrice Houdini. The ten word code. Which he agreed to do if it were possible for him to communicate. He says, you are to take this message to her. And upon acceptance of it, he wishes her to follow up the plan they agreed upon before his passing. This is the code, Rosabelle. Answer. Tell. Pray answer. Look. Tell. Answer. Answer. Tell. He wants this message signed in ink by each one present. He says the code is known only to him and to his wife. And that no one on earth but those who know it. He says there is no danger on that score. And that she must make it public. Announcements must come from her. You are nothing more than agent. He says that when it comes through, there will be a veritable storm. That many will seek to destroy her. And she will be accused of everything that is not good. But she is honest enough to keep the pact. Which they repeated over and over. Because before his death. He says, I know that she will be happy. Because neither of us believe it would be possible. And then the Guide added, her husband says that on receipt of this message. She must set a time as soon as possible. When she will sit with this instrument. While I, the Guide, speak to her. As soon as Squad was well into the trance. The guide came again. He said, this man is coming now. The same one who came the other night. He tells me to say, hello, best sweetheart. And he wants to repeat the message and finish it for you. He says the code is one that you use for a mind reading act. He wants you to tell him whether they are right or not. Mrs. Houdini replied, yes, they are. He smiles and says, thank you. Now I can go on. He tells you to take off your wedding ring and tell them what Rosabelle means. Drawing her left hand from under the COVID Mrs. Houdini took off the ring and holding it before her, sang in a small voice. Rosabelle, sweet Rosabelle I love you more than I can tell for me you cast a spell I love you, my Rosabelle. The guide continues, he says, I thank you, darling. The first time I heard you sing that song was in our first show together, years ago. Mrs. Houdini nodded her head. In a sense. Then there is something he wants me to tell you. That no One knows but his wife, through the guide, Houdini continues on. And now the nine words. Besides Roosevelt spell a word in our code very exactly. He then explained the code. The second word in our code was answered. B is the second letter in the Alphabet. So answer stands for B. The fifth word in the code is tell, and the fifth letter of the Alphabet is E. The twelfth letter in the Alphabet is L, and to make up 12, you would have to use the first and second words of the code. Continuing in this intricate way to the end, he said, the message I want to send back to my wife is Rosabelle. Believe. The guide then asked, is this right? Mrs. Houdini with great feeling answered yes. The code had been a handy device employed in Houdini's instructions to his wife during their act. Mrs. Houdini commented that the code was such a secret that even though the stagehands knew the word, no one except Houdini and herself knew the cipher or the key and its application. From the moment that Mrs. Houdini pronounced the message genuine, they began a flood of attack ranging from the ludicrous to the vicious. Mrs. Houdini's veracity was questioned. She was accused of giving the code to someone who then gave it before. As if there could be any comfort for her in securing a message she already knew from a source that she did not believe existed. She was also scored for selling out to her husband with the widely publicized his conviction that all mediums were fake. Consistently, she avowed the genuineness of the messages and defended having them public. It was what he wanted me to do, and I am doing it. Ford was likewise accused of fraud. Of Ford. And there was once also an approach by an ingenious blackmailer. Then a man impersonating Ford fabricated a newspaper story which only one tabloid printed, after which he confessed his hope. Under promise of immunity from criminal prosecution, three individuals brought charges to the United Spiritualist League of New York City. The board had been in cahoots with Mrs. Houdini and the press. The president of the board of the trustees of a church redeemed Ford's character. Mrs. Houdini stood her ground, and the respectable press was meticulously saved. Ford never attempted to collect any of the fabulous sums offered for breaking the Houdini code, and Ford was sure a legal case could have been made. However, he did not, or did receive an enormous amount of publicity. Perhaps Houdini had a hand in that. Ford may have been paying his respect to the fact his act has been performed not while handcuffs, but while sound asleep. And in conclusion, there is just one bit of evidence. A facsimile of statement made by Mrs. The day after the receipt of the message. New York City, January 9, 1919 29. Regardless of any statement made to the contrary, I wish to declare that the message in its entirety and in the agreed upon sequence given to me by Mr. Ford is the correct message pre arranged between Mr. Zambini and myself. Signed BE. It's. From what our program has indicated, there seems to be strong evidence that perhaps something did happen along these lines that we've reported that would indicate that Houdini did get his message through. However, there is one more aspect of the story to report. Houdini died in October of 1926. For 10 years, his widow attended hundreds of seances, all without results. In 1936, on the 10th anniversary of his death, she made her last attempt. Amid impressive surroundings. A medium pleaded with Houdini to make his last and greatest mistake. But nothing happened. And when the seance was over, Mrs. Houdini said, Houdini has not come. I do not believe he will ever come. For years she had kept the light burning over a portrait of the great magician and showman. And that night she turned it off. So which story is true? The purported success of the seances, the evidence given by the medium and the facsimile in writing that Beatrice Houdini had been given the successful message, or the statement in which she said, Houdini has not come? I do not believe he will ever come. Is it a matter of the will to believe as opposed to the will of not believing? In the final analysis, we must agree that there was something special about this man. The flexibility of an eel. The lives of cats. A bizarre genius that enabled him to sneer at locks and setters. He shed handcuffs merely by tapping them in the right place. He could release himself from dungeons in less time than it took to lock him up for 25 years. He astounded audiences by his escapes. Many of his feats were learned the secrets behind these stunts. Many were not. How did he do it? A question mark still punctuates any inquiry into Harry Houdini's magic art. Our main the great Harry Houdini. This is your host, Mark Wharf, thanking you for joining me. Extending an invitation to you to be with me again tomorrow at 11:10am for another Goodwill Station presentation of Kaleidoscope SA.
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