Transcript
Narrator (0:01)
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Narrator (1:34)
It's just after midday on the 7th of May 1907. We're in Rochester, New York, on the banks of the Erie Canal. This major transportation route is usually bustling with barges ferrying goods to New York City from the Great Lakes. Today, though, there isn't a single barge in sight. Instead, both canal banks are crammed full with thousands of excitable people, and they're all here to see one man. Right now, that smartly dressed man, all five foot five of him, is striding confidently up the iron bridge that spans the canal some 25ft above the water. Cheers and applause carry him towards the center. He reaches a policeman standing on the bridge, nods, and begins stripping out of his clothes. The policeman watches, seemingly unmoved, as he sheds his smart suit to reveal a muscular, athletic body now with only long white underpants covering his modesty. He holds his hands out, wrists clasped together, to the waiting policeman, who promptly shackles him in not one but two pairs of handcuffs. As the man holds his clamped wrists up for the crowd to see the onlookers become more boisterous. They've been looking forward to this all week. One woman in the audience is not cheering though. Cecilia Weiss, the man's mother, stares on anxiously, worried for her precious son's life. Surely, she thinks, no one can survive in those icy waters with their hands shackled in heavy irons, dragging them under. As the crowd cheers, the man clambers up onto the huge iron girders that make up the bridge's side. There, like a half naked high diver, he balances on the metal edge, looking down at the sluggish waters below. On the bridge, he takes a moment to compose himself, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. With a final deep breath, he leaps. The crowd cries out as a huge splash hits the water. And then silence. Just as he must be doing in the water, the crowd holds its breath. A gull squawks overhead. As the seconds tick by, all eyes are on the still rippling surface. 15 heart stopping seconds later, the man emerges triumphantly, his upstretched arm waving the opened handcuffs above his head. The crowd erupts in celebration. The great Harry Houdini, the handcuff king, has done it again. The jump from Rochester Bridge is not his first success, but it's the first ever to be filmed. And more importantly to Houdini, it's the first time his beloved mother Cecilia has watched him perform one of his increasingly dangerous death defying stunts. In his diary that night, he'll proudly write, mom watched me jump. Harry Houdini is undoubtedly the best known escape artist of all time. Even now, almost 100 years after his death, his celebrity lives on. Any feat of escape, from dogs in backyards to prisoners in maximum security, earns the escapee the handle Houdini. His incredible tricks, illusions and escapes have become the stuff of legend. Modern illusionists from Copperfield to Blaine Daniels to Penn and Teller, all owe their fame and fortune to Harry Houdini. He was one of America's first real celebrities. A great showman, an adrenaline junkie and a devoted son. But how did a Hungarian immigrant born Eric Weiss lift himself out of abject poverty to become the vastly wealthy Harry Houdini? How did he drag himself from obscurity to international fame? And why did he risk his life again and again for over 30 years? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of Harry Houdini. In the late 1800s, America is in a state of flux. Since the end of the Civil War, things have been on the up. Electricity lights the cities, Skyscrapers dominate the skylines and the Statue of Liberty is being built. It's the land of opportunity and thousands of hopeful European immigrants cross the Atlantic with dreams of making their fortunes. One such immigrant is a 4 year old boy called Erich Weiss. Though he'll go on to become the great Harry Houdini when he arrives in America in 1878 with his three older brothers and mother, that life is a million miles away. The Weiss family quickly realize, like so many others, that the American dream is in fact a nightmare. Overcrowded living quarters, far fewer jobs than expected, and cultural discrimination mean that many immigrants end up in poverty, facing starvation and disease. Though Eric's father, Samuel is a German speaking rabbi who was fortunate enough to find work in Wisconsin, it doesn't last long. After four years, the congregation let Rabbi Samuel go in search of a new flock. He offers ad hoc rabbinical services, but it's not enough to keep the family from having to beg. Young Eric, alongside his brothers, has to find work to help support the family and their beloved mother. At the age of 8, Erich leaves school and gets work shining shoes and delivering newspapers. By 9, he has his first taste of public showmanship. Performing as a contortionist and trapeze artist in a 5 cent circus he and some neighborhood friends set up. He wears red stockings and calls himself Eric Prince, Prince of the Air. But life is hard and even with his financial contribution, the family struggles to make ends meet. At around 12, he runs away from home, hoping to find better luck in bigger towns. It's a radical move for the son of a close knit Jewish family and he tries to soften the blow by writing to his mother and reassuring her that he loves her. He intends to head to Texas, but jumps aboard the wrong train and ends up in Kansas instead. Meanwhile, his father goes to New York in search of work. Having bungled his Texas trip, Erich is the first to join him in the Big Apple. Father and son find work in a necktie cutting factory. It's a step down for the proud rabbi and Erich notices his father fading. They don't know it yet, but he has cancer. In 1888, Cecilia and the rest of the family join them in New York, just in time to see the great blizzard bury the city under 30 foot snowdrifts. The family find a small apartment in a tenement building. They're still struggling for money, but at least they're all together again. When he's not working, Eric fills his time with boxing and running. It's through these hobbies that he's introduced to the world of magic. His running coach, Josef Ryn, is a magician. And when they're not training for races, Rin teaches young Eric magic tricks. Neither of them knows it yet, but these lessons will set Eric on the path to becoming one of the world's greatest magicians. Around this time, Eric pays his first visit to Coney Island, a magical place over in Brooklyn dedicated to curiosity and fun. He's filled with wonder at the sideshow acts, the strongmen and the magical illusions, combining the tricks he's learned from Joseph Ryn with those he's studied. Watching the Coney island acts, Eric decides to start a show of his own. In 1891, he begins performing as a sideshow magician, pulling card tricks and performing in dime show tent acts. He's not very successful. By 18, keen to broaden his reach, he teams up with a friend from the neckwear cutting job. Jacob Hyman is a tall, mustachioed youth with an equal interest in magic. Taking inspiration from the founder of modern magic, Jean Eugen Robert Houdin. They call themselves the Brothers Houdini. They add the I because someone told them that in French. Adding an I meant like, and they certainly want to be like Houdin. Erich, or Eri, as his family know him, Westernizes his nickname to Harry. And Harry Houdini is born. By 1894, Jacob Hyman has left the brothers Houdini and branched out on his own. Harry's younger brother Theodore, or Dash to his friends, joins the act in his place, having always shared Harry's passion for magic. Their father Samuel recently succumbed to his cancer, leaving Cecilia with even less support. Harry made him a deathbed promise that he and his brothers would look after their mother. He's doing everything in his power to do just that. While the brothers Houdini continue to scrape by on the sideshow circuit, sending money back to Cecilia. In New York, Dash meets a young woman called Wilhelmina Beatrice Rana, known to everyone as Bess. She's in a song and dance act called the Floral Sisters, who are also eking out a living on the sidelines. When Dash introduces her to Harry Potter, its love at first sight. After a three week courtship, the pair marry on June 22. Their honeymoon is rather fittingly, on Coney island, which Bes later describes as cheap but glorious. But the Brothers Houdini act can't support three performers. Keen to set out on his own, Dash leaves the group and Bess is more than happy to take his place. The husband and wife team become the Houdinis and perform a polished routine of card tricks, sleight of hand and some small scale allusions along with a healthy dose of comedy and entertainment. They complement each other well as the magician and his glamorous assistant. Harry's athletic and muscular and the elfin looking Bess, with her dreamy eyes and exaggerated soft voice makes her husband seem quite matcha. Their act picks up where the brothers Houdini left off at dime museums. These are odd places which offer up chambers of horror, waxworks and live human oddities known disparagingly as freaks who exhibit themselves in the so called Curio Hall. Among the Houdini's fellow attractions are Count Orloff, the human windowpane whose debilitating condition leaves him not only with thin transparent skin but completely bendable limbs as though he has no bones. Then there's Unthan, the armless wonder who can play the violin with his toes, and Thado, the beautiful woman who subjects herself to repeated rattlesnake bites for audiences. Entertainment. These human anomalies who draw paying crowds to marvel at their strangeness, become close friends of Houdini's. He feels a kinship with them as he too considers himself an outsider, a foreigner, a Jewish boy turned sideshow curiosity. And from each of these friends Houdini picks up a skill. He will learn to contort himself like Orlov, develop dexterous toes like Unthan, and understand how to rise above pain and discomfort like Thado. These skills will become the cornerstones of his future success. For now, though, the dime museums are the only bookings they can get.