Harry Houdini: Magician, Escape Artist... Movie Star?
By 1923 Houdini had grown tired of making movies and that was still a few years away from the introduction of the talkies so don't expect masterpieces guaranteed to keep kids of all ages enthralled. At the same time, watching Harry Houdini perform magic acts and masterpieces of escape shows in stunning detail just how irritating contemporary forces of magic like David Copperfield really are. Houdini was more than a magician, he was a showman. He could put on a show without all that dramatic posing and surrounding himself with skimpily clad female eye candy like Copperfield. Houdini was also not afraid, like Copperfield is, to reveal that he was shorter than the average bear. What is really great about Houdini's career as a movie star is that he used the magic of film to perfectly integrate his phenomenal escapes into a narrative. Even though the camera was used for magic tricks by most filmmakers at the time, the fun thing is that when Houdini does an escape or incredible physical feat like climbing a building without rope, he almost always does it without resorting to camera tricks, even just plain simple editing. Watching Houdini do his amazing stunts on film is like being there when he actually did it. The real camera trickery is how Houdini managed to work his tricks into a serial story. What you get watching Houdini's films that live audiences never managed to get was a story. Instead of just a series of wild physical stunts and mind-boggling escapes that utterly unconnected, you get to incorporate them into a narrative whole that lends them a depth that, let's face it, is sorely lacking in a David Copperfield special. It's one thing to watch the Statue of Liberty disappear after 50 minutes of lesser magic tricks, but it is something else to watch a master magician actually work his magic into a coherent, if goofy, storyline.
And as if that weren't enough, Harry Houdini proves the glorious exception to the rule that you excel in one entertainment medium it means you probably aren't going to be much of an actor. If only Shaquille O'Neal, Mariah Carey and Paris Hilton were as good at acting as Harry Houdini. Had he not grown both weary of the business of making movies and obsessed with exposing fraudulent mediums, Harry Houdini could possibly have gone on to be one of the most famous names from early movie history.
Published by Timothy Sexton - Featured Contributor in Arts & Entertainment
Timothy Sexton was named this site's very first Writer of the Year. Today he has several columns on Yahoo Movies and a weekly column on The Simpsons on Yahoo TV. He has published over 8,000 articles coverin... View profile
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6 Comments
Post a CommentI just looked up that Houdini set on Amazon--and I see it's from Kino. And they do a good job of restoring old silent movies. Interesting, too, they have an audio recording of Houdini from 1914. I think I've heard some recordings of him from the 1920's, and his voice is a lot higher than I imagined it to be. Well, everybody sounded like Mickey Mouse when recorded on an Edison cylinder during that era...
his appendix getting ruptured by running into a sword as the Tony Curtis movie oddly dramatized...;)
My dad was a performing stage magician for years--so you can be sure this is a great gift idea for Father's Day or next holiday season. Nevertheless, he already owned an older VHS collection of Harry Houdini's silent films. They were obviously in public domain, though, because the prints were horrible--and the company didn't even bother to put music to accompany the films. I hope the DVD release amends that. Other than the general interests of Houdini being a movie star, I found his features to be a bit ho-hum, albeit a chance to see him do some great stunt work there (including classic his straight jacket escape while hanging by a rope). Out of the ones I remember, "Terror Island" was probably the best one. Incidentally, I recently was going to recommend that 1998 two-part TNT movie on Houdini's life (starring the impossibly-named Johnathon Schaech)--but then remembered that it really wasn't factual. It still was the closest in accuracy from the previous ones. At least it didn't show
Yes, his obsession with mediums really did make a difference in his career, didn't it? (rhetorical question there)
Houdini is pretty fascinating, although I am not much into magic tricks.
I remember I used to be very intrigued about Houdini, the magician, when I was growing up, especially after watching the movie done by Tony Curtis...................I still am, but I didn't know about his talent as a movie star.