Houdini's 1922 film The Man From Beyond wasn't released in the UK until January 1927. That's right, The Man From Beyond didn't appear in British cinemas until after Houdini's death, meaning the flickering image on those screens really was a man from beyond! Of course, this presented a marketing challenge.
Below is one of the only ads that references Houdini's death, referring to him as "the late Houdini." I found another ad that calls the film as "His Last Great Creation." Apart from these, ads largely ignored the fact that the film's famous star was now deceased.
Evening Advertiser, April 1, 1927.
Evening Post, Feb 17, 1927.
Houdini had planned to tour the UK in 1927, presumably with his "3 Shows in One." It's possible he negotiated the release of The Man From Beyond for 1927 in anticipation of his return to the country after a six-year absence. When he last played the UK in 1920, The Grim Game was just coming out in cinemas.
I've often thought about how audiences perceived this last appearance of Houdini in the UK, where he was so well-known and popular. Seeing The Man From Beyond must have been a somewhat melancholic experience. And, considering the story is of a man returning from the dead, a little spooky!
Houdini's silent feature The Man From Beyond will screen at the Southend-on-Sea Film Festival in the UK on May 23, 2015. Stuart Burrell, an escapologist and stamina strongman, will do a presentation that is said to include a clip from The Grim Game. My guess is this will not be from the new TCM restoration, but will be the plane crash footage from the Kino DVD set.
The official website notes that The Man From Beyond was "released in the UK shortly after his untimely death in 1926." I've never heard this before. As far as I know, The Man From Beyond was distributed via the Houdini Picture Corporation, and that was dissolved by the mid twenties. So who released the film in the UK in '26, I wonder?
The Man From Beyond screening will take place at the Park Inn Palace Hotel Ballroom on Saturday May 23 at 6:00pm. For more information, check out the official website.
UPDATE: According to the always amazing Joe Notaro of HHCE, The Man From Beyond was released by Unity Film Company on Dec. 27, 1926. Joe uncovered this information in a 1927 Kinematograph Year Book. More here.
Our good friend Joe Notaro is on a roll. Having released two groundbreaking Houdini books, The Zanetti Mystery and Houdini's Schooldays, Joe has now released Houdini Adaptations. This new work contains the rare adaptations of The Grim Game and Terror Island and much more. Below are details.
Arthur B. Reeve and Houdini worked on three silent film stories together, The Master Mystery (1918), The Grim Game (1919), and Terror Island (1920). The Master Mystery silent film was adapted into a book in 1919. While not adapted to a book, The Grim Game was adapted to a story paper format in 1920, just like Terror Island was in 1921.
The Grim Game and Terror Island story adaptations are featured in Joe M. Notaro’s book for the first time and illustrated with original movie stills to help tell the story. For each of the 3 films that Reeve and Houdini worked on, Notaro also shares the cast, synopsis, words of Houdini, history, advertising campaign, and missing footage information.
A 1924 newspaper article, "Houdini Breaks into Playwrighting," describes a new, previously unknown stage play that reads like the plot summary from The Grim Game. The book also features tidbits about each of his known stage plays: Challenged or Houdini Upside Down (1911), Walking Through a Brick Wall (1914), and Buried Alive (1914).
As a bonus, Notaro shares the "Out of the Shadows" film treatment from his personal collection, which has never been published. Along with that, he summarizes and shares tidbits about each of Houdini’s other film treatments: The Marvelous Adventures of Houdini (1917), The Far North or The Man From Beyond (1921), Haldane of the Secret Service or Mysterious Mr. Yu (1921), Yar, the Primeval Man (1921), Il Mistero de Osiris or The Mystery of the Jewel (1921), The Great Tontine (1992), The Monster (1992), The Vulture (1992), Floating Through Space (1992), and Blood Brothers (unpublished).
Houdini Adaptations is released today, April 6, and is available for purchase at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Special offer! U.S. customers can order signed copies (available May 2024) directly from Joe via PayPal to Joe.M.Notaro@gmail.com. Price is $40 and includes a signed book with a Premium Color Interior and USPS book-rate shipping.
Even though the publisher shows a September 26 release date, Houdini: The Life and Times of the World's Greatest Magician by Charlotte Montague is now shipping from Amazon in the U.S. (mine arrives tomorrow). Aimed at general readers, the book runs 208 pages and is relased by Chartwell Books.
Based on contemporary reports and diaries and supported with historic photographs and period posters, Houdini is an intriguing biography of the world’s greatest magician and escape artist. Ninety years after his death, this brings both the man and his magic back to life again for one last performance.
This biography is an authoritative view from accomplished biographer Charlotte Montague, and belongs on the shelf of any lover of magic, escape artistry, and enigmatic figures.
Purchase Houdini: The Life and Times of the World's Greatest Magician from Amazon.com (U.S.) and pre-order from Amazon.co.uk (UK - Sept 28).
UPDATE: I've just received my copy and flipped through it. The book is beautifully laid out and comprehensive. Almost an encyclopedia in how it sections off people and events. Lots of photos, all familiar. Nice to see that it tracks Houdini beyond death -- into books, movies and television, right up to last year's Houdini & Doyle and this year's Timeless. I've not gotten into the text itself, but it appears to be a nice summation of known facts. I've already spotted some mythology (Bells of the Kremlin) and inaccuracies (Buried Alive), but there's mercifully no section on his "spy work." Oh, and it's a much larger book than I thought it would be. Almost brings me back to the glory days of Houdini coffee table books. I admit I'm a little hurt to not see my site listed in Further Reading (it appears to have been sourced for the later sections at least), but this is one I'm happy to add to my shelf.
BBC audiobooks have released a collection of three BBC-produced Houdini radio programs called Houdini & The Witch of Beacon Hill. Details below.
What drove Harry Houdini - magician, escapologist, and one of the most famous men in the world?
Whether it was escaping from handcuffs, a straitjacket or from a box filled with water, Houdini wowed audiences with his seemingly death-defying performance... This BBC Radio collection shares the story behind the trickery: in two fascinating full-cast dramas about the life of Harry Houdini, and in particular his public campaign to expose fraudulent spiritual mediums.
In the stunning full-cast dramatisation Houdini, a man is naked against the world, bound in chains, deprived of all help. Performing a death defying escape from a galvanised iron can, filled with water and secured with massive locks. Failure means a drowning death! This is the gripping story of the master magician, escapologist, and at the time of his death in 1926, one of the most famous men in the world. Michael Maloney stars as Houdini, with Graham Crowden as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lorelei King as Bess.
Houdini, the showman, longed to believe that he might be able to communicate beyond the grave with his beloved mother, but knew far too much about the trickery and faking of the stage to be easily convinced. The Witch of Beacon Hill is the true story of how Harry Houdini tried to debunk psychics and mediums. Attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and a police officer he debunked the most famous and celebrated Boston medium Mina Crandon, also known as ‘Margery’. This radio drama tells Margery’s story, and the story of how Houdini set out to disprove her claims. Starring Shelly Thompson as Margery and Nigel Anthony as Houdini.
This double edition collection comes with a bonus episode of Harry Houdini: Escape artist and showman with Rajan Datar. Through interviews, Datar charts the life and career of the legendary Houdini, with writer and biographer Adam Begley, Dr Matthew Solomon, and Dr Katharina Rein.
For the record, Houdini was first broadcast on BBC Radio 2, Oct 1996; The Witch of Beacon Hill on BBC Radio 4, 30 Sep 1989; and Harry Houdini: Escape artist and showman on BBC World Service, 30 Dec 2021
Purchase Houdini & The Witch of Beacon Hill: Two Full-Cast BBC Radio Historical Dramas at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a physical release.
In many ways, Death Defying Acts is the model for how not to make a film about Houdini. It opts for fiction over fact, spiritualism over magic and escapes, and incident over biography. It even omits Houdini's name from the title. What the filmmakers thought would be the "hook" of this movie is beyond me, except that it starred Catherine Zeta-Jones.
But having said that, Death Defying Acts is not without merit, and it was good to see Houdini in any form back on the big screen, if only for one week.
From the start, Death Defying Acts was more about the role of the fictional Mary McGarvie than Houdini. This was clear when the project was first announced in the trades as Death Defying Feats in 2005. At that time, Rachel Weisz was set for the co-starring role. Weisz even said she believed she might be related to Houdini! But even with the casting of Guy Pearce as Houdini the project would have trouble getting off the ground until Catherine Zeta-Jones, fresh off her Oscar win for Chicago, took over the role of Mary, reportedly agreeing to a pay cut that "saved the film."
Directed by Gillian Armstrong with a script by Tony Grisoni and Brian Ward, Death Defying Acts tells the fictional story of Houdini's obsessive search for a medium who can prove communication with the dead (and his mother) during a tour of Scotland in 1926. Houdini discovers McGarvie, a Scottish Music Hall clairvoyant, who along with her young daughter, Benji (nicely played by Saoirse Ronan), manipulates matters to get inside Houdini's cloistered world. Ultimately the two tricksters fall in love.
The film was shot in Edinburgh (where it is set) and in London's Savoy Hotel. Much was made by the British tabloid press about an on-set injury to star Zeta-Jones when a member of the crew accidentally stepped on her toe. The Sun reported that, "It virtually took the toenail clean off." Executive producer Dan Lupovitz threw cold water on the story by saying, "It was as minor incident which hardly disrupted filming. She's fine."
In the film, Guy Pearce plays Houdini as a bit of a primadonna who berates hotel porters and barks at his (fictional) manager, Mr. Sugarman (Timothy Spall). Pearce also effects a husky, gravelly voice. The result is the least likable Houdini of them all, although Pearce certainly looks the part with a very Houdini-like physique (although he's the Houdini of 1906 rather than 1926). Says Pearce: "There’s footage of Houdini and there’s audio stuff of him, but I decided to go in a completely different direction and really just work off what my own imaginative response was to the script anyway, I think, rather than really just trying to channel somebody."
The real highlight of Death Defying Acts is the outstanding production design by Gemma Jackson. The opening bridge jump in Sydney Harbor is truly evocative of the period. Many authentic Houdini photos are recreated with Pearce's likeness. Houdini's stationary is even accurately reproduced. The Chinese Water Torture Cell is nicely recreated, although Pearce's patter is hokey and its conclusion, with Pearce lounging across the top like a beach boy, seems out of character. While Bess does not appear in the film, her photograph does. Oddly, the filmmakers elected not to use a photo of the real Bess, but a photo of an unknown actress. Who is this mystery Bessie?
For once a Hollywood film does not portray Houdini as dying in the Water Torture Cell. However Death Defying Acts takes the punch in the stomach story to a new mythic level by having Houdini struck in public and dropping dead on the spot. The so credited "Montreal student", played by Justin Flagg, shouts "Trick or Treat" before he delivers the fatal blow. The punch, and Houdini's problematic appendix, are set-up throughout the film, but the depiction of his sudden death seems a bit lazy.
Produced for less than $20 million, Death Defying Acts was financed through the Australian Film Finance Corp., BBC Films and Myriad Pictures. After it was completed, The Weinstein Company bought the film after viewing a promo reel at the American Film Market, paying a reported $5.5 million for limited distribution rights. Myriad Pictures had already sold distribution rights in the U.K. to Lionsgate.
Death Defying Acts had its world premiere at the State Theater in Sydney Australia on March 10, 2008. A VIP after-party was held at the Zeta Bar at the Sydney Hilton. The film never saw a wide theatrical release in the U.S. Instead, the film played for only one week in two theaters: the Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema in New York and Manns Chinese Theater 6 in Hollywood (where I saw it on July 11, 2008).
The film actually received a good review in the Los Angeles Times, which stated; "Death Defying Acts is far more diverting and well crafted than its promotion-free release campaign might suggest. What the film loses in momentum as the romance takes over, it gains in sex appeal as its two attractive actors make their own kind of magic."
Death Defying Acts wasn't entirely "promotion-free". There was a novelization written by Greg Cox released by Pocket Books (left). This was only the second time a Houdini film was novelized (the first being The Great Houdinis in 1976). A CD soundtrack of the score by Cezary Skubiszewski was also released, and marked the first time a Houdini movie soundtrack made it into stores.
Death Defying Acts was released on DVD on October 28, 2008. The DVD packaging wisely carried a new subtitle, "Houdini's Secret". In some territories the title became Houdini's Death Defying Acts. The DVD includes commentary by director Gillian Armstrong and producer Marian MacGowan, and a Making Of documentary. A Blockbuster Exclusive DVD contained a short documentary, Houdini: The Man Behind The Magic, featuring the stars and filmmakers discussing the real Houdini.
Death Defying Acts is an interesting addition to the Houdini film canon. While maybe not the Houdini film we wanted for the 21st Century, its sincerity makes up for its flaws.
Death Defying Acts plays the Chinese 6 in Hollywood in 2008.
