There was a fair amount of Houdini excitement over the holidays, but nothing more exciting than this. If you watched the PBS series
Lucy Worsley's Holmes vs. Doyle, you saw rare footage of Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the 18th Annual S.A.M. banquet at the McAlpin Hotel in New York on June 2, 1922. I knew footage was shot at this banquet and hoped it would one day surface. Now it has!
Not only did we get to see Houdini, Bess, Sir Arthur, and Lady Doyle at their dinner table, but there's also footage of Howard Thurston, Horace Goldin, Max Malini, Carl Rosini, and Houdini on-stage magically producing their wives from a large cloth. Wow!
It's likely the production acquired this footage from a stock footage house. There are several listed in the credits. However, a search of their websites turned up nothing. It's also possible this came from the Doyle estate. Whichever the case, there may be more than what we see here!
I ran a moving picture, taken at the banquet, and if you desire a copy, I shall be pleased to let you have one. It is a remarkably good picture of Lady Doyle, and you have a very amused expression on your face as if you were in a good humor—and I hope you were!
- Houdini to Conan Doyle, June 1922.
If you missed the series, you can watch it for a limited time on the
PBS website. The Houdini footage appears in S1 E3: Shadows and Sleuths. You can also buy the series on
Amazon. For those in the UK, you can watch the series on the
BBC iPlayer under the title
Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle.
You can also view the footage and read MUM's report on the banquet as a member of my
Patreon. Just click below.
