Is this a cut scene from Houdini?

Here's a curious image from a website promoting the just released Houdini miniseries on DVD and Blu-ray in Germany. This shot shows Adrien Brody and Evan Jones, who played Jim Collins, engaged in some sort of dramatic escape action.

There was no scene or shot in the 3+ hour miniseries to match this. It's possible this is just a publicity photo (or preparations for a photo), but it sure looks like Brody and Jones are giving some sort of performance here. Unfortunately, this small image is the only one I can find online.

The German Houdini Blu-ray and DVD can be purchased at Amazon.de.

UPDATE: Mystery solved. This was for an unused poster.

Ira Davenport to Houdini in MAGIC

The April 2015 issue of MAGIC Magazine contains something Houdini fans might want to check out. In his terrific regular column, Classic Correspondence, Mike Caveney examines a letter written to Houdini by Ira Davenport. Below is a description:

Click to enlarge.

You can purchase this latest issue at the official MAGIC website.

Thanks to Leo for the tip.

Related posts:

• "Houdini, we started it, you finish it."

The Grim Game landing in Wisconsin

Tomorrow, April 16, TCM's restoration of Houdini's The Grim Game will screen at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison, WI. On hand to introduce the film will be producer Rick Schmidlin (right), who oversaw the project from possibility to premiere.

Last Friday I had the pleasure of doing a phone interview with Rick who took me step by step through his entire adventure. It's a wild tale of close calls and selfless work by a whole team of talented individuals. We spoke for almost 2 hours and there is a lot of great information to share, so I will offer up the interview in two installments: Finding The Grim Game and Saving The Grim Game.

So keep an eye out for Part I in which Rick talks about how he became interested in magic (and the magic of film), and how the real hero of The Grim Game story might be... Zinn Arthur?

The Wisconsin Film Festival screening of The Grim Game will take place at 6:00pm at the Sundance Cinema 5. Click here to buy tickets.

UPDATE: I got a quick email from Rick after the screening saying, "Packed house of silent movie fans, they love it."

Houdini Amsterdam prison break poster with error

Our friends Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz at the Houdini Museum in Scranton share with us this treasure from their collection. This is a rare original poster advertising Houdini's Amsterdam prison break on January 12, 1903.

There are actually two different styles of this same poster. The other features less text, more muted colors, and while it's the same design, it's a completely new illustration. One of these posters sold at Guernsey's in 2012 for $18,000.

This style, which had brighter colors, additional text, and a better likeness of Houdini (IMO), sold at Swann Galleries in 2006 for an astounding $78,000 (with buyers premium). What's also interesting about this poster is it contains an error. The text at the top of the poster says the escape took place in 1903, but the text below reads 1902. The escape time is also different; 5 minutes above and 15 below. That might explain the existence of the second style poster which omits the lower text entirely.

The two Amsterdam prison break posters.

The exciting news is Dorothy and Dick will be offering this poster for sale later this year along with some other original Houdini and magic items.

Thanks Dorothy and Dick.

UPDATE: 28 Houdini lots in Haversat & Ewing October auction.

Related posts:

• Houdini posters fetch big buck$ at auction (error style)
• Two of four Houdini posters sell in NYC auction (non-error style)
• Looking for Mr. Houdini

LINK: Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, a.k.a. Mrs. Bess Houdini

With all The Grim Game excitement, Bess has not been getting the attention that she normally gets around here. So today I'm happy to correct that by linking to an excellent post by Gena Philibert-Ortega at the Genealogy Bank Blog. It's all about Bess and it builds a nice profile of her using some unique newspaper clippings and quotes. Click on the headline to read.

"Mrs. Houdini admits that while it is the magician’s business to mystify an audience it is the wife’s business to mystify the magician to the extent of convincing him that she understands his tricks whether she does or not."

A new challenge every day

In January 1906, Houdini made his first appearance in Washington D.C. He dazzled the city with three separate jail escapes, culminating with a spectacular escape from the United States Jail's own Murderers Row. In September of that same year, Houdini returned to the nation's capital. So what could he do to top his first appearance?

Once again, Houdini was booked at "Chase's Polite Vaudeville" theater located at at 1424 Pennsylvania Avenue in the former Grand Opera House. Owned and operated by Plimpton B. Chase, it was described as "clean and wholesome pleasure for the refined men, women, and children."

This time, Houdini decided to forgo outdoor escapes and instead dazzle the city from the stage of Chase's with a unique challenge escape every day (plus a straitjacket at every matinee). The theater took out daily ads announcing what dilemma Houdini would be facing that evening. Putting them all together (at least the one's I could  find) gives a nice feel for what it was like to have Houdini in town, and how he continued to generate excitement even after he left the city.

September 19, 1906.

September 21, 1906.

September 22, 1906.

September 25, 1906.

September 26, 1906.

September 27, 1906.

September 28, 1906.

September 29, 1906

Interestingly, Houdini did refuse one challenge during the engagement on the grounds that it would be "too gruesome."

September 26, 1906.

Even after Houdini left the city, Houdini-mania remained. A department store displayed a packing crate from which he had escaped, and a "Professor Maurice Joyce" vowed to expose Houdini's tricks at the rival Columbia Theater.

Joyce drew a large crowd (there was a rumor Houdini would attend), but his grand exposure turned out to be an accusation that Houdini had colluded with his challengers. Those firms that had challenged Houdini assailed Joyce in print, and the manager of Chase's offered Joyce $100 if he could escape from one of the cases that Houdini had freed himself from. That was the end of Professor Joyce.

In 1912, Chase's Polite Vaudeville moved to a new theater in the Riggs Building on the southeast corner of 15th and G Streets, directly across from the Treasury and just a block from the White House. But Plimpton Chase was only in the new building for a year before he retired and sold his theater to the powerful B.F. Keith. 

Keith's "High-Class Vaudeville" would become Houdini's Washington D.C. home for the remainder of his career. It was from this theater that he would perform his famous suspended straitjacket escape on January 22, 1922.

You can read more about Houdini in D.C. at Carnegie: Magic Detective, and more about the Riggs/Keith Theater at Streets of Washington. 

Clippings source: Newspapers.com.

Related posts:

• Houdini's escape from Murderers Row
• Houdini escapes D.C.
• Mr. Houdini Goes to Washington, Part I

S.A.M. will screen The Grim Game at convention in July

The Society of American Magicians have announced that they will screen the TCM restoration of Houdini's The Grim Game at their upcoming National Convention, July 1-4, 2015 in Philadelphia. Our friends Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz will be on hand to introduce the movie. Dorothy was recently elected president of her local S.A.M chapter in Scranton, PA.

This marks the second announced screening of the movie following the premiere last month in Hollywood. The film will screen next at the Wisconsin Film Festival this Thursday, April 16.

When Houdini made The Grim Game in 1919 he was into his third year as National President of the S.A.M. He would serve until his death in 1926.

For more information on the S.A.M. National Convention visit the official website.

Houdini's leading ladies: Mae Busch

Until I saw The Grim Game last month, I had no idea how big a role actress Mae Busch played in the film. Because of this, I didn't include her in my Houdini's Leading Ladies series in 2012. I'm correcting that mistake today.

Mae Busch was born on June 18, 1891 in Melbourne, Australia. Mae was famous in her day for playing "vamps." While she doesn't do any vamping in The Grim Game, she's still a beauty and a scene stealer as Ethel. A great moment is when she and leading lady Ann Forrest both beat up on a bad guy.

Here is Mae's biography on Fandango:

Australian-born Mae Busch was the daughter of an opera singer mother and a symphony conductor father. Her family came to the U.S. when Mae was 3 years old, and she was placed in a convent school while her parents toured the world. While still a teenager, Mae achieved stage stardom by replacing Lillian Lorraine in the musical comedy Over the River. In 1915 she became a Mack Sennett bathing beauty at the invitation of her close friend, Sennett-star Mabel Normand. Later, Mae was hired by Eric von Stroheim to play a lusty Spanish dancer in Stroheim's The Devil's Passkey. The director used her again in Foolish Wives (1922), casting Mae as the amoral--and fraudulent--Princess Vera. She was later signed by MGM, where she was billed as "the versatile vamp." Upset at the nondescript leading-lady roles she was getting, Mae walked out of her contract; this action caused producers to hesitate casting Mae in major productions. While free-lancing at second-rate studios, Mae accepted a comedy-vamp role in the Hal Roach 2-reeler Love 'Em and Weep (1927), which represented her first appearance with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Though she made an impressive sound feature-film debut in Roland West's Alibi (1929), the steely-voiced Ms. Busch's stardom had passed, and for the most part her talkie assignments were bits and secondary roles. Her best opportunities in the 1930s came in the films of Laurel and Hardy, where she was often cast as a shrewish wife or sharp-tongued "lady of the evening." In the team's Oliver the Eighth (1934), she essayed her most flamboyant role as an insane widow with a penchant for marrying and murdering any man named Oliver--which happened to be the first name of the hapless Mr. Hardy. Ms. Busch went into semi-retirement in the 1940s, occasionally resurfacing in small roles in such films as Ziegfeld Girl (1946); she died of a heart attack at the age of 49. Formerly married to silent-film star Francis McDonald, Mae Busch was also the aunt of 1960s leading lady Brenda Scott. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Mae Busch has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd. This makes her Houdini's third leading lady on the boulevard (Nita Naldi and Lila Lee being the others).

The Grim Game will screen at the Wisconsin Film Festival next Thursday, April 16. It will air on TCM later this year.

More Houdini leading ladies:

• Ann Forrest
• Lila Lee
• Jane Connelly
• Gladys Leslie
• Nita Naldi
• Rosemary Therby
• Marguerite Marsh
• Ruth Stonehouse

Jeremy Renner channels Houdini

The 2013 film The Immigrant is released this week on DVD and Blu-Ray. The film is set in 1921 New York and features Jeremy Renner as Emil Orlando, a Houdini-like magician and escape artist who competes with Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix) for the affections of Ewa Cybulski (Marion Cotillard).

I haven't seen the film, but based on the photo of Renner above, it looks like something to check out, if just for the magic and production design. Although you'll notice Renner is sporting a full straitjacket fail.

You can buy The Immigrant at Amazon.com.

UPDATE: The movie is also available on Netflix.

Meet "Houdini's daughter"

MeTV recently aired an episode of The Carol Burnett Show in which the great comedian played the daughter of Houdini, "Flo Ziegfeld Houdini." The sketch co-starred Harvey Korman and went wrong in a number of ways. In fact, Burnett gives a special intro to the sketch explaining exactly what went wrong (a packing crate failed to break, etc.), and how they decided to air the failed sketch instead of reshooting it. The sketch is already pretty funny and madcap, and the mistakes make it all the more so (The Carol Burnett Show was famous for having performers "break up" on camera).

The show first aired on March 9, 1974. It was Episode 22 of Season 7.

Of course, I don't need to explain that Houdini didn't have a daughter, right?

UPDATE: You can ow watch the full "Houdini's daughter" sketch HERE.

Related:

• Did the Houdinis have a daughter?
• Houdini's daughter is 'Born of Illusion'
• LIVE from Machpelah Cemetery, it's Saturday Night!

What caused The Grim Game plane crash?

Our friend Bill Mullins alerts me to an article in the September 1939 issue of Flying Magazine about Cecil B. DeMille and his aviation interests. It was DeMille's company, Mercury Aviation, that rented the two "Jenny" biplanes used in Houdini's The Grim Game from "DeMille Field No. 1" in Santa Monica.

The article includes an account of the famous accident while filming. What's interesting is it blames Houdini's stunt double, Robert E. Kennedy, for causing the collision. This is the first I've ever heard of blame being placed on anyone for the accident. Here's the excerpt:

Money came in rapidly from airplane rentals to film companies. Harry Houdini made a picture at the DeMille fields, called "The Grim Game." A wing-walker, doubling for Houdini, got down on his ladder and "froze." The pilots jockeyed and jockeyed – and finally locked wings. They started a double flat spin, broke apart. One pilot landed with the wing-walker still clinging to the ladder, with a shattered upper right wing. The other came in with more serious damage, rolled over on its back.

"No one was injured," DeMille recalled. "The pilots jumped from their ships, took out after the frightened wing-walker to vent their wrath, for he was the cause of the accident. They didn't catch him. So far as I know, he's never been back to Hollywood since."

One clarification to the above is that Kennedy was hanging from a rope, not a ladder. Ladders were more typically used by wingwalkers for this kind of stunt. The accident footage is especially clear in the new TCM restoration of the film, but its still hard to tell exactly what happened. A few times the planes come in close, but Kennedy never seems close enough to safely transfer, and at one point he comes dangerously close to the propellers. Perhaps DeMille just wanted to shield his pilots from any blame.

Of course, publicity for The Grim Game claimed it was Houdini himself dangling from the end of the rope and who survived the crash. Houdini never denied it.

Thanks Bill.

UPDATE: You can read more about the happless stuntman Robert E. Kennedy at Joe Notaro's HHCE: How did Kennedy get the plane-changing job? and What happened to Kennedy after the plane incident?

Related:

• L.A. Daily Mirror pinpoints Houdini's plane crash
• Seeing double on The Grim Game set
• Grim Game plane wreck lobby display

Grim Game links from around the web

Reports are coming in from around the web about last week's world premiere of Houdini's restored The Grim Game. The movie screened for the first time in decades at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood.

First up is a report from our good friend Joe Notaro, who runs "Harry Houdini Circumstantial Evidence," a blog devoted to The Grim Game. No one know more about this movie than Joe. Some great photos here as well: Review of The Grim Game and the Festivities in Hollywood.

Next is a review by Sheri Linden at the popular blog arts.meme. Sheri gets the prize for the best headline: Lost and found: Houdini has 'Game'.

Richard Kirkham's blog "Kirkham A Movie A Day" has a nicely detailed eyewitness report, including the observation that: "I noticed a group of people waiting to get in who all seemed to know each other [...] My guess is that they were an invited group from the Magic Castle." (That group was us.): TCM Film Festival Day 3 Finale: The Grim Game.

Here are more reports on the TCM festival in general, all of which mention and/or review The Grim Game:

Film Racket: TCM Classic Film Festival 2015
L.A. Daily Mirror: TCM Film Festival Screens the Classics
Roger Ebert: A More Balanced Audience: The 2015 TCM Film Festival
Monster and Critics: Hollywood Hills Alive With The Sound Of The TCM Classic Film Festival
New York Post: TCM Classic Film Festival carries on without Osborne
Classic Movie Hub: TCM Classic Film Festival 2015 Day Four Films: Quotables
Fishbowl NY: Harry Houdini, Newspaper Reporter
I See A Dark Theater: TCM Classic Film Festival Recap, Days 3 and 4: Sophia Loren, Home Movies, and A Whole Lot of Silents and Magic

If I've missed a link, please send it to me and I will include it.

I'm surprised that this huge Houdini event has received scant attention from the major magic news websites and blogs. If this isn't magic news, I don't know what is! But perhaps people are waiting until they can see the movie for themselves.

The Grim Game will next screen at the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 16. It will air on TCM later in the year. There is no news yet of a DVD release.

Related:

• Photos from The Grim Game premiere in Hollywood
• Houdini conquers Hollywood (at last) in The Grim Game
• TCM ACQUIRES 'THE GRIM GAME', SCREENING IN MARCH