Houdini’s Girl Detective: The Real-Life Ghost-Busting Adventures of Rose Mackenberg by Tony Wolf is available now in a print edition and eBook. I've been eagerly awaiting this one since we first got word of it back in May. Here's the cover and description from Amazon:
The 1920s: a time of unprecedented belief in "spiritualism", or the practice of ostensibly communicating with the spirits of the dead. Into this milieu stepped Rose Mackenberg, a private detective trained by the great magician and escape artist, Harry Houdini. Her mission: to investigate and expose "ghost racketeers" who used magic tricks and psychological manipulation to con bereaved people out of their hard-earned cash. "Houdini's Girl Detective" is an illustrated anthology of Rose Mackenberg's original 1929 newspaper article series, detailing her sometimes hair-raising adventures exposing the chicanery of the ghost racket.
You can purchase Houdini’s Girl Detective: The Real-Life Ghost-Busting Adventures of Rose Mackenberg at Amazon.com (U.S.) and Amazon.co.uk (UK).
Great news! Houdini (1953) is coming back to disc. Independent distributor Olive Films will release the Paramount classic starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh on DVD and Blu-ray November 15. Here's the new cover art.
New Houdini Blu-ray (left) and DVD (right).
This marks the first standalone Blu-ray release of Houdini in the U.S. The movie had previously only been released on Blu-ray in 2011 bundled with Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies. The last time Houdini was released as a standalone DVD was 2008.
It does not appear this new Olive Films release will include any extras or special features.
You can pre-order both the HoudiniBlu-ray and DVD from Amazon.com.
It was two years ago tonight that the Houdini miniseries starring Adrien Brody first aired on the HISTORY channel. To mark the occasion, here's a look back at the making of 'Houdini' with some terrific behind the scenes photos from technical advisor David Merlini.
In the spring of 2013, Hollywood had no less than a dozen Houdini projects in development. Summit Entertainment was working on a screenplay that featured Houdini as a super spy. Sony was developing a movie in which Houdini and Chung Ling Soo battled the super-natural. ABC even purchased an idea for a TV series in which Houdini’s ghost would work alongside a female detective in contemporary New York. One thing they had in common: they were all highly fictionalized treatments of the great magician’s life.
Then on April 10, 2013, news broke that Oscar winner Adrien Brody had made a deal to star in a Houdini miniseries that would air on the HISTORY Channel. This new Houdini promised to be a biopic that “traces the arc of the turn-of-the-20th-century master magician’s life from desperate poverty to worldwide fame.” Overseeing the project would be veteran TV producer Gerald W. Abrams, father of director J.J. Abrams.
Unannounced at the time was that screenwriter Nicholas Meyer of Star Trek and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution fame had already penned the first drafts of the screenplay. The writer had an interesting personal connection to Houdini. His father, Bernard C. Meyer, wrote a psychoanalytic study of the great magician in 1976 called Houdini: A Mind in Chains. Meyer agreed to do the job only if the producers optioned his father’s book, which they did. However, Meyer’s final script would owe more to the uncredited 2006 biography, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Slomon, than it would to his father’s work.
The Houdini miniseries would span two nights. Meyer originally gave each installment a unique title. Part One was to be called “Becoming Houdini” and Part Two was “Being Houdini.” However, this two title idea was eventually dropped.
On August 19, 2013, producers Lionsgate and A+E Studios (parent company of HISTORY) gave Houdini the greenlight to start production in the fall with Brody as Houdini and the talented Kristen Connolly as his wife Bess. Wishing to portray Bess as accurately as possible, Connolly did her own outside research, and even fought the producers on their original idea to make Bess Irish.
Oscar nominee Uli Edel was hired to direct. Other crew members included Patrizia von Brandenstein as production designer and Karl Walter Lindenlaub as cinematographer. The entire production would be shot in Houdini’s birthplace of Budapest, Hungary. This was not an homage to the great magician; rather, the decision to shoot in Budapest had to do with favorable tax incentives offered by Eastern Europe.
Louis Mertens as the young Houdini.
Cameras started rolling the week of September 30, 2013. Further additions to the cast included Evan Jones as Houdini’s trusted assistant Jim Collins; Hungarian actress Eszter Ónodi as Houdini’s mother Cecilia Weiss; Jeremy Wheeler as Rabbi Weiss; Louis Mertens as the young Houdini; Tom Benedict Knight as Houdini’s brother Theo Hardeen; David Calder as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; and Megan Dodds as Mina Crandon, a.k.a. Margery the Medium.
Digital visual effects (almost 300 shots) would be employed as never before in a Houdini biopic in order to transform the streets and soundstages of Budapest into New York, London, San Francisco, St. Louis and Detroit. Noted escape artist David Merlini was hired as the technical consultant and oversaw the many escapes.
Adrien Brody with technical advisor David Merlini.
October 31, 2013 marked the 87th anniversary of the death of Houdini. It was also the 14th day of shooting on the Houdini miniseries. The scene that day featured Houdini, Bess, and Jim Collins practicing a straitjacket escape in the Dorchester Hotel in London in 1905 (in the finished film, the scene would appear to be set in Houdini’s house). To mark the occasion, David Merlini proposed a minute of silence in honor of Houdini before shooting the scene. Interestingly, Houdini's actual death scene was shot just a few days later.
Details of the Houdini miniseries began to leak online even before production had wrapped. Photos of actress Eszter Ónodi under a sheet of ice revealed the miniseries would include the fictional “trapped under the ice” drama so memorably depicted in the classic 1953 Tony Curtis Houdini movie. For fans, this was an indication that the miniseries would embrace popular Houdini mythology.
Principal photography wrapped in mid-December, and Entertainment Weekly offered the first official look at Adrien Brody as Houdini in their February 21, 2014 issue. While the original plan was to air the series in May, it was later pushed to the end of summer.
Post production and editing took place at EPS-Cineworks in Studio City, California. There the editors were faced with the challenge of creating two versions of the miniseries: a condensed version for U.S. broadcast, and a longer cut for international audiences. This would later prove controversial.
Faced with a tight editing schedule, editor Sabrina Plisco expanded the editorial team to include co-editor David Beatty, and assistant editors Jared Zalman and Paul Alderman. "This Houdini is more of a psychological thriller, so we used jump cutting, freeze frames, and contemporary sound and music to give an edginess to a classic story," explained Plisco.
Oscar nominated composer John Debney was brought in to do the musical score. Debney’s music would further the producers desire to give the series a contemporary feel to attract younger audiences. Debney’s score would also be released on two limited edition CDs. However, the music that would draw the most attention was the song "Simple Pleasures" by Jake Bugg that played over the first full trailer (included at the end of this post).
HISTORY began promoting Houdini in late summer 2014. The network launched an official website in which viewers could take a Houdini quiz, and began rolling out impressive online trailers and TV spots. One novel promotion featured bus stops created by Atomic Props that would fill with water, inviting pedestrians to try to hold their breath as long as Houdini. A few weeks before the series aired came news that Houdini would reveal secrets. This would be the first Houdini biopic to cross this line and break the Magicians’ Code. Star Adrien Brody, who practiced magic in his youth, put as good a face on this as possible, saying, "There is an oath not to reveal certain tricks. And I had issues with this. But the audience will gain an understanding of how some great illusions worked. You could probably find them online these days. I feel like it's an interesting facet of the storytelling, but I don't really like that certain things are revealed because he wouldn’t have wanted to reveal them." Houdini hit U.S. airwaves on Labor Day, September 1, 2014. The first night garnered 3.7 million total viewers, making it cable’s number one miniseries premiere of 2014. The second episode aired on September 2nd.
Critical reaction to the miniseries was mixed. Brian Lowry in Variety opined: “Houdini erects a cage from which even the renowned magician can’t escape: Nicholas Meyer’s misbegotten, heavy-handed, narrated-ad-nauseam script and Uli Edel’s equally obtrusive direction. Spread over two nights, there are intriguing elements for those fascinated by Houdini, but the movie feels less like a gut punch than a head blow.”
Allison Keene in The Hollywood Reporter was kinder, saying: “The miniseries nails the most important thing: spectacle. Edel's refreshingly dynamic direction and Brody’s buoyant performance allow Houdini's tricks to retain their wonder, even for the jaded modern viewer. That’s a magical feat indeed.”
Magicians and magic bloggers were predictably upset by the many historical inaccuracies. The general consensus was a channel that calls itself HISTORY should have shown more sensitivity to the facts. Even news station KSDK in St. Louis caught Houdini fact check fever, taking issue with how the miniseries showed Houdini leaping from their own Eads Bridge when he did no such thing. (My own Fact Check of Night One remains my most viewed post of all time.)
It didn’t help matters when producer Gerald Abrams defended the film by stating, "Since this was four or five generations ago, there's no one around to say it didn't really happen the way we show it." Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer’s own feeling was that, “The Italian expression se non è vero è ben trovato seems to apply" (even if it is not true, it is well conceived).
One recurring complaint was that the miniseries didn’t carry a disclaimer, as did the 1976 TV movie The Great Houdinis, which also played fast and loose with the truth. However, when Houdini aired on Sky TV in the UK the following week, a disclaimer was in place. That’s when it was reveled publicly that two different versions of the miniseries existed.
Nicholas Meyer did not hold back his feeling about the two versions, particularly what was shown to U.S. audiences on HISTORY. “I much prefer the Lionsgate [International] version,” he told the official Star Trek website. “[HISTORY] re-cut the movie, and tore a lot of it out, and put in a lot of voiceovers and stuff that I just wasn’t crazy about. And wasn't our intention. It hadn't been written.”
Evan Jones and screenwriter Nicholas Meyer at the DVD launch.
Both versions of the Houdini miniseries were included on the DVD and Blu-ray released by Lionsgate Home Entertainment on October 7, 2014. To promote the DVD release, Nicolas Meyer and actor Evan Jones hosted a Houdini séance at The Magic Castle in Hollywood to which select reporters and bloggers were invited.
Houdini was nominated for 11 Emmys, winning one for Outstanding Sound Editing For A Limited Series, Movie Or A Special. The miniseries was released to Netflix in March 2015, which is where many discovered it for the first time. Today, props from the miniseries can be seen at David Merlini's The House of Houdini museum in Budapest.
Unlike what was promised when first announced in April 2013, the Houdini miniseries proved to be a liberal confection of fact and fiction that did not always mix well together. Two years later, I still can't decide whether I love it or hate it. But it had ambition and scale, strong production values, and a major star in the lead, so today it stands as a worthy attempt by Hollywood to tell the life story of Houdini.
Thanks to David Merlini for providing all the terrific behind the scenes photos. This article was first published in my now out-of-print booklet 'Fact Checking HOUDINI The Miniseries'.
Aftershock Comics has released Adam Glass's ROUGH RIDERS #5. The series teams Houdini with famous notables such as Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Edison and Jack Johnson, who is featured on the cover of this latest issue.
With the help of Thomas Edison and Annie Oakley, STEAMPUNK TEDDY is released upon the Spanish American War. As Teddy fights the infamous Battle of San Juan Hill, Harry Houdini and Jack Johnson make a discovery that will change the course of history, their mission and the rest of their lives.
ROUGH RIDERS #5 can be purchased at ComiXology. The series is set to run for seven issues.
In early 1895, young Harry and Bess Houdini got what they believed was their big break; a week's engagement at Tony Pastor's prestigious 14th Street theater in New York. It was their first shot at "the big time."
Tony Pastor's was the pre-eminent theater for variety entertainment, or what Pastor coined as "Vaudeville", in all of New York City. Opened in 1881, Pastor's offered a wide selection of acts that guaranteed "refined" wholesome entertainment that could be enjoyed by women and families. It was a winning formula and Tony Pastor's 14th Street Theatre was enormously popular.
However, by 1895, Pastor was facing serious competition. Newcomers B.F. Keith and Edward Albee had opened the Union Square Theater that directly challenged Pastor with their own "refined" vaudeville. Looking for an advantage, the Union offered lower ticket prices and what it branded as "continuous vaudeville", shows that ran non-stop from 12:30 PM to 10:30 PM, divided into matinee, supper, and evening shows.
Pastor resisted the idea of continuous vaudeville which he called "Ferris Wheel Shows." His 14th Street theater offered matinee and evening shows only. But the Union began to drain not only customers away from Pastor's, but also talent. This meant Pastor had to broaden his search for new acts, and one of those acts where The Houdinis.
The Houdinis week long engagement at Tony Pastor's is nicely documented in Harold Kellock's Houdini His Life Story:
Tony Pastor's! Houdini could hardly believe it. That famous hall was still in its glory in the nineties, a national institution, as well known in its way as its immediate neighbor, Tammany Hall. Houdini was so excited by the prospect that he spent all his money advertising in the theatrical papers: "Next week at Tony Pastor's—The Great Houdinis, Harry and Bessie."
How thrilled they were when they walked out on the stage for their first show! The cleaning-women had hardly finished, and were still in evidence with their pails and mops. Instead of an orchestra there was only a lone pianist. Barely twenty-five persons were in the house. But Houdini, his head in the air, spoke to them as he did later to thousands. He had no doubt that such a stage was his proper place.
A regular Pastor's headliner was Maggie Cline (right), known as "The Irish Queen" and "The Bowery Brunhilde". Her repertoire consisted of Irish-themed rough and tumble songs and skits, performed in a deep brogue. At one point during the week, Cline encountered the young Bess Houdini backstage. Kellock recounts the meeting:
"My God, child!" she exclaimed. "Who made you up?"
"I did it myself," stammered Bess.
The older woman smiled. "Come in here, kid," she said. "Let me fix you."
She led Mrs. Houdini into her dressing-room. In a few minutes, after her practical fingers had done their work, the young performer hardly recognized her own reflection in the glass. As finishing touches, Maggie Cline fixed a bow here, [and] pinned a flower on the shoulder...
As the story continues, Houdini barely recognized Bess when she re-joined him in the wings. Maggie Cline watched their act and later recommended that Pastor move them to a better position on the bill, which he apparently did. No more performing for the cleaning crew.
Years later, when Houdini was headlining at Keith's in Boston, he again shared the bill with Maggie Cline who was then performing her farewell season. Bessie reminded her of her kindness. But try as she might, Maggie could not remember meeting the young Houdinis.
The Houdinis finished out their week and received a terse letter of endorsement from Pastor (below). Unfortunately, their week playing the big time did not lead to bigger things, and The Houdinis went back to playing dime museums and beer halls.
"The Houdinis act as performed here I found satisfactory and interesting."
Now, every available Houdini biography leaves the story there -- that Harry and Bess played this one week at Tony Pastor's and then went back to the small time. But the truth is they played Pastor's at least one more time the following year (and it wouldn't surprise me to learn they played Pastor's several times). Evidence of this return engagement has been hiding in plain sight.
On page 35 of James Randi's Houdini His Life and Art there is a photo of a Pastor's program dated Monday, October 12 with The Houdinis at the bottom of the bill. The book captions it as: "First appearance at Tony Pastor's in New York." However, Maggie Cline is not on the bill, and October 12 fell on a Monday in 1896. As Pastor's telegram establishes February 1895 as their first appearance, this can only be a return engagement.
By this time, Tony Pastor had given in and was now offering continuous vaudeville. No doubt in an effort to fill the bill, the Houdinis were "satisfactory and interesting" enough to book again. The program also shows Pastor's was now offering movies -- The Kineoptikon.
But even this second engagement did not lead to bigger and better things. In his scrapbook, which Houdini used to solicit bookings, he carefully altered the program, making it appear as if they had occupied a better position on the bill.
Keith-Albee, along with their west coast partner Martin Beck of the Orpheum circuit, would come to dominate and monopolize vaudeville in the new century. Unable to compete, Pastor closed his 14th Street theater on June 6, 1906. Houdini would go on to become a star on the circuit that has been Pastor's undoing.
Tony Pastor died in 1908. The building that housed his theater (and Tammany Hall) was demolished in 1927.
But Tony Pastor's rose again in the 1953 biopic Houdini with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. It's at Pastor's -- here portrayed as more of a dinner theater -- that Harry plays an old man in a "Fountain of Youth" act and steals Bess away from her date. It's a fitting nod to a theater that must have held nostalgic memories for The Houdinis.
UPDATE: The great Fred Pitella sends over this image of the original newspaper playbill for The Houdinis first engagement at Tony Pastor's, which we see commenced Monday, January 7, 1895. Thank you Fred!
Today's sad news is that the great Gene Wilder had died at age 83. During his long career Wilder touched on the edges of Houdini's world by playing Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and a silent movie star in The World's Greatest Lover. But what I didn't know until today was that Wilder was from Milwaukee, where Houdini spent several formative years. A Google search revealed that the two men share wall space at the Fork in the Road restaurant in Mukwonago, WI. So I think that's reason enough to honor the passing of Gene Wilder here.
Joe Notaro at Harry Houdini Circumstantial Evidence has undertaken the task of "restoring" Reel 3 of Houdini's Terror Island using photos and script excerpts from the Margaret Herrick Academy Library in Los Angeles. While Terror Island is missing two full reels (3 & 4), Joe is just tackling just those scenes missing from the Kino explanation cards which fill in the gaps on the current DVD release. Below are links to all four installments.
As the action proceeds to Reel 4, Harper (Houdini) escapes from a burning wearhouse and an overboard box. Soon, all find themselves heading out to sea on their way to Terror Island.
Thanks to Joe for taking on this important work. Here's hoping one day we might see the film itself restored.
David Jaher, author of The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World, will be the guest of a "Tea & Talk" event at Ventfort Hall in Lenox, MA, this Tuesday, August 30 at 4:00 PM. Details and tickets can be purchased HERE.
The Witch of Lime Street will be relased in paperback on October 11. Last year it was announced that STX Entertainment had purchased the movie rights to the book, but there has been no news on that since.
Houdini & Doyle may be behind us, but the HOUDOYLE fansite, run by the tireless Christopher Baker, is still going strong! Christopher has done an amazing job of tracking down all the shooting locations and offers maps and comparison photos at his site.
Also going strong is the Houdini & Doyle Fan Group on Facebook run by the also tireless Traci Porczynski. Now what I'm waiting on is any word on a U.S. DVD release. So far it is only available for streaming on Amazon.
The blog My Inwood by Inwood resident and realtor Cole Thompson has a well-researched article about the death of Houdini's brother Dr. Leopold Weiss. It includes Leo's short New York Times obituary and photos of the apartment building at 57 Park Terrace West from which Leo took his own life on October 6, 1962.
I'm excited to learn that Leo's apartment still stands. I also never realized that Leo killed himself the day after the 70th anniversary of his father's death (Oct. 5, 1892).
Click here or on the headline to have a read at Cole Thompson's My Inwood.
Potter & Potter's auction of "Old & New Conjuring" is set to go live tomorrow at 10AM CST. As always, there are several Houdini lots, including this scissor-cut silhouette portrait of Houdini by Dai Vernon from 1920 (Lot 393). This was probably done from life and is an excellent likeness. Estimate is $4,000- $6,000.
Vernon prided himself as being "the man who fooled Houdini" with a card trick. He later taught magicians such as Doug Henning, and provided silhouettes for the title page of Henning's Houdini His Legend and His Magic. Today he's venerated one of the all time great sleight of hand masters. Looks like he was pretty handy with the scissors as well!
Here's a rare close-up look at Houdini's hands. This incredible unpublished image comes from the collection of Mario Carrandi, Jr. Mario shared this on his Facebook group, THE MAGIQUARIAN, and generously allowed me to share here as well. The photo is from the 1920s.
Click to enlarge.
I don't believe I've ever seen a better shot of Houdini's hands, certainly not with a palm up. You can also see what appear to be long scars running down and across his inner arm. Souvenirs of years of damaging handcuff escapes maybe?
Speaking of Houdini's hands, in 1900 a Kansas City newspaper reported that Houdini had his "hand examined" by a local palm-reader named Professor Paul Alexander Johnston (reproduced in Houdini His Legend and His Magic). The article featured an image of "Houdini's palm", and the professor was reported to have prophesied:
"Unless you are exceedingly careful during your thirty-seventh year a violent death is written in this Line of Life," said the palmist. "Your money making period began, I should judge, last year. Provided you save, you will attain great wealth."
For the record, Houdini turned 37 in 1911, a year notable for no close calls. I guess Houdini must have been "exceedingly careful"!
In the 1970s, Utah-based Sunn Classics Pictures produced a series of feature documentaries that investigated subjects such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster (The Mysterious Monsters), Biblical mysteries (In Search of Noah's Ark), and even The Lincoln Conspiracy. As a kid, I loved these, and the pseudoscience documentaries that today populate the History and Discovery channels own a debt to Sunn's productions.
In 1978, Sunn released Beyond and Back, which "dared to investigate" the question of life after death. While on-screen host Brad Crandall promised "one of the most extraordinary films of our times", Beyond and Back is more well-known today for making critic Roger Ebert's list of all-time "Most Hated" films.
But Beyond and Back contains a nice surprise for Houdini buffs. It includes a three and a half minute segment about Houdini with real footage, a reenactment of the Arthur Ford séance, and actress Beverly Rowland as Bess (she later appeared in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers). Oddly, they add the words "learn" and "idea" to the end of the Houdini Message Code. For the record, the real code was: Answer (B), tell (E), pray-answer (L), look (I), tell (E), answer-answer (V), tell (E).
The full film is available on YouTube, but I've excerpted just the Houdini sequence below.
Beyond and Back was released on VHS, but I don't believe it ever made it to DVD. As with all their documentaries, Beyond and Back was released as a tie-in paperback. For a review of film, check out one of my favorite blogs, Every 70s Movie.
