If you've already forgotten what the old site looked like, CLICK HERE.
Monday, September 12, 2016
A new look for WILD ABOUT HARRY
So I've launched a new design for WILD ABOUT HARRY. This marks the first real change in the look and feel of the site since it went live in November 2010. This is primarily so I can create new drop down menus and can better organize some the content buried deep within the blog. Let me know in the comments below if this is a look you can live with for another six years. Thanks!
Houdini rises at Paramount
Our good friend Steven Bingen, who has written books about Warner Bros and MGM, is now completing a new book about Paramount Studios called Paramount: City of Dreams. While doing research, Steve came across this October 1952 issue of the studio newsletter showing an impressive new construction on the backlot for their upcoming production of Houdini.
Related:
Click to enlarge.
The building facade would be used to shoot Houdini's suspended straitjacket escape. Here are a few images of the shoot itself from the archives of LIFE magazine. Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the stuntman who performed the straitjacket escape that day. It's interesting to note that this was filmed around Halloween 1952.
I can't help but think what a nice companion piece the makes to last Friday's post about Houdini himself doing a stunt 33 years earlier on a building facade at the Famous Players-Lasky studio for The Grim Game. Famous Players-Lasky was later folded into Paramount.
Houdini (1953) is due to be released on a new DVD and Blu-ray on November 15. Steve's Paramount: City of Dreams will be released November 1 and can be pre-ordered at Amazon.
Thank you Steve.
Related:
Saturday, September 10, 2016
It's now the "Houdini Studio" in New Jersey
I'll be darned. Our friend Perry in New Jersey has discovered a new website for the building at 216 19th St. in Union City, which was once owned by Houdini and housed his Film Developing Corporation and possibly his magic workshop. It appears the building has been renamed "Houdini Studio." The website sources THIS POST from 2014 pointing out the connection. Our work is done here!
The new "Houdini Studio" website also offers photos of the inside, which we can maybe use to help prove and/or pinpoint the exact location of Houdini's workshop, as seen in THIS PHOTO from the Kevin Connolly collection that I shared last week.
Below is what the the building looked like in Houdini's day. Back then the address was 216-222 Weehawken Street.
I feel kinda proud that this building is now known as Houdini Studio. But to give proper credit, this location was first uncovered by the great Patrick Culliton and first revealed on Kevin Connolly's blog "Houdini Himself" in 2010 (Kevin took down his blog and all its content earlier this year).
Thank you Perry.
Related:
The new "Houdini Studio" website also offers photos of the inside, which we can maybe use to help prove and/or pinpoint the exact location of Houdini's workshop, as seen in THIS PHOTO from the Kevin Connolly collection that I shared last week.
Below is what the the building looked like in Houdini's day. Back then the address was 216-222 Weehawken Street.
Thank you Perry.
Related:
Friday, September 9, 2016
The Grim Game jail break behind the scenes
One of the highlights of Houdini's The Grim Game is the jail break sequence. Not only do we get to see Houdini escape shackles and the jail cell, but we see him use the rope from a flagpole to climb down the side of the building. It's a stunt Houdini did himself.
In the film it appears Houdini is doing his acrobatic stunts on a real building. But this photo from a magician's scrapbook housed at the Magic Castle's William Larsen Sr. Memorial Library gives us a new perspective on the stunt.
This photo shows us that Houdini's jail break was actually filmed on the Jesse Lasky Famous Players Studio backlot (confirmed by the great silent movie location archaeologist, John Bengtson). But Houdini is still far enough off the ground that he could be seriously injured or killed if he fell. In fact, at some point while filming the jail escape sequence, he did break his wrist in a fall. Below is how it appears in the film.
Also shot on the backlot was the crash landing of Houdini's biplane. Today the site of the former Laskey backlot sits behind The Hollywood Palladium and looks like this.
In the film it appears Houdini is doing his acrobatic stunts on a real building. But this photo from a magician's scrapbook housed at the Magic Castle's William Larsen Sr. Memorial Library gives us a new perspective on the stunt.
This photo shows us that Houdini's jail break was actually filmed on the Jesse Lasky Famous Players Studio backlot (confirmed by the great silent movie location archaeologist, John Bengtson). But Houdini is still far enough off the ground that he could be seriously injured or killed if he fell. In fact, at some point while filming the jail escape sequence, he did break his wrist in a fall. Below is how it appears in the film.
Also shot on the backlot was the crash landing of Houdini's biplane. Today the site of the former Laskey backlot sits behind The Hollywood Palladium and looks like this.
If you love this kind of stuff like I do, check out more Grim Game filming locations below, and also visist John Bengtson's amazing Silent Locations blog.
Related:
Related:
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Houdini & Doyle unused artwork
Our friend Traci Porczynski at the very active Houdini & Doyle Fan Group on Facebook has been searching the web and making some interesting discoveries. First up are these unused Houdini & Doyle main title logos by Sub Pixel Motion Design.
One logo created by Sub Pixel was used early on by FOX. It was uploaded the official press site on the day the series was first announced. You can see that logo HERE.
Traci has also uncovered this unused promotional image taken by Mitch Jenkins of stars Michael Weston and Stephen Mangan as Houdini & Doyle in action! Fun stuff.
Traci has also uncovered this unused promotional image taken by Mitch Jenkins of stars Michael Weston and Stephen Mangan as Houdini & Doyle in action! Fun stuff.
Thanks Traci.
Related:
Related:
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
'Houdini Talks Houdini' at the Coney Island Film Festival
Adam Steinfeld's short film HOUDINI...Talks Houdini will screen at the 16th annual Coney Island Film Festival on September 17 at 7:00 PM as part of block of music videos and experimental films. The film is a fictional recreation of what Adam imagines Houdini's final radio interview would have been like.
You can buy tickets and get more details at the official Coney Island Film Festival website.
Congratulations Adam!
Related:
You can buy tickets and get more details at the official Coney Island Film Festival website.
Congratulations Adam!
Related:
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
FLASHBACK: Houdini's busted bust
After I posted this, the mystery owner vanished and the bust has never again surfaced. It was all very curious, but it's still an amazing thing to see. So click below and revisit:
HOUDINI'S ORIGINAL GRAVE BUST REVEALED!
*Do you like the idea of periodic "flashback" posts like this? Feel free to give me feedback below.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Houdini in his workshop
For Labor Day, I couldn't resist sharing this amazing image of Houdini in his New Jersey workshop preparing magic apparatus for his 1925-26 3 Shows in One. This photo comes from the formidable collection of the great Kevin Connolly. Kevin recently shared this at his Facebook group, CONJURING HISTORY - BUY, SELL AND TALK.
The folks over at Kevin's group have been doing a great job dissecting what we can see here. Houdini is holding what appears to be a Vanishing Birdcage. This was actually a Harry Blackstone specialty at this time. Behind him we can see a pair of Conradi Vanishing and Appearing Lamps. These once went wrong during a show and Houdini denounced the manufacturer from the stage. Another thing spotted by the eagle-eyed David Charvet are what appear to be two 35mm film canisters on the work bench.
It's been suggested that Houdini's New Jersey workshop may have been located in the same building that once housed his Film Developing Corporation (FDC). That building still stands today.
Thanks to Kevin Connolly for generously allowing to share this shot. Hope you are all having a relaxing Labor Day weekend and are ready for the Fall "seance season."
UPDATE: To help our discussion in the comments below, here's the other more well-known image of Houdini in his workshop. This comes from Gresham's Houdini The Man Who Walked Through Walls and is credited there to "Brown Brothers."
UPDATE: Having now been in the building, I can say with almost complete certainty that the workshop was on the ground floor. I was in the room where all the windows, wall features, and even the views match. Here's a pic.
Click to enlarge.
The folks over at Kevin's group have been doing a great job dissecting what we can see here. Houdini is holding what appears to be a Vanishing Birdcage. This was actually a Harry Blackstone specialty at this time. Behind him we can see a pair of Conradi Vanishing and Appearing Lamps. These once went wrong during a show and Houdini denounced the manufacturer from the stage. Another thing spotted by the eagle-eyed David Charvet are what appear to be two 35mm film canisters on the work bench.
It's been suggested that Houdini's New Jersey workshop may have been located in the same building that once housed his Film Developing Corporation (FDC). That building still stands today.
Thanks to Kevin Connolly for generously allowing to share this shot. Hope you are all having a relaxing Labor Day weekend and are ready for the Fall "seance season."
UPDATE: To help our discussion in the comments below, here's the other more well-known image of Houdini in his workshop. This comes from Gresham's Houdini The Man Who Walked Through Walls and is credited there to "Brown Brothers."
Click to enlarge.
UPDATE: Having now been in the building, I can say with almost complete certainty that the workshop was on the ground floor. I was in the room where all the windows, wall features, and even the views match. Here's a pic.
Related:
Sunday, September 4, 2016
'The Magic of Houdini' now streaming on Netflix
In The Magic of Houdini, Alan Davies, a UK comedian and personality, travels to various Houdini locations in the UK and U.S. Along the way he talks with: Roger Dreyer, David Copperfield, Ruth Brandon, Ken Silverman, Kevin Connolly, Richard Sherry and Dayle Krall, and 93-year-old Larry Weeks (his last interview). As I wrote in my original review, it offers up a nice time capsule of the Houdini world in 2014.
Thanks to London Ervin for the alert.
Related:
Exposing The Wizard Exposed
"The Wizard Exposed" by H.L. Adam first appeared in the July 1901 issue of The Royal Magazine in the UK. The five-page article featured Houdini exposing "some of his simpler" magic tricks. The pages are reproduced in Walter Gibson's The Original Houdini Scrapbook (1976), but mega collector Arthur Moses shares with us scans of the original article from his collection (the largest collection of Houdini periodicals in the world). I love these early images of Houdini performing straight magic.
Houdini once said that exposing tricks is "taking bread and butter from honest hard working ambitious magicians." But Houdini freely exposed select tricks throughout his career. I can't help but wonder how "The Wizard Exposed" was received by magicians of the day. Even though this article is written as if by an outsider, there's little doubt that Houdini was behind the entire piece, and may have even written it himself.
Arthur also recently discovered this same article in the French magazine La Petite Gironde Dans la Famille, February 25, 1902, with translated title "Tous Magiciens" (All Magicians). This time there is no byline. This was published following Houdini's first appearance in France.
Click to enlarge.
"Mr. Houdini is now well known as the "Handcuff King," but before he went into handcuffs he was a skilful [sic] conjurer in America, and the explanations here given may be relied as being thoroughly genuine."
Click to enlarge.
"A very effective, but much simpler trick is that where water is turned to wine, and back again to water. This, Mr. Houdini informed me, was one of his favourite tricks in America, and one which never failed to elicit plenty of enthusiastic applause."
Click to enlarge.
"And now I wonder how many Maskelynes, Devaneys, Le Roys, and Houdinis will result from the publication of this article. I desire to express thanks to Messrs. C. Ornum & Co., Duke Street, Charing Cross, for their kindness in lending apparatus for the illustration of this article."
Houdini once said that exposing tricks is "taking bread and butter from honest hard working ambitious magicians." But Houdini freely exposed select tricks throughout his career. I can't help but wonder how "The Wizard Exposed" was received by magicians of the day. Even though this article is written as if by an outsider, there's little doubt that Houdini was behind the entire piece, and may have even written it himself.
Arthur also recently discovered this same article in the French magazine La Petite Gironde Dans la Famille, February 25, 1902, with translated title "Tous Magiciens" (All Magicians). This time there is no byline. This was published following Houdini's first appearance in France.
Click to enlarge.
Thank you Arthur.
Related:
Saturday, September 3, 2016
'Houdini’s Girl Detective' out now
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:
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).
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).
Related:
Friday, September 2, 2016
Olive Films will release Houdini (1953) on Blu-ray and DVD
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.
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 Houdini Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon.com.
Related:
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 Houdini Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon.com.
Related:
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Making the Houdini Miniseries
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.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.
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.
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.”
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'.
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ROUGH RIDERS #5
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.
ROUGH RIDERS #5 can be purchased at ComiXology. The series is set to run for seven issues.
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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.
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