poster courtesy Wikimedia commons / public domain
Houdini in handcuffs, circa 1900.
Dear Vance: Why is magician Harry Houdini’s name engraved on a brass star set into the sidewalk at the entrance to the Orpheum Theatre? — B.B., Memphis.
Dear B.B.: Look around, and you’ll find the names of other celebrities set into stars around this historic theater at Main and Beale. In 1995, longtime Orpheum president Pat Halloran created the “Sidewalk of Stars” as a tribute to the world-famous performers who have graced the Orpheum stage. At present, 88 names have made this rather exclusive list. I’m ashamed that no Lauderdale is among them. Surely, an oversight.
But that explains the WHY: Harry Houdini, probably the most famous magician in the world, performed here. But I presume readers want to know WHEN, so I turned to John Cox. A professional magician, historian, and writer based in Los Angeles, in 2000 Case created the website WildAboutHoudini.com, the most comprehensive guide to anything and everything concerning Harry Houdini.
“He was at the Grand Opera House from October 23 to November 5, 1899,” Cox told me. What’s more, he confirmed that Houdini came back to Memphis twice, performing at the Orpheum on February 16-18, 1916, and again during the week of September 10, 1923. He knows this because he is the author of The Travel Diary of Harry Houdini: 1897-1899, and “I am currently compiling a complete list of every engagement he ever played,” he says. “It is a massive undertaking. This year, I will release the first volume covering the years 1900-1906. It’s over 600 pages!”
photograph courtesy wayne dowdy / Memphis and Shelby County Room, Memphis Public Libraries
The Grand Opera House, shortly after it opened at Main and Beale in 1890.
Let me pause to clarify something: The Grand Opera House (shown here) opened at Main and Beale in 1890. Around 1907, it was renamed the Orpheum Theatre. So we’re not talking about two separate buildings — not yet, anyway.
I hope readers know that Houdini was the stage name of Erik (or Ehrich) Weisz, born in 1874 in Austria. His family sailed to America when he was 4 years old, settling in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as a rabbi. As a teenager, he taught himself card tricks, performing at sideshows as “The King of Cards.” But then he became interested in escape illusions that would draw larger crowds. In 1899, a manager booked him as a vaudeville act, where he displayed his uncanny ability to escape chains, ropes, handcuffs, and other constraints. In 1894, he married Wilhelmina “Bess” Rahner, who assisted him with his act, and Weisz became Harry Houdini, after the famous French magician, Robert Houdin (1805-1871).
photograph by kristin bennett / orpheum theatre
His 1899 appearance here was one of his early performances as Houdini, and reporters weren’t sure what to call him. Promoters billed him as “The Handcuff King,” “The Genius of Escape,” “The Elusive American,” and even “The World Champion Self-Liberator.”
I ran into a hurdle searching old Commercial Appeal files for a review of Houdini’s 1899 act, and Case explained why: “In October 1899, Houdini was still largely unknown. He had some success in the West on the Orpheum circuit, but now he was off the circuit and working his way back east, playing independent theaters.”
However, Cox sent a faded scrapbook clipping from the Memphis Evening Scimitar. Headlined “CHAINS WILL NOT HOLD HIM,” the article offers a fascinating glimpse of an early Houdini performance. He was so little known that the reporter identified him not as an Austrian, but as “an Australian, and from that great island far away has brought tricks that rival those performed by the Hindus.”
poster courtesy Wikimedia commons / public domain
At this time, “the magician is only 27 years old, but he has been following his business for 14 years, and the development of his hands and muscles is truly remarkable. Houdini delights in his work. He does not care whose handcuffs or chains are used, the end is the same. He always releases himself.”
After his stage show at the Opera House, Houdini visited the police department here, where “he disrobed completely, so it was not possible for him to conceal a key. A dozen pairs of handcuffs were placed on his wrists — some of the double-lock kind which cannot be removed without a key or cold chisel. A locksmith would have given up in disgust the job of removing them. Adhesive plaster was fastened over his mouth, making it impossible for him to conceal keys there.”
At the magician’s request, “the spectators left Houdini in the room alone. Returning ten minutes later, they found him entirely free of the bracelets.”
The consummate showman provided another surprise. On a table, “all the cuffs were locked and interlocked precisely as they had been placed on his wrists.”
After other performances that year in America, in 1900 Houdini embarked on a long tour of Europe, where he became an international sensation. Taking advantage of the newfangled “moving pictures,” he performed his stage act before an audience, interspersed with filmed scenes of other adventures, such as leaping in mid-air from a biplane and landing in the cockpit of another flying below. By the early 1900s, he was earning $300 a week ($12,000 today).
In 1916, he returned to Memphis, this time as one of the most famous entertainers in the world. As a thrilling preview of his Orpheum show, on February 17, 1916, he was strapped into a straightjacket, a cable hooked around his ankles, and hauled high into the air by a crane mounted on the roof of the four-story Commercial Appeal building at Second and Court. The newspaper reported that “a committee of businessmen will see that the buckling of the straitjacket is done in a thorough manner.”
Once again, assistants placed a screen around the box. The audience waited; not a sound was heard. After perhaps 10 minutes, the screen was pulled down with a flourish, and there was the great magician standing beside the wooden crate — still nailed shut!
With “more than a thousand pairs of eyes looking on, Houdini took only five minutes to free himself,” casting the straitjacket into the cheering crowds below. That evening, on the Orpheum stage, in addition to escaping from various chains and handcuffs, he performed his famous “Chinese Water Torture” trick. Handcuffed, with his feet bolted securely into wooden stocks, he was lowered head-first into a massive glass case filled with water. The challenge, of course, was to escape before he drowned.
Assistants placed a curtain around the “torture chamber,” and the crowd held their breath and nervously checked their watches. Minutes ticked by. The audience grew nervous. Invariably came shouts of “Let him out!” Stagehands rushed forward and pulled away the screen — only to reveal the water chamber empty, and Houdini sitting calmly in a chair.
He wasn’t quite done with Memphis, though. That week, Goldsmith’s Department Store published a challenge to Houdini in the local newspapers: “As expert packers and shippers, we challenge you to escape from a case of heavy lumber, in which we believe we can so nail and rope you that you will be unable to make your escape.”
On February 18, 1916, Houdini published his response: “Houdini Accepts the Challenge,” with a reasonable request: “Under the condition that the box must not be air-tight.”
That Friday night at the Orpheum, Houdini invited audience members to come on-stage and use their own hammers and nails to seal him even more securely. Or so they thought.
Once again, assistants placed a screen around the box. The audience waited; not a sound was heard. After perhaps 10 minutes, the screen was pulled down with a flourish, and there was the great magician standing beside the wooden crate — still nailed shut!
poster courtesy Wikimedia commons / public domain
Houdini starred in several movies, such as The Grim Game (1920).
In the 1920s, Houdini embellished his fame by starring in a series of short films designed to showcase his skills: The Grim Game (1919), Terror Island (1920), and The Man From Beyond (1922). By this time, he had become so famous that his name became a verb. The Chicago Tribune, reporting on a political scandal, observed that the parties involved would have to “houdini” themselves out of the predicament.
On September 10, 1923, Houdini returned to Memphis for his third and final time. He repeated the outdoor straitjacket stunt, again dangling from the Commercial Appeal roof. At the Orpheum later, he “introduced new tricks” — such as escaping from a steel milk can latched on the outside — and closed the show with another heart-stopping performance of the Chinese Water Torture, which never failed to bring a standing ovation. It remains, to this day, one of the most sensational — and difficult — magic acts in history.
Memphians were lucky to catch this engagement. Just weeks later, on the night of October 16, 1923, the Orpheum burned to the ground. The blaze apparently started on the third floor, which had been leased to various businesses. It wouldn’t be until 1928 that the “new” Orpheum — the majestic structure standing on the same site today — would rise from the ashes.
Houdini passed away two years after the Memphis performance, at age 52. A man who could have died in so many ways while performing death-defying stunts was felled by peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. Many fans thought his Halloween death on October 31, 1925, was fitting for a man who made it his life’s work to debunk spiritualists, clairvoyants, and fortune-tellers. If there really was life after death, he proclaimed, he would send a secret coded message to his wife. Bess, who passed away in 1943, waited for it until the end of her life.
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Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis Magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101.
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