The Life And Many Deaths Of Harry Houdini by Ruth Brandon
Reviewed by Jamy Ian Swiss (originally published in Genii February, 2005)
Was Harry Houdini the greatest magician of all time? This is probably among the top
ten questions laymen ask of professional magicians. But the answer is problematic. One
can no more make such a definitive statement about magic as about any other
profession.
In Houdini's case, magicians who saw him perform have often been quick to deride his
ability. Vernon, for example, often spoke of Houdini's lack of conjuring skills. But if
fooling the public is at least one measure of a magician, then in some ways, Harry was
and still is the greatest. Sixty-eight years beyond his death, Harry continues to
effectively deceive not only magicians, not only the public at large, but in particular,
researchers and historians who attempt to profile his life in depth. Houdini's latest
success is with chronicler Ruth Brandon, whom Harry has fooled as effectively as he did
any audience member of his own time.
Ms. Brandon is a British television and print journalist, the author of four volumes of
fiction and six works of non-fiction. Her history of spiritualism, The Spiritualists
(Prometheus, 1984) is a sometimes strident, occasionally mistaken, but nevertheless
insightful and highly-readable work, and perhaps served to introduce her to Houdini,
whose debunking of mediumistic fraud she discusses. In this biography of Houdini, the
author embraces a form often referred to as "psychohistory," in which she attempts to
shackle her subject to an analyst's couch— albeit an imaginary one—and to penetrate the
mystery of not merely his magic, but of his mind. As ever, our intrepid hero escapes,
although perhaps not entirely unscathed.
That he does escape is evident in the title of the book. When Ms. Brandon addresses the
subject of Houdini's "life and Many Deaths," she speaks not entirely in the figurative
sense. Her profile is built in large part upon the premise that Harry habitually risked his
life throughout his career. What an utterly quaint notion. I asked some experts what
they thought of Brandon's assumption. James "The Amazing" Randi has been a Houdini
biographer as well as an escapologist himself, having performed Houdini's milk can
escape and also having escaped from a strait-jacket while suspended from a crane over
Niagara Falls. He says, "Houdini was too smart to take chances. For example, I have
personally examined the milk can and the water torture cell, and it would have been
impossible for Houdini to lose his life in either." Penn and Teller have built a formidable
portion of their public profiles by seeming to take each other's lives into their hands, and
more often than not, Teller is the victim, whether he is being run over by an 18-wheel
tractor trailer (driven by Perm), apparently drowning in a tank of water, or currently
performing that most legendary and occasionally fatal exploit, the bullet catch. In
response to the claim that Houdini legitimately jeopardized his life on a regular basis,
Teller flatly states, "He would have been dead at twenty. You can't, night after night, go
out and do something that actually has danger involved in it and not sooner or later get
hurt. Tightrope walkers get hurt. They fall eventually. People who do crossbow acts get
shot. I'm 45. I have all ten fingers, both eyes, and my face is more or less intact. And the
reason is that I think we're as careful as Houdini was. Houdini survived to 52, and did
not fall to one of his death-defying experiments. He fell more or less to vanity."
Houdini clearly took every professional precaution toward minimizing threats to
himself, while exploiting every opportunity to maximize the impression, indeed the
illusion, of danger. The ability to maintain these two parallel tracks lies at the heart of
conjuring, and therein lay Houdini's creative genius. Certainly there were the
exceptional occasions when danger came a little too close for comfort, as in the buried
alive stunt. But were Houdini sincerely courting death, instead of merely flirting with it,
he would have repeated his professional interment. Yet he abandoned it immediately
upon realizing that it presented genuine risks. Houdini certainly could have capitalized
on the aura of danger surrounding the bullet catch, and yet he heeded Kellar's advice
and never attempted it. Are these the choices of a man entrapped by a compulsive
suicide wish, as Ms. Brandon would have us believe?
And so, the author's fundamental hypothesis is a fallacy, but this is not the book's only
defect. About Houdini's pursuit of mediumistic charlatanism, Ms. Brandon posits that
Houdini was never truly a skeptic, and that he desperately hoped for a successful
spiritualistic contact around every seance corner. She supports this belief with an
excerpt from a letter Harry wrote to Arthur Conan Doyle, in which Houdini commented,
after describing numerous spiritualistic frauds he had witnessed, that "...still I want to
believe there is such a thing." But surely this is paltry support for the idea that Houdini
was so internally conflicted that he wished for a reality other than the one he so
passionately and rationally embraced. It is one thing to say that one has an open mind to
other possibilities—any rationalist must always be open to the potential of new
discovery. But it is quite another to suggest that this frustrated wish was the engine that
drove Houdini's spiritualistic exploits. Harry was courting Doyle's friendship, and at the
same time was clearly aware that Doyle was a passionate believer in spirit phenomena.
Would Harry have chosen to merely insult and offend his friend directly? No, he would
have stated his openmindedness in the hope that they could continue their amicable
association—a hope that, as it turned out, was ultimately doomed. But one sentence in a
letter laden with an obvious personal agenda cannot fairly characterize Houdini's true
motives. There is no reason to second guess Harry's body of work on the subject, both in
word and deed, nor to even assume that he needed to find a supernatural success in
order to achieve his own personal peace of mind. It is one thing to acknowledge that
Harry would have been delighted to have contacted his mother's spirit. That he
continued to hope for success at every turn, that his misery was compounded by every
"failure," is mere speculation, and beyond belief.
But Ms. Brandon appears not merely satisfied by speculation; she seems to delight in it.
That Harry regularly endangered his own life, or that he was driven by the pressing need
to find truth in spiritualism—these are far from the most fantastic claims of her book.
On page 52 we learn that the author's "...own guess...is that Houdini may have been impotent." The evidence? Harry's "...effusive daily—sometimes thrice-daily—outpouring
of love-declarations..." to his wife, along with the fact of his and Bess' childlessness.
And under the heading of speculation, there is much more. Apparently it makes sense
for Jews to become magicians, because "Do not conjuring tricks of one sort or another
lie at the very roots of Jewish history?" (No wonder gospel magic is so awful. It's
practitioners are bucking a trend.) We learn that "Houdini's whole act could be seen as
an expression of anger..." We are told that in escaping from jails, Houdini "...identified
deeply with the prisoners who had languished, powerless, in those very places; and the
worse the crime—the more it placed its perpetrator outside the bounds of society—the
greater its fascination for Houdini." Apparently, anyone who has read or watched "The
Silence of the Lambs" is operating from a deep-seated psychological dysfunction. And
we find, repeated from psychiatrist Bernard Meyer's own ludicrous Houdini
psychohistory, "Houdini; A Mind in Chains," (E.P. Dutton & Co., 1976) that "... the
origin of Houdini's lifelong inability to sleep (was) brought on by the consciousness that
his parents were waiting for the children to go to sleep before they could indulge in sex."
It's a wonder any of us ever gets any sleep at all.
The Meyer book is not the only questionable source to which Ms. Brandon turns in
search of guidance. Mere pages into "Life and Many Deaths," I found myself reminded
of the work of Joseph Campbell, wherein symbology veers out of control; nothing is ever
as it seems, everything means something else, and eventually everything can mean
anything at all. Lo and behold, I turned to investigate Ms. Brandon's bibliography,
where I discovered two of Mr. Campbell's titles, along with works by Erich Fromm and
Carl Jung (apparently Dr. Meyer provides sufficient Freudian input so as to render
Freud's inclusion in the bibliography unnecessary). As with Campbell, et al, Ms.
Brandon's work is appealing and seductive at times, until one drags one's self out of the
murky pages into the light of day, shakes off the cobwebs of mythological interpretation,
and realizes that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"—and sometimes a magician is just
trying to make a buck.
Which is a useful motivation to consider in examining Houdini's life. One of ten children
born of a poor, immigrant family, Houdini set out to be that family's personal savior,
and indeed he succeeded in this genuine pursuit of heroic ideals in the only way he knew
how. Lacking formal education, he withstood the hardships of show business in the hope
that its potential rewards would eventually be his, and his relentless pursuit of success—
personal, professional, and financial—was eventually won. His feats became ever more
spectacular because he needed to sell tickets. His stalking of seance trickery, endowed
by expertise and moral perspective, was fueled as well by the need to find new ways to
produce fresh publicity and fill more theater seats even as he was aging beyond bridge
jumps and suspended straitjacket escapes. Perhaps some mysteries seem impenetrable
because there is no mystery to solve.
We are repeatedly told that Houdini and his theatrical successes were essentially
mysteries even to himself. This is perhaps the most glaring error of historical
revisionism; namely, to judge the past by the standards and assumptions of the
present—and to assume that the inhabitants of the past are invariably inarticulate dullards when compared to our clever, contemporary selves. Could it possibly be that
Houdini, despite a lifetime of tapping directly into the well of public consciousness, was
completely unaware of the currents which swept his audience up and carried him to the
heights of success? The author quotes from a letter from Europe in which Houdini
comments that in parts of Europe "...the Police are all Mighty, and I am the first man
that has ever dared them, that is my success." Yet Ms. Brandon maintains that Harry
was not sufficiently sophisticated, about himself or others or the world at large, to
recognize the reasons for his own appeal. Could he have been entirely unaware of the
provocative nature of his frequent public nudity? Could he have been blind to the
mechanisms, which he consistently tripped so skillfully, that drove his audience to a
worshipful frenzy? It is a far cry—but apparently not too far for Ms. Brandon— between
autodidact and autistic savant.
Such questionable assumptions abound throughout. We are told that "At least one
school of psychoanalytic thought sees birth, that earliest of all separations, as the
causation of all the neuroses." The author fails to tell us her stand on this particular
curriculum, but thanks for sharing. And once the author is on a roll, there is little
stopping her. Consider this excerpt: "There were other possible delights. It seems
probable that Houdini took a sexual pleasure in bondage. And near-asphyxiation can
reputedly induce exquisite pleasure." Possible...probably...can reputedly. Well, perhaps,
perchance...please, when do we get to the facts? These glaring flaws almost overwhelm
the multitude of smaller errors that drift throughout Ms. Brandon's narrative. Despite
the fact that I am given to understand that the author corrected a number of historical
inaccuracies in this American edition after the book's earlier publication in England,
errors still remain. Houdini never jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge (and a glance at
the height of that structure would be enough to establish this fact). Houdini did not
introduce the Water Torture Cell at Hammerstein's Roof Garden in New York City. On
the subject of conjuring, the author identifies the classic trick of "The Miser's Dream" as
something called "Money for Nothing." She repeatedly refers to the idea that Houdini's
bow-legged stance was an essential aid to his escapology skills, as if there could never be
a pigeon-toed escape artist. She describes the standard effect of the ashes developing
writing on the arm with a method from a different, if related, effect. She even comments
that "Some people are of the opinion that all magic as we know it today in America and
Britain can be traced back to the Davenports, through Kellar and through J. N.
Maskelyne..." This is so wacky that while I'm not surprised she left it unattributed, I am
perhaps only surprised that she included it at all. The statement cries out for a source,
because lacking same, it seems merely nutty. Certainly the author had the opportunity
to consult with countless authorities, many of whom she names in the
acknowledgements, who could have corrected these errors. That she failed to do so
further calls her scholarship into question. She is not a conjuror, but as well, she is not a
psychiatrist, and her lack of savvy in both these areas leaves very little solid ground
upon which to construct her account.
As I write this, more than a dozen Houdini-related volumes sit on nearby shelves. Most
are flawed in some if not many ways. The Meyer book is laughable in its basic theses, but
there is interesting historical material revealed within. The Christopher book is openly
worshipful, but endures as perhaps the most significant single text to date. The Kellock book is decidedly colored by Bess' agenda, but remains indelibly charming. And Harry's
own written legacy, its sometimes tortured prose notwithstanding, still makes for
fascinating reading.
Similarly, the book at hand offers some valuable insights. When the author turns to the
historical context—as in her analysis of the evolution of the relationship between
theatrical performers and audiences—the device, while often inelegantly executed, is
nevertheless useful and intriguing. Other interesting subjects briefly touched upon
include the birth of motion pictures, and a delightfully skeptical view of Old Testament
magic. And when the author turns her eye to Bess and the subject of the Houdini
marriage, she offers a cogent perspective that has heretofore been given little
consideration, at least in the written record; this is the strongest element of the book.
There is new historical material to be found here as well, especially from Houdini
correspondence in private collections, along with material from the Library of Congress,
that has not previously been widely circulated. There are some excellent photographs
included. And in general, the book is entertaining, if lacking in cohesive structure. But
the flaws are so pervasive, and touch upon so many subjects and aspects of the tale, that
ultimately a long shadow of doubt is cast upon the entire work. The author begins with a
premise, indeed a prejudice one suspects, and having laid that template upon a life,
allows only that which fits the premise to poke through, obscuring all else.
"When the apparently trivial is endowed with the weight of emotion Houdini brought to his
act, it is no longer trivial; and nor, therefore, is the performer."
It is not news, nor can one deny, that Houdini was inordinately attached to his mother;
that he was possessed of an insufferably monstrous ego; that he was less than a master
conjuror; or that he was a live entertainer who, bereft of humor or irony, could not begin
to compete on an artistic level with the likes of Emil Jarrow and other stylish
entertainers of his era. It would be easy, and perhaps interesting, to examine these
limitations, free of the weight of psycho-babble and pseudo-analysis with which the
author weighs down her account. There is even a hint of mean-spiritedness as she sets
upon the task of taking her subject down a notch, with her repeated focus on Houdini's
twisted syntax (apparently confusing grammatical skills with intelligence) or when she
suggests that "...had he possessed an iota of creative imagination..." then perhaps his
efforts in motion pictures would not have suffered from the (hardly undetectable)
failings which eventually frustrated his film career. While the author wisely dismisses
the oft-repeated suggestion that Houdini's penchant for publicity accounted entirely for
his success, nevertheless, she seems to want to hold anyone and anything responsible
for that success other than the man himself and his own abilities. But if Harry Houdini
had not "possessed an iota of creative imagination," then I submit we would not be
discussing him this very day.
Ruth Brandon provides excerpts from a letter in which Houdini recounts a verbal
contest which he stumbled into, during the course of a performance, against the then
world heavyweight boxing champion, Jess Willard. At the climax of the encounter,
Houdini landed the final verbal blow by thundering, "I will be Harry Houdini when you are not the heavyweight champion of the world!" When this book is a minor footnote to
history and legend, Harry Houdini will still be Harry Houdini.
