WEBVTT - Harry Houdini: More than Magic 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.840 Heart Radio because I am, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.479 I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck, Brian over there, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:22.720 and Jerry's here. She's invisible but here. And this is 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:26.880 the Mystery Magic Podcast hour a k A. Stuff you 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:30.840 should know. I feel like we haven't covered much magic 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:34.720 related stuff, have we not nearly enough? Oh? Yeah, you 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:38.559 into it? Yeah? I find it interesting for sure. Um, 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:43.320 and I think magicians are pretty cool people typically. Um. Yeah, 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:47.479 you know Toby, our friend Toby he um he and 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:52.480 I were talking about um working on a magic podcast, 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:56.200 kind of like a magic skeptics podcast, a couple of 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.280 his good friends, and they're just they're just cool dudes, 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:04.200 chill people, interesting, very witty, sharp, not pink boys at all. 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.520 You guys should totally do that. This is years and 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:11.399 years ago, said that Chip. Well, he's a big movie producer. Now, yeah, 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:16.600 that's magic podcast. No, thank you. Well, I'm glad to 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:19.560 know that you found some cool magicians. Yeah, are you 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.120 not familiar with cool magicians? No? I mean the magicians 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.920 I know about are decidedly uncool. Oh, I see, like 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:33.320 Ben Stiller and arrested Development instiller and arrested Development. Yeah 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:37.639 he was Job's rival. Oh right, you know, I forgot 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:39.800 about that kind of a white snake thing going on. 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:43.000 I think I'm thinking mainly about the time I went 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.760 to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles and I felt 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.760 like one of the cooler people there, which is unusual. Okay, 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:51.440 full of a lot of people. I don't mean like 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:54.639 fonds cool. I mean cool in the in the fact 0:01:54.680 --> 0:02:00.680 that they're like interesting, they are sharp, they're quitted. Uh. Um, 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.000 they will take your wallet from you if you're not careful. 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:06.160 That kind of cool, you know what I mean? Okay? 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:10.120 Was Judini cool? Uh? In a lot of ways? He 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.560 was very cool? Um, the band in a lot. No, 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.560 that's pretty they were very cool. Um in a lot 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:19.600 of ways. I think he was cool in some other ways. 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:23.640 He wasn't necessarily super cool. But I think overall you 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.720 could say, yes, Houdini was cool in the sense that 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.680 a good magician is cool. Yeah. This is one of 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:32.639 those guys where I did a little digging to see 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.800 if if we needed a like, see if he was 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:39.680 some monster in his personal life. I didn't see anything 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.160 like that. I think he was a pretty intense guy 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:44.120 and maybe and I'm sure a man of the time, 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:48.440 but I didn't see anything that jumped out at me. Uh. 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:51.760 And we should mention big thanks to boy a bunch 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.000 of things. History dot com, Smithsonian Magazine which is always great, 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:59.960 PBS New Yorker, and of course the great Harry Houdini 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.200 dot com. Yes, there's also a couple of other sites 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.760 that I got some stuff from, like, um, wild About 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:09.680 Harry is a good Houdini site, And there's this, Uh, 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.359 there's this some documentary series by a site called Timeline, 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.440 and the one I saw was hosted by Alan Davies. 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:18.919 It's called Life and Magic of the Real Harry Houdin 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:21.840 and Houdini and it was just like this, you know, 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:25.480 hour long, pretty cool little documentary. I thought it was 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:28.040 very neat. I got like good info from that too. 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.800 It's on YouTube too. Well. I was, Uh, I was 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:34.000 into Houdini when I was a kid for a short time, 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.120 and I think that it was probably just because it 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:38.360 was a short time where I was, And I think 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:42.120 a lot of kids go through a magic phase, uh, 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:44.600 whether it's going to a trick shop and getting a 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.400 fake deck or learning your first dumb little card trick 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.119 that's not very good, but you think it's awesome. It's 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:53.680 just something that I feel like almost every kid goes 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.480 through a brief little magic phase and sometimes it sticks 0:03:56.480 --> 0:04:00.600 and you become super cool. Evidently that's right, exactly. So there, 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:02.600 I saw a couple of things that seemed to support 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.360 that he wasn't a monster by the way, chuck Um. 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:08.400 One of them was that he would go to like, um, 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:11.440 the children's ward in hospitals and perform magic for the 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:15.960 kids and beat them up take their money. Yeah. But 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:17.440 I mean, like, if you think about it, that's not 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:21.440 something that just anybody does, you know, Like that's that's 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.320 time he could be do spending doing something else. Um. 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:30.520 He was like almost almost pathologically devoted to his mother 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.080 m making sure that she was well taken care of. 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:36.279 I think also one of the I saw that that 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:39.320 was like a possibly a driver of his ambition as well, 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.200 that he wanted to be Mom's favorite, an impressor more 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:45.719 than any of his siblings because he was one of six. Yeah, 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:50.200 and also that his father was never much of his success, 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.120 which will get to and I think I think those 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:55.080 are definitely the big drivers. But he himself called himself 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:58.360 a mom's boy, like he used those two words together. Yeah. Yeah. 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:00.960 There's a famous picture of him with his his wife 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:03.880 Bess and his mother and he's got like his arms 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.279 around both of them and he calls them my two 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:08.880 girls or my two sweethearts or something like that. So 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:11.719 I mean, like, I know, hats off the best for 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.239 being like, all right, let's go with it. We're gonna 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:16.280 go with it. I'm definitely not gonna try to probably 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:18.479 that one LuSE it's not gonna work. So we're just 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:20.440 gonna go with it. And I say, good for her, 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:23.560 all right, Well should we get into it. Yeah, let's 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:25.640 because you said something about his father, and I think 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:29.160 that that's an important thing to understand about Houdini um 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:32.520 from the get go, is that he was essentially born 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.159 into poverty and it just got worse as he got 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.120 older because his father was a rabbi, and if there 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:40.400 is such a thing, his father was a failed rabbi. 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:43.640 He couldn't make it as a rabbi. I know that was. 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:47.120 I was surprised to see that because all like everywhere 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:50.440 I looked, it would continually say like, boy's dad just 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:54.560 couldn't make the rabbi. Racket work, and I kind of, 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:56.760 I don't know, I kind of naively assumed that if 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.840 you were sort of giving up a life of trying 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:02.880 to a make you know, money as a capitalist for 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.159 a living by going to the church and being a 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.120 steward of the church, then you would at least do Okay, 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.320 you'd think so. But I think that means that he 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.880 was so charmless he couldn't even muster up a congregation 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.320 to to to surround him. So he was a hard 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:21.600 luck kind of guy. And as a result, Harry uh 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:24.560 was was raised in poverty, had to go to work 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.000 from a very young age, and also like missed out 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:29.920 on a formal education as a result too, And so 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:33.080 those things kind of converge to also, I think kind 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.480 of drive him to prove himself that yeah, maybe he 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:38.440 didn't go to school and maybe he was born poor, 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:40.800 but he could still be a superstar, he could still 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:46.279 amaze people, he could still be um idolized. Basically. Yeah. 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:50.240 His his dad's name was Meyer Weiss, his mom was 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:54.760 Cecilia Steiner Wights, and he was born Eric E. H 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:59.000 R I C. H Viights in March of eighteen seventy 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:03.000 four in Hungary. Uh In Budapest, but he when he 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:06.240 was four, he came over and joined the family in Wisconsin, 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.600 and his dad did manage to have a small congregation 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:15.000 in Wisconsin, I think in Appleton and Uh they changed 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:19.120 immigration officers changed the name to Vice with two s 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.800 is instead of an s z, and Eric went by 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.000 Airy E h R I E. The only reason I 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:28.520 mentioned Airy is because that comes into play later when 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:30.640 he takes on the name Harry is sort of an 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:34.040 Americanized version of that name. So that's where the Harry 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:38.320 came from. Um. Yes, he uh, he was. He started 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:42.120 working I think uh and when he was still single digits, 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.200 but he started performing also around the same time too. 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:47.160 When he was nine, he made his debut as a 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:51.559 trap He's artist, Eric the Prince of the Air nice 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:54.800 and he was always a rather short stature. I think 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:57.800 he topped out at five point five ft five inches 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.760 five point five um, but he was extremely fit. He 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:07.080 decided early on that he wanted to be very athletic 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.440 as much as he could be, so he really like 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:11.560 he was doing things like you know, when he moved 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:14.120 to New York a few years later. Um, he was 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.600 doing things like running five miles around Central Park every day, 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:19.360 which is super commonplace today, but you know in the 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:23.600 eighteen late late nineteenth century, that was weird. Yeah. I mean, 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:26.000 like god knows what kind of shoes he was wearing 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:27.400 for that kind of thing, but he would do that 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:29.880 kind of stuff. So he was short of stature, but 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:34.560 also very athletic um self taught to Yeah. So, like 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.640 you said, they eventually landed in New York um after 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:42.719 you know, his again, Rabbi Weiss was not doing so well, 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:44.760 so he was kind of always on the move trying 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.360 to find somebody to listen to him, and they eventually 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.920 get to New York and in eighteen nine one, which 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:56.520 would have been uh, what's the math there? S sixteen 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.840 is seventeen ish. We were trying to figure out before Ghostbusters, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:02.280 no no, I was trying to figure out how old 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:05.600 he was. Uh, he's like sixty or seventeen when he 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.040 teamed up with this buddy, Jacob Himan. I'm sorry him, 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:13.600 himman him, Why did that look weird on the paper? 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:18.480 You may be having a stroke. I hope not. The 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:21.720 brothers Houdini is what they called themselves, and Harry again 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:25.240 is what he went by because of Airy and then 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:29.080 as far as Judini goes, his favorite French magician's last 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:32.520 name was Robert Houdin, so he threw an eye on there, 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:37.800 and all of a sudden, he's Harry Hudini for evermore. Yeah, 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:40.240 I think so. I saw in that documentary that somebody 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.280 told him that adding an eye to a name in 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.600 French means that you're saying you're like that person. So 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:49.000 he was saying Hohodini, like he's like Hudin Houdin hudan 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.760 Um who was his idol for at least while he's 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:54.720 growing up. And then apparently later on he kind of 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:56.960 turned on him and exposed all of his secrets after 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:59.800 the guy had died, which was actually not cool. It 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.080 not cool. And there I think there was also a 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.920 tradition of the eye name on those kind of acts 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.880 like yes, but I think he may have started that. 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:11.760 Oh really, I'm not sure, but he was the blond 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:14.880 niece and right right, um, I think as far as 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:18.440 magic goes, he may have been the the originator of 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:20.440 that because I saw some of like one of his 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.480 other um uh contemporaries who who helped kind of train 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.960 him was last name Heller. There was a haller like 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:32.080 there was no other eyes that I saw interesting. Yeah, alright, 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.040 so he kicked off the big eye crazy that's still 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.839 going crazy today. It is the iPhone. Um. So he 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:44.200 I think his dad died in Uh. Harry is eighteen 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.600 at this point, and he does a very unusual thing 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:51.000 and that he actually leaves his mom behind along with 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:52.800 his brothers, which was a big deal for him, like 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.520 you said, because he was a self professed mama's boy. 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:58.480 And he took off on the road doing his act 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:00.960 kind of through New York, through the mid West. I 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.080 was doing okay, he was performing kind of all around. 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:05.920 It was a bit of a grind, uh with with 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:10.560 Hyman still sounds weird and not because of what you think. Uh. 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:14.400 And then eighteen ninety four, his younger brother replaced him 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.680 in just for a short while, because later that year 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.319 he would meet eighteen year old Brooklyn Knight to name 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:25.960 the villamina Beatrice Ronner or Bess, and she became his 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.920 magic partner. And you know, they called him assistants. She 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:33.600 would have been the one on stage, you know, looking 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:37.679 pretty and doing all the flourishes. And it's a tradition 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:41.040 and magic that I know, I don't want to use 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:45.240 word problematic, but it has changed in more recent years. Yeah, 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:47.880 but this is at the time when a magician's assistant 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:52.200 was a lady in a bathing suit. Yeah, basically, and 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:54.080 and Best was no exception to that, although if you 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.640 read some of the descriptions of some of the illusions 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.240 and tricks that they did together, she was just as 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.560 much a magician in her own right as he was. Um, 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:05.960 she definitely got her training from him. I think he 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:10.320 discovered her in a singing troupe. Um. But like like 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.280 she grew to be just as adapt at magic and 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:16.320 sleight of hand as her husband, which is pretty cool. Yeah. 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:19.640 It's interesting the things that have become boys clubs over 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.040 the years, and like magic is definitely one of them. 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.400 It's I mean that's changed a lot over the years, 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:27.680 but it always I mean, going to the Magic Castle 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.000 and you're in, you're mainly going to see male performers 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:34.520 and a bunch of old man dressed in suits. Uh, 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.360 it's just a fund It odd that it's something that 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.280 maybe just appeals to young boys. I don't know. My 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:42.240 sister wasn't into magic, and my brother and I were so, 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:44.679 but there's something too much of that is just like 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:49.120 the gender norms and expectations of society where it wasn't 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:51.960 like presented to your sister in a way that it's like, hey, 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.160 isn't this interesting? Like everything else. Yeah, there was a 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.240 documentary I saw. I'm sure I mentioned it before, um 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:02.920 years ago, about these like up and coming teenage magicians 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.599 who are all trying to make their way through competitions 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:09.440 to the Magic Castle to like a grand showcase, and 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.400 they follow these ones. There were there was at least 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.320 one girl that I remember, and she was good. Um, 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.760 but I mean she must have been thirteen fourteen at 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:19.520 the time and have been into it for years. So 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:23.480 clearly there's something you know that appeals to some girls too, 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:27.520 even if it's not directed towards them. He has a 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:29.600 great documentary. You gotta see it. And by the way, 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:32.960 since we're speaking of documentaries, you have of course seen 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.760 Love on the Spectrum, have you not? No, you recommended 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.800 that a few weeks ago. Just we'll just stop. I'm 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.880 gonna I'll give you about six hours. Okay, you just 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.559 go watch and we'll come back and finish recording. Okay, 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:48.719 all right, Well, then another three weeks you can bring 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.240 it up again. You you just have to see it. Okay, 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:53.640 I'll see it. It's like again, I'm giving you a 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:57.840 gift here. Oh did you make it? No? No, just 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:00.000 telling you about it as a gift as what I'm 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.199 and say. It's that sweet. Alright, well everyone watch Love 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:05.079 on the Spectrum and we're going to take a break 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:08.720 and we're going to talk about Houdini's eventual success right 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:31.800 after this. Alright, so we got Houdini, we got best together, 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:34.640 and now things can begin in earnest and they kind 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.360 of pick up together where what Houdini had started, which 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:44.760 was very small little venues, sometimes a side show UM, 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:48.000 sometimes a museum like a P. T. Barnum type museum. 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.120 If they were lucky, um, they were just kind of 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.600 there almost part of the woodwork or the furniture um 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.600 with other stuff going on. They weren't doing actual shows. 0:14:57.840 --> 0:14:59.520 And if they were doing a show, it was a 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.400 small act in a larger circus. And it was a 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.680 grind from what I understand. Yeah, I mean travel back 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.040 then was not as still a grind, but it definitely 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.680 wasn't fun and they were on the road all the time. 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:19.000 And then finally in they met a man named Martin 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.920 Beck who was a big name and a big up 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:26.120 and comer in the vaudeville scene, which at the time, 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:28.080 I mean you think of vaudeville now is like these 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:30.920 kind of little shows, But at the time that was 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:33.760 kind of the peak of the touring world and the 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:35.920 live theater world. If you were doing vaudeville, that was 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:39.080 that was sort of top of the pops. And he 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:42.720 saw them perform in St. Paul, Minnesota and was really 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.080 knocked out. He did this one of his handcuff escapes. 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.880 And he also took these challenges. He was very famous 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:50.720 for people saying, hey, can you do this? Can you 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.800 get out of the ease? And uh it really you know. 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:55.520 He would do this in public and it would help 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.960 like promote his brand basically and get a lot of press. 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:01.840 And he was challenged with a pair of handcuffs from 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.120 Beck and he got out of those and Beck said, kid, 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.520 you got it being Omaha in March, and I'll pay 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:14.360 sixty bucks, which is about eighteen hundred dollars today. So 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:18.200 it was good money. And all of a sudden they 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.080 are killing it on the vaudeville circuit. Yeah, his his 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:25.920 um his cable to them said, I might proposition you 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.160 for all next season as well. So it was like 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:30.280 it was a big, big deal. It wasn't just that 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:32.520 one show. Was like, Okay, you've just made it to 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.000 the big time. And so all of a sudden they're 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.520 in with with Martin Beck, who basically is the king 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:42.960 of the Western Circuit of the Vaudeville of vaudeville, and 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:46.320 they're playing all over the place, making a lot more 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:50.520 money than they were before, playing fewer shows, um, putting 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:55.000 in fewer hours on stage, and getting compensated better for it. 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:57.200 They're like, all right, this is this is pretty great. 0:16:57.240 --> 0:16:59.880 I can I can go with this? Yeah, And he 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:01.720 you know, I mentioned that when he would go to 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.439 these towns, he would do these challenges and stunts for 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:07.920 the public and the press. And one of the things 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:09.520 he did that would later come back to buy him 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:11.840 a little bit was he would always like the cops 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.400 would come out and he would you know, he would 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:16.000 have the cops lock them up and put him in 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.480 handcuffs and do all this stuff, which was great press 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.600 of course, but um, as we'll see later on in Germany, 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:24.320 that didn't go over so well with the cops. But 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.720 he he was known because of this is uh, the 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:32.680 king of handcuffs and also the celebrated police battler. Yeah, 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:34.560 I mean, and and not only did it kind of 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.480 drum up like attention in a new town where they 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:39.040 may not have heard of him. This guy shows up 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:41.399 to a police station, says, put me in jail, and 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:45.720 then gets out like in five minutes or something like that. Um. 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.800 But also the cops end up talking to the press 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:50.480 and they say, we have no idea how he did it. 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.159 So now you have an official endorsement that you just 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:57.359 got for free out of like the cops and the 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.280 local police, you know. So it was like it was 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:02.000 a very smart thing to do. And he would do 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:03.640 that from town to town to like you said, drum 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.120 up publicity and also to sell tickets. Like this would 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.439 be a way that his shows would go from you know, 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.880 moving ho home and then to sell out with one 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.159 of his publicity stunts. So he was really good at 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:18.400 that kind of thing, alright. So he's making all this dough. 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.639 He tries to get a tour together with Beck to 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.560 go to Europe because if you know, if you really 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:26.639 back then it wasn't if you can make it in 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:28.320 New York, you can make it. Make it anywhere. It 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:30.160 was if you could make it in Europe, you could 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.119 make it anywhere. And Beck was sort of, um, not 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:35.239 too high on that idea. So I think they had 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:39.280 a falling out, and Houdini put him, uh, put a 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.320 tour together for he invests for themselves to go kind 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.000 of run their own show, and they did. They went 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.680 to Europe and were equally as successful all over Europe 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:53.440 and the UK performing this you know, these feats of escape. Yeah, 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.840 and Russia too. He basically did a world tour over 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.040 the course of five years. He invested they just like 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:02.560 they still listen to it. We're gonna we're gonna try 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:05.520 to really kind of make this to the next level. 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.520 And he he took the same kind of um like 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.640 publicity chasing stuff from town to town that he did 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:13.920 in the US that served him so well. He did 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.879 the same thing in Europe too, and um he uh 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:21.600 he in bests like really kind of up the act 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.840 around that time, like they started coming with more and 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:30.800 more like grander illusions and tricks and stagecraft, and um, 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.359 the the European thing was a huge success in it 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.320 That's what catapulted him into like superstar and he became 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:40.520 an international star thanks to that, that five year tour. Yeah, 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.200 and that was in Germany. How I mentioned earlier, the 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:46.439 police there, I don't think liked the fact. You know, 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:48.880 the German police aren't known for their senses of humor, 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:51.480 and I don't think they thought it was super cool 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:53.880 that he would go over there and sort of uh, 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:55.919 not making fool of them, but I think they may 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:57.760 have some of them may have taken it that way. 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:03.119 So they police officer in Cologne, Germany accused him of 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:08.480 fraud at one point Houdini fired back that that is slander. Uh. 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:10.879 And then I think he had to go to court 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.080 and expose some of his tricks, which he wasn't too 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.520 wild about, but he had in order to get out 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:18.399 of it. He had to kind of expose how he 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:20.679 did some of these tricks. But it did work and 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:22.119 he did get out of it. Yeah, and now he 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.000 had an official court endorsement that he was no fraud, 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.960 he was an actual true magician. So and it was 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:30.919 a big deal too because Germany at the time was 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.520 under the Kaiser who ruled it with an authoritarian state, 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:38.240 or ruled an authoritarian state, and um to take on 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.679 Germany and then prevail like it took. It took khutzpah, 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.480 as his dad might have said, you know so. Um. 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.800 After that, they kind of go back to America. I 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:51.280 think in nineteen o five, after five years of touring 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.720 Europe a lot of money, yeah, a lot of money, 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.800 a lot more stardom. Um. This could have been a 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:00.960 really like easy time for he Best to just settle 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:03.560 down and say, you know what, we we've made it. 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:07.400 We're rich, we're good, we can retire forever. Um, let's 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:11.160 just live the good life. And they made some attempts 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.200 to that. I think Best really was ready to settle down, 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:17.479 and I think Houdini was like saying he would. So 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:19.879 they bought a brownstone at Harlem. There was a farm 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:23.440 in Connecticut they bought. Mom moved in with them, and 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:27.080 he was making the gestures of settling down, and then 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:28.960 he said, you know what, I've gotta I've gotta get 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.760 back out there. I'm getting stale. Yeah. I mean, I 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:34.960 think one of my big takeaways from reading about his 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:36.720 life it was that. And we'll get into some of 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:39.879 his inventions later, but he was really an innovator and 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:44.560 he was never content to um to just sort of 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:46.320 sit back and do the same old tricks. I think 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.600