Harry Houdini was one of the world’s most popular entertainers on stage and screen.
Born in 1874 in Budapest, Houdini began performing at a young age. In 1893, he married Wilhelmina Rahner, known as Bess Houdini. She was his assistant and joined him onstage.
In 1899, Houdini’s act caught the attention of Martin Beck, an entertainment manager. Beck booked Houdini at some of the best vaudeville venues in the country, and then they started a tour around Europe.
Some shows involved having the local police place him in shackles and lock him inside a maximum-security prison cell, and he’d then escape in minutes; other shows had him tied with chains in a box that was locked, roped, and weighted. The box was thrown from a boat, to which he returned after freeing himself underwater.
These and other shows were a huge success, and soon he became the highest-paid performer in American vaudeville.
From about 1900, Houdini began to earn an international reputation. One of his most famous acts in 1912 was the Chinese Water Torture Cell. In it, Houdini was suspended by his feet and lowered upside-down in a locked glass cabinet filled with water. He had to hold his breath for more than three minutes to escape.
Houdini’s shows earned him a lot of money, which allowed him to get into other fields and try different things. He purchased his first plane in 1909 and became the first person to fly a controlled power flight over Australia in 1910.
Houdini also started a movie career, releasing his first film in 1901, Merveilleux Exploits du Célébre Houdini à Paris. He also starred in several subsequent films, like The Master Mystery, The Grim Game, and Terror Island.
After that, he started his own production company, Houdini Picture Corporation, in New York. And in 1923, Houdini became president of Martinka & Co., America’s oldest magic company.
In his later years, Houdini went against mind readers, mediums, and others who claimed supernatural powers. He wrote Miracle Mongers and Their Methods in 1920, and A Magician Among the Spirits in 1924.
On October 31, 1926, Houdini died of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital.
Twelve days before, as he was talking to a group of students about the strength of his stomach muscles, suddenly, one of the students punched him in the stomach.
Houdini, without any time to prepare, had his appendix rupture. Then, after performing one last time, he was hospitalized. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31, he passed away.
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