Houdini by Adam Begley

Author:Adam Begley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2020-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Master Mystery was a hit with audiences when the first episodes were released in November 1918, a hit with Houdini (who declared, “the Houdini Serial is the greatest ever screened”), and a hit with the critics. Billboard raved about the “crackerjack production.” The timing was good: the war in Europe was over, and the nation was in the mood to celebrate. By the end of the year Harry was happily boasting, “The Movie Fans are ‘clambering’ for another Houdini serial, and as that is much easier than my Self created hazardous work, I may step that way.” Actually, filming was hazardous, too: he fell during one of the many fight scenes and fractured his left wrist, a complicated break that had to be reset. And the business side of the industry was as slippery then as it is today. Although he’d been promised half the net profits (in addition to a weekly salary of $1,500), he eventually had to sue to get his share. The court case dragged on for four years; by the time he was awarded $33,000, the production company was bankrupt.

Hooked on film, Houdini signed in early 1919 with Famous Players–Lasky Corporation (FP–L), a major producer of silent movies run by the ruthless Adolph Zukor (like Harry an immigrant from Hungary). Zukor, who presided over Paramount Pictures for half a century, had assembled an impressive stable of stars at FP–L, including Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and Rudolph Valentino. Houdini was offered a weekly salary of $2,500 plus a percentage of the profits.

The first of the FP–L movies was a murder mystery entitled The Grim Game. Arthur Reeve again wrote the screenplay, this time in collaboration with John W. Grey and Houdini himself, who claimed to have done the lion’s share of the writing but once more received no credit for his contribution. The filming—in Hollywood—began in May and finished in July, briefly interrupted when Harry once again broke his wrist. As far as he was concerned, the rebroken bone was the only mishap: The Grim Game turned out to be the best Houdini vehicle, an altogether more sophisticated, polished, and coherent production than The Master Mystery. Houdini plays Harvey Hanford, a cheerful newspaper reporter who frequently flashes an exaggerated grin. Hanford is a regular guy, save for his inexplicable talent as a self-liberator. (After Quentin Locke, Houdini always played characters with the initials H. H., which surely helped the audience figure out where the escape artist skills came from.) Hanford is framed for a murder and thrown in prison and a gang kidnaps his fiancée, but of course it all works out in the end.

Thrill after thrill was packed into the seventy minutes of The Grim Game, including a suspended straitjacket escape and an awkward encounter with a bear trap. But the most astonishing stunt was a midair crash between two airplanes while Harvey Hanford was trying to scramble from one plane to the other. The collision was accidental, and could easily have proved fatal for the stuntman performing in Houdini’s place.

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