Houdini's Greatest Act

This week was the 100th anniversary of the death of Harry Houdini. He died on Halloween in 1926 and has continued as a cultural icon ever since. 

Houdini, which was his stage name, was a Jewish-Hungarian escape artist, which some regarded as a magician, who was brought to America as a child. Performing for audiences he did amazing escapes, from handcuffs and strait jackets, from sealed containers and crates filled with water while handcuffed or restrained, and from being buried. He did such acts across the world, in many different venues, making it extremely unlikely that there was any kind of fraud involved.

What we have to remember in order to understand Houdini's continuing fame a century after his death, he is the only magician that most people can name, is that he was far from alone. Those were the days before radio and television and before movies had become widespread. There were many traveling performers who could amaze audiences with their acts, everything from acrobats and psychics to tightrope walkers across Niagara Falls. 

Train travel enabled performers to easily move around and it became widespread before movies did, and well before radio and television. At the same time many more people were living in cities. So performers that could do various amazing things are what people turned out to see.

In his day, Houdini was one among many. He did amazing stunts, but so did any number of others. If Houdini had been as widely regarded during his career as he is now, his movies would have made a lot of money. But they didn't. 

Yet Houdini is today the best-remembered such performer of that era, and the only magician that most people can name. Houdini himself didn't claim that there was anything magical about his stunts.

I see the reason for that, and it was his greatest act of all. 

The time that Houdini lived and performed in, the early Twentieth Century, was a time of increasing secularism but which had been more religious not so long ago. The life of Jesus was familiar to most people, although Christianity was increasingly more a part of the culture than of actual faith.

There was nothing overtly religious about Houdini and I can't see that he ever said much about the subject. But his performances closely evoked, in physical terms, the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Being handcuffed and being put in a strait jacket, or other restraining device, subconsciously evokes Jesus being nailed to the Cross, particularly being suspended from a tall building in a strait jacket. His seemingly impossible escapes from sealed containers, filled with water, and from being buried, definitely evokes Jesus' miracles and His rising from his tomb, with the boulder that sealed the tomb removed.

This is certainly not to say that Houdini claimed to be Jesus or a messianic figure or associated himself with Jesus in any way. But the Gospels were still, to some degree, familiar to most people and Houdini strongly resonated with Jesus in physical terms. Add that he was Jewish and Jesus may well have looked something like Houdini.

I regard this as Houdini's greatest act of all. It wasn't necessary to be consciously aware of it but this resonance, in physical terms, with the familiar story of Jesus, regardless of belief, is what set Houdini apart from the many amazing performers of his era. It is why Houdini is still famous a century after his death and the only magician or escape artist that most people can name. 

Houdini's greatest act goes beyond the physical escape stunts. He was very active in exposing the fraudulent stunts of others, particularly spiritualists, even though he didn't gain anything from it. But this was an important part of his greatest act. It strongly evoked Jesus condemning the hypocrisy of groups such as the Pharisees. 

The greatest act continued after Houdini's death. He supposedly gave a code word to his wife, which he would use when contacting her in a seance after his death. But it wasn't kept private, it was widely reported. This makes it resonate with Jesus rising from the dead. 

You have heard of Houdini not so much because of his individual stunts but because he put everything all together into his greatest act of all.