by David Jaher
As Houdini saw it, he performed his tricks with spirit trumpets and slates so convincingly that both the lawmakers and the mediums believed he was psychic. The bill was ultimately rejected, he said, because the subcommittee had been taken in by his own phony manifestations. Actually, the politicians decided that any measure against professional mediums and soothsayers was not only unconstitutional but unnecessary. “We are making ourselves ridiculous with this bill,” complained Congressman Gilbert. Unbowed, Houdini intended to continue his campaign. He didn’t know that the curtain on his life of mystery was closing.
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* Houdini would speak before House and Senate subcommittees in February and April.
New York
At just after noon on August 5, Houdini was put into his casket. He wore a watch with a radium dial and next to him was a battery-powered telephone so that he could communicate from the coffin. Sealed inside, he was lowered beneath the surface of the Shelton Hotel pool in Manhattan. An unparalleled demonstration began. Houdini was attempting to prove that he could rise from a watery grave after having been submerged for more than an hour.
The Great Houdini had had showdowns with Margery, Bird, and the Spiritualists en masse when he confronted them in Washington. This time he was dealing with another of his nemeses, Hereward Carrington, who had always avoided the Margery séances that Houdini attended. Dr. Carrington was promoting the work of an Italo-Egyptian fakir named Rahman Bey, who mystified New York audiences that summer. On the stage of the Selwyn Theatre, Bey punctured his cheeks and breasts with hatpins, then slashed the folds of his neck with a dagger. He showed physicians how he could increase the pulse rate of one wrist while simultaneously slowing down the other. Dr. Carrington, his manager, said that Bey had an “almost unlimited ascendancy over the body.” The fakir hypnotized animals and psychically read the thoughts of volunteers from the house. And in his most remarkable feat, he was encased in an airtight coffin that rested at the bottom of the Dalton Hotel pool for one hour. He emerged from it Houdini-like: happy and triumphant.
For Houdini this was an old act in the days of Evatima Tardo, probably even old when the pyramids were erected. There was as much Eastern hypnosis in Bey’s work, he told Walter Lippmann, as there was a lack of liquor in America. The problem, he explained, was that since Carrington had not attributed his performer’s work to supernaturalism, Houdini was bound by the ethics of the magic profession not to reveal Bey’s circus methods.
The only thing to do, Houdini decided, was surpass him. At fifty-two, he was twice Bey’s age. He carried twenty pounds more weight than he had during his prime. He had high blood pressure and was phasing out his more acrobatic escapes. But Houdini never ducked a challenger. And so, after weeks of arduous training, he was put in a coffin and lowered into the pool at the Hotel Shelton.
Designed like an Ottoman bath, with a high gallery and ornate tiles, it was the right setting for a display of sorcery. Houdini had emphasized, however, that the feat required no spiritistic power or mastery of Eastern mysteries. The telephone wasn’t there for the dead to speak to the living, but so that he could call for help if he felt himself losing consciousness. For decades Houdini had relied on his uncanny dexterity and athleticism, yet he knew that to match Rahman Bey he would have to achieve a preternatural state of motionlessness and inner quiet.
Six swimmers held the coffin underwater by stepping on it. Whenever one of them slipped and the coffin bobbed, it was agony for the escape artist inside. It was a struggle to control his breath and sustain the depleting oxygen in the coffin. Physicians said it would be impossible for him to endure more than fifteen minutes underwater. He remained there far longer, while the reporters, in their straw skimmers, quietly counted the minutes. There was a pall over this demonstration. Houdini’s intention was not to entertain or escape—the goal was survival.
After ninety minutes, Houdini had shattered Rahman Bey’s record by half an hour. Within the sweltering box he was panting and disoriented. His lungs burned. His saliva tasted like metal. He saw yellow flashes and felt agitated. Finally, he called for the casket to be raised. There were no shackles to be held up, no bows to take. Houdini never felt such relief, though, as when they pried the lid off the coffin. The onlookers applauded while doctors received him like an emergency patient. His pulse was racing. His systolic blood pressure had soared, his diastolic had plummeted dangerously. He was bathed in sweat, his face “deathly white.” He was smiling broadly. Carrington was saying that Houdini must have had oxygen pumped through the telephone line; otherwise the achievement was impossible. No one was listening to him. The invitation-only audience, mostly newspapermen, gathered around the escape artist, their pens at the ready. But he had little to say after this, his final resurrection.
Boston
Back in May, while Houdini battled the psychics on Capitol Hill, the Boston newspapers were reporting on another proceeding—in which MRS. CRANDON GOES TO COURT. This incident had nothing to do with the spirits; rather, Margery’s penchant for speed had gotten her into trouble, as Roy had feared it would, when she drove so recklessly that a police sergeant alleged that he and his patrol car were almost knocked off a suburban hill. Found guilty by a Woburn judge, she received only a fine in the end, a slap on the wrist. Another verdict that came down that summer had a greater influence on her life.
In June, Eric Dingwall officially weighed in on the Margery mediumship. In his highly anticipated report, he called her phenomena “the most remarkable hitherto recorded.” Praising her dedication and personal traits, he emphasized that he had never detected her in fraud. At length, he described her brilliant effects when he sat with her during the winter of 1925. He presented a convincing case that the mediumship was genuine.
He then tore apart his own argument.
While admitting that he had been of the provisional opinion that her work was authentic, he stated, “I no longer hold this view, and admit my change of mind.” About halfway through his two-month series of test séances, he began, so he now claimed, to have his doubts. Flashing through his mind, like scenes in a movie reel, were impressions that the medium’s phenomena were contrived and her ectoplasm fake.
When Walter had laughed at the same time a camera flashed, Dingwall saw the corner of the medium’s mouth fall, as if pulled by a string. He realized then that the ghost’s distinctive cackle came from the kid. He had noticed that jerks of her shiny headband coincided with some of Walter’s effects. So he wondered whether Houdini might be right about her making ingenious use of her mouth or head. While he could not explain much of her work, he observed that the teleplasm “which flapped about so gamely when hands were available would cease their gambols when those hands were controlled.” He also saw an incriminating pattern to when light fell on the spirit hands. Walter would never allow red light while the ectoplasm was forming. Dingwall found it suspicious that he could only view the finished product, the teleplasmic mass, but not the means by which it sprang from the medium’s lap. On one occasion, while he was touching the manifestation, Margery had turned quickly away, pulling the appendage with her, and he heard it crumble like an inflatable bag.
Ultimately, it was the quality of that teleplasm, particularly during the final séances he witnessed, that troubled him the most. He began to feel that Elwood Worcester and William McDougall were right: the stuff was inert, flaccid, and felt like some part of an animal that a butcher might throw out. Dingwall wondered if his colleagues were also correct in thinking that Dr. Crandon, a skilled surgeon, had sewn together the clammy material that was stored inside the psychic. He could not conceive that such shriveled pulp was the substance of eternal life. In conclusion, Dingwall said he could not support the hypothesis of either authenticity or fraud. He had changed direction—as if he saw where the mediumship was headed and did not want to be a passenger when it crashed.
Malcolm Bird, still chief investigator for the ASPR, the organization that was sister to the British one dominate
d by Dingwall, decided that the Englishman’s doubts about Margery, echoed as they were by Houdini and Harvard, had to be answered once and for all by unbiased experts. Appearing before the powers at the ASPR, Bird urged them “either to abandon the task of proving here and now, to the man in the street, whether the mediumship was valid or not, or for it to seek a new agency through which to attempt this proof.” Recognizing that he was perceived as pro-Margery, Bird recommended that the society hire a second research officer to test the psychic.
Henry C. McComas, a respected Princeton psychologist, was thus brought in to fill the shoes of Walter Prince. And he was present at the Lime Street séances in September 1926—where, in honor of the International Philosophical Congress at Harvard, Margery dazzled some of the great minds that came to Boston for the event. Surprisingly, McComas wanted to apprise her rival of her return to form. When the sitting ended, he and Edison Brown of the ABC Club drove to the Majestic Theater—where Houdini had just performed. Shirtless and still flushed from a climactic escape, Houdini sat in his dressing room, listening to McComas describe how Margery had levitated a basket though her hands, feet, and head were thickly fastened. “Never,” recalled McComas, would “he forget the scorn” with which Houdini replied to the description of what they had just witnessed. “You say, you saw,” snapped Houdini. “Why you didn’t see anything. What do you see now?”
The magician took a half-dollar and slapped it between his palms. It vanished. As he was stripped to the waist, his guests had no idea where it went. He refused when asked to repeat the effect. The visitors then made a challenge they were sure he would accept—they wanted him to come to Beacon Hill and reproduce Margery’s phenomena under the same stringent control to which she had just been subjected. Almost without conditions, Houdini agreed, his eyes brightening as he envisioned his return to Lime Street. Since Margery was to hold another séance the next evening, he made suggestions for her control. He vowed that on the following day, that Sunday, they could wire him in her new glass cage and he would reproduce her entire routine.
At her Saturday séance Margery agreed to the proposal. After being searched she sat nonchalantly as they bound her to her cabinet. Psychic investigators had imaginations like hangmen, she joked. Braided steel picture wire was lashed to her wrists and ankles; surgeon’s tape and plaster were wrapped and laid around her waist, so that it covered the tops of her bloomers, and then around her thighs, so that the bottom openings were also sealed. Only then could the men be reasonably certain that no fake ectoplasm would escape that suspect region. In the previous investigations, Margery had been accused of making skillful use of her mouth and head, which was why they padlocked her in a dog collar attached to the back of the glass booth. Luminous pins were inserted into her clothing and affixed to her hands and feet so that her form could be seen in the dark. McComas then explored her mouth with his forefinger, as Houdini had directed.
After all that, Margery, in one of the last of her storied exhibitions, produced some of her best effects—the quaking of furniture, cold gusts, the crashing of objects, and the jingle of the bell box—the highlight being the flight of a glowing basket along a shelf and into darkness. While Walter whistled and Margery gasped, the basket later rose from the table and then slowly ejected a luminous doughnut that proceeded to follow it on its trajectory above the psychic’s head. Minutes later the basket crashed, then began banging against the glass cabinet, which threatened to shatter. When the violence ceased, Walter, saying that his force was low, soon left.
Following the sitting, McComas went directly to Adams House at Harvard to consult Houdini. Once again the escape artist spoke of “mal-observation,” protesting that the experience would be entirely different before his own eyes. “She can do her stuff in my presence,” he promised, “and I will go right in and duplicate them, or if you wish, I will stop her from doing anything by having her controlled properly.” Yet the more he talked, McComas detected wariness behind his bravado. “The lady is subtle,” Houdini added, “and changes her methods like any dexterous sleight of hand performer.” Her latest effects he could not readily explain. He wanted time to think them over.
Now the magician made new demands, insisting that he would only show up later in the week and with a committee of witnesses. When he said that Margery was using confederates, McComas wondered if he was going to enlist some of his own in order to reproduce her program. Whatever his new plan, Houdini was asking for “ample time” to prepare for Margery.
On Sunday, McComas relayed that message to Dr. Crandon. So Houdini was getting cold feet? the doctor remarked. He was expected that day, and alone, at Lime Street. He had failed to appear, which Roy considered a major victory for Walter and Margery.
Back went McComas to Houdini’s hotel, where for two hours they discussed new terms for the challenge. This time Houdini wrote Dr. Crandon directly, telling him to expect his arrival before he left Boston.
The doctor replied that, as the only value in Houdini’s visit “would be because it would afford some amusement to watch your attempts to duplicate these phenomena and since this you very wisely decline to do, there seems no other compelling reason for your coming again to Lime Street.”
For the rest of his days, Dr. Crandon would claim that Houdini, who left Boston a few days later, had ducked a final showdown with Margery—a charge the magician would not be able to answer.
Montreal/Detroit
Houdini anticipated that his days were numbered—at least according to Fulton Oursler, impresario of the MacFadden publishing empire and the magician’s medium-busting ally. Oursler recalled that before Houdini left New York for Boston he said that he was “marked for death” by spirit circles everywhere. Other signs indicated that Houdini did not consider himself in any more danger than usual. The last summer of his life had been, if anything, unusually tranquil. He had been away from the stage, working on his book on witchcraft and planning the next phase of his career—in which he intended to teach a curriculum of magic at Columbia University. After his next circuit he wanted to attend Columbia himself, as a student, to sharpen his English and other skills necessary to becoming a professor there.
It was during his fall tour that he experienced a series of misfortunes. Nothing untoward, other than Margery’s resurgence, had occurred in Boston. But in Providence Bess came down with ptomaine poisoning. After staying up all night with her, Houdini broke his ankle while performing the Water Torture Cell in Albany. A few days later, yielding nothing to his injury, he arrived in Montreal, where excited crowds turned out for his performances at the Princess Theatre and lecture at the McGill student union. Among those cheering at the university was an arts junior named Samuel Smilovitz, who had come to sketch Houdini lecturing on the era’s Great Delusion.
Smilovitz’s expectations did not match his first glimpse of the magician limping to the lectern. Was this really the Handcuff King, he wondered, who had “filled half a world with awe and admiration”? Houdini looked unwell, “with a drawn face and dark shadows under tired eyes.” Yet when he began to speak Smilovitz’s first impression faded. Once Houdini had absorbed the energy of the audience, he seemed to glow with intensity. His gray eyes flashed as he leaped boldly into his subject; Smilovitz noted that the crowd could feel his urgent power, “sensitized mind,” and vitality.
But the magician was no superman. What most people lacked was the ability to see, he told the students. If only people would educate their eyes and minds, they would easily see through practically every one of his “miracles,” as well, he said, as those of psychics like Margery, whose one true power was her sexual charm. “Margery handed out applesauce to the investigators,” he asserted. “I know this because I have walked through apple orchards myself.” While he had resisted that fruit, she was only one of many enemies. “If I should die tonight,” he declared, “the spiritualistic mediums would hold a national holiday.”
As Smilovitz sketched, another figure in the crowd took notes while wat
ching the magician who spoke for science and reason. Penetrating and curious, Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead was keen to get to the bottom of things. He had a fetish for detail and hidden meanings. When reading the newspapers at home, Whitehead always kept a dictionary on one side of the table and an atlas on the other. Six-foot-two with a muscular build, he didn’t look like a scholar, and at thirty-one years old, he didn’t appear to be a freshman, though officially he was one. Even at first glance there was something vaguely misplaced about Whitehead. It isn’t known why he started college in his thirties. He claimed to be studying religion; at other times it was medicine or engineering. He studied boxing too, and had a right hand like a sledgehammer to prove it. A loner, Whitehead withdrew to his own world after applauding Houdini’s presentation. Meanwhile, two of Smilovitz’s fraternity brothers tried to get the star to sign the sketch portrait after his magic show that night at the Princess Theatre. Their efforts were rewarded when he received the students in his dressing room and autographed the picture. Then he gave them a message for the artist—would Smilovitz be so kind as to come to the venue the next morning and make another drawing?
Delighted by Houdini’s interest, Smilovitz arrived with another student, Jack Price, and waited with other fans outside the theater. When Houdini walked in, accompanied by a nurse, he was surrounded by petitioners. Amid the fuss, Smilovitz heard the nurse impatiently urge him to go inside and eat. Replying that he wasn’t hungry but could always get something, Houdini materialized a hot dog from the lapel of one of his fans. While the others applauded, Smilovitz produced his sketch and introduced himself.
