Harry Houdini was born on 24 March 1874.
Are you surprised to see him highlighted here? Well, he made a number of films — first as an actor and later as a producer, writer, and director. Ultimately, he gave up making films. He claimed that the margins were too small. He may have thought so because his later films didn’t do that well. But he also made so much money performing live that it may have just been relatively disappointing.
Houdini started his film career with The Master Mystery. It was a 5+-hour 15-part serial. Some of the episodes are lost. But you can watch most of it online. In it, he plays a special agent on the trail of evil elites with a humanoid robot.
Following it, Houdini starred in The Grim Game. It was once thought lost. But in 2015, TCM released a restored print of the film. Paramount Pictures signed a two-film deal with him. The next year, he made Terror Island. After that, he started his own production company. It made a couple of films before he lost interest.
Historians consider The Grim Game the best Houdini film. I just watched it. And it is charming. Some of it is genuinely funny. Houdini does some of his escapes, which are interesting to watch. And the story is pretty good.
Houdini plays Harvey Hanford, a newspaper reporter. His uncle (who hates him) is about to bankrupt the paper he works at. So Hanford comes up with an idea to get his uncle to go on holiday secretly. So everyone will think he has been murdered. And there will be plenty of press because Hanford planted evidence — essentially framing himself. But wouldn’t you know it?! Someone actually murders his uncle and Hanford has to escape from jail and prove his innocence.
The climax of the film features Houdini climbing down a rope from one airplane to another. It is impressive. But more impressive is that when shooting the stunt, the two planes collided. Everyone (including stuntman David E Thompson) survived the collision.
Even though this is a silent film, I highly recommend watching it. I was charmed!
Harry Houdini via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.
That’s a brilliant clip find! And you can see where the planes collided mid-air (although the final crash is obviously staged for the camera).
It’s really important you let us know that everybody survived, though, or the clip wouldn’t be nearly as fun!
When I was a kid, I read a lot of books about him. And they discussed his films. But, of course, there was no way to watch them. I was struck by how entertaining this one is. I always hesitate to watch silent films. But I find if I just start watching, there really is no difference from watching anything else. It becomes very natural. I keep thinking that if filmmaking were banned for a few decades, it would be a great thing. Of course, I know people would just watch old sitcoms they’ve seen before!
Also, on the issue of surviving: I totally agree. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t seem to care. But for me, it is the difference between cool and tragic. I hate “funny” videos where people clearly get hurt.
The only issue I have with silent films is how so many of them are in terrible shape. If the movie’s been well-preserved (although few but the most famous are), it’s a lot easier to watch than something that’s full of scratches and flickering exposure levels.
Yeah, in order to get people to watch old stuff instead of Friends and Seinfeld reruns, we’d need to make nothing else available but old stuff. When I become Planet Emperor I might go “hey, for the 2030s, everything’s banned except stuff from the 1930s!” It’d be an improvement for sure. (Not that all my reign as Planet Emperor would be an improvement, but I’ll take Gold Diggers of 1933 over Friends and Seinfeld.)
I definitely care about people (or animals) getting hurt in stuff! One of my favorite (weird) odd finds lately was some clearly pissed-off lions in DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross. Well, they were pissed off because DeMille himself was whacking them with a whip! That’s the epitome of Hollywood arrogance; the animal trainers say “we’ve done our best, the lions don’t want to walk up those tricky stairs you want them to.” And the egomaniacal director saying “I’ll teach ’em!” and grabbing a whip.
What would make that story better is if the lions then ate DeMille.
And the lions would have been doing the world a favor! I don’t care for his films. Or Mankiewicz’s. In their way, they are as bad as Mamet!
The other thing about silent films is that so many of them are simply lost. Of the 3 silent Frankenstein films, two are lost — including the only feature. It’s heartbreaking. But I understand why. It’s like people today throwing out spoiled fruit.
Yeah DeMille was something else! And a sanctimonious prick, too!
It’s really horrible how much old film has been lost. At least with old books and records, there were copies owned by individuals that could survive and be rediscovered later. But films didn’t belong to the customers or even the creators; the studios/producers owned them, and if they thought they were disposable, out they went.
I wonder how much stuff is being lost today. I guarantee you some good stuff will be.
I don’t know. Even low-budget stuff has value with a 95-year copyright. And with easy video transfers, they can go everywhere…