Theodore

The Great

Hardeen

In 1890, the seventeen year old Harry Weiss¹ was working in a tie factory in New York City. His family was quite poor and he and his five brothers worked to help out his mom, Cecelia, and his dad, Mayer Samuel.²

But what Harry really wanted was to be an entertainer, particularly a magician. So he and a friend began to perform on the Coney Island boardwalk as "The Brothers Houdini" - a name dreamed up by Harry based on the name of the famed French stage magician, Robert Houdin. Then after some personnel changes, Harry selected his younger brother, Theodore ("Dash" to friends and family), to be the other Houdini.

One of the Houdinis' tricks was called "Metamorphosis". One of them, Harry or Dash, would be handcuffed and placed in a large bag that was then tied shut. Harry or Dash, bagged up, would then be placed in a large trunk which would be padlocked shut. Next the unbound Dash or Harry would conceal himself and the trunk behind a curtain. Dash or Harry would then clap his hands three times. On the third clap, the curtain would be drawn back to reveal Harry or Dash, now freed from the bag, trunk, and handcuffs. The trunk would be opened and Dash or Harry would be found in the bag and cuffed.

Then in 1894 Dash introduced Harry to a young lady acquaintance, Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner. Called Bess by her friends, she was part of a song-and-dance act called The Floral Sisters. After getting to know each other for all of three weeks³, she and Harry married. It wasn't exactly a case of opposites attracting. Even though Harry neither smoked nor drank while Bess did both, both were of similar stature; Harry hit the ceiling at 5'5" and Bess probably didn't even crack 5 feet.⁴

Bess took Dash's place and the Brothers Houdini were now "The Houdinis". Later at Bess's insistence the act became just "Houdini". Harry and Bess did virtually all kinds of magic and there is one poster advertising Harry as "Houdini - King of Cards".

The Metamorphosis trick was kept in their repertoire. It was a more effective trick with Bess, not just because the switch of Harry to Bess was more dramatic than from Harry to Dash, but with Bess's small stature it was easier to perform (Dash was both heftier and taller than Harry). In fact one competing magician later claimed that his version of Metamorphosis was superior to Harry's because Bess was a mere slip of a girl while his own wife was plump.⁵

The Houdinis (Bess and Harry) and "Metamorphosis"
(Also Known as the Trunk Substitution)

Dash, though, kept with show business and toured on his own. But for five years, neither Dash nor Bess and Harry found work except at the small time vaudeville theaters and "dime museums"⁶.

Then came Harry's break. The big time impresario, Martin Beck, saw Harry and Bess perform in St. Paul in 1899. Thinking the handcuffs were fake - "gimmicked" is the professional term - he provided a regulation pair to test Harry's skill. Harry was out in a trice and Martin said if Harry would stick to the escapes and drop the magic, he'd give him a contract. Harry was such a hit that he and Bess soon began a tour of Europe where they remained for five years.⁷

In Europe it became clear that Harry was going to be even a bigger star than he had been in America. Soon he wrote to Dash, "Come over, the apples are ripe." Dash sailed from New York and found that he, like Harry, was prone to seasickness.⁸ In England Dash first performed as "Harden", but the name was a bit ordinary. So he stuck in another "e" and became "Hardeen".

The decision to have Dash come over as a "competitor" was not just to set Dash up as a successful performer - although it certainly did that. It was strategic. By getting Dash scheduled in the better theaters, Harry was able to squeeze out the many Houdini imitators that began to pop up.⁹

With Dash also touring Europe, Harry pretended he had no idea who this new competitor was. He wrote a column - anonymously - for the magician's magazine Mahatma and commented about the new performer.

"A handcuff mystifier appeared lately at the Empire Theater, So[uth]. Shield, England, calling himself Theo. Hardeen, who does a Houdini act. He is on the Moss and Thornton tour. He says he is an American and although I have seen almost all the conjurors in America, this man's face is not familiar to me, neither is his name. Perhaps some of the readers are acquainted with him. He is doing well."

OK. So what's this about Dash being the first to perform a straight jacket escape in front of the audience?

Both Harry and Dash escaped from straight jackets. But in their early acts they did so concealed behind a screen. Otherwise they'd reveal how the trick was done. But today all escape artists free themselves out in the open. So why the change? And how do we know Dash was first?

In 1941, Dash wrote that he did the out-in-front escape before Harry. Walter Gibson, a magician, author, and friend of the Houdinis, confirmed the account and quoted some news stories about the performance.

In this telling two police constables - experienced in restraining prisoners - had trussed Dash up in the jacket and he retired behind a screen. When after fifteen minutes he emerged free, there was scarcely a smattering of applause.

Then one of the officers even had the audacity to doubt that Dash had really freed himself. Instead a hidden assistant could have let him loose. Although Dash was too tired to try it a second time, he told the audience he would repeat the escape the next night and in full view of the audience.

The following evening Dash repeated the escape but without the screen. The crowd watched his Herculean efforts, and when Dash finally threw the jacket away, they roared approval. Dash mailed Harry an account of the performance and Harry adopted it into his own act. So here was one case where Harry Houdini imitated a Harry Houdini imitator.

But as usual in the Tales of Houdini - whether they're about Harry or Dash - it's easy to throw a monkey wrench into the story. The date and location of the out-in-front escape is hard to pin down and so this naturally casts doubt on the verisimilitude of the story itself.

One of Harry's more reliable biographers places Dash's performance in Swansea, Wales, on December 26, 1904. But more recently a Houdini scholar makes a convincing case that the first full-view escape was not in Wales in 1904, but in London in March 1905. And here things get very interesting.

Let's review what happened. Dash is bound in a straight jacket by two policemen. He then effects his escape behind a screen. Then one of the policeman expresses doubt that he really escaped by himself. Dash then promises to escape the next night in full view of the audience, and he does so to a thunderous ovation.

There's one wee problem with this scenario. One of the reasons it's hard to pinpoint the date is that it was reported in different newspapers at different times. So it seems that what we have here was a "staged" challenge, set up beforehand and repeated at different theaters. So even if Dash's performance was he told it, he quickly adopted the event - including the doubting policemen - to be a regular part of his show which would guarantee a packed house the next night.¹⁰

In any case, the consensus remains that Dash was the first to escape from a straight jacket in front of the audience and turn it into a standard part of his act.

So that's that.

Despite Harry's anonymous column that in 1900 he hadn't heard of anyone named Hardeen, by 1908 it was no secret that the two performers were brothers. But Dash still got a lot of notices where his name was unlinked to Harry. By 1910 Hardeen was a big name on the theatrical circuits. He was regularly mentioned in the papers and the reviews were mostly (but not always) positive.

Dash stuck with the Houdini tricks and was even billed as "The Handcuff King". He also did the famous Milk Can Escape and freed himself from crates that were nailed and chained shut. And like Harry, Dash's repertoire included manacled bridge leaps and underwater escapes.

But no, Dash never escaped from a submerged crate where the river had been frozen over and he survived only by breathing from the thin layer of air trapped between the ice and the water. But then, despite what you read or see in the movies, neither did Harry.¹¹

Harry had performed on the vaudeville circuits, but he had long wanted to tour with his own full evening show. It was to be a 2½ hour program in three acts. The first would feature stage illusions and other magic tricks (Harry had detachable sleeves on his tuxedo to show he had nothing up his sleeve). The second act was the escapes, and the third was an exposé of fake spiritualist tricks. The tour began at the end of August 1925 and toured for 36 weeks.¹²

In 1926, the biggest news about Harry was when on August 5 he remained sealed for 91 minutes in a submerged coffin in the pool of New York's Shelton Hotel although medical opinion was that there would have only been enough air for 3 to 4 minutes. This "buried alive" trick had been performed earlier by Egyptian magician Rahman Bey¹³ who claimed it was due to his mystical powers. Harry's performance bested Bey who had stayed underwater for an hour.¹⁴ Harry maintained that there was no trick to what is a quite dangerous stunt, and it was a matter of careful breath control.¹⁵

After the underwater demonstration, Harry began his second year of the evening magic show. This included a trip to Montreal. The well-known story is that there in mid-October Harry was visited by two students from McGill University. One of them asked if it was true that Harry could be hit in the stomach. Harry replied he could and the student then dealt him several blows but before Harry had time to stiffen his abdomen.

That Harry would let people test his strength with stomach punches was confirmed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld who said Harry once invited him to do so. Al said it hurt his hand. Whether the blows dealt by the student in Toronto aggravated a case of appendicitis and caused the appendix to rupture is less certain.

It's likely that Harry was already suffering from appendicitis, and by the time Harry reached Detroit a week later, he was seriously ill. Nevertheless and against medical advice, he went on stage to do his act. Eventually he was persuaded to go to a hospital where the ruptured appendix was removed. But peritonitis had set in, and in that pre-antibiotic era it was often fatal.

Dash was at Harry's beside when he said his last words, "I'm tired of fighting, Dash. I guess this thing is going to get me." He soon slipped into a coma and died on October 31 - Halloween - 1926.

After Harry died, Dash continued to perform as The Great Hardeen. He had changed his name legally and his descendants bear this name.¹⁶ Although the name is rare, it does appear as a bonafide surname before Dash adopted the name.

In addition to his performing, Dash also began debunking spiritualists as his brother had done. He claimed if he saw what a spiritualist did twice, he would be able to repeat it. He kept performing well past the days of vaudeville.

Dash died on June 12, 1945 at age 65, after he failed to recover from what was a relatively routine surgical procedure. His death left his brother Leopold and sister Gladys as the remaining Weiss siblings. Dash had retired a couple of weeks earlier and designated his assistant Douglas Geoffrey as "Hardeen Junior" Before working for Dash, Douglas had been an assistant to Harry on his last tour, and he continued performing as a magician until the late 1980's.

Harry had stipulated that his magical apparatus and papers were to be destroyed after his death but Dash chose not do so. He passed them on to Douglas who was primarily an illusionist and seems to have done the Metamorphosis trick as his only escape. Harry's equipment and papers still exist in various collections including the Library of Congress.

Although you may read that today no one knows Houdini's (and Hardeen's) secrets, skilled professional magicians can do a Houdini act, often more impressively than Dash or Harry ever did. A big difference in magic acts today and back then is the speed that the audience expects the tricks to take. Harry's famous challenge by England's Daily Mirror using a pair of super handcuffs took about two hours. Few modern audiences would sit that long staring at a closed curtain.

Of course, some of the stretching out of the tricks was part of the show. In some of his more lengthy escapes Harry got out of the restraints quickly and then sat around behind the curtain reading a newspaper. When someone cautioned him he was making too much noise turning the pages, he told them to have the band play louder.

Walter Gibson left some books on How Harry Did It. Sometimes an escape was not really an escape. Instead it was sleight of hand, not just by Harry, but also by his assistants. Walter wrote an account of how one of the escape-which-is-really-sleight-of-hand worked.

Harry alway stipulated that all challenge handcuffs had to be "regulation" and in proper working order. So he would have the challenger prove that the cuffs worked by first opening them with the key. This verification would be observed by a committee of spectators that Harry called on stage. Having such a committee was always useful. It gave the appearance of preventing Harry from indulging in trickery and it also created distractions so he could do so.

During the - quote - "verification" - unquote - Harry made sure that the key was seen by an assistant. While the hubbub preparing the escape was in progress, the assistant would slip backstage where Harry kept a trunk of keys of different shapes and sizes. The assistant would pick the key that most resembled the one for the cuffs.

By this point Harry had been cuffed up and the assistant would return on stage ostensibly to take the key from the challenger and give it to one of the committee members for safekeeping. During this process he would substitute the real key for the lookalike. Naturally the holder of the key had no idea the switch had been made.

Then as Harry retreated behind a screen or to the cabinet, the assistant would slip him the real key. Of course Harry released himself easily. Then when returning the cuffs and key to the owner, the real key was resubstituted for the fake.

Although this seems a complex process, it involves one of the most basic sleight-of-hand moves, switching one object while palming another, a move that many an aspiring conjurer learns first. It's possible that Harry could even switch the real key without involving an assistant since he could keep small keys concealed in his fancy formal outfits. During the trick someone other than the challenger would hold the key so minor differences would go unnoticed.

And although this may shock! shock! the fans of Harry and Dash, some of their handcuffs were actually gimmicked and could be opened without a key. The simplest way was to just replace the usual springs with weaker ones so by pulling the hands apart the cuffs would open. Such doctored cuffs were routinely used in the underwater escapes or bridge leaps. Without minimizing the real risks involved, Dash later said that the hardest part of the bridge leaps was keeping the handcuffs from falling off before you hit the water.

You'll also hear from modern escapologists that the upside down straight jacket escape was actually easier than the stage escape.¹⁷ This is because when suspended upside down it's easier to force the arms above the top of the head. That's the first thing that you have to do to get out of the jacket.

However, the inversion does make it more difficult to undo the straps which is what comes next. You have to twist and reach upwards to undo the buckles, which although difficult, is possible with the hands still in the sleeves.

And yes, sometimes the straight jackets were modified to make wriggling free easier. Although Dash and Harry could have used a regulation jacket when hanging by their feet, they felt it would have taken too long and would have tried the patience of the audience and - equally important - that of the reporters. Instead the straight jacket was not standard. The sleeves were longer than usual and there were only single, not double straps. The longer sleeves produced more slack and of course single buckles are quicker to undo than double ones.¹⁸

There was yet another "fixed" straight jacket intended for escapes where they would also be locked up in a crate where the available space was too small to push the arms above the head. In this "Bonza Jacket" the ends of the sleeves were not sewn or riveted shut but were held closed with hooks. The hooks could be detached with the hands still in the sleeves. Once their hands were free, Harry and Dash could then undo the straps.

And for another shocker (or maybe not by now) even though the "challenge" escapes were legitimate from the standpoint of the challenger, Harry and Dash were not above a bit of subterfuge - even to go so far as to tamper with the equipment.

For instance Harry once escaped from an iron crate. The lid was designed to be slipped onto the top and bolts would be slipped through from the inside and padlocked from the outside. So the heads of the bolts were on the inside of the box. With such a design, escaped seemed impossible.

So how did Harry do it?

In "box" challenges the crates would be turned over to Harry well before the performance. They would be displayed in a window of a local business or in the lobby of the theater to drum up interest in the performance.

That is, they were be displayed during the day. Of course, at night the crates were removed from the display windows, and if they were in the theater, at night nobody was watching.

Harry had an expert engineer and machinist working for him. That was Jim Collins who had first been hired by Dash on his English tour (Jimmy was English). It was no problem for Jimmy to make copies of the bolts but with the heads detachable. So before the performance these would be switched for the real bolts. Once padlocked inside, Harry would remove the heads, push the bolts out of their slots and escape. Then while concealed behind the curtain he would replace the heads on the bolts and these would later be replaced with the originals before everything was returned to the challengers.

Although the professional competition between Harry and Dash was part of their publicity strategy, nevertheless the two men were brothers and didn't mind giving the other a sibling tweak of the nose. In 1915, Harry and Dash were both appearing in the San Francisco, Harry at the Orpheum Theater and Dash at the theater owned by Alexander Pantages. As was common Harry decided to garner some publicity and had staged an upside down straight jacket escape above one of the city streets. As Harry fought to free himself, a group of men came through the crowd passing out leaflets bearing Hardeen's photograph and the words, "All this week at Pantages."

When Harry learned of the prank, he invited Dash, Dash's wife Elsie, Alexander Pantages and his wife Lois, and novelist Jack London to dinner at his hotel. Everyone passed a pleasant hour. When the bill came Harry took it, bowed politely to everyone, handed the check to Dash, and walked out.

References

Wild About Harry, John Cox , wildabouthoudini.com. A veritable fount of information about Harry, his career, his family, and associates with much that can't be found in the books.

"Leopold and Sady Weiss: Why Houdini Wasn't Happy", Jack Sanders, Wild About Harry.

Houdini: The Untold Story, Milborune Christopher, HarperCollins, 1996.

Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss - American Self-Liberator, Europe's Eclipsing Sensation, World's Handcuff King and Prison Breaker, Kenneth Silverman, HarperCollins, 1996.

Houdini's Fabulous Magic, Walter Gibson, Barnes and Nobles, 1977.

"Timeline of Houdini's Life", American Experience.

Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls, William Lindsay Graham, Holt Rinehart, and, Winston, 1959.

Houdini: The Man Behind the Myth, Interviews: David Copperfield (magician), James Randi (magician), David De-Val (magician), E. L.Doctorow (writer) Ken Silverman (writer), Al Hirschfeld (artist), American Experience, Public Broadcasting System, 2000.

Houdini - Art and Magic, Brooke Kamin Rapaport, The Jewish Museum, Yale University Press, 2010.

"Houdini Straight Jacket History and More", Dean Carnegie, The Magic Detective, December 11, 2011.

"Houdini Stays Underwater for an Hour and a Half", St. Croix Avis, August 30, 1926, p. 3.

"Did Houdini Die from a Punch to the Stomach?", David Mikkelson, Snopes, May 2, 2001.

"Flashes from the Footlights", The Washington [D. C.] Times, September 27, 1908, p. 2.

"Houdini's Secrets Lost Forever?", Walter Gibson, Detroit Evening Times, September 2, 1945, p. 10.

"Issue Challenge to Spiritualist: Hardeen Says They Have Good Racket, That's All", Walter Gibson, New Britain (Connecticut) Herald, December 12, 1928, p. 10.

"James Randi, Famed Magician and Skeptic", Scottie Andrew, CNN, October 22, 2020.

"Houdini Imitators", Magicpedia.

"Douglas Geoffrey Mackintosh", Magicpedia.

"Pitroff", Magicpedia.

The Odds Against Me, John Scarne, Simon and Schuster, 1966.

Houdini, Tony Curtis (actor), Janet Leigh (actor), Torin Thatcher (actor), George Marshall (director), Philip Yordan (scriptwriter), Paramount, 1953.

"Harry Houdini", Find-a-Grave, December 31, 2000.

"Theodore Hardeen", Find-a-Grave, March 23, 2007.

"Alexander Pantages", Find-a-Grave, December 31, 2000.

"Hardeen, Houdini", Ngram Viewer, Google Books.