The lore around Harry Houdini’s death is so great that people often lose track of the facts. They assume his death actually occurred while he was performing. That his untimely demise happened during one of his legendary “magic shows.” Though to call what Houdini did a magic show is to belittle the extent of his talent and mortal abilities. But to assume this is how he died only heightens the myth surrounding him, only intensifies the belief that he was somehow superhuman. Because to acknowledge how he really died is to admit that he was just as vulnerable as any other “average joe.”

So instead, they prefer the myth. The one that still allows him to be the most powerful “magician” in the world. Even to this day. Though, obviously, what he was can be characterized as the more sophisticated-sounding “illusionist.” His illusions achieved with his gift for escapology and stunts. But the truth is that Erik Weisz a.k.a. Houdini was very much a mere mortal, with all the foibles that go hand in hand with that classification (or should it be “handcuff in handcuff” for this particular scenario?). I ought to know. I’m his biographer, after all. And I guess you might say that’s how I “fell into” writing biographies: my fascination with human frailty—even in “great” people.

Although my career was launched with a tome about Rudolph Valentino, it wasn’t long before my passion for Houdini developed—and then turned into a full-on obsession. It didn’t help, in terms of quelling my interest, that I also lived right near his former townhouse in Harlem. The one he bought after he had become a success. This was after he caught his big break in 1899, when Martin Beck, the founder of the Orpheum Circuit, caught him performing at some two-bit beer hall in Minnesota. Seeing something in his “art,” Beck offered Houdini the chance to open for the Orpheum Circuit. This meant exposure at the country’s top vaudeville theaters. It didn’t take much time for Houdini to become a sensation after he was put in front of larger audiences and told to focus on his escape routines rather than “magic.”

Five years after this fortuitous encounter and Houdini was buying the Harlem townhouse. Back then, the geographical makeup of Harlem was very different—and only right at that moment about to shift. For 1904 was also the year that the Great Migration of Black residents into the neighborhood would surge after the Harlem real estate bubble burst. This due to the increasing uncertainty of when a subway line would actually be built there. So it was that all the apartment buildings that had cropped up stood unoccupied, with white people unwilling to pay top dollar to live in an area with no public transportation. And once Black people began trickling in, that’s when the whites who already lived there proceeded to abandon ship in droves. Of course, Houdini was unbothered. Perhaps just another testament to the long-standing sense of fraternity between Jews and Blacks. Besides, something about the townhouse, which he and his wife, Bess, were the first to occupy, made him want to put down roots there.

That same year, Houdini would also perform some of his most publicized stunts, including escaping from handcuffs that were specially made under the careful “supervision,” so to speak, of the Daily Mirror in London so as to ensure, once again, that Houdini wasn’t some kind of “huckster.” Another daring feat of escapism took the form of Houdini being buried alive (not his first attempt, but one of the more successful ones). Eventually, he was able to emerge…though Bess could sense a distinct change in him after this particular stunt. Almost as if something in him knew he was now “marked” for death by the reaper. But this was only to be the first of many changes in him leading up to his final days, twenty-two years later. The final days that would start in Montreal and end in Detroit (not exactly the most glamorous place to die, as Madonna would likely attest).

At just fifty-two, still a “young buck” by today’s standards, Houdini would be felled, ultimately, by peritonitis. For about two weeks before that medical declaration, Houdini had been suffering from abdominal pain. This incurred upon “letting” a McGill University student name Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead (who was also known as a boxer) punch him repeatedly while backstage before the show. There were some other students (or perhaps “fanboys” is the more appropriate word) backstage as well: Jacques a.k.a. Jack and Sam. These were the ones who would recount the horror that had unfolded. For a start, Houdini was already dealing with a broken ankle, having injured it during a performance a few days earlier. Accordingly, he was in a reposing position on the couch that was backstage when Whitehead approached to ask him all manner of nonsense, like if he believed “in the miracles of the Bible.”

To Houdini, it probably seemed like he was another “debunking” type (read: psycho)—someone who desperately wanted to prove that there was some sinister form of “trickery” going on in Houdini’s act. This is also probably why, according to the witnesses who gave their testimony, Whitehead was quick and abrupt in launching into a series of punch-throwing aimed right at Houdini’s stomach. And done while Houdini was in a position that made him ill-equipped to absorb the beating very well, let alone without warning. Still, because Houdini had told this knave that he could take quite a punch in the stomach when Whitehead directly asked him if “it was true that punches in the stomach did not hurt him,” he took this to somehow mean he had permission to “prove Houdini right.” All he proved, however, was that evil rears its ugly head in all kinds of “good” people. Bursts of it that can be fatal for others, like Houdini, who died on Halloween of 1926. And everything about his death, the events leading up to it and the random-ass man with his arbitrary decision to sucker punch Houdini, served as a spook show rather than a magic show.  

The only thing I can possibly take comfort in about his death is that, later, his murderer (for all intents and purposes) at least signed the papers Bess Houdini needed him to in order for their insurance company to pay out the amount listed in the double indemnity clause. So maybe there was some “good” in the man. And maybe Houdini was really performing one final feat of “magic” in managing to get the much-coveted double indemnity clause to work in Bess’ favor. Part of me believes that’s what she was trying to contact her husband about during her unsuccessful seances over the next ten years: to ask if it was all an elaborate illusion, and if he might soon come back so that they could enjoy the money she had received together.