Before the camera Houdini broke his own record in a scene of the great fifteen episode serial, “The Master Mystery.” Instead of two sets of handcuffs, he wore three, he was completely bound by heavy chains from his shoulders to half way below his knees, his ankles encased in leg manacles. Thus equipped, he was placed in an iron enforced heavy wooden packing case, securely bound, and hoisted by eight strong men out into the Hudson River.
A strong current was running, the box tipped to one side, then immediately sank to view. In exactly 32 seconds, Houdini appeared, swimming leisurely about as though taking a refreshing dip. But not alone did he break his own record by twenty seconds, almost cutting it in half, but he performed the feat with a broken wrist; he obtained no permit from the police, he signed no release statements for his men, so sure of his success. As his box was lost to sight and was to be used again in the serial, after regaining the dock from which the box was hoisted, he joined the divers in their search for it. When found, it was still securely bound.
Houdini resumed his work before the camera as the though the marvelous record-breaking feat he had just accomplished were a mere part of his day’s routine, but Mr. Rolfe, the president of the B.A. Rolfe Productions, Burton King, who directed the scene, the cameramen; in fact, all who watched Houdini take his life so lightly in his own hands, were well high nervous wrecks, so high had been their tension, so keen their anxiety.
[Images from YouTube and Text is from The Hays free press June 26, 1919, Hays, Kan.]
