Today, I continue my series of posts where I share an interview that Pictures and Picturgoer magazine did with Harry Houdini:

“WILL you step this way, please?” The call-boy of a popular London music-hall beckoned to PICTUR ES representative, and hurried along endless corridors to a dressing room where reposed the man whose name is a household word the world over—Harry Houdini—the Handcuff King. Repose may seem an inadequate term to use in connection with this live, active and almost restless personality, but it is accurate. Houdini works hard, plays hard, and rests hard.

We talked of many things; of life and hopes and ambitions, of business and of romance.

• His future film plans.
• His pet superstition.
• His greatest happiness.
• His fertile brain.
• His pleasure in films.

His pet superstition.

For instance. I once broke my wrist getting out of a window three feet from the ground. I reckon a brave man is one who takes risks while fully realising what he is undertaking—it is the fool who is reckless.

I’m not superstitious, really, but like most people I have one pet superstition, and it is that it is unlucky to keep a lock of another person’s hair. Once when I was experiencing a run of bad luck I remembered that I was carrying a lock of the famous Duke of Wellington’s hair as a souvenir. Directly I remembered this I determined to lose no time in getting rid of it. It was 4 o’clock in the morning when I thought of the lock, but I got up and burned it—and my luck changed.

When the conversation turned on ” happiness,” Houdini warmed to the subject and divulged what that magic word meant to him.

Source:

• Picture and Picturegoers March 6, 1920