Today I continue my series of posts, where I share different Master Mystery Exhibitors’ Ads from my personal collection:
- Houdini Talks About Himself and the Master Mystery
- Ruth Stonehouse Writes Plays When Only Six
- Houdini’s Tame Eagle in “The Master Mystery”
- The Triumph of Science. A Mechanical Man with a Superhuman Brain
- By Request of Hoover Houdini Chaffs Miss Marsh
- Kidnapped into Pictures
- Handcuffs I Have Met
- Houdini Breaks Own Record in “The Master Mystery”
- Why “The Master Mystery” is a Sure Record=Breaking Serial
- $25 for Houdini’s Secret
- Houdini Made the Kaiser Apologise. The Great Mystic a Victim of Hun Arrogance
- About Publicity
Related:
Nothing like THAT story to remind the wartime public Houdini was red, white, and blue. I still wonder if he really opened that padlock and/locked safe in the courtroom. It’s all shrouded in smoke and mystery.
I added a couple related posts to add to the smoke and mystery.
The lock at the second trial I believe, but the safe I do not. I’m not even sure HH was at the third “trial.” I might have just been a preliminary hearing in which a judge reviewed whatever new evidence Graf brought. Houdini was in Blackburn when he learned the final verdict.
You know, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a copy of the original article that stated all this. Daily Rheinische Zeitung (No. 170), July 25, 1901. That would be a nice get.
Indeed!
It’s possible I’ve encountered it in some archive, but as it’s in German, I may have passed it by without realizing what it was. This possibility haunts me.
Thanks for the extra links to past posts Joe! I always forget about them. The safe test was an interesting account. The courts supposedly forgot to lock it! That $26,000 Potter & Potter German folio. Who owns that now? Who was the winning bidder? DC?
“That said, the definitive answer is most likely in the Houdini’s German Slander Trial Archive, 1902 that sold for $26,000 at the Potter and Potter auction on Aug 23, 2014.”
I don’t believe those Berliner cuffs were specially made by the courts. It’s a standard pair with a Houdini story pasted onto it. They probably just threw those cuffs at him from a police station and of course he already knew how to open them. That paperback Houdini Handcuffs and Legirons booklet is in the $300 range in the used book market. Ridiculous.