From my personal collection, the following article and Houdini quote [?] appeared in the October 25, 1926 Times The Weekly News-Magazine:
Harry Houdini, prestidigitator, handcuff king, foe of charalatan spiritists:
“As I was about to perform my ‘Chinese water-cell trick’ * on the stage of the Capital Theatre at Albany, N. Y., faulty stage tackle let the ponderous wood-and-iron stock fall upon my left foot, crushing it. Though my supple feet and ankles constitute great assets to me in my escapes from fetters, piano boxes, safes and other receptacles, I risked swelling and infection, stayed on the stage, did other tricks. Afterwards one of my staff said something about a ‘jinx.’ wherat I rebuked him sharply, ‘There is no such thing as a jinx.’ An Albany newspaper said, “There is a line worth writing in the copybooks . . . Only the sagbacks blame the jinx.'”
* The footnote of the article goes on to explain the routine and expose a method. For more info, see page 442 of “the Key” by Patrick Cullition.
Six days after this article appeared, Houdini passed away on Halloween, October 31, 1926.
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Nice post Joe! It’s always interesting to read an article that quotes HH directly. The reports from October 1926 are morbidly fascinating.
Culliton believes the quotes were ad-libbed by the Time staff.
What are sagbacks?
That’s the $64,000 question, would love to know.