Last Sunday, I shared an image from the Baker’s Dock scene (Episode Three) in the Houdini serial, The Master Mystery. Most of the Baker’s Dock scene is missing in the surviving prints. Below is another image from the Baker’s Dock Scene you won’t see in the serial.
Since today is Super Bowl Sunday, I thought I would share a missing image from The Master Mystery Serial that depicts The Great Gray Mystery (robot) coaching.
Enjoy the game!
“The Master Mystery” Film Daily Ad – August 25 1918
Harry Houdini is recovering from injuries received while working in the new Houdini (Rolfe) serial [The Master Mystery] at Yonkers, Houdini bumping against a wall while making an indoor descent in a parachute. His left wrist was fractured and bruises suffered, but the injuries will not prevent him from opening with the Hip show, New York, Aug 22. [Variety Fri August 16 1918 page 6 Vaudeville]
“Everything” opens Thursday August 22, 1918 at the Hippodrome (aka the Hip) in New York.
Houdini appeared with his left hand bandaged. He explained that because of an accident in which his wrist was fractured, he could not present his burial trick. But he escaped from a straight jacket, while hanging head down, at a height near the top of the proscenium. He must have been in pain, for he never did the escape quicker in public. [Variety Fri August 30, 1918 page 16 Show Reviews]
Houdini felt called upon to apologize for the simple nature of his stunt. [New York Tribune August 23 1918]
Several acts left “Everything” at the Hippodrome Saturday [Nov 2], including Houdini, Reynolds and Donegan, and Gerda Guida, the Danish danseuse. They had been engaged on a ten-week basis with contracts expiring and not renewed. Houdini had been working under a handicap ever since the opening of the show because of a broken bone in his wrist. [Variety Fri November 8 1918 page 5 Vaudeville]
When Houdini returns to the Hippodrome he promises to present the most sensational act he has ever attempted. In full view of the audience, lying flat on the floor of the stage itself, he will allow himself to be covered with three tons of sand — dumped on him out of a big automobile truck. Then he will dig himself up through the pile in less than 60 seconds. To make it more difficult Houdini will be put in a strait-jacket before the sand is dumped on him. The date of his reappearance at the Hippodrome will depend on his complete recovery from a recent accident in which he broke his wrist. [Variety Fri November 29 1918 page 7 Vaudeville]
Harry Houdini was in New York Monday [Dec 2] with the plaster cast off his wrist. He has a ten weeks’ leave from the Hippodrome. Three of them have been spent by Houdini before the camera [The Master Mystery]. He may play vaudeville during the other seven weeks outside Greater New York, according to permission given by the Hip management. [Variety Fri December 6 1918 page 11]
Buried Alive Stunt on stage is postponed until September 1926. The escape is finally debuted at the Majestic Theatre in Boston:
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.]
Today, I thought I would share an incredible image that I came across while doing some research on Houdini in 1919:
Enjoy!
The image above is the front and back of card #38 from Houdini: The World’s First Superhero” cards. And once again the image on the right (back of card) is
misidentified. But instead of misidentifying the actress as Gloria Swanson like William Kalush and Larry Sloman did on page 360 of their book, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of Americas First Super Hero; the card misidentifies the actress as Marguerite Marsh. Close, but no cigar. The actress is not Gloria Swanson or Marguerite Marsh, but Ann Forrest (Houdini’s co-star) from the Grim Game. Houdini did spend time with Gloria Swanson on the Lasky set, but was never in a movie with her. See my blog Harry gets cozy with a young Gloria Swanson (and Ann Forrest) at Lasky Studios. Houdini also cozied up with Margaret Marsh when he made the serial The Master Mystery. As the card above points out, Margaret Marsh played Eva Brent, the imperiled damsel in distress in the Master Mystery.
Houdini cozies up to Marguerite Marsh in The Master Mystery
I was intrigued by the following posts from John Cox at WildAboutHoudini.com:
It led me to find the following VHS video:
Excerpts from the Harry Houdini serial, The Master Mystery are ridiculed by a wisecracking commentator for the entertainment of the enlightened 1948 audiences.
Click on the link below to load a 4 minute 115MB .wmv file in a separate window; it may take several minutes to load the video I took with my iphone of the VHS tape playing.
I was hoping to find lost footage from the Master Mystery, but that was not the case. The footage is misidentified on the tape as being from The Man From Beyond. The footage is actually from episode 2 and 3 of the the Mastery Mystery. The Baker’s dock sequence which suffers severe nitrate deterioration on the Kino DVD aprears to be in better shape on this 1948 version that appears on the 1980 VHS tape, although you can’t really tell from the poor quality of the compressed .wmv taken with my iphone.
The search for lost Houdini footage that has not deteriorated continues…
