Category Archives: The Master Mystery

Houdini Relaxes on Set with Marguerite Marsh Not

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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

 

Flicker Flashbacks

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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…