Is it true that Houdini never smoked?
While I don’t have a real photo of Houdini smoking, I do have some circumstantial evidence that he did:
On Monday 18th April, it was a cold and windless morning. As Houdini waited for final preparation to be made, he smoked a cigarette. This was highly unusual for Houdini and it indicated that he was nervous. He gave orders in a ‘quiet yet incisive manner’ and watched with a ‘critical though quite unmoved eye.’
At approximately 8 am he took off and made a flight lasting between three to four minutes which covered a few hundred meters. This marked the first officially recorded successful powered, controlled flight in New South Wales [Australia]. [Houdini’s Tour of Australia by Leann Richards]
After reading the above account, I searched for more evidence and was able to find a newspaper that documented this:
Houdini himself seemed the least perturbed of the party. Cooling smoking a cigarette, he watched preparations with a critical though quite unmoved eye. That he was taking an interest in the proceedings could be observed from the quiet yet incisive manner in which he ordered minor defects to be remedied. [The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 19 April 1910, page 8.]
I also found the following:
Though personally frugal, and except on their anniversary, rarely known to join Bess in a glass of champagne, Houdini may have explored other mood-altering substances around the time he went to Hollywood. Will Goldston believed he sometimes partook of a ‘nip of opium’ of the kind widely available in Edwardian music-hall circles, if only for its analgesic properties. The drug may have numbed the pain of a damaged kidney and other health-related issues collected over the years, but, as with Bess’s drinking, it didn’t always produce a felicitous state. [Masters of Mystery by Christopher Sandford]
Does anyone else have knowledge or evidence of Houdini smoking or exploring mood-altering substances.?
