Last year I acquired the 1924 newspaper article, Houdini Breaks into Playwriting, describing a new stage play adapted from The Grim Game.
- WILD ABOUT HARRY: The Grim Game on stage? (wildabouthoudini.com)
- Houdini Adaptations – Arthur B Reeve | harryhoudinicircumstantialevidence.com
Houdini actually broke into playwriting (if you can call it that) between 1911 and 1914 where he registered three of his famous illusions as “playlets” or short plays, with the U.S. Copyright Office. These deposited scripts are now held within the Reader’s Collection, Library of Congress Copyright Office Drama Deposits.
The three playlets were also published in the Linking Ring [Jun to Aug 1967] and Patrick Culliton’s books, Houdini’s Strange Tales – A Collection of fiction by the legendary Harry Houdini [1992], “Houdini Unlocked”[1997], and “Houdini – The Key” [2010]
Edgar Heyl says: “these plays are unbelieveable bad. Yet Houdini barged right ahead in writing them, completely oblivious of plot, motivation, characterization, credibility, reality and the many other factors that make the work of a professional playwright so difficult.”[Linking Ring August 1967]
This post concludes a 3 part series of posts where I summarize and share tidbits about the three copyrighted plays that he wrote:
- Challenged or Houdini Upside Down (Copyrighted August 1, 1911)
- Walking Through a Brick Wall (Copyrighted July 15, 1914)
- Buried Alive (Copyrighted September 9, 1914)
Today we look at Buried Alive
Only one copy was deposited and it consisted of 4 small octavo pages typewritten double spaced.
SUMMARY
The premise of this play involves two tourists who try to one-up a local priest by performing a surprising “miracle”. The stage directions describe the tourist in a straitjacket, who is put into an empty box and lowered into the ground with dirt shoveled atop him. After a few chants and incantations, the tourist is revealed “relieved of his bonds, and appearing just as he was before.” The locals treat him as supernatural, but he insists he is a mere man.
[Houdini and the Magic of Copyright by Marilyn Creswell (March 24, 2021)]
Per Cullliton:
Like the other plays in this collection, Buried Alive was not a serious attempt at playwrighting on Houdini’s part. It was just an attempt to protect a new effect from the imitators who had dogged his every step.
The 1914 Buried Alive poster advertising “Harry Houdini’s original creation” goes hand in hand with the play and protecting his new effect. Note: Elcock did the artwork for the poster. Like the Water Torture Cell escape, the stage version (non-play) of Buried Alive would have to wait until a later date for Houdini to perfect and perform.