Today, I continue my series of posts where I share an interview that Pictures and Picturgoer magazine did with Harry Houdini:

“WILL you step this way, please?” The call-boy of a popular London music-hall beckoned to PICTURES representative, and hurried along endless corridors to a dressing room where reposed the man whose name is a household word the world over—Harry Houdini—the Handcuff King. Repose may seem an inadequate term to use in connection with this live, active and almost restless personality, but it is accurate. Houdini works hard, plays hard, and rests hard.

We talked of many things; of life and hopes and ambitions, of business and of romance.

• His future film plans.
• His pet superstition.
• His greatest happiness.
• His fertile brain.
• His pleasure in films.

His pleasure in films.

One of his reasons for his pleasure in the popularity of films is rather delightful. “Because they give old people a chance of securing work as actors,” he said.

This feeling is no doubt born of his long and happy association with stage-folk, whom he dearly loves, and while at the Lasky studios making The Grim Game he met two or three hundred men and women of the theatrical world who were too old for the stage, yet were earning a generous livelihood at film-acting.

One more word about Houdini ; he neither drinks nor smokes. Movieland be glad to welcome him into its fold—on and off the screen, for we are glad to know we have men of such ideals amongst us. M. O. B.

Source:

• Picture and Picturegoers March 6, 1920