I was intrigued by the following posts from John Cox at WildAboutHoudini.com:
- http://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2012/07/fractured-mystery.html
- http://www.wildabouthoudini.com/2012/08/houdini-on-early-television.html
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…
Oh, this is excellent. 1948! Wow. So are we safe in saying this is the earliest Houdini TV appearance?
So far, but I would not bet on it. It is from Flicker Flashbacks No. 7, series 5, July 2nd 1948 (USA)
So Bill Mullins over at the Genii forums says these were theatrical shorts, not a TV series?
I believe he is correct. Either way, it was fun discovering this footage from 1948. I just wish it was lost footage.