Last year, as part of the 100 year anniversary of Houdini’s movie, The Grim Game, I did a post on how Houdini broke his wrist and the effect it had on filming.

Still (HHCE collection)

It included Houdini’s own account:

It is unexpected that always happens. Though doing daring stunts thousands of feet above good old Mother Earth, flying in cranky aeroplanes, climbing the outside of buildings, swinging from the top of a swaying flag-staff a hundred feet in the air, leaping on and off heavy motor trucks and the like, I never got a hurt, but from a three-foot fall I again broke my left wrist, not so badly as before, however for then a bone was broken in three places, while this time I escaped with one fracture. This accident has detained me in California longer than expected, but my wrist is now rapidly completing its “knitting work”, and I shall soon be able to give the necessary personal attention to the finishing stunts of the picture and return to New York. [MUM July 1919]

Thought I would follow-up, with a post on how he may have broken his ankle (?) filming.

Three Sheet Poster (The Nielsen Gallery)

According to an M-U-M October 2009 article by Tom Ewing on The Nielsen Gallery Grim Game 3 Sheet Poster:

One final word about the straitjacket escape in The Grim Game. The scene called for Houdini to escape from the jacket, untie his feet, and then drop to the street, where his fall would be broken by a store awning and he would jump to the street. During filming of the street-level segment where he supposedly landed on the awning and jumped to the ground, he fractured his ankle. One must wonder if this injury and the daily abuse he inflicted upon his feet contributed to another ankle injury, this time doing the Water Torture Cell escape in Albany, New York in October, 1926. The stocks shifted or dropped as he was lifted aloft and fractured his ankle. We will never know, but it was the beginning of the end for the daredevil escape artist who died a few weeks later in Detroit on Halloween.

Lobby Card (John Cox Collection)

So, after Houdini shared his account of breaking his wrist from a three-foot-fall [escaping one of the prison cells], he broke his ankle (?) during the strait-jacket stunt.