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In
the 1890s, young Harry Houdini is performing with a Coney Island carnival as
Bruto, the Wild Man, when Bess, a naive onlooker, tries to protect him from
the blows of Schultz, his "trainer." Harry then appears as magician
The Great Houdini and, spotting Bess in the audience, invites her on stage.
Harry flirts with the unsuspecting Bess during his act, but she flees from
him in a panic. When Bess shows up to watch Harry perform two more
times, however, he corners her. Bess admits her attraction and, soon
after, the two appear at Harry's mother's house, newly married.
Bess becomes Harry's onstage partner, touring the country
with him, but soon grows tired of the low pay and grueling schedule.
After Bess convinces Harry to take a job in a locksmith factory, Harry works
as a lock tester while fantasizing about escaping from one of the factory's
large safes. On Halloween, Harry and Bess attend a special magicians'
dinner at the Astor Hotel, during which magician Fante offers a prize to
anyone who can free himself from a straightjacket. Harry accepts the
challenge and, through intense concentration, extricates himself from the
jacket, greatly impressing Fante. Afterward, however, Fante advises
Harry to "drop it," noting that Johann Von Schweger, a German magician,
retired at the height of his career after performing a similar feat, fearful
of his own talents. Bess then persuades Harry to give her his prize, a
single, round-trip boat ticket to Europe, so that she can cash it in for a
down payment on a house.
Later, at the factory, Harry locks himself inside one of the
big safes, determined to make an escape. Before he can get out,
however, the foreman orders the safe blown open, then fires Harry.
That night, in front of his mother, Harry and Bess argue about their future
and, frustrated by Bess's insistence that he quit magic, Harry walks out.
Soon, a contrite Bess finds Harry performing with a carnival and presents
him with two one-way tickets to Europe.
Sometime later, at a London theater, Harry and Bess are
concluding their magic act when a reporter named Dooley challenges Harry to
break out of one of Scotland Yard's notoriously secure jail cells.
Harry, who hired Dooley to issue the challenge, accepts the challenge,
unaware that the jail's cells do not have locks in the door, but on the
outside wall. Despite the added difficulty, the dexterous, determined
Houdini picks the cell lock and appears on time for his next performance.
Now billed as the "man who escaped from Scotland Yard," Harry begins a
successful tour of Europe with Bess.
In Berlin, Harry is joined by his mother and begins searching
for the reclusive Von Schweger. While performing an impromptu
levitation trick with Bess at a restaurant, Harry is arrested for fraud.
During his trial, Harry denies that he ever made claims to supernatural
powers, insisting that all his tricks are accomplished through physical
means. To prove his point, Harry locks himself in a safe in the
courtroom and breaks out a few minutes later, noting that safe locks are
designed to keep thieves out, not in. Vindicated, Harry then goes to
see Von Schweger, who finally has responded to his queries, but learns from
Von Schweger's assistant, Otto, that the magician died two days earlier.
Otto reveals that Von Schweger summoned Harry to ask him the
secret of "dematerialization," a feat he accomplished once but could not
repeat. Although Harry demurs, Otto insists on becoming Harry's new
assistant and travels with him to New York. There, Harry finds he is
virtually unknown, so for publicity, he hangs upside down on a skyscraper
flagpole, constrained by a straightjacket. Harry executes the escape
and soon makes a name for himself in America. To prepare to be
submerged in a box in the chilly Detroit River, Harry bathes in an
ice-filled bathtub. During the trick, which takes place on Halloween,
the rope holding the box breaks, and the box drops upside down into an
opening in the ice-covered river. Although Harry manages to escape
from the box, the current drags him downstream, and he struggles to find air
pockets under the ice and swim back to the opening. Above, Bess and
the horrified audience assume Harry has drowned and proclaim his demise.
To Bess's relief, Harry shows up later at their hotel, admitting that he
heard his mother's voice, directing him toward the opening. Just then, Harry
receives word that his mother died at the exact time that he heard her
voice.
Two years later in New York, Harry, who has not performed
since his mother's death, reveals to Simms, a reporter, that he has been
trying to contact his mother's spirit, without success. Harry invites
Simms to attend a séance with him and, after the medium appears to have
communicated with his mother, Harry and Otto expose her as a fake.
After a public crusade against phony mediums, Harry decides to return to the
stage and builds a watery "torture cell" for the occasion. Terrified,
Bess threatens to leave Harry unless he drops the dangerous trick, and he
agrees not to perform it.
Before the show, Harry admits to Otto that his appendix is
tender, but goes on, despite the pain. When the audience noisily
demands that he perform the advertised "water torture" trick, Harry succumbs
and is immersed, straightjacketed and upside down, in a tank of water. Weak,
Harry cannot execute the escape and loses consciousness. Otto breaks
the tank's glass and, after reviving, Harry vows to a weeping Bess that he
will "come back." |
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