The Handcuff King

Bruce MacNab’s The Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini follows the exploits of Houdini as he laid the groundwork for becoming a 20th-century icon. Houdini, of course, became famous for escaping from ropes in less time than it took to be tied up, from handcuffs brought and placed on him by others, from straitjackets used on the insane and from jail cells that housed notorious criminals. He also exposed psychics and seers, all of whom he regarded as fraudulent. What few knew until this publication is that seeds for these sensational stunts and services were first sown in the summer of 1896 in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Quite extraordinary really, considering that Houdini has been profiled hundreds of times since his death in 1926, and prior to The Metamorphosis, the coverage of Houdini’s Maritime exploits could be counted in paragraphs rather than pages.

Why the Maritimes, and why MacNab?

Houdini came to the Maritimes because he and his wife, Bess, both in their early twenties, had been eking out a living as itinerant variety artists in the hinterlands of America, and had the opportunity to join a larger show, one that would tour “internationally,” that is, to the Maritimes, organized, promoted and headlined by Marco the Magician, aka Edward James Dooley, an accomplished church organist who harboured, like Walter Mitty, the notion that he was someone else, a master magician like the then king of conjuring, Alexander Herrmann.

MacNab, a proud Maritimer, became enamoured with Houdini when, as a boy, he read of Houdini’s exploits. At least he declares his bias. In his prologue MacNab confesses that he was “thrilled to know that Houdini walked our streets, boarded our steamships, and entertained our people long before the world knew his name.” MacNab’s enthusiasm for his homeland and Houdini is infectious, and lends the book much charm.

So the book is a biography of Houdini in the Maritimes. As he maps out the tour route, MacNab identifies all of the players, even the policemen who cuffed Houdini, and the places where Houdini performed, complete with box office reports. As one excerpt illustrates, the reader certainly benefits from the author’s boots-on-the-ground approach: “The police station was stifling hot this day; more than a century later, sweat droplets from the policemen making their shift comments are still visible on the June 25, 1896, page of the station patrol book.”The book is also a biography of Dooley, the organist masquerading as a magician. MacNab’s research on Dooley is nothing short of groundbreaking and it fills in long lost elements of his relationship, an important one, with Houdini.

The Metamorphosis is also a travelogue, past and present. In describing the towns and communities where the players performed, the author places the landmarks—the hotels, the theatres, the police stations and the prisons—in context, but then brings the reader back to the present, noting which edifices still exist or how they have been transformed. And then there is the magic of the landscape. Here, for example, MacNab describes one of the natural wonders of the world.

While his local knowledge is stellar, the same cannot be said of MacNab’s understanding of magic. The author goes to enormous lengths to document the story, seasoning the tale with details from primary sources, but then makes sweeping statements about the art itself. For example, MacNab writes, “Unlike the star magicians who used exotic birds in their stage show, Ehrich [Houdini] could only afford an ordinary bantam chicken.” The problem is that, historically, magicians did not employ exotic birds in their shows until decades later. A trifle, I know, except to this reader. If there were just one or two errors, I could let them pass. But as the inaccuracies mount, and there are dozens, for someone like me who has spent a lifetime studying the subject, the willing suspension of disbelief—essential to stories of all stripes—disappears.

MacNab also repeats stories that are most likely apocryphal, or at the very least have no provenance. Did Houdini, for example, as MacNab suggests, really show “astonishing determination for a child” by practising “for hours by hanging upside down and picking up sewing needles off the floor with his eyelashes”? It certainly made great newspaper copy when Houdini probably said it in the 1890s, but today it simply stretches the bounds of credibility, even for someone like me who believes in the impossible.

The author could have developed other elements. For example, he writes: “Bessie rarely spoke of the wedding; although, she once commented privately to Dorothy Young, one of Houdini’s later assistants, ‘I sold my virginity to Houdini for an orange’.”

What does that mean?

MacNab is absolutely correct when he writes that “Houdini’s greatest strength as an escape artist was his showmanship.” I would encourage readers to pay close attention to MacNab’s description of the trunk trick, Houdini’s signature routine. Read the description, and then watch a few performances on YouTube—search under “Houdini Metamorphosis”—and then ask yourself who you would rather see—Houdini or the current crop of performers who have no understanding of the dramatic arc of the effect, or how to perform it.

There is also an interesting omission in The Metamorphosis, but one for which MacNab should not be held accountable. It is a subtle point, but an intriguing one for those interested in Houdini. MacNab goes to great lengths to describe the stunts—the handcuff escapes and the jailbreaks— that Houdini pioneered. What surprised me, however, is that there is no mention of the Yogi Masterpiece, also known as the “Hindoo Needle Trick,” the feat where the performer swallows dozens of sewing needles and a long length of thread, and then regurgitates the needles threaded. The first description of Houdini performing this miracle, something he did onstage and off for most of his career, is April 11, 1899, a couple of years after the Maritime tour. Houdini stated, however, in a booklet/catalogue he issued in the late 1890s that the feat was taught to him by “Hindoos at World’s Fair in 1893.” If Houdini really did learn the secret to the feat in 1893, why would he not have performed it while on tour in the Maritimes?

Finally, having toured the Maritimes at the start of my own professional career, I can state that MacNab’s description of the various theatres may be the closest you will ever come to standing on those stages. The book also made me realize how little has changed: it is still difficult to enter Canada—or any other country—as an itinerant performer; you still rely on publicity stunts and public appearances to motivate people to purchase tickets; and you still experience a rollercoaster ride of emotions as you move from a full house to one where the number of people on stage may outnumber those in the audience, and then back again.

The Metamorphosis is MacNab’s first book, and like Houdini’s inaugural international tour, it is not without its flaws. But, as the scribe who reviewed Houdini’s performance in Moncton wrote, “give him a good house tonight. His show certainly merits it.” I hope that the public and professional magicians embrace The Metamorphosis. MacNab certainly deserves it.