Many people believe Houdini drowned in his Water Torture Cell, the tank he escaped from upside down. That ending comes from the 1953 Hollywood film Houdini. In real life the act did injure him in 1926, when, according to the Library of Congress, the stocks holding his feet broke and he fractured his ankle.
The story as it is told
The curtain is drawn. Houdini hangs upside down by his ankles in a glass tank of water, locked in, and the audience waits for him to step out as he always does.
This night, the story says, he never does. The seconds go by, and then the minutes. His assistants rush the stage and smash the glass, but it is too late. The great escape artist has drowned in front of his audience. It is often told as Halloween night, 1926.
What we can confirm
The Water Torture Cell was Houdini's great stage illusion of the 1910s and 1920s. He was lowered head first into a narrow tank of water with his ankles locked in stocks, a curtain was drawn, and minutes later he stepped out, dripping.
He registered it with the US Copyright Office as if it were a short play. The Library of Congress's Copyright Office blog explains that Houdini registered three short playlets between 1911 and 1914. One, "Challenged: or, Houdini upside down," a 16-page typescript, is the Water Torture Cell written up as a play. He registered it as a dramatic composition, a category the blog notes has been eligible for copyright since 1856. The other two playlets were "Walking through a Brick Wall" and "Buried Alive," both registered in 1914. The blog also shows the limits of that protection: after other people sold cheap blueprints of the brick-wall apparatus, that trick lost its appeal, even though nobody had copied his script.
He kept performing the cell until his last tour. The Copyright Office blog says that in 1926 a stock broke during the act and he fractured his ankle. He kept touring on it, and that injured, exhausted Houdini is the man who reached Montreal in October (see The punch and the medical record).
So why do people think he died in the tank? Turner Classic Movies' history of Paramount's 1953 biopic Houdini, starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, explains that the film "concludes on the evening of Houdini's death in 1926, when he performed the famed 'water torture cell' illusion." TCM's writer adds that the movie "deviates wildly from the facts of that fateful evening." Houdini died of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital on October 31, 1926, a week after surgery.
Our interpretation: the movie version probably stuck because it is the one most people saw, in Technicolor, with a star. The record says the cell broke his ankle, and his appendix killed him.
The facts
- Three playlets registered 1911-1914; "Challenged: or, Houdini upside down" (16 typewritten pages) is the Water Torture Cell; "Walking through a Brick Wall" and "Buried Alive" (1914); 1926 tour, stock broke, fractured ankle; playlets now PD. Marilyn Creswell, LoC Copyright Office blog, Mar 24, 2021, blogs.loc.gov
- 1953 Paramount film ends with the Water Torture Cell on the night of his death and "deviates wildly from the facts"; based on Harold Kellock's book; technical supervision by Joseph Dunninger. Bret Wood, TCM, June 26, 2009, tcm.com
- Death from peritonitis in Detroit, Oct 31, 1926. LoC Information Bulletin 1997, loc.gov
Sources
- Three playlets registered 1911-1914; "Challenged: or, Houdini upside down" (16 typewritten pages) is the Water Torture Cell; "Walking through a Brick Wall" and "Buried Alive" (1914); 1926 tour, stock broke, fractured ankle; playlets now PD. Marilyn Creswell, LoC Copyright Office blog, Mar 24, 2021, blogs.loc.gov
- 1953 Paramount film ends with the Water Torture Cell on the night of his death and "deviates wildly from the facts"; based on Harold Kellock's book; technical supervision by Joseph Dunninger. Bret Wood, TCM, June 26, 2009, tcm.com
- Death from peritonitis in Detroit, Oct 31, 1926. LoC Information Bulletin 1997, loc.gov