Houdiniphiles around the world are trembling with trepidation over the History channel's heavily-hyped Houdini bio airing Labor Day weekend. Advance reviews are already calling it “mediocre” and “hamfisted.” We'll give it a full-scale review next week. But first let's take a look at the book it's based on: Houdini: A Mind in Chains, by Bernard C. Meyer, MD.
Meyer was a New York psychiatrist who happens to be the father of Nicholas Meyer, the screenwriter on History's biopic. The son has adapted the script from his father's book, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Nicholas Meyer is a writer we've always admired, particularly for his best selling Sherlock Holmes pastiche The Seven Percent Solution. He credits his father for getting him interested in films. So Meyer has written Houdini as a tribute to his father - a noble effort. But we're worried that in honoring his father he has done a disservice to Houdini.
Bernard Meyer's book came out in 1976, applying Freudian analysis to what then passed for the story of Houdini’s life. The gist is that Houdini was in some sense mentally ill (“…toyed with madness…”), caught in an Oedipal whirlpool, wracked by bondage fantasies and “sadomasochistic perversions” that created “insuperable difficulties in effecting a fusion between erotic and romantic love.”
Unfortunately, the book was written at a time when serious Houdini research was still in its infancy. Meyer’s influence spread widely to subsequent biographers, who parroted and embellished his “scientific” conclusions (e.g.: Ruth Brandon’s bio that claims Houdini was impotent). After Labor Day - and at least thirteen repeats - it’ll be imprinting the minds of a new generation.
What did other psychiatrists think of Meyer’s book when it came out? In a review for The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, his colleague Eric Carlson, MD revealed that Meyer did not have much in the way of factual sources. So he resorted to a 1946 fictionalized version of Houdini’s life, The Great Balsamo by Maurice Zolotow. Zolotow, a show business writer, saw Houdini perform once and was 12 years old when he died.
 |
| Zolotow interviewing Billy Wilder, director of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which may have inspired the Meyers. |
Meyer cites Zolotow as a source on Houdini’s sex life, and the psychoanalyst even recounts a dream by Zolotow’s imaginary magician about wife stealing! As Carlson writes: “Meyer uses this blend of fictional recreation and unsubstantiated evidence…to buttress his assumptions about Houdini’s sexual fixations….”
This is precisely what we believe the History channel is doing, as we’ve said loud and clear in earlier posts.
Investigating Dr. Meyer a bit further we learn that this was not the first time he was accused of perverting the life story of one of his subjects. His first book, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography, missed the boat both as biography and medicine, according to critics.
“Some biographers have concluded that [Conrad’s] illness was predominantly psychological in origin,” writes Royse Murphy of the University of Bristol, in the Journal of Conrad Studies, citing Meyer’s writings. After an exhaustive analysis based on Conrad’s own physicians’ records, Dr. Murphy concludes that Conrad was suffering not from mental illness, as Meyer asserted, but from Systemic Lupus Erythematosis.
Other Conrad scholars accuse Meyer of playing fast and loose with the biographical facts. A review in Comparative Literature Studies by Zdzislaw Najder could easily apply to Meyer’s book on Houdini:
“To accept [questionable] stories of Conrad’s bizarre and sometimes sadistic behavior as solid evidence of his complexes and perversions seems rather rash."
“His characterization of … Conrad’s father is plainly malicious…. [His] image as an irresponsible fanatic … does not find confirmation in any other documents..”
“…highly distorted picture of Conrad’s family relations. Meyer’s remarks on Conrad’s mother may serve as a good example. …He describes her as a ‘disturbed, self-centered and possibly depressed girl.’ Her letters however, show her as a lively, sensitive and affectionate person, strongly attached to both her husband and son. This runs against Meyer’s hypothesis about her lack of affection.”
“Dr. Meyer takes … behavior which is quite usual or “normal” as betraying a mark of peculiarity, symptomatic of some deep secrets or complexes….”
As Freud is reputed to have said: “Lighten up, doc! Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
This is an excellent post David. Although I admit I found the Meyer book fascinating back in the day because it was the first book to really bring forward the whole Leo/Sadie thing and the chapter on Houdini's death had details never shared before. The psychology of it...well...I couldn't really follow it then and I still struggle with it today. Although I've always been intrigued with his claustrophobia theory.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the miniseries goes. I think you are going to be surprised to find that it isn't based on the Meyer book, despite what the credits read. It's the Kalush book almost from beginning to end.
Thanks, John. Would love to be surprised by the miniseries!
ReplyDeleteI found this post informative and will certainly have it in the back of my mind as I watch the second part of this series. So, while I find the presentation entertaining, I am somewhat disappointed in the inaccuracies of the series. Sticking to the facts and entertainment generally don't mix anyway.
ReplyDelete