Many Houdiniphiles think Harry was just playing mic-mac with our minds when he annotated this production still for his very first film, Merveilleux Exploits du Célèbre Houdini à Paris.
True, a close search of the Pathé Brothers filmographies does not contain any such title, nor any reference to Houdini at all.
The conventional wisdom is that the film - a short - was actually made in 1909, not 1901, and released by Lux Film. If 1901 were true it would place Harry in the vanguard of pioneer filmmakers, right up there with with George Méliès, the Lumière brothers and the Pathés.
Once again, Harry is suspected of being either a liar or a dumbbell.
We hypothesized that he was neither, and that the fault was probably on our end. So we got in touch with our friends at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, one of the world's great film libraries. They were able to track down the research notes of Bret Wood, a film director who produced the Houdini videos distributed by Kino International, which include this section of Merveilleux Exploits.
According to Wood, the first part of the film was indeed shot - probably on a Pathé set - in 1901. But he says the film was re-shot in 1909, this time outdoors in the real world of Paris. Wood quotes a contemporaneous newspaper account and French sources. (The complete film, with all titles and scenes intact, appears to be lost.)
This tracks with the citation in IMDB, the International Movie Database, which states that Houdini's first film was shot in 1901, then re-made in 1909.
It makes sense. It fits all the known facts. And it rehabs Houdini. Like most magicians, he only lied when he had to.
[With deepest gratitude to Liana Kroll, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Chris Pulleyn, John Pulleyn and the George Eastman Museum.]
Bret Wood's notes are excellent on the Kino discs. However, I'm not sure about his 1901/1909 theory. I think this was just his way of reconciling the 1901 notation on the above photo. But he didn't understand what we understand, and that's never trust a date provided by Houdini!
ReplyDeleteThe complete film survives (disassembled), and the outside scenes are definitely 1909. What argues against the interior scenes being 1901 is the presence of Franz Kukol. Franz is the French policeman strapping the straitjacket and handling the handcuffs. Franz joined Harry in 1903. So those scenes have to have been either 1905 or 1909, the years HH returned to Paris. As Houdini appears exactly the same in the interior and exterior scenes, I think it was all done in 1909. It also fits as this is when Houdini was filming many things.
BTW, the Kino set, as awesome as it is, doesn't even seem to understand that the clip they have is from this movie! They call it an "Unidentified Houdini Movie Shot in Paris." This is probably because Silverman only described the movie up to the point in which Harry escapes the jail. So Kino and Wood didn’t quite have the understanding of this movie we have today.
I do like your instinct to rehab Houdini! But I don’t think he was knowingly lying. I think he was just quickly dating photos from memory, probably many years later, and he got it wrong. Hand me a stack of photos of myself from the past 20 years and I'm sure I would be just as bad at dating them.
You're so right about KINO not knowing what they had. I think they got that "unknown" designation from Eastman House, who helped them on the research. It's still listed that way in the Eastman archives. About Kukol - correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always gone with the Randi/Sugar version that Kukol and Houdini met in 1900, in Dresden. (IMO Silverman handles the dating here with some wiggle room.) By "the complete film" I meant with opening and closing titles, etc. Am I wrong on that? Don't think I ever saw an opening title sequence.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, correct. No opening or closing credits. There's also an opening shot of the Alhambra with Houdini posters out front that I've never seen, but it's been described as existing and I've seen a photo.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'll have to check up on Kukol! I have that HH hired him on March 2, 1903, sourced to Christopher. I've always assumed that's the date on his oath. Also recall that HH gave Kukol a gold watch for 10 years service in 1913, so that math supports 1903 as well. I love Randi/Sugar, but I don't rely on it a solid source. They go on to say Kukol arranged a bridge jump in Dresden in 1900 and Houdini was arrested for walking on the grass. I've never been able to find any evidence for this 1900 jump. And the walking on the grass thing is one of those floating bits of Houdini mythology that tends to attach itself to several stunts.
But, I've said before, what went on on Germany is a bit of blind spot in Houdini history, so maybe there's something to all this! It's an intriguing door you've opened!
I'm sure there's a wealth of Houdini history waiting to be uncovered in Paris, Berlin & Moscow. If I could finance it, I'd be there right now, digging!
DeleteI agree! I wish a German Houdini nut would do a book like Derek Tait's just about Houdini's German tours. Someone who can translate what must be a wealth of newspaper and magazine material in German.
DeleteI'd love to do it! Studied German in college and speak it fluently! Maybe i should do a Kickstarter campaign?
DeleteYou're the man for the job! :)
DeleteAnother thing to consider here is Bess. She does not appear in the "1901" interior footage. She's not part of the plot at that point. The photo above is just her on the set with two men who also aren't in the movie. Yet she's wearing in the exact same dress and hat as we see in the 1909 exterior footage. So she's wearing a dress from the future here!
ReplyDeleteJust watched the clips again and don't see a discrepancy with Bess. If I'm not mistaken, Bess is in the "1901" exterior footage. She's wearing what looks like that same dress. At the beginning she and Harry are walking together. He sends her away with a kiss, then she's gone from the film when he gets jailed.
ReplyDeleteOh, I was thinking ALL the outside scenes were 1909. Isn't that what Wood is saying as well? We know the morgue jump can only be 1909. The reason I date even the early street scenes as 1909 is Arthur Moses has a French magazine with (what appear to be) three photos from the movie. Two are of the street fight and HH's arrest, and one shows the outside of the Alhambra with a big Houdini poster that depicts events from his career, including the D.C. jail break in 1906. I've always assumed the movie opens on this shot because the drunk and fight happens across the street from the Alhambra.
ReplyDeleteIt's a puzzlement! :)
Another Parisian film mystery to tackle is the footage of HH escaping from the roped chair (which doesn't get much discussed, but it's great!). It's confusing because the scenario is just like Merveilleux Exploits, and there's Franz Kukol playing a French policeman again! You could almost think it was shot at the same time. But Houdini is dressed in different clothes, and you can see grey at his temples, so it appears to be later. It's also credited as Pathe.
ReplyDeleteAnd just to keep driving us crazy, there are these insert closeup shots of Houdini and his cuffed hands that sometimes appear in the morgue jump stock footage. This shots are clearly of an older Houdini (like 1920!). So was Houdini constantly adding to Merveilleux Exploits?
Oh how I love a nice Saturday rabbit hole!