The History Podcast

In the concluding chapter of How Houdini Made Magic, Derren Brown explores how even in death, Houdini knew how to ensure his legend would endure.

The legendary death-defier would eventually fall, not to a locked water cell or an icy river, but to a ruptured appendix after a fateful backstage punch in Montreal.

Worn out by relentless spiritualist crusades, heavy lawsuits, and mounting mortality, a 52-year-old Houdini performed his final show in Detroit with a blazing 40-degree fever before collapsing. Dying on Halloween 1926, he went out at the absolute peak of his powers, avoiding the slow decline of an ageing performer and stepping straight into myth.

Houdini saw his death as an opportunity to test the claims of Spiritualists further. He set in motion a test by agreeing a secret code with his wife, Bess. Once he had passed, she was instructed to hold seances in a bid to reach her beloved Houdini. Bess never heard Houdini’s code, but seances are still held right to this very day, a century later.

Houdini’s greatest trick wasn't just escaping handcuffs or cell blocks - it was mastering the art of storytelling so that his name still means “doing the impossible”.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

World War I and the Spanish Flu caused devastation. Estimates are that up to 120 million people died as a result of both in 6 years - many of them relatively young. It led to the revival of an already popular new religion: Spiritualism.

Spiritualists believe that human souls survive bodily death and can communicate with the living. Harry Houdini, the great mystifier, had some experience with the religion. In his early career, he performed a spirit medium routine with his wife as part of a travelling medicine show. But later in life, he turned into a dogged crusader against what he claimed was a fraudulent faith.

Derren Brown explores how Houdini was perhaps driven to this campaign by a complex mix of factors: personal grief following his mother's death, an informed understanding of the tricks they pulled and a master showman's instinct for staying topical.

Houdini’s crusade played out most clearly in his explosive rivalry with the best-known medium of his day, Margery Crandon. A rivalry that was covered on the front pages of America’s newspapers more than the President.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

During the filming of the 1919 film, The Grim Game, there was a real-life mid-air plane crash. The star of the movie was the greatest escape artist of all time: Harry Houdini. So how did the producers capitalise on the crash? By telling the press that Houdini was on that plane and survived near certain death.

He was not on the plane; it was a stunt double (who did survive). But the public didn’t need to know that. They needed to know that Houdini was now a movie star.

While biographers often write off his silver-screen ventures as flops, Derren Brown argues that Houdini’s experience with Hollywood and his embrace of the emerging technology of film demonstrate a shrewd operator who understood that in order to be a genuine star, you must stay ahead of the curve.

And his use of emerging forms of communication with the masses goes beyond film: Houdini used early postal networks and telegrams like a proto-social media campaign. And he pioneered in radio, giving magic lessons over the newly formed airwaves.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

“It was the making of Houdini”. That’s how one magician described Houdini’s dramatic “Mirror Handcuff escape”.

In London’s Hippodrome, in 1904, Houdini wowed the 4000 gripped audience members as he broke free from handcuffs designed by the Daily Illustrated Mirror to be impossible to escape. The resulting international media coverage was seismic for Houdini’s career.

But was it a masterful escape? Or a brilliantly conceived piece of mutually beneficial publicity?

Derren Brown explores how Houdini became the ultimate master in media manipulation. And how his ability to self-mythologise in the media suggests there was something fishy going on in the Hippodrome that day.

Far from being a let-down, however, Derren argues Houdini’s weaponisation of the media is a sign of his genius. His invented near-death river escapes demonstrate a canny ability to spin in a very modern way.

His understanding of the media then helped to secure Houdini’s name as a pioneer aviator!

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

Documentary evidence shows that when Harry Houdini first arrived in the UK, he struck up a friendship, of sorts, with a man who would go on to pioneer British espionage. A man who would go on to be the inspiration for the character “M” in Ian Fleming’s James Bond.

It begs the question: Beyond the handcuffs and the stage, did the world's most famous mystifier, Houdini, lead a double life as an international informant?

From suspicious passport alterations to intelligence reports signed "HH" ahead of tours through volatile Russia and Germany, the pieces of a tantalising puzzle begin to fall into place.

There is, after all, a striking overlap between the misdirection of a master magician and the tradecraft of espionage. Whatever the answer, Houdini’s fame clearly benefitted from his high-profile connections.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

When an authoritarian empire threatens to brand you a fraud and destroy your legacy, how do you fight back?

Derren Brown explores the high-stakes legal battles that helped cement Houdini’s European triumph.

Arriving in a hostile Berlin where the Imperial police aggressively censored entertainment, Houdini accepted the ultimate challenge, stripping naked before 300 officers to free himself from German restraints. But when a bitter policeman accused him of cheating and bribery, Houdini did the unthinkable: he sued for slander, turning the highest court in the German Empire into the ultimate theatrical stage.

Houdini brilliantly weaponised the legal system, orchestrating PR campaigns and dramatic courtroom victories that he transformed into powerful marketing posters.

Then, with his success on the rise, he faced a new threat: copycat acts. Again, Houdini used ingenious legal tactics to protect his brand in a distinctly modern approach.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

Houdini had made it big in America. At the very start of the 20th century, however, the pinnacle for performers was not the fledgling States, but Europe. So Houdini boarded a ship to London, where he learned how to make noise.

Derren Brown explores the brilliant promotional playbook that set Houdini miles ahead of his contemporaries. Stepping off the boat in London and charming the sceptics at Scotland Yard and the Alhambra Theatre, Houdini quickly realised that the secret to superstardom wasn't just the escape; it was the advertising.

We hear about the outrageous stunts that got the world talking: from engineered rivalries on opening night and lines of bald men spelling his name down Parisian boulevards, to ingenious brand partnerships with local businesses and breweries.

While brilliant technical assistants pioneered new tricks behind the scenes, Houdini’s entrepreneurial genius proved his greatest strength in the battle for attention.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

Houdini almost gave up on the act that would make him a star: the handcuff escape. But with his wife’s encouragement, he persisted. And it paid off.

Join Derren Brown as we learn how Houdini went from a sideshow hustler to the big time.

In 1899, Martin Beck, a Vaudeville booker, stumbled into a beer hall in St Paul, Minnesota, and changed Houdini’s life. He thought Houdini’s handcuff escape act was uniquely interesting and offered him a run of shows.

Houdini grasped the opportunity with both hands. As his understanding of what his audiences desired increased, so too did his star rise. He became a Vaudeville star.

Presenter: Derren Brown

In the late 19th Century, a young Hungarian immigrant called Eric Weisz chose magic as the means to provide for his ageing mother. He found inspiration in the form of a memoir, and his identity morphed: young Eric became Harry Houdini, and a legend was born.

But legendary status only came later. And it required persistence to achieve it. Because cutting through the cutthroat magic scene of the time proved tricky. Alongside a rotating cast of magical sidekicks, Houdini tried his hand at card tricks, comedy and even became a fraudulent spirit medium for a short while.

With these acts, he scraped by in dime museums, circuses, and medicine shows. But it was his bigger stunts that finally got the attention he craved, though. One trick he pioneered during his teenage years would go on to form part of his act for the rest of his life.

Join Derren Brown as he explores the ups and downs of a performer dead set on finding his voice and making it big as he first dabbles with the idea of escape.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

One hundred years after his death, how did an ordinary immigrant child transform himself into the most famous magician in history?

In episode one of How Houdini Made Magic, psychological illusionist Derren Brown traces the early life of Eric Weisz.

In 1878, Eric’s family voyaged from Budapest to the American promised land of Appleton, Wisconsin. What awaited him was the unforgiving Gilded Age America. But Eric turned hardship and personal tragedy into a motivation that would become the driving force of his life: to keep his ageing mother comfortable.

Presenter: Derren Brown

A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4