Comments on: The Quick 10: 10 Facts About Harry Houdini

By: jimmy

jimmy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:45:00 +0000

how do you know he was not punched in the stomach you were not there i was i heard all about it from Ehrich and how he didn’t want to go to the hospital even though he was in a lot of pain

By: xphiler06

xphiler06 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:47:00 +0000

Yay! Buster Keaton! There is a sequence in Keaton’s “Sherlock, Jr.” where he jumps through a wall. I believe he credited that to Houdini, who was Keaton’s godfather and taught him some tricks of the trade.

If I remember correctly, Keaton kept the “how” a secret until the 50s, when the non-fact-based-biopic “The Buster Keaton Story” was made, and Keaton showed Donald O’Connor how to safely recreate the stunt.

By: Drina

Drina — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:53:00 +0000

That’s pretty cool! Thanks!

By: JenPo

JenPo — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:29:00 +0000

I heard that he had to be rescued from the beer cask, not because he couldn’t do it, but because the beer fumes were so strong they made him pass out. (I’ve also heard that he was a teetotaler and this contributed, but I’m not sure about that).

By: roa

roa — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:23:00 +0000

I was going to ask someone to explain #6, specifically, how the words correspond to the letters of the alphabet which spell ‘Believe.’ But I looked it up myself and thought I’d share!

By the way, Houdini’s ten word secret code was: “Rosabelle – Answer – Tell – Pray, Answer – Look – Tell – Answer, Answer – Tell.” It was based upon an old Vaudeville mindreading routine. “Rosabelle” was the name of the song Bess was singing when the two first met. The other words correspond to a secret spelling code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during a mind reading act. Each word or word pairs equals a letter. The word “Answer” stood for the letter “B”, for example. “Answer, Answer” stood for the letter “V”. With this unique code within a code, Houdini’s secret spelled out the word, “BELIEVE.”

I did a google search for the string of words and the first result gave me this information.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:02:00 +0000

I know you retracted the “sucker punch” statement in the actual body of the article, but I still wish people would stop propagating that myth!

Having had appendicitis recently, I really feel for him. What an awesome dude; hope his memory lives on forever.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:29:00 +0000

According to his biography, he was the first person to fly a plane in Australia.

By: Johnny Cat

Johnny Cat — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:53:00 +0000

Yeah, I spent from age 10 until mid-twenties believing he died during a performance, thanks to that movie.

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:52:00 +0000

He was a pretty good looking dude, too. Great article. :)