November 9, 2017
Volume 46 - No. 44 by Friedrich Gomez
As a professional magician, I am often asked if Harry Houdini was really that great. That question requires a qualified answer: As a straight conjuror or stage magician, I would answer no. But, as an escape artist, he was absolutely without equal, even to this day. If I had an opportunity to be able to meet and speak to any magician, past to present, it would have to be Harry Houdini. He was not only world renowned as an escape artist, and a foremost authority on locks and locking mechanisms in general, but he was very intelligent on different levels: he was a pioneer aviator, movie star, owned his own movie studios, was fluent in four languages, and wellread on a variety of topics – all of which separates him, immediately, from any other conjurer, past to present. But purely as an escapologist, he had no peer.
Like Albert Einstein in science, Houdini often thought ‘outside the box’ in regards to ingenious methods of picking locks and extricating himself from different constraints.
It takes one’s breath away just how far he would go in hiding various devices, keys, and assorted picks to secretly open locks with. Yes, there were standard methods he employed, such as when he had doctors examine him in ‘strip searches’ while he was completely naked, prior to a jail cell escape. He initially would have no place to conceal a device for picking locks when a bona fide doctor would examine him thoroughly headto-foot, and leaving no body cavity unchecked. In such a scenario, he would shake hands with the physician and pat him on the back, leaving a lock-pick stuck with adhesive on the good doctor’s backside. After a thorough examination, Houdini would thank the attending physician and – once more -- pat him on the back as the good doctor made his exit. It was the final pat on the doctor’s backside that Houdini, secretly, retrieved the lock pick mechanism back into his possession. However, this method was not always infallible and if the attending physician was not within range to pat on the back The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119
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again (to retrieve Houdini’s key or pick), the great escape artist was up a creek.
This is when Houdini’s mind left planet Earth, and took a quantum leap into the unknown.
A very rare Houdini secret – even today among professional magicians – was a most mindboggling method of concealing a device for picking locks. As a
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magician, this is the first time I am exposing this secret in a nonmagical publication.
The secret of concealment by Houdini in sometimes hiding his lock-pick is an exercise in advanced-thinking which causes us to marvel at his ingenuity. It is extremely difficult to comprehend how Houdini even thought of this method over 90 years ago today – but, it only further
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reveals how truly great he was in his thinking process.
Here’s the method: Houdini knew that doctors would scrutinize in searching every fiber, every body cavity – even looking down his throat with a flashlight – to make certain he had nothing hidden from them. This left the great escape artist with no place to hide his secret key. Or so everyone thought.