Movies and new kinds of popular entertainment were in their infancy and starting to reach deep into the heartland of America and spread across Europe. Houdini was in the right place at the right time. And that is, in many ways, the greatest form of self-liberation imaginable.” He’s showing that one small immigrant from the family of a rabbi – he never made any secret of the fact – could be his own man. This is the view held by Raymond Joseph Teller (the quiet one of the magician team Penn and Teller), who says of Houdini’s Jewish origins: “To me, it was almost irrelevant. His role as a symbol for aspirant Jews – a kind of living Golem – was a by-product of his own relentless ambition and drive. While it may be true that his escape tricks from locked handcuffs, a water-filled milk churn, straitjackets, coffins and crates, chains and ropes and padlocks all act as a metaphor for the escape from the shackles of prejudice, Houdini was more interested in his own mission to become the world’s greatest entertainer. Houdini led by example rather than design. This fact did not go unremarked by Jews who embraced him as a totem of hope for escape from the sweatshops and prejudices and ghettos to seek a prominent place in US society. Most important of all for one section of the community, Houdini was Jewish.

Houdini greatest escape