Nothing On Earth Can Hold Houdini Prisoner!

“I am submerged in a large can that has been filled with water--and the lid is placed on and locked with six padlocks...It is a fine-looking trick.”

Houdini, handcuffed and chained, in a 1900 publicity photograph.

“The easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place some one is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will mean sudden death.”

Suspended from a flagpole, Houdini struggles to free himself from a straitjacket. Up to 100,000 people would skip school or work to see the "Upside-Down Stunt."

“Imagine yourself jammed head foremost in a cell filled with water, your hands and feet unable to move!”

"Sometimes I think that these stunts hold far greater thrills for me than they have even for the spectators."

A theater lobby display featured the rattan basket from which Houdini escapes in Danger in the Dark.

Houdini with Teddy Roosevelt on an Atlantic liner. Houdini’s mystifying demonstration astonished the former president in Shots at Sea.