A Female Houdini In the Movies

"Girl Defies Death, Houdini Marvels"
(newspaper article)

Houdini wants to know how it was done. And by the way, Mr. Houdini, the handcuff king, was at the Hippodrome in Cleveland a week ago and mystified all the folks who saw his performance. 

Helen Holmes, a movie picture actress with the Kalem Company, who is appearing in the film, "Hazards of Helen", has duplicated Houdini's stunts.
Recently, she was thrown into the rough and choppy waters of San Pedro harbor, California, with her hands and feed tied. She escaped and met her sweetheart on the bank of the big stream just as the scenario said she must.
Miss Holmes has worked for more than a year on the trickery of escaping bonds. She has shown most of these in her moving pictures, which are the most daring of the kind ever exhibited.

So who was Helen Holmes? Well she was a silent movie actress from the Illinois born in 1893. She began making movies around 1912. As the Perils of Pauline serial began to take off, the Kalem film company decided to do a similar serial of their own starring Helen Holmes. Her films were somewhat different than the cliffhangers of the Perils of Pauline. Many of her films had Helen herself escaping her bonds or freeing herself rather than being rescued by someone else.

Given the time period in history, I kind of wonder if she did in fact do the escapes. She was known to perform her own stunts, so it's possible.

Helen did not perform the escapes outside of the movies, and any work she may have had in legitimate live theatre was as an actress and not as an escape artist. Her movie career ended in the mid 1920s but she remained in show business both working in theater and training animals for movies. She died in 1950

Below is a video of a typical Damsel in Distress shot from a movie. This is Helen Holmes in action. It appears she was doing these harrowing escapes in the movies before Houdini made his first film.

Houdini's Advice on Success

This is fascinating to me, it's an article that was written by Houdini, yet didn't appear in the papers until November 7th, 1926, a week after he died. The article is titled "Houdini Gave Advice to Modern Youth Battling for Success". The words he wrote are as applicable today as they were then.

"It's true, most unfortunately, that experience is a hard school, but we must learn it, and no other. The light of another's experience will not illuminate the path of youth very much. It is only after he has had his own hard knocks that he can profit by them."

"Starting out thirty years ago as a magician, I have passed hundreds who did not know that success was just another name for hard work. Those in the arrogance of their youth rarely listen to their elders; nevertheless I say that inspiration plays little part in success, and chance plays less. What little success I may have had has come from making up my mind in early youth to be the best in my line no matter what it cost in hard work, and never deviate from that course."

He then goes on to explain how success isn't achieved overnight. He shares the story of how he fearlessly jumps from high bridges and that he had to work up to that by overcoming the height challenges in stages. First learning to jump from one level and then going higher and gradually higher. It's a good analogy of how success is achieved through smaller steps but often to the outside observer who isn't aware of all that work, they think you just made those triumphs appear from thin air.

The final paragraph is interesting because on one hand it appears that he is pushing his anti-spiritualist agenda, but I think he is really expressing a thought with a double meaning. Sure, Houdini is pushing his fight against the Spiritualists, but by ending with this piece he is also expressing his view that success doesn't come about through 'magic or supernatural means' but by good ole hard work.

"No one possesses supernatural power... Do not therefore, be superstitious. Don't be afraid of spirits or spooks. There are none... Don't fear the dark. I have slept in haunted houses and cemeteries and the only thing I ever caught, was a cold."

I wish Houdini had lived longer so he could continue his columns of advice, but instead these were truly his final words.

Houdini Girl

The headline reads "Baby Houdini, Holder of the South American Underwater Swimming Title" on the cover of the June 22, 1921 edition of the Riverside Enterprise Newspaper. This young girl is Alma Mann and she is 11 years old in the photo above. She made a name for herself as a championship swimmer and diver. But she also included underwater escape stunts ala Houdini.

Alma Mann was from the Canal Zone in Panama. She was apparently quite the sensation down there and eventually came to NYC with her Canal Zone Swim Team to compete in swimming events and do exhibitions at the new Madison Square Garden Pool. At home, Alma was the first person to swim the Culebra Cut near the Panama Canal and she broke the ladies speed record of walking across the Isthmus (from Ocean to Ocean) a distance of 50 miles,  in only 16 hours. She did this at the age of 12.

Where she discovered her skills as an escape artist is unclear. She was obviously a tremendous swimmer and athlete at a very young age. The addition of underwater escapes did help her to get media coverage that other girls her age were not getting, so perhaps that was the sole reason she did them.

One of her stunts was to dive from a height of forty feet while bound in 70 feet of rope. She would remain underwater until she was completely free.

She continued to get press from her swimming and escapes stunts for a couple years and then my guess is she went back to an ordinary life as I could not find any other newspaper articles on her. She was never really a Houdini competitor, as far as I can tell she never worked vaudeville. She only added the escape stunts to help promote her swimming and diving exhibitions. I can't imagine an eleven year old even being allowed to attempt such a thing today, but this was back in the 1920s, definitely a different time.

Blog comments are welcome and encouraged. Also, if I happen to get some fact wrong historically I do appreciate having someone set me straight on that. I try to get the best information possible, but even I can miss something. If you want to discuss a blog in detail, please email me carnegiemagic@aol.com