By Benjamin Filene, Curator
Taken from the Mystifier, a publication of the Houdini Historical Center
Volume 5, Number 4 Fourth Quarter, 1996
CONGRESSMAN BLOOM: I would like to have Mr. Houdini make a short statement about the bill.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: May I inquire who he is and if he is not an astrologist.
CONGRESSMAN BLOOM: You may inquire of Mr. Houdini. 1
So commenced Harry Houdini’s appearance before Congress in 1926. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the District of Columbia was conducting hearings on whether to ban fortunetelling in the District, and Houdini was a major player in the proceedings. At that point, only months before his death, Houdini was a household name, perhaps at the peak of his fame. Nonetheless, currents of uncertainty run through the 170-page transcript of the hearing, doubts exemplified by Congressman Hammer’s introductory query and Congressman Bloom’s cautious reply: Who is this man Houdini? Is he any different from the crystal-ball gazers, palm readers, and spirit channelers whom he attacks? As Houdini conducted his proud crusade against spiritualism in the nations’ capital, he faced unsettling suppositions – that he was a publicity hound, anti-religious, or, worst of all, divine.
On the face of it, a Congressional hearing would seem to have been the ideal forum for Houdini. Since it was open to the public, he could draw on his formidable talents as a performer. He could expose the opposition with dramatic demonstrations thereby winning the allegiances of spectators in the hearing room and dominating the newspapers’ headlines. At the same time, since he was making his case before powerful legislators, he could showcase his talents as a scientific expert. He could break down the spiritualists’ illusions point by point, using rational argument to show up the opposition and sway the congressmen to his side. The hearing, it would seem, would allow Houdini to combine some of his favorite roles: he could be both entertainer and expert, showman and scientist.
To an extent, Houdini did capitalize on these advantages. He staged, for example, several theatrical moments in the hearing room. At one point he tossed $10,000 on to the committee table and challenged any medium present to produce an effect that he could not expose. For dramatic emphasis, he added that the manager of Merchants Bank was in the room, to “vouch for the genuineness of this money,” an announcement that drew applause from the gallery (p.67). At another point, Houdini accused two mediums in the audience of having stolen money from him the night before. According to the hearing transcript, “The committee and the audience were thrown into a state of confusion” by this announcement (p.29). The true story was less dramatic: one of Houdini’s investigators had paid the mediums for readings that, Houdini asserted, were fraudulent. Nonetheless, Houdini’s tactics brought him the desired results. Although New York Congressman Sol Bloom had introduced the bill against fortune telling, it was Houdini and his battles with the mediums that dominated accounts of the proceedings in The New York Times.
In addition to orchestrating these publicity stunts, Houdini worked with some success to assume the posture of scholar at the hearings. He offered the congressmen step-by-step explanations of how spiritualists produced illusions, and gave detailed reports of the undercover investigations that he and his staff had conducted across the country. Throughout these expositions, Houdini portrayed himself as the fearless rationalist willing to go any length in the name of science. At one point, he announced that the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and asked him to join a number of Harvard professors on a committee to investigate psychic phenomena. “They did not select me for any intellectual attainments,” Houdini explained modestly. “They know that if in a séance any ectoplasm appears that I will grab it and have it analyzed” (p. 63).
Even as Houdini seemed to dominate the hearing, though, it began to spin beyond his control. Surprisingly, Houdini frequently found himself on the defensive during testimony. Some of the complaints against him were predictable. Spiritualists charged that Houdini’s attacks were motivated not by scientific objections to their practices but by a thirst for publicity. A strident Houdini responded that in order to appear at the hearings he had “refused return engagements in the Belasco Theater in this city which would net me $5,000 to $7,000 ... I brought my staff up here. They are under salary; they are under expenses” (p.70).
Other insinuations, though, were more nettlesome to Houdini, particularly since they came not only from his spiritualist opponents but from the congressmen themselves, the very judges whom Houdini had hoped to sway with his rational arguments against the occult. Houdini faced a series of questions about whether his campaign was, in fact, an attack on mediums’ freedom of religion. Houdini retorted angrily that mediums operated only “under the cloak of [the Spiritualist] religion” (p.7). “I want to go on the record as not attacking a religion...” (p.12). “They say I am quarreling with their religion, but that is their smoke screen” (p.68). Even Houdini’s personal religious beliefs were questioned: “Have you any religious views?” one congressman asked. “Yes, sir,” Houdini replied. “I am the son of a rabbi. For hundreds of years my forebears were rabbi” (p.14).
Most distressing of all to Houdini, though, was that throughout the proceedings both the spiritualists and the congressmen pursued the notion that Houdini – the scientist himself! – must have supernatural abilities. An exchange early in the proceedings illustrated the persistence of this line of argument. Congressman Bloom asked Houdini, “Everything you do is just as a magician?”
HOUDINI: Yes, sir; I call it “mystification.” But I do tricks nobody can explain.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: You do not do this by any divine powers?
HOUDINI: No, sir.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: But these mediums do?
CONGRESSMAN McLEOD (interposing): You claim you have psychic power?
HOUDINI: They say I Have. No one has; we are all born alike (p.14).
Only minutes later, though, despite Houdini’s denials, a spiritualist named Jane Coates took the stand and asserted, “I think Mr. Houdini is one of the greatest mystics the world possesses to-day.”
CONGRESSMAN BLOOM: But he says he is not.
MRS. COATES: Mr. Houdini denies everyone’s statement that is not on his side of the case (p.17).
The issue of Houdini’s supernatural abilities repeatedly derailed his efforts to expose spiritualist frauds before the committee. Repeatedly he tried to demystify spiritualist effects by showing that he himself could duplicate the illusions. The congressmen instead interpreted these demonstrations as evidence that, for better or worse, Houdini and the spiritualists were in the same camp after all.
At one point, Houdini explained that mediums used sleight of hand to create the illusion of otherworldly spirits writing messages on slates. Congressman Hammer noted that “your work is sleight of hand [emphasis added]. You do not claim any divine power?”
HOUDINI: No: I am just an ordinary mortal trying to get along.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: You do not do this by any divine or religious power?
HOUDINI: No...
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: I think you admit you are a fraud? [Laughter] (pp.69-70).
In another exchange Houdini described how at one performance his audience was convinced that he had dematerialized his body. Congressman McLeod pursued the matter: “They believed it was...real?”
HOUDINI: Yes.
CONGRESSMAN McLEOD: ...Did they not pay an admission fee? [Houdini acknowledges this]...Then it is a fact that you were doing practically the same thing [as the spiritualists], only you called it trickery.
HOUDINI: I did not say it was religion, and I did not charge for telling their fortunes. I entertained them.
CONGRESSMAN McLEOD: You get paid for allowing that belief to rest in the people.
HOUDINI: I tell them it is trickery.
CONGRESSMAN McLEOD: They do not believe it.
HOUDINI: They do not believe it (pp.28-29).
Judging by the transcripts of the hearings, it seems that Houdini was befuddled by the congressmen’s insinuations. He reacted with agitated denials and erratic countercharges. At one point, determined to establish his standing as a clear-thinking, God-fearing man, Houdini resorted to calling his wife Bess as a character reference:
HOUDINI: I stated yesterday that I do believe in the Almighty. I have always believed and I will always believe. I am a Mason, and you must believe in God to be a Mason. My character has been assailed. I would like to have as a witness here Mrs. Houdini [Laughter.]
Step this way, Mrs. Houdini. One of the witnesses said I was a brute and that I was vile and I was crazy. Won’t you step this way? I want the chairman to see you... On June 22, 1926, is when we will celebrate our thirty-second anniversary. There are no medals and no ribbons on me but when a girl will stick to a man for 32 years as she did and when she will starve with me and work with me through thick and thin, it is a pretty good recommendation... Have I shown traces of being crazy, unless it was about you? [Laughter.]
MRS. HOUDINI: No.
MR. HOUDINI: Am I brutal to you, or vile?
MRS. HOUDINI: No.
MR. HOUDINI: Am I a good boy?
MRS. HOUDINI: Yes.
MR. HOUDINI: Thank you, Mrs. Houdini. [Applause.] (pp.51-52)
Such desperate moves seem to have had little effect on the subcommittee. As the proceedings drew toward a close, Congressman Hammer abruptly shifted the focus of the inquiry directly onto Houdini himself.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: The original Houdini was a Hindu, was he not?
HOUDINI: No.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: You are Houdini the second?
HOUDINI: No.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: You are the original Houdini?
HOUDINI: No; the original Houdini was a French clock maker.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: I thought he lived in Allahabab.
HOUDINI: Are you joking?
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: No; I am in earnest.
After a number of such questions, Houdini interjected angrily, “I know that you are asking spiritualistic questions and I want to let you know I know it.”
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: No, I have been told that your people came from British India. That is all I was trying to find out. It is contended here that you are a medium and do not know it. These people really believe that you have divine power and that you won’t admit it. That is the reason I am asking you these questions...Have you ever been in Allahabab?
HOUDINI: No, sir.
Following another series of these exchanges, Congressman Hammer concluded by asking, “Did you have anything to do with numerology? Do you know anything about it? The figure 3, you know, as numerology says, represents a serpent.”
HOUDINI: I do not believe in that truck – in numerology.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: You do not believe in that any more than you do in astrology or fortune-telling or soothsaying?...There is none of that in your performances? It is all really tricks and sleight of hand?
HOUDINI: Yes, sir.
CONGRESSMAN HAMMER: I am very much obliged to you.
No doubt stunned, Houdini moved haltingly to defend himself anew, replying, “You are very welcome. I am very happily married, 52 years of age, well to do, and very proud -- ” Here Congressman Reid interjected, “And very proud of your wife, or try to make us think so” (pp.150-152).
Throughout the Congressional hearing, Houdini had tried to portray himself as a skilled performer and a careful scholar. Clearly, though, his audience had settled on very different identities for him. Despite Houdini’s repeated protestations, both the spiritualists and the congressmen saw him as shaman as much as showman; occultist as much as scientist. The man of many faces – the rabbi’s son, the handcuff king, the man of letters, the self-proclaimed “elusive American” – had become saddled with other identities that, despite his fiercest resistance, he could not shake.
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