![]() ![]() The attendant, who perhaps had nothing better to do, found a straitjacket and laced Houdini in. Harry Houdini seen in a 1906 publicity photo. I want to see the best straitjacket you have in the place.” “But I want you to do me the favor I ask and I will explain my reasons later. “I am going to make a somewhat peculiar request,” Houdini told a hospital attendant. “He was finally seen to brace himself up as if for some supreme effort,” the San Francisco Call reported the next day, “and with rapid strides walk toward the entrance to the insane ward.” Workers noticed him pacing outside, occasionally stopping to “scan the windows in an anxious manner.” On July 16, Houdini walked to the new Receiving Hospital, near today’s Civic Center. And his first attempt at a grand San Francisco stunt was more than a little alarming for his unwitting assistants. Within a few years, he'd become world-famous for his publicity stunts but, in 1899, Houdini was an unknown. Over the years, the city would provide a testing ground for some of Houdini’s most successful acts. That summer, Houdini and his wife Bess arrived in San Francisco for the first time. At the bottom he’d later write: “This wire changed my whole Life's journey." Sensing his luck was about to turn, Houdini held onto the telegram. He sent Houdini a telegram inviting him to join his Orpheum Circuit as an escape artist. Acts who signed onto the circuit had guaranteed employment for months as they went from performance to performance at Orpheum-operated theaters. The Slovakian immigrant worked with theater owners all over the western United States to book acts, creating what became known as the Orpheum Circuit. In the crowd was Martin Beck, the booking agent for San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre.īeck was just beginning his career as one of the most influential men in vaudeville. Down on his luck but not quite ready to pack it in, Houdini took his new handcuff escape to a Minnesota beer garden one spring day in 1899. ![]()
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