HOUDINI'S DEATH- THE REAL STORY
In the 1953 movie Houdini starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, the great magician died a spectacular death-   attempting to perform his dangerous Water Torture Cell illusion. A Hollywood ending to be sure, but not true at all. The sad truth is that Houdini was in the middle of a U.S. tour in the fall of 1926 when he began to experience severe stomach discomfort. A performer to the core, Houdini refused medical treatment, because that would have meant missing some shows. Quite possibly Houdini was suffering from the onset of appendicitis, and his own stubborn refusal to see a doctor may have spelled his doom. Houdini was tired, and unusually accident-prone. In Albany, NY, a few weeks before his death, his ankle broke as he was being lifted into the Water Torture Cell onstage. In pain, he continued to perform. A few days later, in Canada, he allegedly was punched in the stomach by a university student who was testing Houdini's well-known ability to withstand blows to the body. That punch may or may not have been the cause of Houdini's ruptured appendix; regardless, Houdini collapsed onstage a few days later in Detroit, and was admitted to Grace Hospital, suffering from peritonitis.

On Halloween, with his brother Hardeen at his side, Houdini passed away. His last words were, "I'm tired of fighting".

Though Houdini officially died of peritonitis, Bess was able to collect double indemnity on his insurance policy, claiming the blow was equivalent to "an accident directly causing the premature demise of Harry Houdini".

Read Houdini's fascinating life story

HOUDINI'S SPOOKY PREMONITION
One macabre sidebar: in the summer of 1926, a few months before he died, Houdini heard about a magician who had sealed himself inside a box and had been lowered into water, where he allegedly stayed for over an hour, submerged, before coming up out of the water and the box, triumphant. Houdini purchased a bronze coffin and had himself locked into it and submerged in a hotel swimming pool for an hour and a half before the coffin was pulled out of the water and opened to reveal a smiling, healthy Houdini. Houdini took the coffin on tour with him in the fall, displaying it in the lobbies of the theaters he played. He jokingly instructed his wife to use the coffin "should anything happen" to him while on tour. It was in that very coffin that Houdini's body was returned to New York for burial.

HOUDINI AND SPIRITUALISM
Houdini was a skeptic on the subject of spirits returning from the dead to speak to the living. He battled spiritualists in court, the most famous being the Boston medium named Margery. He duplicated the same "ghostly" phenomena as the mediums in a special Spirit Cabinet built for both courtroom use and for his stage shows. He argued at length with friend and ardent supporter of psychic phenomenon, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

HOUDINI'S SECRET MESSAGE
Despite his skepticism, Houdini and his wife Bess devised a secret message that was to be used to test the validity of any so-called spirit message coming from either of them, should one or the other die.

The message was based on both sentimentality and an old vaudeville mindreading routine. The message was, "Rosabelle- answer- tell- pray, answer- look- tell- answer, answer- tell". Bess' wedding band bore the inscription "Rosabelle", the name of the song she sang in her act when they first met. The other words correspond to a secret spelling code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during a mentalism act. Each word or word pair equals a letter. The word "answer" stood for the letter "B", for example. "Answer, answer" stood for the letter "V". Thus, the Houdinis' secret phrase spelled out the word "BELIEVE".

HOUDINI SPEAKS! OR DOES HE?
Bess began the tradition of holding a séance to see whether Houdini, the Man No Jail Could Hold, could escape from death. These séances, of course, provided rich publicity, and Bess was dedicated to promoting the Houdini name. In early 1929, a very ill Bess was approached by "Rev." Arthur Ford, a young and eager medium. Within weeks, Ford triumphantly announced that he had successfully delivered the correct message to Houdini's widow. It did not take long for the press to discover that Ford's claim was a hoax, and that Bess had inadvertently revealed the message to several reporters a full year before Ford's claim.

THE HOUDINI SÉANCE TRADITION LIVES ON
The 1936 séance was the last one that Bess conducted. Ten years was enough, and she admitted that she had never received the message from Houdini. The magic fraternity quickly took on the task of the annual séances, with numerous notable magicians heading the table, including Walter Gibson, Houdini's ghostwriter and author/creator of The Shadow.