But it stuck to the lore surrounding his association with the mystical, especially during his time late in life spent debunking assorted frauds who claimed they could put Houdini in touch with his deceased mother. The best-known feature based on his life, 1953’s Houdini, offered the then-nifty gimmick of husband and wife Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh playing the illusionist and his spouse. But privately, his wife, Bess (Kristen Connolly), asserts that he can’t even wash his ears without her help.

On stage, audience gasps and intense stares emanated a level of energy that Houdini fed off of.

Meyer’s book (as adapted by his son, Star Trek writer-director Nicholas Meyer) posits that Houdini’s resistance to following in the footsteps of his father, a rabbi from Budapest who never really assimilated into American culture, coupled with the unreserved adoration that his mother showered on him, made for an alternately confident but sometimes helpless man. Using the framework of a relatively obscure book, Houdini: A Mind in Chains – A Psychoanalytic Portrait, it tries to explain some of what actually motivated the man.ĭr. In between, Uli Edel’s miniseries scrutinizes the enigmatic Houdini’s personal life more than previous projects. It’s a representative flashpoint the miniseries will go back to at the end of its first half and at the start of its second. Houdini begins with master escape artist Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody) in chains, plunging into a frozen river from St.

Houdini curtis