Houdini

Houdini (1953)

His feats of magic were GREAT! The magic of their love was GREATER!

By the early 1900s, the extraordinary Houdini earned an international reputation for his theatrical tricks and daring feats of extrication from shackles, ropes, handcuffs and... Scotland Yard's jails.

Date of release
1953-07-02
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (82)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Drama, Romance, History
Director
George Marshall

Casting

Interesting facts

Houdini is a 1953 American Technicolor biographical film from Paramount Pictures, produced by George Pal and Berman Swarttz, directed by George Marshall, that stars Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. The film's screenplay, based upon the life of magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, was written by Philip Yordan, based on the book Houdini by Harold Kellock. The film's music score was by Roy Webb and the cinematography by Ernest Laszlo. The art direction was by Albert Nozaki and Hal Pereira, and the costume design by Edith Head.

Production

In September 1951, it was announced that Paramount had bought The Life of Houdini and that George Pal would produce. Hedda Hopper suggested Orson Welles, who was a magician, would be an ideal star. Pal said he would make it after War of the Worlds.

Barré Lyndon wrote the first screenplay then Philip Yordan wrote another version. The distinguished magician, escapologist, and mentalist Joseph Dunninger, credited as "Dunninger", was technical adviser on the film. Dunninger was a good friend to many notables in the magic community including Houdini himself, Francis Martinka, and Tony Slydini.

In July 1952, Paramount announced that Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh would star under the direction of George Marshall. Curtis was borrowed from Universal, where he was under contract; he said he was delighted to make the film, as he had mainly been in action films up until that time. Leigh was borrowed from MGM. It would be the first time Curtis and Leigh, who were married, appeared together on screen.

To prepare for the role, Curtis trained with magician George Boston for one month. Joe Dunninger did the illusions. Leigh said she and Curtis learned the illusions "so that it wouldn't have to be done with camera trickery. When Tony levitated me, there were no cuts, and there were none during some of the other tricks — they were done "legit"." Leigh said, however, that the escape scenes were "fixed because Tony wasn't Houdini; he didn't have the…

The film was originally meant to be shot in black-and-white, but the decision was made during pre-production to film it in color to take full advantage of the costumes and sets.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended