HISTORY CHANNEL FAKES HOUDINI

"Novels arise from the shortcomings of history," the philosopher Novalis once wrote. We’ve had a long career as an investigative journalist and a second career researching Houdini’s history for this blog and for the Library of Congress, where we're consultants. We know that it's not easy to nail down even the simplest fact.

But that's no excuse for faking it, or for getting sloppy, lazy or cheap. Even in our forthcoming historical novel about Houdini, The Escape Artist, we try to stick to all the known facts. The last thing we want is for some professor to write to The New York Times complaining, "Doesn't that idiot know they didn't have telephones in Moscow until 1882?" 

One dumb howler destroys the credibility of the whole thing.

That's precisely our impression so far of what the so-called History Channel is doing with Houdini’s life story.

Here's a production still that has surfaced from the History series now being filmed in Budapest. It purports to show the Appleton, Wisconsin post office in the era of Houdini's childhood, circa 1880. But look up top where they use the two-letter abbreviation for Wisconsin - WI. In the words of that cranky professor: "Don't those idiots know the U.S. Post Office didn't use two-letter abbreviations until 1963?"

These pictures look like History has recycled an old Wild West movie set to fake up Appleton. “The audience will never know the difference,” we can almost hear them saying. Well, take a look at the real historic Appleton:

What’s pathetic about this is that Appleton has a large landmarked historic district with 27 buildings still standing just as they were in Houdini’s day. Far from being a hick hamlet, it was a prosperous papermaking and university town, boasting the first electric trolley cars in America! 

Appleton c. 1886

This video, shot in 1930, takes us on a trolley ride through Appleton that  looks very much like it did in Houdini’s period more than a hundred years ago. Scrub through for a quick tour of history:

OK, so History blew it on Appleton. How about the rest of the scenes?

Well, here’s a shot of Adrien Brody, playing Harry, preparing for the straitjacket escape in "History's" recreation of downtown San Francisco. As you can see, it’s right in front of the San Francisco Chronicle building, the city’s famous newspaper.

Problem is, Houdini did that stunt in front of Hearst’s Examiner building, the age-old rival of the Chronicle. Wrong location. So the question remains: if the History Channel is getting all the simple stuff wrong, what are they doing to the rest of the story?

Paging the fact checkers! They would point out that Hearst sold the Examiner and now owns the Chronicle. More to the point, Hearst is also joint owner of the History channel!

It’s exactly this kind of sloppiness that has mangled not only Houdini’s life story but so much of our history. The History channel should be correcting the mistakes of history, not making new, ugly ones.

© 2013 David Saltman

(Stills from film.hu. Appleton images from Fox Valley Historical Society. SF scene via Tumblr. Thanks to John Cox for the lead.)