Word: houdini
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Richard III, the alternating attraction, is considerably less successful. The play surges stirringly over the steps and platforms of an ingenious permanent set; troops of actors use every conceivable kind of entrance, save sliding down the tent poles. But the production traps Alec Guinness like Houdini in his water tank, and he manages only a few times to burst forth with some real acting. Guinness could never be really bad, and is always good company. But he is apt to be subtly ironic where Richard must be grandly hypocritical, mildly unpleasant where he should be heroically evil...
...Houdini (Paramount) dramatizes the life of Master Magician Harry Houdini,* famed for his escapes from strait jackets, handcuffs, jail cells and locked and sealed containers of all kinds. Unfortunately, this account of the Houdini story fails to escape from the conventional, romanticized film-biography formula...
...rich Technicolor, the Houdini career is followed from struggling carnival magician to the world's best known illusionist. The movie ends with his death in 1926 at the age of 52 while he was suspended upside down in a strait jacket in a huge tank of water (actually, Houdini died in a hospital of peritonitis). Other highlights: his arrest in Germany on the charge that his act was a fraud and his acquittal after demonstrating his abilities in a courtroom; his escapes from a strait jacket while dangling from a Times Square building, from a packing case lowered into...
...picture makes no attempt to give away any of the secrets of Houdini's feats. In the title role, Tony Curtis is as unrevealing about Houdini the man as about Houdini the magician, hardly hinting at his dynamic personality, strength, ingenuity and resourcefulness. As Houdini's wife and assistant, Janet Leigh (Mrs. Tony Curtis in real life) is another cute trick. Together, they achieve an illusion that outdoes Houdini himself: in the good old Hollywood tradition, they grow old in the film's final sequences without perceptibly growing one bit less young and handsome...
...Then, as he went off to relax on the sands at Acapulco, many a New Yorker guessed that he would settle down south of the border for good, to bask in the southern sun and enjoy the admiration of the understanding Latins, and perhaps reflect cozily, like a retired Houdini recalling the box trick, on his old adventures in practical politics...