Harry Houdini, the American magician and escape artist who became famous in the first quarter of this century, spent a great deal of his time exposing frauds. He insisted that all his own marvellous tricks were just that, accomplished entirely without supernatural assistance; he also exposed numerous “spiritualists” whose claims to otherworldly connections were hoaxes of one kind or another. Over the years he built up a tremendous reputation for uncompromising honesty. Yet Houdini was above all a showman—and at least once in his career the impulse to take credit for a great stunt overcame the impulse to tell the truth.

It was the fall of 1919, and Houdini was touring the country promoting his latest motion picture, The Grim Game , a superthriller featuring a daredevil attempt to transfer from one airplane to another—and the totally unexpected air collision that ensued. As part of the promotion Houdini (or his press agent) issued a release describing his feelings during the filming of this incident: “I was 3,000 feet up in an airplane circling above another machine. The plan was for me to drop from my plane into the cockpit of the other by means of a rope. I was dangling from the rope-end ready for the leap. Suddenly the two planes crashed together, the propellers locked, and we started plunging downward toward the earth—and Eternity. I was helpless—but strangely unafraid. A lifetime passed in an instant. The crash will come. I shall be gone. But it is not all. There is another life. There must be! was the comforting thought in my head. But fate ruled otherwise. By a miracle the planes were righted into a half-glide, and though they were smashed into splinters by their terrific impact with the ground, I was miraculously unhurt.”

This gives a reasonably accurate impression of the event, as the movie frames reproduced opposite suggest—except for one crucial point. The man swinging from the rope in mortal danger was not Harry Houdini, but an ex-Air Service flier, Robert E. Kennedy.

Irvin Willat, the director of the film, who is still alive and living in Hollywood, explained not long ago how it all happened. The script did call for Houdini, the star, to make the death-defying leap, and he was perfectly willing to try it. Willat, however, had made other arrangements.

“I simply wouldn’t allow Houdini to attempt it,” Willat said. “No director ever risks the success of a picture by allowing his star to perform a potentially lethal stunt. Houdini thought he was going to do it. But he was a very intelligent man and gave me no argument when I told him he wasn’t.”

The man who volunteered to do the stunt in Houdini’s place, Robert Kennedy, was one of a group of World War i fliers who were amusing themselves by working in the movies. Christopher V. Pickup was to fly the drop plane, while David E. Thompson, somewhat confusingly,