HOUDINI

In the 1890s, young Harry Houdini (Tony Curtis) is performing with a Coney Island carnival as Bruto, the Wild Man, when Bess (Janet Leigh), a naive onlooker, tries to protect him from the blows of Schultz (Sig Ruman), his "handler". Harry also appears as magician "The Great Houdini" and, spotting Bess in the audience, invites her on stage. When Harry flirts with the unsuspecting Bess, she quickly leaves. Bess shows up two more times, and finally admits her attraction. They marry and live with Harry's mother. Bess becomes Harry's onstage assistant, touring the country with him.

Bess tires of the low pay and grueling schedule and convinces Harry to take a job in a locksmith factory. Harry, a lock tester, fantasizes about escaping from one of the factory's large safes. On Halloween, Harry and Bess attend the Magician Society dinner. Magician Fante offers a prize to anyone who can free himself from a straitjacket. As many frantically jump about trying to escape, Harry, through intense concentration, extricates himself from the jacket, impressing Fante. Later, Fante advises Harry to give up being a magician, noting that Johann Von Schweger, a German magician, retired at the height of his career after performing a similar feat, fearful of his own talents. Bess persuades Harry to cash in the single, round-trip boat ticket to Europe he won, to save for a down payment on a house.

At the factory, Harry locks himself inside a big safe, determined to escape. However, the foreman orders the safe blown open before Harry can get out, then fires him. Harry and Bess argue about their future, and frustrated by Bess wanting him to quit magic, Harry walks out. A contrite Bess finds Harry performing with a carnival and presents him with two one-way tickets to Europe. During a performance at London theater, a reporter challenges Harry to escape Scotland Yard's notoriously secure jail cells. Harry, who hired the reporter to issue the challenge, accepts, unaware that the cell locks are not in the doors, but on the outside wall. Though challenging, Houdini successfully picks the lock. Now billed as, "the man who escaped Scotland Yard", Harry and Bess embark on a successful European tour.

In Berlin Harry searches for the reclusive Von Schweger. Meanwhile, Harry is arrested for fraud, but during his trial, he denies ever claiming to have supernatural powers, insisting his tricks are accomplished through physical means. To prove his point, Harry locks himself inside a safe in the courtroom and successfully escapes. Vindicated, Harry then goes to see Von Schweger, who finally responded to his queries. However, Von Schweger's assistant, Otto (Torin Thatcher), says the magician died two days earlier. Otto reveals that Von Schweger summoned Harry to ask him the secret of "dematerialization", a feat he accomplished once but could not repeat. Although Harry demurs, Otto insists on becoming Harry's new assistant and travels with him to New York City.

Once back in America, Harry finds he is virtually unknown. For publicity, he hangs upside down on a skyscraper flagpole, constrained by a straitjacket. Harry executes the escape and soon becomes known. Harry prepares to be submerged in a box in the cold Detroit River. During the performance, the chain holding the box breaks, and it drops into an opening in the ice-covered river. Although Harry escapes the box, the current drags him downstream. He struggles to find air pockets under the ice and swim back to the opening. Above, Bess and the horrified audience assume Harry has drowned and proclaim his demise. To Bess's relief, Harry shows up later at their hotel, saying that he heard his mother's voice, directing him toward the opening. Just then, Harry receives word that his mother died at the exact time that he heard her calling.

Two years later in New York, Harry has not performed since his mother's death. He tells a reporter that he has been attempting to contact his mother's spirit, without success. Harry invites the reporter to attend a seance with him. The medium appears to have contacted his mother, but Harry and Otto expose her as a fake. After a public crusade against phony mediums, Harry plans to return to the stage and builds a torture water cell for the occasion. Terrified, Bess threatens to leave Harry unless he drops the dangerous trick, and he agrees not to perform it. Before the show, Harry admits to Otto that his appendix area is tender, but goes on, despite the pain. When the audience noisily demands that he perform the advertised "water torture" trick, Harry succumbs. He is immersed, upside down, in a tank of water. Weak, Harry is unable to escape and loses consciousness. Otto breaks the tank's glass, and after reviving, the now-dying Harry vows to a weeping Bess that, if possible, he will return.