Houdini is upside-down in a locked cage, water is spraying from the top, and his bare feet are breaking through into the air.
The Strobridge Lithographing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio published the lithograph around 1916. It is the "caged" variant of the advertising for Houdini's Water Torture Cell. Houdini first performed the Chinese Water Torture Cell in public at Circus Busch in Berlin on 21 September 1912, and kept the escape in his variety-theatre tours through to 1926. One Houdini researcher points to an April 1915 Baltimore Evening Sun illustration and a January 1916 Houston theatre review describing a solid steel cage with 22 locks.
He suggests that the caged apparatus shown here may match a real variation used in the 1915 to 1916 US touring season. In private correspondence Houdini called the act "upside-down", or USD. Strobridge was founded in Cincinnati in 1847, and the poster's copyright line reads Cincinnati and New York.
On the poster
The inverted figure wears a blue-striped swimsuit and is locked inside a cage of studded timber and iron bars. Every panel is secured with gold padlocks of varying makes. Water sprays outward in white arcs from the open top. The lower panel carries the $1,000 reward challenge in bold blue condensed type. Across the top, "HOUDINI" is set in towering gold shadowed capitals against a cadmium-red ground.
About this print
A digitally restored reproduction, printed on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art paper with pigment inks.
