How Houdini Made Magic: 8. Keep ahead of the times

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During the filming of the 1919 film, The Grim Game, there was a real-life mid-air plane crash. The star of the movie was the greatest escape artist of all time: Harry Houdini. So how did the producers capitalise on the crash? By telling the press that Houdini was on that plane and survived near certain death. He was not on the plane; it was a stunt double (who did survive). But the public didn’t need to know that. They needed to know that Houdini was now a movie star. While biographers often…