20th Century Time Machine | Harry Houdini: The Grim Game (Silent Film 1919). @20thCenturyTimeMachine | Uploaded May 2016 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
A public domain video.
This is the famous and, as of 2011, only surviving excerpt from The Grim Game, a 1919 silent film starring the world renowned escape artist and magician Harry Houdini. Framed for murder and unjustly imprisoned, Harvey Hanford, played by Houdini, uses his powers of escape to flee prison and pursue those who set him up and hold his fiancee hostage. This scene, filmed in Santa Monica, California, calls for Hanford to transfer from one plane to another in mid-air in an attempt to rescue his fiancee from her kidnappers. The planned stunt, however, goes awry, resulting in a real life crash, when the two planes collide, become entangled and nose dive into an empty field as a third plane captures the event. Nobody is fatally injured, and, as the official story goes, the screenplay is rewritten to incorporate this accident, which Paramount Pictures subsequently exploits to sell the movie to the public, dubbing it the most dramatic moment ever âcaught on film, and insisting that it is really Houdini attempting the mid-air exchange. In reality, the person filmed is his stunt double, Robert E. Kennedy, though some say it is stuntman and actor Monte Blue, while the famed magician is safely on the ground.
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youtube.com/channel/UC_S8ZlDCRkMMgc7ciw8X-hg
The 20th Century Time Machine takes you back in time to the most important historical events of the past century. Watch documentaries, discussions and real footage of major events that shaped the world we live in today.
youtube.com/watch?v=EHAZA5h5cmo
A public domain video.
This is the famous and, as of 2011, only surviving excerpt from The Grim Game, a 1919 silent film starring the world renowned escape artist and magician Harry Houdini. Framed for murder and unjustly imprisoned, Harvey Hanford, played by Houdini, uses his powers of escape to flee prison and pursue those who set him up and hold his fiancee hostage. This scene, filmed in Santa Monica, California, calls for Hanford to transfer from one plane to another in mid-air in an attempt to rescue his fiancee from her kidnappers. The planned stunt, however, goes awry, resulting in a real life crash, when the two planes collide, become entangled and nose dive into an empty field as a third plane captures the event. Nobody is fatally injured, and, as the official story goes, the screenplay is rewritten to incorporate this accident, which Paramount Pictures subsequently exploits to sell the movie to the public, dubbing it the most dramatic moment ever âcaught on film, and insisting that it is really Houdini attempting the mid-air exchange. In reality, the person filmed is his stunt double, Robert E. Kennedy, though some say it is stuntman and actor Monte Blue, while the famed magician is safely on the ground.
Subscribe - never miss a video!
youtube.com/channel/UC_S8ZlDCRkMMgc7ciw8X-hg
The 20th Century Time Machine takes you back in time to the most important historical events of the past century. Watch documentaries, discussions and real footage of major events that shaped the world we live in today.
youtube.com/watch?v=EHAZA5h5cmo
