Although the possibility of contacting his mother was always on Houdini's mind. Houdini had an interest in spiritualism from the start of his own magic career, and his crusade against fraudulent mediums did not begin until 10 years after his mother died. However, the direct connection of his mother's death and his involvement in spiritualism is not entirely accurate. It's true that the death of his mother in 1913 (not 1914) devastated Houdini. Was Houdini devastated by the death of his mother? (Read: When Houdini walked through a brick wall.) As to whether the method shown in the miniseries is the correct one. Yet it left such a strong impression that he is still called "the man who walked through walls" today. Houdini only performed the effect for a short time before turning it over to his brother Hardeen.
Houdini did indeed walk through a brick wall in July 1914, although he performed the illusion at Hammerstein's Roof Garden Victoria Theater in New York, and not in London as shown in the miniseries. (Read: 100 years ago Houdini vanished an elephant.) How exactly Houdini made his elephant vanish is still debated today. Houdini later revived the illusion using a smaller elephant for live appearances at the Time Square Theater to promote his film, The Man From Beyond. But unlike in the miniseries, Houdini vanished his elephant in a gigantic box made to look like a circus wagon. Houdini performed his Vanishing Elephant during a record-breaking engagement at New York's Hippodrome Theater in 1918. After Houdini's death in 1926, Hardeen inherited his brother's props and resumed his magic career until his own death in 1945. Dash left show business to run Houdini's film developing lab in New Jersey in 1916. While the brothers sometimes posed as "rivals" for the press - and might have had a few moments of genuine competition - they were not rivals as shown in the miniseries. This worked well and Hardeen established himself as a popular and credible escape artist in his own right. The idea was for Dash to take bookings in theaters and circuits that Houdini didn't play, and the brothers could effectively shut out the many cheap imitators of the escape act. In November of 1900, Houdini invited Dash to come to Europe where he set him up with a complete act and named him Hardeen. Houdini was very close with his younger brother Theo a.k.a. Was Houdini's brother also a magician and escape artist? For those who'd like to separate fact from fiction, we continue our fact check of HISTORY's Houdini.
However, the miniseries redeemed itself in Night Two which, finally free of the silly spy movie narrative, was able to focus on the events of Houdini's real life and even right some wrongs of earlier biopics. Part One established HISTORY's Houdini as the least accurate Houdini biopic ever made.