It's amazing how Houdini is still influencing people. In a day where it's getting harder to amaze people with magic, people don't tend to realize how dangerous his act was, and remains to this day. He would escape numerous times a day during his theater shows. He would do an underwater escape, sometimes while the police literally turned their back, then do his shows later that same day. The preparation was relentless, as was his schedule. His persona has become popular myth, but at the end of the day he was just a man doing what he loved. The same can be said for Mandrake, and hopefully he will pass into local myth. But with today's short term memory masses, that may be doubtful.
