The Grim Game
About The Grim Game
Reporter Harvey Hanford loves Mary Wentworth, ward of the rich eccentric Dudley Cameron, who forbids the match. Harvey joins a newspaper stunt meant to fake his uncle's murder. Cameron is actually killed, and Harvey is jailed for it. He gets out of the cell, then out of handcuffs, chains, and a straitjacket, and goes after the men holding Mary. The chase ends in the air. After a collision between two planes, Harvey is cleared and reunited with her.
Cast & crew
More about The Grim Game
Irvin Willat directed. Arthur B. Reeve and John Grey wrote the story, and Walter Woods the screenplay. Jesse L. Lasky produced for Famous Players-Lasky. Paramount released the film on August 25, 1919. The mid-air crash was not in the script. It was filmed over Santa Monica and written into the ending.
Themes
Making
The collision was kept. Prop planes were later dropped, nose down, onto the ground to fake the crash landings that follow the real footage. Rick Schmidlin restored a complete print that Larry Weeks had bought from the Houdini estate, after a lead from Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz of the Houdini Museum in Scranton.
Reviews
The New York Times said Houdini's familiar feats were more baffling than ever, and that Mary is carried from a hunting lodge to heights in the clouds just out of his reach.
Look
Al Wilson, in a third Curtiss JN-4, followed the two colliding Jennys down over Santa Monica and kept the camera on them.
Preservation
A complete print from the Houdini estate, owned by Larry Weeks, was restored by Rick Schmidlin. The restoration closed Turner Classic Movies' festival on March 29, 2015, and TCM broadcast it on October 18, 2015.
Notes
- Ann Forrest plays Mary Wentworth. Thomas Jefferson plays Dudley Cameron. Augustus Phillips, Tully Marshall, Arthur Hoyt, and Mae Busch are also in the cast.
- Robert E. Kennedy doubled Houdini on the landing gear of a Curtiss JN-4. David E. Thompson flew that plane. Christopher Pickup flew the lower one. Al Wilson flew the camera plane.
- A gust pushed Thompson's landing gear into Pickup's top wing. The planes spun, separated at about 200 feet, and both landed. Thompson's was still upside down. Nobody was killed.
- Publicity said Houdini himself had hung from the aircraft. The man on the gear was Kennedy.
- The New York Times wrote that airplanes, motor cars, and treetops were brought in to stock the thrills, and that this was the first time Houdini mixed a love story with the escapes.
Scenes
- Harvey slips a straitjacket while the men who framed him think he is held.
- Two Curtiss Jennys lock together over Santa Monica, with a man hanging from the upper plane's landing gear.
- Both planes pull apart near the ground and land, one of them upside down.
Also available
- Internet Archive (The_Grim_Game_1919_starring_Harry_Houdini)
