What were some of Harry Houdini's failures?

Answer 1

The title of Jim Steinmeyer's book "Hiding The Elephant" is referring to one of Houdini's more public failures.

It was a show in New York's Hippodrome. A huge arena. Houdini wanted to present a similarly huge trick, and decided to make an elephant disappear. However, the trick apparently wasn't very fooling, and the headline the next day read "Houdini Hides Elephant".

As for failing to escape, for most of his career he had an open challenge to his audiences to provide any sort of restraint and he would free himself. There are a few stories on record of him failing that challenge, usually involving a rather unique or custom built restraint.