Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear

as we chatted with Laura on speakerphone. She had just started her one-woman show, CHEAT, a residency performance in Edinburgh, Scotland, based on a fictitious female card hustler. For the show, the stage is adorned with a square felt table surrounded by wooden chairs—a makeshift gambling parlor. A framed photograph of Geraldine Hartmann, the femal

Magicians are also able to file a patent for a piece of equipment used during a routine, but that largely defeats the purpose of protecting a secret. In order to file a patent (which is a public document), the magician has to reveal how the apparatus, and therefore the trick, works. The secret therefore must be revealed for it to be protected.

it wasn’t until I saw a series of clips of Orson performing stage illusions on one of Walt’s VHS tapes that I realized he was an accomplished conjuror.

Walter had amassed a collection of hundreds of tapes, footage of wonder-workers that was otherwise impossible to find. He had clips dating back to 1896 and Georges Méliès’s vanishing act, Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin. A seven-year-old Ricky Jay changing a guinea pig into a dove on the 1955 program Time for Pets. Every magician who ever

After his short-lived foray into the world of magic, Walter Irving Scott vanished. His legend, however, lived on. His otherworldly abilities, and the lore associated with his demonstrations, continued to steal the hearts of card junkies and move monkeys for decades to come.