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When Steinmeyer writes about the theater a century ago, he speaks as one who's met modern versions of the characters, who's even reconstructed their tricks onstage. So when, for example, he describes David Devant's Mascot Moth (which Steinmeyer reproduced in Doug Henning's Merlin),
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
His specialty was convincing each person that they had witnessed a near catastrophe.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
The public never heard the name Dircksian Phantasmagoria. Dircks happily accepted five hundred pounds for the idea and waived any future royalties, merely asking that his name be attached to the invention.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Harry Kellar was also badly fooled when he saw it in the summer of 1901. He was America's greatest magician, a rough-and-tumble showman. He'd been born Heinrich Keller in 1848 in Erie, Pennsylvania. As a boy, Harry worked as a drugstore clerk, a newsboy, and custodian for the Erie Railroad before he ended up in Buffalo, New York and responded to a
... See moreTeller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Early in his career he was famous for his manipulations with billiard balls or silk handkerchiefs. A famous Buatier deKolta sequence involved the production of small, variously colored silk handkerchiefsat his fingertips. He then showed two porcelain soup bowls, placing them mouth-to-mouth on his table.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
I regard a conjurer as a man who can hold the attention of his audience by telling them the most impossible fairy tales, and by persuading them into believing that those stories are true by illustrating them with his hands, or with any object that may be suitable for the purpose.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Jean Robert-Houdin was famous for the opinion that a magician is actually just "an actor playing the part of a magician."
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
It was card tricks that made Howard Thurston famous. He performed his act at Tony Pastor's theatre in New York, and in 1900 he opened at the Palace Theatre in London, billed as "The King of Cards" or "The World's Premier Card Manipulator."
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
That photo, like Kellar's bold visit to the Egyptian Hall stage, wouldn't have shown him very much. It was actually the little tool that made the eyelets, and the felt-covered rollers-two simple additions that never looked very impressive backstage-that had made all the difference.