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

Jim Steinmeyer (Author), Teller (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2004

Now in paperback comes Jim Steinmeyer's astonishing chronicle of half a century of illusionary innovation, backstage chicanery, and keen competition within the world of magicians. Lauded by today's finest magicians and critics, Hiding the Elephant is a cultural history of the efforts among legendary conjurers to make things materialize, levitate, and disappear. Steinmeyer unveils the secrets and life stories of the fascinating personalities behind optical marvels such as floating ghosts interacting with live actors, disembodied heads, and vanishing ladies. He demystifies Pepper's Ghost, Harry Kellar's Levitation of Princess Karnak, Charles Morritt's Disappearing Donkey, and Houdini's landmark vanishing of Jennie the elephant in 1918. The dramatic mix of science and history, with revealing diagrams, photographs and magicians' portraits by William Stout, provides a glimpse behind the curtain at the backstage story of magic.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The success of a magician "lies in making a human connection to the magic." Create an illusion in the audience's mind, and they're hooked. But to understand magicians, we need to understand the art of that creation. Steinmeyer, who has designed illusions for Siegfried and Roy and David Copperfield, presents a cultural history of magic's golden age (from the 1890s to the 1930s), some legendary tricks (including the Levitation of Princess Karnak and Harry Houdini's Disappearing Elephant) and the fierce rivalries that dominated the craft. Steinmeyer reveals certain secrets, which rely on engineering, artistry and sheer chutzpah, but he hasn't betrayed anyone; most of his information has been published elsewhere. What he adds is context. Magicians advertise deceit, then perform it. Unlike political chicanery, which Steinmeyer dubs dishonest trickery, magic is a kind of pure trickery. Audiences pay for a ruse, not a lecture on fraud. Do we believe movie special effects are real? Of course not, but it doesn't detract from our enjoyment. Similarly, while many 19th-century spiritualists were rightfully debunked as frauds and charlatans, audiences loved the antics. Some, such as the Davenport brothers, were a magnet of controversy and a wild hit, successfully mixing "religion, agnosticism, science, superstition, and fraud." Steinmeyer diagrams famous tricks, celebrating their science and ingenuity. Readers meet characters as colorful as their acts. Buyer beware: If you want to keep your illusions, go to Las Vegas. But for magic lovers who revel in learning the magician's art, this book part research study, part salute is a find. 8 pages of b&w photos and diagrams.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Writing a history of stage magic, Steinmeyer reveals the secrets of such famous feats as hiding an elephant, one of Houdini's big tricks, as he details notable stage magicians' careers. He shows that this venerable entertainment genre is indubitably more illusion, performed by monumentally clever practitioners, than magic. Brother-and-sister mind-reading act Charles and Lilian Morritt perfected a silent code based on synchronized counting that defied cagey observers' abilities to detect, let alone understand. Charles went on to realize the sleight central to Houdini's disappearing elephant bit, and that is just one of the delicious connections Steinmeyer points out among performers who seem to constitute a fellowship. Complementing Steinmeyer's profiles are excellent portraits of his subjects by underground-comix stalwart William Stout. Delightful and informative. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (September 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786714018
• ISBN-13: 978-0786714018
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Magic & Illusion
  • #9 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Magic
  • #65 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Modern

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just Giving Away the Tricks, February 16, 2004

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (Hardcover)

The magic duo Penn and Teller have a trick called "The Honor System." Instead of putting a curtain around the box from which Teller is to escape, they simply invite onlookers to keep their eyes closed, and open them once he is out. Those who take them up on the deal see Teller locked into a secure wooden box, and after a spell of eyes closed, they see him magically, inexplicably free. Those who peek see just how easily the trick is worked. Penn and Teller know that they can give away the secret of this or other tricks and there is still a show. The gadgets used in the illusions aren't the story, the performance is. Jim Steinmeyer knows this, too. He has designed illusions for magicians and Broadway shows, so he knows all the hardware. In his book _Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear_ (Carroll and Graf), he has given away lots of secrets. But he is not the stupid Masked Magician, revealing tricks for notoriety and fortune. What he has given us is an appreciation of magic history and the refinements in fooling people by clever stagecraft, but he has never forgotten to remind us of the dazzle of the performance.

The elephant of the title is one named Jennie, who, at the New York Hippodrome in 1918, vanished from her box on stage, under the direction of none other than Harry Houdini. The hardware he used to make Jenny disappear was surprisingly simple (as are most of the gadgets that make magical effects). It was a product of a boom in the art of conjuring that had started around sixty years before. "It's all done with mirrors" is a dismissive phrase, and yet the history given here of mirror illusions shows that they have been refined in countless ways, from putting ghosts on the stage to producing a talking disembodied head on a table. The ghost craze also manifested in spiritualism, and magicians were keen to cash in on the craze. Among them were the Davenport brothers of Buffalo, who allowed themselves to be bound with ropes inside a cabinet, whereupon in the dark, ghostly hands appeared, instruments were played, and so on. The brothers were tied up before the manifestations, and after, so it seemed as if they could not have been working the tricks. Other magicians could easily see this was a rope escape trick, dressed up in the fancy of the day. But spiritualists only saw the Davenports as demonstrating the truth of communication with the afterlife. The controversy didn't hurt business at all.

The stories of these tricks often involve intense competition between magicians. One who invented a trick was likely to see it performed by someone else shortly thereafter. Oddly, patenting a trick is little help; a patent has to have public details of how the mechanism works, and so if he does go to the trouble of patenting an effect, an inventor describes it in unhelpful ways, thwarting the patent process itself. The theft of secrets kept the illusions lively, as other means were found of doing similar effects and tricks were repackaged. "Sawing through a Woman" was invented by P. T. Selbit in 1921, a reaction to women's liberation and an outgrowth from the Grand Guignol theater. Before long it was "Sawing a Man in Two," "Sawing a Woman in Half," or "Matter through Matter." There were other illusions stretching a woman, or crushing her, and there were furious arguments about giving credit (and fees) to the correct inventors. Steinmeyer's story thus leaps repeatedly from one time to another, and from America to Europe. We in the audience ask how a magician has made an effect, and Steinmeyer has answered this thoroughly for some of the tricks discussed here. But there is a lot more than a "how", but also why, when, and who. On display here are the personalities behind the deceptions, and the evolution of the psychology of stage deception. Steinmeyer has given a great performance; we can know the trick and we are still left in wonder.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Inside look at Illusion, October 26, 2003

By 

j.e.g. (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (Hardcover)

In an extremely entertaining and insightful new book, Jim Steinmeyer has
explained the world of the magicians. How they do it, how they entertain
audiences, and how, throughout the years they struggled for their careers,
begged, borrowed or stole people, secrets and ideas.

Imagine a cross between Longitude and Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women and
you'll have a good idea of Hiding the Elephant. It's a fun, lively and
well-written read, a page-turner organized like a mystery to keep pulling
you from story to story. This book is a combination of history, biography
and science, a tribute to the art of magic.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book are the accounts of magicians
like Davenport, Maskelyne or Devent, who changed what magicians did on stage
and the way magicians went about deceiving people. The author's "cast of
characters" have fantastic stories. Robert Houdin was asked to perform magic
for the French government and stop an uprising in Africa. Magicians Devent
and Melies discovered cinema. Houdini became a star by turning to dangerous
escapes. Morrit reinvented the way tricks were accomplished. Jarrett decided
to publish a book of all his secrets, explaining his best tricks for a few
dollars. Some of these stories end in triumph, some in tragedy. Many
magicians found that their careers ended when movies became popular. One
famous magician, at the height of his fame, tragically lost control of hands
and ended his life as an invalid.

The author points out that the greatest magicians were successful because
they were partly artists and partly scientists. Some time in the 1800s, they
discovered a way to make things disappear, or as the author says, "the
formula for invisibility," which led to some truly amazing new illusions.
Ghosts walked on the stage. People appeared in locked cabinets. Harry
Houdini made an elephant vanish on the stage of the Theatre Hippodrome.

Along the way there are a number of secrets explained. The author says that
magicians "guard an empty safe," and that their presentation and artistry
are more important than their actual secrets. As a magician, I was familiar
with most of these secrets, but the author has a friendly, interesting,
step-by-step way of presenting these scientific principles so that you
understand the basic secrets and how they could be used on a stage to fool
an audience. I know that there's currently a lot of controversy about Hiding
the Elephant, as a magic organization is upset about this book and the
author's revelations. They feel that too much has been explained in Hiding
the Elephant. But I actually thought that Steinmeyer handled this all very
carefully. Don't worry. Next time you see a magician, you'll still be
amazed, and you'll have a new appreciation for what he's doing.

Even more important than the secrets, Steinmeyer has explained how audiences
think about magic, why they're interested in it and why they often welcome
being deceived. For example, some of the greatest illusions have been tied
to cultural events, fulfilling the particular fantasies or nightmares of the
audience. Much of this information is based on the author's own experience.
As an amateur magician, I've been a big fan of Steinmeyer's work and his
books, which are usually written for only for magicians. (He was the guy who
had the idea for making the Statue of Liberty disappear.) Hiding the
Elephant is an insider's view of magic, giving you a glimpse behind the
curtain. No matter how you've ever felt about David Copperfield or David
Blaine, you'll end up being a fan of magic by the end of the book,
understanding why magic fascinates us. I hope that audiences will consider
magic as an art and realize that its history has been filled with important
artists.

I recommend the book.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Curious about Smoke and Mirrors, October 26, 2003

By 

hugh connor (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (Hardcover)

For years we've heard that it's all done with mirrors. Hiding the Elephant
is the story of just how it's done. Why we insist on looking here while
they're doing something else over there.

Starting with Houdini's greatest feat, attempting to make a live elephant
disappear, the author has tracked and explained the discovery of various
optical illusions, like how to become invisible by using mirrors. For
example, a magician in Paris actually made transparent ghosts, who performed
in plays that terrified his audiences. (I was surprised at how clever and
simple this could be done: again, think "mirrors.") Two spiritualist
brothers also produced the illusion of ghosts, although their version was
much less optical and much more psychological. These secrets are often easy
to understand, although I noticed that some secrets are explained in
deliberately sketchy form and remain concealed by the end of this book, like
a discussion of the famous "Sawn in Half" illusion. (Once a magician, always
a magician?) The author concentrates on why various secrets were useful and
how some were stolen or hoarded over the years. (Through some detective
work, he does manage to explain how Houdini did the elephant trick.) This
backstage element of the book might be the most interesting part. For
example, there were magicians who thought that secrets were worthless and
actually told audiences how they did it, because they thought that made
their magic tricks even better!
The book is fast moving and well written, leading us from one mystery to
another and re-introducing characters from the past or hinting about what's
just around the corner. It is illustrated with portraits of the magicians
executed by comic book artist William Stout, and there are photographs of
some of the magicians and their tricks. I actually wish there had been more
photos, as it would have been helpful to see some of these magicians in
action to appreciate their various tricks. I really enjoyed Hiding the
Elephant. The author makes the subject approachable and introduces us to a
number of unknown, interesting characters. Since these guys are masters of
deception, they might not always be trustworthy but they turn out to be
entertaining in their own way. Once we're entertained, it's easy to put one
over on us. That's how they do it!