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Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (2004)

par Jim Steinmeyer

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Membres	Critiques	Popularité	Évaluation moyenne	Mentions
469	9	52,750	(4.05)	3
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.… (plus d'informations)

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Affichage de 1-5 de 9 (suivant | tout afficher)

This is a wonderful history of the high points of stage magic, centering around the early 1900s, within a framework of explaining how Houdini vanished an elephant on the stage of the Hippodrome. Woven throughout are real-life stories of intrique, espionage, jealousy, creativity and love (of magic) - along with the secrets of how some of the most memorable stage illusions actually work.

Very readable and edifying. (

)

kalinichta | Jun 30, 2017 |

Entertaining survey of stage magic covering the 19th and (first part of the)
20th centuries. This is really a vastly entertaining book.

It's very strange, I find watching 'magicians' on-stage incredibly boring and
highly sleep-inducing. Reading about them is fascinating! (

)

captbirdseye | Feb 4, 2014 |

Terrifically enjoyable history of magic. You may have heard the line "they do it all with mirrors." That turns out to be quite accurate.

True in India. True here (

)

ben_a | Oct 18, 2012 |

A great overview of the Golden age of Magic & the characters that inhabited it. Very good on their interactions, their inventions but less so on the "wonder" of what was, probably the finest age to be a magician. You don't have to have a particular interest in magic to enjoy this, just the need to be captivated and enjoy peformance art. At times flabby & that is what stopped me giving it 5 stars (

)

aadyer | Feb 24, 2011 |

An interesting overview of the development of the stage magician's art around the turn of the twentieth century. Although Steinmeyer reveals a number of the secrets behind famous effects, one of the points he keeps returning to is that the trick itself is secondary to the conjurer's delivery of it. There are some nice anecdotes along these lines, my favourite of which is the recounting of Thurston's method for producing an expression of shocked amazement from children viewing his levitation effect up close. (

)

oblongpictures | Nov 27, 2007 |

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Nom de l'auteur	Rôle	Type d'auteur	Œuvre ?	Statut
Jim Steinmeyer	—	auteur principal	toutes les éditions	calculé
Teller	Avant-propos	auteur secondaire	quelques éditions	confirmé

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In November 1995 I found myself standing offstage at a Los Angeles theatre with a borwn Sicilian donkey named Midget, who, I was about to tell the audience, could disappear.

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▾Descriptions de livres

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.

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