Psychologically, for some reason
it was OK for me to fall onto concrete from 40 feet,
but the idea of falling on spikes really bothered me.
Hi, I'm David Copperfield.
I've made the Statue of Liberty disappear,
escaped the Death Saw,
flown through midair
and survived Niagara Falls.
All of that was possible because of magicians who came before me
and created the foundations of magic that go back generations.
Today, we're inside my Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts
here in Las Vegas.
I'm going to show you how some of my favorite illusions
and magic effects began
and how far we've come.
Let's get started.
Sawing someone in half.
The great idea to saw a person in half was Percy Selbit's in 1921.
He put a person in a box, sawed past through them,
the piece didn't separate,
but the idea was so strong that it got a lot of attention
and started the ball rolling.
He would actually pour blood in the streets, outside the theater
to stimulate people's reactions and get them to buy tickets to the show.
Horace Goldin took the sawing in half idea and made it very visual.
He had a saw that went through the person's body.
He sawed through the box making two boxes,
so you saw the feet and the head separated.
Separating the pieces made it very interesting.
And then later on, he used a giant circular saw
that passed through the torso of a person.
Dante took it to the next level.
Harry Jansen, also known as Dante the Magician,
sawed a woman in half starting in the 1920s.
He improved the illusion from its inner workings to box's design.
As captured on film, you would have assistants lift half of the box
containing the woman's head and torso off the table and spin her around.
Richiardi, whose real name was Aldo Izquierdo,
took it one step further
with the giant circular saw he added blood and guts flying all around the stage.
Pretty disgusting.
I saw that show and it was pretty weird.
I took all these bizarre elements that came before me,
reinvented the technique and technology,
and created the Death Saw.
I wanted to have everything totally out in the open
on a thin table with a giant blade above.
And I wanted it to happen to me instead of an assistant.
I wanted to be the victim,
my top half and my bottom half
separated with everything moving.
We wanted to make the ending very special.
So my restoration was turning back time.
Everything happened in reverse.
My body pieces came together and
I think I survived.
Levitation.
To be suspended midair or to levitate is a dream we all share.
Robert-Houdin created one of the first ones,
the Ethereal Levitation,
where he levitated or suspended his son in midair,
and it was really remarkable.
A number of years ago, I was in Paris
and somebody handed me the technology
that he actually built,
and I began to cry
because it was the beginning of it all for me
and for magic.
It's the first illusion of that kind to be invented.
The next step in levitation
was created by the British magician Maskelyne,
who created an amazing levitation
where the girl would rise and lower on an empty stage.
That illusion was stolen by the American magician Kellar,
who hired one of Maskelyne's assistants to reveal the secret to him.
And then he sold his show to the American magician Thurston.
Here's what's cool -
we can actually see the performance of Thurston on film.
Imagine being back in the early 1900s,
seeing a woman floating in midair.
Hoops are passed around with no visible means of support.
In the early part of my career I, of course, levitated.
I floated cars, I floated people,
but I wanted something everyone dreamed about - flying.
I worked for seven years to create this flying illusion.
I flew through the air, pushed against the air.
I levitated through hoops
and in a plexiglass box to show, there was nothing attached to me
and took a woman from the audience to fly my arms.
The first time I performed flying,
the curtain closed at the end and the audience went crazy.
And all of us who worked so hard on it went,
"This is really something special."
Great escapes.
The idea of escaping from being confined
is something that everyone can relate to,
and people in my business have taken advantage of that.
The reason we know the name Houdini
is because he'd really identified the idea of doing escapes,
and it was copied by everybody in the early 1900s.
Houdini called himself the Handcuff King.
He would jump off bridges with the handcuffs,
get into a box, into a river.
It was quite compelling.
Houdini took it to another level using a straight jacket.
For publicity, Houdini would go on the street,
hang from a rope over the heads of an audience on the street
and escape from a straightjacket.
Houdini's most famous escape was the Water Torture Cell.
His legs would be locked in stocks.
He'd be suspended upside down over a tank of water.
Slowly, he'd be lowered into the tank,
no air to breathe,
and the audience was invited to hold their breath
to see what it was like.
After he was in the cell,
he'd be covered with a curtain
where he'd have to make his escape.
In my museum, we have the actual recording of Houdini's voice
explaining what was to take place in the Water Torture Cell,
recorded by Thomas Edison.
My epic escape was inspired by Houdini.
It's called Fires of Passion.
We rehearsed it for two years on the road.
I would have a crane outside the theater,
and I was suspended in the air by three burning ropes,
and step by step,
I'd have to escape from that straightjacket
and get out of the situation.
We added one thing on the nightof the actual television broadcast,
and that's spikes below.
And that was not good.
Psychologically, for some reason, it was OK for me to fall onto concrete
from 40 feet,
but the idea of falling on spikes really bothered me.
But again, all's well that ends well.
Throughout history, people did giant events.
The vanishing elephant, perfect example, nobody can picture that.
Houdini put an elephant inside a cabinet, a big box.
The box is opened, elephant was gone.
The only problem was
that it took four guys to bring out the cabinet to begin with
and 20 guys to take the cabinet off.
Milbourne Christopher did a version on TV,
got a lot of publicity.
The elephant vanished behind the slatted screens,
and it was OK.
Those illusions were performed inside a theater or a TV studio.
I wanted to do something of that scale outside.
"If you can hear me, raise your hands."
"Now!"
I made an airplane disappear
and the next day it was an amazing reaction.
"I was right here and there's no way that plane could have left."
But my most famous vanish was the Statue of Liberty,
and I wanted to show how we take freedom for granted.
I wrote it with Frank Capra, the famous film director
who directed "It's a Wonderful Life"
and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."
I was a big fan of his and towards the end of his life,
I collaborated with him to make that illusion very meaningful.
"I thought if we faced emptiness
where, for as long as we can remember, that great lady has lifted up her lamp,
why then, we might imagine what the world would be like without liberty,
and we'd realize how precious our freedom really is."
The reaction was kind of viral before viral.
People really freaked out, both live in New York and at home on TV.
I think the Statue of Liberty vanish stood the test of time
because of its storytelling and symbolism.
And the fact that shows like "The Americans"
have made whole episodes about it
shows that it had an impact.
"Whoa."
These are just a few of the incredible people and performances
that helped shape magic as we know it today.
The next time you see a great illusion with your friends and family,
you might be able to tell them where it came from.
Hang on!
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