David Copperfield’s Book Reveals Photos of Las Vegas Magic Museum – The Hollywood Reporter

One of Las Vegas’ hidden gems is the famous illusionist David Copperfield’s private magic museum, located in a warehouse on the Strip and visited over the years by Taylor Swift, Guillermo del Toro, Hugh Jackman, and producer Jason Blüm.

Now Copperfield has published a book that documents his immense holdings of memorabilia, from Harry Houdini’s water torture cell and Richiardi Jr.’s rotating circular saw to the rifle that killed the magician Chung Ling Soo after a failed attempt to do his famous bullet trap feat.

In David Copperfield’s History of Magic (Simon & Schuster, $ 35), he uses the objects in his collection as starting points to tell stories about the fascinating, sometimes diabolical, and always inventive magicians who preceded him and why they deserve attention.

Among other things, his collection includes a dress supposedly worn by Adelaide Herrmann, the self-proclaimed queen of magic in the 19th century; Buatier de Koltas Expanding Die, “a devilishly difficult feat that really grows from 20 inches to three and a half feet in an instant”; Howard Thurston’s “The Disembodied Princess,” a trick that kept his assistant’s head and legs in place while her midsection disappeared.

Copperfield spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his future plans for the museum, including its long-term preservation, why he never tried the bullet trap trick, and how his own magical secrets ended up on the lunar surface.

David Copperfield.
Emma Summerton

What is a Holy Grail item that you would like to get for the museum?

The holy grail would be talking to these people. The objects open the doors, but the stories are the point.

You are known to have made the Statue of Liberty disappear in 1983. Over the past few years a number of people have tried to explain how you did it, including by making the audience all stand on some sort of huge lazy susan that was spinning so slowly that no one noticed. What do you say?

Well, you know it’s amazing. There are so many versions of the way I do my stuff and people are surprised when they go on the internet – ‘Well, someone is revealing your secrets.’ Guess what? Do you know who did that? I made these misdirected method videos. People actually believe that these methods were real, even though they are actually some kind of fantasy to scare people off.

Have you always wanted to do the trap ball trick?

No, because they don’t want a child to copy you. I’ve done a lot of dangerous things. I escaped from an imploding building, but it’s hard for a child to imitate. I did an underwater escape in a water tank and a performance in a straitjacket and walked over Niagara Falls. Difficult to duplicate.

I find it amazing that you have pennies in your museum that President Lincoln held in his hand.

They passed through his hand. It’s a classic of magic. Today not so much is done where one penetrates through objects. In this case, it’s at someone’s hand. It went through Lincoln’s hand. Lincoln liked magic and I loved that.

Pennies once owned by the magician John Wyman Jr. and used during a trick President Abraham Lincoln participated in. “The coins appeared to be getting through the president’s hand,” writes Copperfield.
Homer Liwag

Have you made any changes to the Magic Museum lately?

It’s gotten amazing. We built a whole library, a whole research center. We just did a tour last night for a guy who worked at Tannen’s magic shop when he was 14 in 1954. I recreated the shop in the museum. People start crying and get very emotional. It’s a kind of lost world that has really shaped the lives of many people. So much culture is shaped by the idea of ​​being amazed together.

Copperfields Museum includes a replica of Tannen’s Magic Shop, the oldest operating magic shop in New York City.
Homer Liwag

Your whole museum started with a collection of items that you were offered, right?

At the very beginning there was a guy named John Mulholland. He was a friend of Houdini, but a sorcerer historian and a performer. He also worked for the CIA on the use of magical techniques during the Cold War and earlier. His collection was sold, given to the Players Club in New York, and sat there, so to speak. People kept taking things out secretly. At some point another guy bought it. He ran into legal trouble and was auctioned off by the government. What happened was I was brought in to buy it. It would be split up. Someone said to me, ‘You can’t let that happen. The collection is a very important thing. ‘ I bought it and I really didn’t care that much about the history of magic back then. I really invented new illusions. I went forward. I never looked back.

An exhibition dedicated to the magician Adelaide Herrmann shows a dress supposedly worn by the self-proclaimed Queen of Magic.
Homer Liwag

What has changed in your attitude?

In retrospect, I really should have looked back. After I bought the collection to save it, I learned about the stories of all of these people. It’s about these incredible stories of people who really changed history and changed the world using technologies and techniques that didn’t exist before. They first existed as magical effects and as benefits to society by being used in daily life.

What kind of inventions?

The first smart home was created through magical effects. Now the door of every grocery store opens by itself. It started as a magical effect. Movies, cinema were magical effects. You would see a train coming your way, and it was the magician George Méliès who decided that we would use it to tell stories. He bought the theater from Robert Houdini and performed his magic and then adopted this new technology. If you’ve seen the movie Hugo, it tells the story very well.

One of the first illusions to be created came from Houdini and was referred to as ethereal levitation. Ether, the chemical that can put you to sleep, was a whole new thing in the 1840s and people were talking about it. Wow, a chemical you can hold to your nose and people go to sleep. Oh my God. It’s an unbelievable thing. He incorporated it into the show by levitating his young son and wafting ether through the audience. He superimposed this idea on levitation to give it an actual conversation. Twenty years ago I was in France and some French historians gave me the gimmick for this ethereal levitation, the original by Houdini, and I started crying. It was the beginning of everything I was a part of. Similar to how Guillermo del Toro came to the museum a few years ago and saw all the Méliès stuff. He got very emotional and said, ‘Well, it’s the beginning of everything. That’s why I do what I do. ‘ Because Méliès started this whole culture of using film technology to tell stories.

Copperfield’s Museum contains the rifle that killed Chung Ling Soo, a white magician posing as Chinese and appropriating Chinese magic and culture. He “shaved his head, wore a false braid and used makeup to darken his skin,” writes Copperfield.
Homer Liwag

Are there any plans to expand the museum further?

The next steps are all magic sets. I have the most amazing collection of magic sets. We’re going to do a collection of these and puppet shows, all of the things that belong to Edgar Bergen and Shari Lewis and Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger, and more. I have all of these things.

How do you preserve the collection in the long term?

I’ve spent three decades putting these stories together, and my goal is to donate them to make sure there is enough money to start a foundation that will sustain them. And to make sure people get through there on a basis that keeps their secrets. I can’t really have public tours of the museum. There are so many secrets in the game.

An area of ​​the museum dedicated to Harry Houdini.
Homer Liwag

So you’re saying there are other magicians’ secrets that you don’t want to divulge that are in the museum?

Thousands upon thousands of them. That’s all. They say there are more books on magic than anything but medicine. There is so much literature. Mages love to keep their legacy and secrets through books and these things are very preciously held and cherished.

And are all the secrets of your illusions in the museum somewhere?

My things are actually in a very special place. We have all of my secrets etched in nickel discs that will last forever. Nickel lasts billions of years. It’s all miniaturized and you need a microscope to see it. And we blew it up in space and it crashed with a lander on the moon last year. And so my secrets are literally on the moon. That package of knowledge could one day be found. It is quite amazing to go out of the house and think, ‘My things that I have touched and worked on all my life have been kept in a non-degradable form on our moon, which is pretty incredible.’

Buater De Kolta’s Expanding The Apparatus.
Homer Liwag

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A version of this story first appeared in the November 3rd issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe.