My wife and I were watching a magic show on the satellite last night. The magician performed a few “standard” illusions, including “sawing a woman in half.”
This got me wondering: Has there ever been any serious mishaps in a magic show? The only one I’m able to recall is a turn-of-the-century Chinese magician who died from a bullet wound. (I forget his name.) But I’m curious if any performer or assistant has been seriously injured or killed during a death-defying illusion/stunt such as knife throwing, sawing a person in half, swords through a box, etc. (Morbid, I know. But I’m still in the Halloween spirit…)
Well, Houdini died from peritonitis from ruptured viscera when some schlub socked him in the gut because he’d seen Houdini get hit like that during his performances. Unfortunately for Harry H. he didn’t see the blow coming so didn’t have time to tighten his abdominal muscles to absorb the force.
As an amatuer illusionist (I don’t call myself a magician because magic is the farthest thing from what you’re seeing), I can tell you the chances are slim. Those illusions are just that - illusions. There is very little danger in performing most of those tricks. Many of the knife throwing and arrow shooting bits don’t even involve *real[/r] weapons, those that do, the real knives or whatnot are never really thrown at the assistant, it’s just made to look that way. Everything on stage is rigged and for the most part perfectly safe.
It is true that the illusionist may put himself in a position where he relies on his rigged equipment to work to get him out of some potential danger, but 99% of the time you’re seeing the illusion of danger, and no real threat to the performers exist.
Even when they pull some random volunteer from the audience, I’d say 9 out of 10 times, that “volunteer” isn’t random.
[dark recesses of memory]
There was one accident in, I think, Alaska where a girl was pretty severely burned from a magic act gone wrong. Something about her tied to a pole and some explosive charge going off. Take that for what its worth.
[/dark recesses of memory]
I hear about people getting hurt doing escape acts all the time. Its risky. That’s the whole point.
I don’t know many other magic acts that are really so risky. Sawing a woman in half? Cabinet of swords? Not very risky, its all an illusion.
Harry Anderson used to do a bunch of grisly self-mutilation magic acts. There’s one you might still catch on reruns of SNL. He pushes big skewers through his arms, it looks totally real but it has to be an illusion. Looks damn convincing though, you’d swear he was pushing a rod through his muscle and pushing it around with the rod. Gak.
I don’t consider myself the most credulous creature ever to breath air but… in those TV specials where they have a knife thrower on the stage and you see him throw the knife, it (seemingly) flies through the air and it pierces the balloon, sticks in the target and the balloon pops.
Now granted the “throw” and “through the air” part is too fast for me to say for sure that I am seeing it leave his hand and fly through the air (on TV) but that’s what it sure looks like and if it’s a fake it’s a darned good one.
So you are saying thare are virtually no real knife throwers that have that kind of throwing accuracy? Disappointing if true.
I’m sure some knife throwers have that kind of accuracy, but I doubt someone performing a magic act is that skilled. Usually (not always) this is done by having the assistant on one end of the stage, and the thrower at the other, or in the middle, but the assistant is always towards the edge of the stage. Knife handle and partial blades are already rigged in the back of the target and pushed forward through the target by an unseen assistant backstage when the thrower throws the knife, thus popping the balloon. This involves a lot of practice and timing to pull off the illusion that the knife has struck the target.
and for Chas.E - you wanna know how he sticks that hat pin through his arm? Rubber cement. The round end of the hat pin is rubber, like an eye-dropper that holds the fake blood. About halfway up the length of the hat pin is the hole where the blood flows from. Wathc carefully the next time you see him perfrom this, and you should take note that you never see the actually point of insertion into his arm. He hides the needle from the audience at the moment the needle “sticks” into his arm.
The trick is, there’s a thin layer of rubber cement on his arm where he is going to stick the needle through. What he does is set the needle (which probably has a thin layer of Vaseline on it to prevent it from sticking to the rubber cement) toward the middle of the rubber cement pathc on his arm and then folds his skin over the top of the needle. The rubber cement sticks to itself, and the skin is now covering the needle, in effect froming a little tunnel for the needle to slide through. As he moves the needle back and forth, he squeezes the round end of the hat pin and blood flows out of the “wound” I did this trick this past Halloween for the Haunted Forest I work at in KY for charity every year. Very gross, very realistic looking, but the most painful part of it is getting the rubber cement off your skin in you forgot to shave the little hairs off your arm before performing the trick.
Houdini had a mishap involving his famous milk can escape. The challenger – a brewery – filled the can with beer instead of water. HH was a teetotaler (akk. how do you spell that word?!) and was overcome by the fumes and passed out inside the can. A worried assistant freed him with a fire ax.
The OP cites another incident, the details of which are worth mentioning. The “Chinese magician” was actually not asian at all; he was a westerner (Billy something, I believe) who was riding the coattails of a genuine Chinese magician who made a minor splash in the west during the turn of the century. The westerner adopted a name similar to, and easily confused with, the real Chinese guy. But soon the copycat was making a bigger reputation for himself than the original – largely due to his astounding bullet-catching act.
(Spoiler alert…) An “expert” volunteer, like a policeman or soldier was asked to prepare and fire a muzzle-loading rifle at the magician. The ball, powder and wadding went into the gun barrel, and was rammed home with a ramrod. The volunteer aimed, and fired and BANG went the gun… and the magicain "caught the bullet. The gimmick behind the trick was the doctored rifle. The flint (or whatever) never ignited the charge in the real barrel; instead it ignited a blank charge in the tube beneath the barrel that held the ramrod… hence the realistic bang, puff and kickback.
Well, after years of use, corrosion opened a small hole between the ramrod chamber and the bullet chamber. When the gun was fired, both charges ignited, sending the bullet into the magician who eventually died from the wound.
The way I understand it (From that History of Magic series that A&E shows every once in a while) it was just regular every-day wear, not corrosion.
Also on that show, Teller (Of Penn & Teller) who was being interviewed, mentioned another magician that bought it in the Bullet Catching act.
As Teller told it, this magician (who I don’t remember being named) used his wand like a ramrod, and used it to pull the bullet out, then, as an extra flourish, patted the other end in, not noticing the ivory tip of the wand had popped off, and was now in the gun - a nice little ivory projectile.
According to said show, the bullet catching trick has a fairly high body count, for an illusion.
I remember seeing something on TV many years ago about some idjit who elected to do one of those buried-alive things with a see-through box (plexiglass, methinks). He then was lowered into the pit and had cement poured over him. However, he didn’t take into account that concrete hardens from the inside-out or something like that, so the stuff around the box got heavy and dense really fast, trapping him, and eventually crushing the enclosure and the escape artist. Messy. Sorry I couldn’t remember more specifics–I was about 10 at the time.
Anyone remember that kind of escape “magic act” gone wrong?
Tengu, “corrosion” vs. “everyday wear”? Geez, cut me some slack, willya buddy?
I got my information from a book (by magic author Edmund P. Wilson???) I read in, like the eigth grade – over twenty-five years ago. It’s lucky I remember anything about the trick at all!!!
Lemming, I remember that, but as I recall, it was only a few years ago. It was just the sheer weight of the concrete mix (or whatever) that caved in the enclosure. I distinctly remember seeing the sudden drop in the level of the filler.
I remember, about 5 or 6 years ago, there was a show (maybe the one you guys mentionned) about magic tricks gone very wrong…
and yes, there was the one where the coffin collapsed and the cement dropped. They then showed another individual who tried the same trick, but had an excavator set to dig next to the original hole, in case the same thing happened again, they could drain some of that cement out of the original hole… IIRC, that time, the coffin collapsed, but they got the guy out in time.
There were many other examples of escapes gone wrong, in that show, but I can’t remember them.
According to the list, the would-be escape artist who crushed himself under 7 tons of concrete was Joseph Burrus, who left this world on October 30, 1990.
I recall seeing a “bullet catcher” perform on late night TV quite some time ago. I think he was not performing an illusion, but a stunt, since he actually caught a .22 caliber bullet in his mouth using a heavy, metal cup clenched in his teeth.
During the performance I viewed, the aim of the gun was slightly off and the bullet chipped his upper teeth, even though he caught it in the cup. I heard later that he was killed performing this stunt when the bullet missed the cup, striking min in the throat.
Did this actually happen or is my memory telling me lies?
