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The easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place some one is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will mean sudden death.
"Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it... because you're not really looking... You don't really want to know... You want to be fooled."
You know them: they wear tuxedoes (or if female, fishnets), top hats, swishing satin capes, and fine white gloves. They flourish black batons with white tips, and brandish decks of cards, metal rings, rubber balls, paper cups and silk handkerchiefs. Their favorite words are "Abracadabra", "Hocus Pocus", "Presto" and "Voila!"
Using their nimble fingers, hidden devices and deliberate misdirection, they can Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat, pull a dove from their sleeve, Saw A Woman In Half, and even make hapless audience members disappear! Sometimes they're also escape artists, able to get out of handcuffs and straitjackets and still find out what your card was. Some of them solve crimes in their spare time. And maybe, just maybe, some of them can do real magic.
For one of their most common tricks, see What Have We Ear.
Examples
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- Zatanna from the DCU and her deceased father, Zatara.
- The main character from Jar Of Fools, Ernie Weiss (based on Harry Houdini, whose real name was Ehric Weiss), and his mentor Al Floss (based on the actual magician named Al Floss).
- Mandrake The Magician was the very first comic book superhero - he could do "real" magic as opposed to illusions - making this Older Than Superman (if there is such a category, and if not there should be).
- One arc in Spawn had the title character, sent back in time, encounter and work alongside Houdini, who is revealed to be an actual mage using his show as a cover. Houdini teaches Spawn a few tricks about what his suit can do.
- Wim Magwit in the Star Wars Expanded Universe comics.
- Moloch the Mystic from Watchmen.
Film
- Both main characters in The Prestige.
- The main character in The Illusionist.
- Most of the main characters in Magicians.
Literature
- The main character of Carter Beats the Devil.
- Harry Dresden's father.
- Alistair MacKinnon in The Shadow in the North.
- Aziraphale in Good Omens. He certainly could do "real magic" if he wanted, but he much prefers prestidigitation, despite how awful he is at it.
- Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters novel Reserved for the Cat featured a Fire Master (ie, a mage) who spent his career being a very good stage magician. He did occasionally use 'real magic' in his performances.
- The conjuror in GK Chesterton's Magic
- The mystery of Mr. Todhunter, in the Father Brown story The Absence of Mr Glass, is explained by his being a stage magician.
Live Action TV
- Adam Klaus, Jonathan's boss from Jonathan Creek.
- On Pushing Daisies, Ned's half-brothers and their mentor, the Great Hermann.
- GOB Bluth on Arrested Development
- The 1970s British kids' show Ace of Wands featured a stage magician called Tarot who solved mysteries in his spare time. The show had a magic advisor, but most of the tricks depicted in the show were cheats using video fx.
- Occasionally Sesame Street would feature The Amazing Mumford, for whom Grover was always eager to be the audience volunteer. Sometimes his tricks would have an educational bent (for example, when he subtracted pineapples), sometimes they were just gags (one occasion when Grover came to watch, but there was no show-Mumford was just practicing. He didn't get the trick right, but Grover did get a hop and a skip for his exit).
- The Supernatural episode "Criss Angel is a Douchebag" features several.
- "The Great Montarro" from Friday The13th The Series.
- The patient in the House episode "You Don't Want To Know" is a stage magician.
Radio
Tabletop RPG
- In both versions of Mage, certain magic-users are presented as using stage magic as a cover story. Magic in this setting is made more dangerous by mortals perceiving it, an effect called Disbelief, but it is possible to suspend Disbelief by masking it. (This won't work with the really flashy stuff like lightning bolts.)
Theatre
Videogames
- One of Kirby's powers in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. His moves include releasing doves, card-throwing and releasing a jack-in-the-box.
- A troupe of stage magicians play an important part in Apollo Justice Ace Attorney, in addition to Apollo's boss/sidekick Trucy.
- Max Galactica from earlier in the same series is also one.
- The Rank 4 boss in No More Heroes, Harvey Moisewich Volodarskii, is a professional magician who has a Siegfried/Roy accent and dresses like David Copperfield. He fights Travis at his show, and has a One Hit Kill attack where he has his assistants lock Travis into an exploding box.
Web Comics
- An arc of The Wotch featured a character who "cheated" by using real magic. He said he was actually helping true stage magicians by reinforcing the myth.
Western Animation
- The Amazing Mumbo from Teen Titans.
- "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"
- One episode of Fillmore involved a missing robot dog that a junior magician made vanish at the school talent show. The Chase Scene got a lot more interesting when the suspect was using magic tricks to escape.
- Presto Digitagione of the Pixar short Presto is one of these, but with (presumably) much more talent at real magic since he's created two portals and hid them in his hats.
Real Life
- Doug Henning was a famous stylistic subversion of this kind of performer. Most famously, he rejected the tuxedo, top hat and clean shaven look cliche and opted to have more of a hippie day-glo look along with an earnest enthusiasm which help revitalized the magic show as a popular entertainment in the 1970s.
- Penn & Teller, who came to prominence in The Eighties, are a huge subversion — they cheerfully admit to stage magic being fakery to the point that they don't hesitate to show how some conventional tricks are performed. They also incorporate tons of comedy and social commentary into their shows.
- David Copperfield became famous in The Eighties with TV specials that included such stunts as making the Statue of Liberty appear to vanish and escaping from Alcatraz. Probably the best-known traditional magician working now.
- Lance Burton, a Las Vegas favorite, is another traditional example who specializes in close-up magic (producing doves, cards, etc.).
- Siegfried (Fischbacher) and Roy (Horn) got their start in Las Vegas as a supporting act in showgirl revues in The Seventies, but eventually headlined their own shows, the biggest of which ran at the groundbreaking Mirage Hotel and Casino from 1989-2003. They were famous for using huge setpieces and exotic animals in their acts; infamously it was Roy being mauled by one of their white tigers during a performance that ended their stage careers. Their flamboyance made them by far the most frequently parodied modern magicians during their run, subsequently replaced by:
- Criss Angel (Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos). This magician with a rock and roll "bad boy" persona came to prominence at the Turn Of The Millennium with his colorful stunts on the A&E show Mindfreak. He launched a Las Vegas show co-produced by Cirque Du Soleil (Believe) in 2008, but the result has been derided as So Bad Its Horrible.
- The Amazing Johnathan is a subversion of this whole image, he's dirty, he's fat, he's hairy, and all of his tricks usual end up back firing spectacularly.
- David Blaine formed his creative persona as a direct inversion of this kind of magic (hence his usual title, "street magician"). Increasingly, however, he has gained popularity for increasingly showy, increasingly public (and publicized) feats of magic, though the stunts are more endurance-based than typical illusions.
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