Magic Trick (film)

Magic Trick
Directed by	Orson Welles
Written by	Orson Welles
Starring	Orson Welles
Release date	1953 (1953)
Running time	3 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Magic Trick is a short film made in 1953 by Orson Welles, for use in a show by magician Richard Himber. It involves Welles on-screen interacting with Himber off-screen as the two play a card trick, and would have been projected life-size (in black and white) during Himber's touring stage show in the 1950s.

It was the first time Welles had filmed any magic tricks since his segment in the 1944 film Follow the Boys (which in turn used tricks Welles originally staged in the 1943 The Mercury Wonder Show); and from the late 1960s onwards, Welles would perform more of these tricks in public, most notably in The Orson Welles Show (1979) and Orson Welles' Magic Show (1976-85).

Subsequent use of the footage by David Copperfield

Magician David Copperfield resurrected the footage for use in his 1992 CBS TV special, The Magic of David Copperfield XIV: Flying - Live the Dream. In it, he interacted with the footage to repeat the same card trick, claiming that he was communicating with Orson Welles from beyond the grave.

To further this, all the instances in which Welles referred to Richard Himber off-screen as "Dick" were dubbed into "Dave".

External links

• Jonathan Rosenbaum, description of segment in chronology of Welles's career, in Rosenbaum (ed.), Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, This is Orson Welles, New York: Da Capo Press, 1998 [rev. 2nd edition] pp. 545–6
• The Magic of David Copperfield XIV: Flying - Live the Dream at IMDb