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11:28 AM CDT on Monday, October 10, 2005

By JEROME WEEKS / The Dallas Morning News

Making an entire Asian elephant disappear onstage was rather the opposite of what Houdini was famous for – reappearing in the flesh, having freed himself from being locked away in crates or jail cells.

But Houdini always wanted to be more than an escape artist. His first (self-awarded) showbiz title was the "King of Cards," and he longed to be a complete magician like his rival, the sophisticated Howard Thurston.

So de-materializing a 6,000-pound pachyderm spoke to Houdini's ego, his showmanship, his need to prove himself. And it spoke to his heavy-handedness. It was The Biggest Illusion Ever.

And it flopped. In 1918 in New York before an audience of 5,200 people, Houdini had Jennie the elephant brought out onstage at the Hippodrome, an auditorium so large and specially equipped that zeppelin attacks were staged there. Jennie climbed into a garage-sized box up on wheels. Stagehands spun it, curtains were pulled back and the crowd could see straight through the box.

Ta-dah.

A smattering of applause.

One flaw was the sheer scale. The Hippodrome was so vast, the gigantism that Houdini thought would overwhelm spectators was greatly reduced. To many viewers, Jim Steinmeyer writes, Houdini himself was "little more than a black speck" on the stage.

The other flaw was simply that "Houdini was a terrible magician." Mr. Steinmeyer titles his in-depth history of how this illusion took shape over 50 years Hiding the Elephant because that's actually what the trick entails. Not "vanishing" or "disappearing" or even "removing" the elephant. Jennie was there all along; it was the audience's view of her that changed.

And if you figured that it was "all done with mirrors," you're more or less right: mirrors and angles. Invented by an alcoholic Englishman named William Morritt, the effect was based on his discovery that if you looked into a barrel lying on its side with a properly angled mirror hiding half the interior but reflecting the empty half, it appeared as though the entire barrel were empty.

But as Houdini's failure amply demonstrates, it's not the mechanism that makes the trick. His was truly a landmark technical achievement despite the initial thud. Performers still employ the same methods today. But it's showmanship that sells a trick, the story the performer weaves around himself and his act that connects with theatergoers, truly changing their view.

Put another way: The performer must cast a spell. And that, as Hiding the Elephant shows in great detail, is the real source of magic.

E-mail jweeks@dallasnews.com