David Copperfield

If you had to name the single best-known magician of the last half-century, it would be this one. David Copperfield is the performer who made magic work as global popular entertainment. He also does something else — he keeps the art's memory.

Performance from an official channel

Magician David Copperfield (CBS Sunday Morning)
CBS Sunday Morning — Embedded from an official channel. Pressing play connects to YouTube.

Key achievements

1. Established magic as global popular entertainment through years of television specials.
2. Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
3. Has sustained a long-running Las Vegas residency and is regarded as the most commercially successful magician.
4. Also works to collect and preserve the historical record of magic.

A member at twelve, a lecturer at sixteen

He was born David Seth Kotkin on 16 September 1956 in Metuchen, New Jersey. His father ran a menswear shop.

He took up magic at ten, reportedly as a way of becoming more sociable.

What followed was not ordinary. At twelve he became the youngest person ever admitted to the Society of American Magicians. At sixteen he was teaching a class on magic at New York University. A schoolboy belonged to a professional body and lectured at a university.

The stage name David Copperfield comes from the Charles Dickens novel.

On finishing high school in 1974 he was cast as the lead in the musical The Magic Man.

Putting the story first

His television series, The Magic of David Copperfield, began in 1978 — a few years after Doug Henning had won the audience back.

The distinguishing feature of his work is less the phenomenon than the narrative placed in front of it. Why this. What it means. The audience receives the context before the piece begins.

The same event is received quite differently depending on whether a story precedes it, and Copperfield pursued that idea rigorously. It is the work of moving magic from a display of impossibilities towards something closer to composition.

Using real things

The list of his pieces is a statement of his thinking.

A Learjet (1981), the Statue of Liberty (8 April 1983), a levitation over the Grand Canyon (1984), the Great Wall of China (1986), an escape from Alcatraz (1987), a dining car of the Orient Express (1991), and flying on stage for several minutes (1992).

What they share is the use of real things everybody already knows. The audience arrives knowing exactly what the Statue of Liberty and the Great Wall are. That is precisely why anything happening to them registers on a different scale.

He took the stage outside the theatre.

The work of keeping 300,000 items

There is a second occupation behind the performing one.

In 1991 he bought the Mulholland Library of the Conjuring and the Allied Arts and founded the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts. The collection runs to more than 300,000 items — books, graphic images, prints, posters, playbills, photographs, manuscripts, letters and the scrapbooks of leading magicians.

This matters. Magic is an art that leaves poor records. Performances vanish, apparatus is dispersed, papers are thrown out. Without someone gathering and holding it, a performer from a century ago does not even leave a name.

An archive like this one exists because that preservation work was done.

What the record says

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and sustains a long-running Las Vegas residency. He is generally regarded as the most commercially successful magician there has been.

The scale of the performing career and the custodial work behind it. Very few figures in the history of magic have done both at once.

Notable works

• The television series The Magic of David Copperfield
• Pieces staged around real landmarks — the Statue of Liberty (1983), the Great Wall of China (1986)
• The International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts (founded 1991), holding over 300,000 items
• A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Chronology

Only years that could be verified are listed.

1. 1956 Born David Seth Kotkin on 16 September in Metuchen, New Jersey
2. 1966 Takes up magic at the age of ten
3. 1968 At twelve, becomes the youngest person ever admitted to the Society of American Magicians
4. 1972 At sixteen, teaches a class on magic at New York University
5. 1974 After finishing high school, is cast as the lead in the musical The Magic Man
6. 1983 The Statue of Liberty piece is broadcast on 8 April
7. 1986 The Great Wall of China piece is broadcast
8. 1991 Buys the Mulholland Library and founds the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts