Vanishing the Statue of Liberty
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Making the Statue of Liberty appear to disappear on live television in 1983 is one of David Copperfield's most memorable tricks. The illusion was a creation of Jim Steinmeyer [1], and it is still unpublished.
In the book Bigger Secrets, William Poundstone published his guesses and detailed a plausible-sounding theory for how Steinmeyer's illusion was accomplished. Poundstone suggests that the entire stage and seating area for the audience was atop a rotating platform. Once the curtains were closed, blocking the view, the platform was rotated—slowly enough to be imperceptible. When the curtains opened again, the audience was facing out to sea rather than toward the statue. Poundstone further elaborates that, once the stage rotated, the statue itself was mostly concealed behind a brightly-lit curtain tower. To further misdirect attention, there were two rings of lights: one, initially lit, around the statue, and another (dark and invisible at first) in the area the audience would end up facing. When the trick "happened", the statue's lights were doused and the others turned on. The radar blip highlighted in the television presentation was simply an animation. As for the three Kodak flash cameras taking pictures of the statue at the moment that it "vanished," Poundstone points out that the cameras' tiny flashbulbs would not be nearly powerful enough to illuminate the statue on their own once the main lights had been switched off.
Some claim that this explanation is unsatisfactory, maintaining that one end of the statue's pedestal base was visible to the live audience at all times[citation needed]. Furthermore, the size of the suggested platform would have to be quite large to support the curtain towers and guidewires as well as be moved in some silent fashion to not arouse suspicion in the live audience.[citation needed]
Others in the trade claimed at the time that the statue itself was a smaller scale model on a stage somewhere other than in New York City, and that the "live" audience were paid actors. Supporting this claim is the fact that the crown of the statue right before it disappears shows bright white lights compared to the softer blue that appears in the real statue, and the audience's reaction seems staged. Further, there is loud applause heard after the disappearance, but no one in the videotape seems to be clapping.
[edit] References
Poundstone, William. (1986). Bigger Secrets. Houghton Mifflin.
