Jason Leddington
Bucknell University

Theatrical magic is one of the most popular forms of live entertainment of the last 200 years. In the 19th century, magicians such as Alexander Herrmann and Harry Kellar rose to become the first “global” entertainment superstars; and in the first two decades of the 20th century, when ‘Thurston’ and ‘Houdini’ were household names, magicians continued to reign as the kings of popular entertainment. Only with the rise of Hollywood in the 1920s and television in the 1940s did magic fade from public view—for a time. Though television has always regularly featured magic performances (especially on talk-shows such as The Tonight Show), it was in the late 1970s and the ’80s that a new crop of magicians—especially Doug Henning and David Copperfield—ushered in a new “golden age” of magic by  … (to read more)

Jason Leddington / The American Society for Aesthetics ©2017

courtesy of  The American Society of Aesthetics ©2017