“phantom tube” used for optical illusions, and a foam-core
model of the magic table he created for Disney’s latest stage
rendition of Mary Poppins. This prop allows the British
nanny to pull gigantic items from her carpetbag, including
a hat rack and full-length mirror.
But what Steinmeyer intends to unpack for me is uncer-
tain. He’s not going to let me f lip over his mirrors or rif le
through his drawers, and when I ask him a straight-line
question, he responds with misdirection—labyrinthine tan-
gents and looping alternate pathways. His story about the
burglar and the safe is as much about what he doesn’t say as
what he does. My brain fizzes with unsated curiosity.
Secrecy is the coin of the realm here, and Steinmeyer is
an open secret himself: Most people who see magic shows
assume the performers invent their own tricks, but it’s illu-
sion designers like Steinmeyer who conjure most of the
magic offstage. The New York Times, in fact, labeled Stein-
meyer theater’s “celebrated invisible man.”
But even given Steinmeyer’s relative anonymity com-
pared with the Copperfields and Blaines of the world, magic
has to reckon with YouTube now. Type any trick into a search
bar and you can view explainers of its mysteries in seconds—
endless spoilers about invisible wires, trap doors, and rigged
boxes. You can find books that detail the mechanics of most
illusions, down to diagrams with measurements. Some of
these tell-alls have existed for generations. Some of the more
recent ones, Steinmeyer wrote himself.
So as one of history’s greatest conjurers of magic contin-
ues to explain and not explain the safe trick, I find myself
wondering: If anyone can dig up the secrets behind many
of Steinmeyer’s tricks, why is he so intent on hiding them?A
t 61, Steinmeyer retains a striking youthfulness that
manifests in an easy grin, a cheerful chattiness, and
eyes that seem lit from behind. He wears a khaki vest
over a tie and pinstriped Oxford, a look that recalls
him as a boy in the 1950s, haunting Chicago-area magic
shops, hobnobbing with performers, probing for tips. As we
walk through his home, posters of great magicians past stand
guard along the walls. One shows an illustrated Harry Kellar,
a sensation in the early twentieth century. Kellar’s arms are
elevated skyward, a woman f loating above his hands. The leg-
end reads: “Levitation—The Greatest Illusion in the World.”
Once settled in the studio with Albert, Steinmeyer’s
doddering but ebullient 13-year-old dachshund, I make an
opening gambit: I ask Steinmeyer about the state of magic
today. He launches into a commentary about how people
don’t just receive entertainment anymore—they see it as a
challenge. “That’s what this has become,” he says, “ ‘Let’s
talk about magic as a puzzle. Let’s deconstruct it.’ ”
Steinmeyer has given the world more to tease apart thanalmost anyone else on the planet. The god-tier highlight of his
career is arguably designing David Copperfield’s televised
vanishing of the Statue of Liberty, but over more than three
decades, Steinmeyer has engineered an entire pantheon of
physics-defying, brain-exploding, how-is-that-even-possible
feats. He made a f lying carpet for the latest turn of Aladdin
on Broadway. He transformed the Beast into a prince at the
end of the stage version of Beauty and the Beast. He vanished
the titular character of The Invisible Man. He erased an ele-
phant from the center ring for Ringling Bros.
In the more traditional world of magic, he brought
a painted portrait to life and back again (“The Artist’s
Dream,” performed by husband-and-wife team the Pendrag-
ons, among others) and designed a whole series of illusions
in which the performer walks through a mirror, a wall, and
a number of other impenetrable objects. Steinmeyer has
invented card tricks and box tricks and levitation tricks
and ESP tricks and every other imaginable kind of theatrical
deception, then some you couldn’t imagine, for the biggest
names in entertainment, including Orson Welles, Siegfried
& Roy, Doug Henning, and Ricky Jay.
Aside from its ambition and quality, what stands out is
the breadth of Steinmeyer’s work. Most illusion creators stay
in a lane: big-stage illusions, escapes, mind reading, theater
productions, or “close-up” magic. Steinmeyer does it all.
“Jim is an expert in virtually ever y area of magic—in fact,
he’s sing ular in that,” says Richard Kaufman, publisher of the
industry magazine Genii and the author of scores of books
about magic. “Nobody else is working at this level. People like
Jim come along once every two or three generations.”S
teinmeyer keeps his secrets out of reach as hours of con-
versation unfold. He is engaged and animated, and he
shares his biography with depth, but he def lects other
questions in a way that reminds me of the conversa-◀ Steinmeyer has 24 notebooks, 100 pages each. Counting both sides of a
page, that’s 4,800 pages dating back to 1980 or ’81. He says he shows them
to no one. ▼ Steinmeyer’s Disappearing Donkey trick (featuring Midget,
pictured) is based on a technique by English magician Charles Morritt.November/December 2020 39CO
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