By 1974, magic had lost
its mass appeal and there was no such thing as a celebrity
magician—until a skinny, bucktoothed kid from Winnipeg became an
overnight star in an unlikely Broadway musical called The Magic
Show. Doug Henning, with his refreshingly modern approach to the
art of illusion, permanently changed the face of magic and
reintroduced an entire generation of audiences to grand illusion as
a theatrical art.
John Harrison traces
Doug’s stunning rise to fame from his humble beginnings in the
Toronto coffeehouse circuit to his fantastic success as the world’s
first celebrity magician in fifty years. Told with exacting detail
and reverence for its subject, Spellbound: The Wonder-filled Life
of Doug Henning is an engaging story about the making of a
master illusionist and his unrelenting search for real magic.
From the highest rated
magic television special in history, to three Broadway shows, to a
decade of touring, John Harrison takes us on a backstage tour of
Doug’s performing life and gives a behind-the-scenes look at the
mysterious world of grand illusion. All of Doug’s astounding feats,
like making an elephant vanish and walking through a brick wall, are
featured in this engaging biography of a man who believed he would
one day be able to levitate without resorting to his illusionist’s
bag of tricks.
As amazing as his
onstage life, Doug Henning’s journey through the bizarre world of
transcendental meditation and his brush with politics are told with
equal intrigue.
Spellbound: The
Wonder-filled Life of Doug Henning
is as exciting as Doug Henning’s miracles themselves, filled with
captivating adventures, like Doug’s harrowing moments while
submerged upside down in Houdini’s Water Torture Cell on live
television, his several heart-stopping incidents with rampaging
tigers, and his attempt to build an amusement park in Niagara Falls.
From his first magic
trick—making a quarter disappear—to his eventual retirement from the
stage at the height of his career, the fantastic life and career of
Doug Henning come vividly to life in this magical biography.
