LYNCHBURG, Va. -- If any garden-variety magician can make a lovely assistant vanish, can thousands of the world's magicians, working in concert, perform the same trick on a reviled television program?

So far ... no.

By all reports, Fox Television has remained unmoved in the face of methods both magical and mundane. To the trepidation of magicians everywhere, the network this fall is going forward with two more of its popular specials in which a magician in disguise reveals how hitherto astounding feats of magic are really accomplished.

All of which leads to another question: Can a television show make a whole performance art -- namely, the art of magic -- vanish? After all, how can a magician be a magician without his tricks?

This is no mere philosophical riddle to magicians, and certainly -- not to the husband-wife performers Cindy and Kevin Spencer. Thanks to Fox Television, the Spencers are now without two of their tricks. Gone is the Shadow Box. Ditto the Chinese Water Torture Cell. Both are now so much junk in a storage facility near their home here.

Now the Spencers sit in their stucco home with magic greats like Harry Houdini and Carter the Great gazing down upon them from posters on the wall, and they shudder to think what more damage Fox has in store for them this fall. "What are we going to lose next week, next month?" Cindy asks glumly. The Milk-Can Escape? Metamorphosis?

The Spencers, like magicians around the world, were aghast last November when Fox unveiled the first of its specials, "Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed." The program -- and its two subsequent sequels -- expose the hidden compartments, the forklifts and the mirrors behind the tricks that formerly held us spellbound. The shows have scored strong ratings for Fox. Magicians say they have also done nothing less than taken the magic out of magic and impaired their ability to make a living.

And if these specials continue, the magicians warn, the only thing disappearing will be themselves.

The shows shatters the cardinal commandment of magic. "The number one rule of magic has always been: 'Don't Expose,' " says Kenneth Silverman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of an acclaimed 1996 biography of Harry Houdini, which, incidentally, does not reveal the great magician's secrets. "It is a violation of the basic commandment. If you expose, there's no trick left."

Andre Kole, widely considered one of the top two "magical inventors" in the world, whose illusions have been performed by David Copperfield among other top-name magicians, is less diplomatic. "It's almost like raping a profession," he says.

But then, Kole himself was victimized by one of the Fox shows. In the last of its three specials in the 1997-98 television season, Fox revealed the secret of the "Table of Death," Kole's best-known illusion. In that trick, the magician is bound to a table while above him looms a platform of steel spikes suspended by a rope that is slowly being burned away by a candle. The magician must escape before the flame makes its way through the cord. If not, he becomes a human pin-cushion.

Kole says he has licensed the "Table of Death" to seven of the world's top 10 magicians. Now, because Fox revealed his secrets over his objections, Kole insists the trick is virtually worthless. "They have destroyed one of the best illusions in the history of magic," he says. Kole estimates the financial damage at well over $500,000.

So he's making good on his threat by suing Fox for $55 million and attempting to stop Fox from airing any more of the specials. His is one of at least four lawsuits against the network brought by magicians around the country.

No illusions

The Spencers, who have toured for 15 years, filed one of the other suits after the Fox specials cost them the Shadow Box, in which Cindy slowly materializes into an empty box, and the Chinese Water Torture Cell, an escape trick invented by Houdini. They represent two of about 20 tricks in the Spencers' repertoire.

"Those illusions are gone now," Kevin said last week in the couple's living room, populated by all manner of bronze and plaster cherubs. "We can't use them anymore."

As each of the Fox specials approaches, says Cindy, the foil in many of Kevin's tricks, "you feel physically ill." Each trick they perform, she says, is the result of tens of thousands of dollars in time and money. The Spencers -- both 39, slim and dark-haired -- pay construction and licensing fees for most of their tricks, which usually include non-disclosure agreements. Then they devote hundreds of hours to rehearsals, choreography, music, sound and lighting.

"Suppose you're in the middle of a tour in Colorado and you suddenly lose one or two of your tricks," says Cindy. "It would truly be a professional embarrassment to us."

Beyond the embarrassment, Kevin says, the Fox specials deprive audiences of the fun of being astounded. "The keeping of these secrets isn't hurting anybody," he says, "but the telling of them is hurting magicians throughout the world, and stealing the wonder and amazement of audiences everywhere."

In their lawsuits, the magicians argue that Fox is revealing trade secrets and ransacking their intellectual property. David Barum, Kole's attorney and a consultant to the Spencers, likens what Fox is doing to illegally appropriating the recipes for Coca-Cola or McDonald's products.

Since the lawsuits were filed, Fox and the show's producer, Nash Entertainment, have refused to discuss the specials. However, when Kole tried to stop Fox from revealing his "Table of Death" routine, the network solemnly stood behind its First Amendment rights to expose his secret.

The lawsuits are only the latest weapons the magicians have used against Fox. They have also organized an international letter-writing protest (the "Keep the Magic Alive" Campaign) to the network and its advertisers. While Fox has been unresponsive (not to mention unremorseful), the magicians have made headway with some major advertisers. McDonald's, 3M, Wendy's and Coca-Cola have all pledged not to advertise on any future shows.

Despite that coup, some magicians believe the public fight with Fox is only building more interest in the shows. "A lot of people are saying we should just shut up because we're just giving them more publicity," says Bill Smith, a builder of magic apparatus, some of which has been spotlighted by Fox.

That's one reason some famous magicians are remaining low-key in the fight. Although Copperfield has registered his disapproval, he has not taken a lead role in the dispute. Magicians say he is wary of Fox turning his opposition into promotional advantage. "See the Show that David Copperfield Doesn't Want You to Watch."

Still others in the fraternity, including Stan Allen, editor of Magic Magazine, believe the magicians are overreacting. Each successive Fox special has seen a ratings decline. The public, Allen says, is losing interest and in any case has a short memory. "Magicians are hyping this into a bigger deal than it should be," he says.

Obviously, that's not the view of the Spencers, who insist they cannot stand by in silence while their livelihood is threatened and -- at least in their minds -- their age-old art is debased.

Kevin's immersion into magic is typical of many professionals. Fascinated by it from an early age, he taught himself his first tricks from a child's magic kit, joined magic clubs and started performing professionally as a teen-ager. Along the way, he received valuable advice from such masters as Doug Henning, Harry Blackstone Jr. and Kole. Through apprenticeship, study and practice, Spencer became a top touring performer, especially after Cindy joined his act after their marriage in 1983.

That is why he is particularly irked by the derogatory tone taken in the Fox shows. In one program, host Mitch Pileggi, of Fox's "The X-Files," sneers, "It's not so magical when you know how it's done."

Kevin Spencer says the shows make him feel like a criminal. "Instead of performance artists, we're presented as con men."

Even more galling is that the instrument of the magicians' undoing is one of their own. The secrets are revealed by a sinewy, silent figure in black whose face is covered by a feline mask. Known as "the Masked Magician," he is identified by Pileggi as one of the best magicians in the world.

Other magicians find the claim laughable. They say the Masked Magician is none other than Leonard Montano, a modestly successful Las Vegas magician whose stage name was Valentino. While the Masked Magician was performing on the Rosie O'Donnell show, Smith says, he recognized the Blade Box he had built especially for Montano. Also, during that show, the device mechanically disguising the Masked Magician's voice wasn't working at first. Those who know Montano say they recognized his voice.

"The last time I saw him perform [as Montano], he was relegated to one of the afternoon shows in Vegas," said David Sandy, a Missouri magician who is helping lead the public relations campaign against Fox, which revealed two of his tricks.

Montano couldn't be reached for comment and his lawyer in Las Vegas, Mark Tratos, did not return a telephone call. In the past, though, Montano has neither confirmed nor denied that he is the Masked Magician.

The Spencers and others call it "unconscionable" that one of their own has betrayed them, but it's no secret why he did. Mike Darnell, the unrepentant Fox vice president behind the shows, gloated to TV Guide that he knew just how to get someone to break the magicians' code. "We wanted a pro," he said. "We went out in the community and said, 'There's money in it.' "

In interviews, though, the Masked Magician has given more high-minded reasons. In the same TV Guide, he complained that magicians have been relying on the same tricks for centuries. "This is a challenge to magicians to come up with new ideas, to sort of push magic into the 21st century," he told TV Guide.

Unfortunately, the Spencers point out, new, original tricks are expensive. Only the premier magicians, the Copperfields and Lance Burtons, can afford them. Most magicians rely on the so-called classics, which are not covered by licensing fees.

Although Fox has gone after some original tricks, like Kole's, it has mainly exposed the classics. "When we were getting started," says Kevin Spencer, "the only tricks we could afford were the classics, which are the very ones that Fox is now destroying."

In the code of ethics of the two largest magic organizations, the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians, the first rule is to "oppose the willful exposure to the public of any principles of the Art of Magic."

If the rule has a long history, it also has a long history of being breached, although perhaps not for as crass reasons as Fox's. In the 16th century, an English country gentlemen named Reginold Scot wrote a book revealing the secrets of magic tricks. It was the first known volume in the English language on magic. But Scot wasn't exposing the tricks simply for the sake of it. He hoped his book would stem the persecution of those accused of witchcraft. He wanted to show that purely human manipulations could explain perceived satanic manifestations.

Magicians have sometimes publicly shown how tricks are performed to prove they were not agents of the supernatural. Their tricks were just that, clever deceptions, not other-worldly. Early in the century, Houdini commanded world attention by revealing that spiritualists who claimed to communicate with the dead were actually doing nothing but appropriating the methods of magicians.

Houdini revealed his methods for other reasons as well. Sometimes, when he was getting ready to retire one of his famous escape acts, he would show how it was done so no competitor could add it to his repertoire.

But the real secret about magic tricks is they are less secret than magicians would have the public believe. "Anybody who is interested in magic need only go to the library or to magic shops and magic clubs in the country," says Allen of Magic Magazine. "I always refer to it as the most open secret art you can imagine."

In other words, it's no great feat for Fox to learn the secrets of magic. But having learned the secrets, does it have to plaster them all over television for the whole world to see?

Cindy Spencer has the answer to that one. "Just because they can doesn't mean they should."

Pub Date: 9/02/98