Doug Henning made me believe in real magic

The year was 1978, I was 12 years old and starting to take my magic more seriously. I remember watching Doug Henning perform at the Palace Theater on 6th Street in downtown Cincinnati. It was a spectacular theater that had just been renivated to the tune of millions. B.F. Keith founded this theater as part of his circuit and it remained a vaudeville house until 1928 when it switched over to movies. The Palace was also known as the RKO International 70 and the International Movie House and later became a venue for stage shows, concerts, and Broadway musicals. The Palace Theater was demolished in 1982 and a large office building was erected on the site.



The show was the first full scale illusion show I had ever seen and I'll never forget the wonderous feeling of the multiple climaxes of "Little Things That Go Bump In The Night" WOW!!!! There he is , now there he isn't, now he's over here and where he was, was a fucking 700 pound tiger. My smile must have lasted a week.



I was just a kid, but I knew that I wanted to devote my life to magic. . . and so I did. Believing in real magic was the first step. Henning showed me how by believing in his own magic. It helped me understand how to sell the audience on the sense of wonder that we try to create.



I also remember how beautifully he performed the "Sands of the Nile"

He would stand behind a small, high, table, bearing a large transparent bowl and three small piles of colored sand. He would begin by pouring ordinary-looking water into the bowl. As he began to tell a story about an ancient Egyptian ritual, he would stir the water with his bare hand, upon which it would turn black and opaque. As the story unfolded, he would then place a handful of each color of sand into the bowl of dark water, then extract them, one by one, dry and unmixed. Henning would then stir the water one last time, and it would again become completely clear, with a few stray grains of sand left in it.