![]() ![]() When he’d inserted all the pieces, he might use a cane to poke inside various holes and rap the bottom of the box.Īnd he’d talk about what was inside the box that the audience couldn’t see. ![]() He shoved in the swords (or rectangular metal blades, or wooden "blades") into the top of the horizontal box until they protruded through the bottom. They started exposing because they could make more money by exposing.Ī performer had a woman (the girl) stretch out inside the blade box. In the following years, Billboard magazine noted that many attractions were exposing the methods of the sword box.īy 1948, blade boxes were advertised for saleīut why would performers start exposing the trick? Weren’t magicians concerned about secrecy? But instead of sawing, he thrust 17 swords and 16 flat pieces of wood through holes in the box. In 1924, Billboard, the trade magazine for performers, told of magician La Villette’s Sawing a Woman in Half Mystery, which was vertical rather than horizontal. ![]() Rival magician Horace Goldin created the iconic version we know today, where the assistant’s head and feet stick out of the box as she is sawed. A woman was locked completely inside a box with her hands, feet and neck tied to ropes held by assistants, then cut in half. It’s earliest forerunner was likely the magical illusion The Hindu Basket Trick, first seen in 1834, where a woman would crouch inside a round wicker basket and the magician would thrust swords through her, sometimes stepping inside the basket to show she’s vanished, and then making her reappear.Īnother predecessor was the famous Sawing a Woman in Half illusion, invented in the 1920s by P.T. ![]() It was profitable because it had developed a unique presentation that relied on exposure rather than secrecy. A common – and profitable – circus and carnival sideshow illusion was called the Blade Box or Coffin Blade Box. ![]()
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