David Copperfield

Copperfield was born David Seth Kotkin in Metuchen, New Jersey, the son of Jewish parents Rebecca Kotkin (née Gispan; 1924–2008), an insurance adjuster, and Hyman Kotkin (1922–2006), who owned and operated Korby's, a men's haberdashery in Warren, New Jersey.

His mother was born in Jerusalem, while his paternal grandparents were Jewish emigrants from the Ukrainian SSR (present-day Ukraine).

David Seth Kotkin (born September 16, 1956), known professionally as David Copperfield, is an American magician, described by Forbes as the most commercially successful magician in history.

Copperfield's television specials have been nominated for 38 Emmy Awards, winning 21.

Best known for his combination of storytelling and illusion, his career of over 40 years has earned him 11 Guinness World Records, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a knighthood by the French government.

He has been named a Living Legend by the US Library of Congress.

In 1974 he graduated from Metuchen High School.

Copperfield started his career as a ventriloquist at the age of 8 with his own 'Jerry Mahoney' puppet.

When he was 10, he began practicing magic as "Davino the Boy Magician" in his neighborhood, and at age 12, he became the youngest person admitted to the Society of American Magicians.

Shy and a loner, the young Copperfield saw magic as a way to fit in and, later, to meet women.

As a child, he attended Camp Harmony, a day camp in nearby Warren, New Jersey, where he began practicing magic and ventriloquism, an experience to which he credits his creative style.

He said, "At Camp Harmony, we spent two weeks searching for a guide who'd been kidnapped by Indians. It was just a game, but I was living it. My whole life goes back to that camp experience when I was three or four."

As a teenager, he became fascinated with Broadway and frequently sneaked into shows, especially musicals featuring the work of Stephen Sondheim or Bob Fosse.

By age 16, he was teaching a course in magic at New York University.

At 18, Copperfield enrolled at New York City's Jesuit-based Fordham University, but three weeks into his freshman year he left to play the lead role in the musical The Magic Man in Chicago.

It was then he adopted the stage name David Copperfield, taken from the famous Charles Dickens novel, because he liked its sound.

He sang, danced and created most of the original illusions used in the show.

The Magic Man became the longest-running musical in Chicago history.

At age 19, he created and headlined for several months the first "Magic of David Copperfield" show at the Pagoda Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, with the help of sound and lighting designer Willy Martin.

Copperfield's career in television began in earnest when he was discovered by Joseph Cates, a producer of Broadway shows and television specials.

Cates produced a magic special in 1977 for ABC called The Magic of ABC, hosted by Copperfield, as well as several The Magic of David Copperfield specials on CBS between 1978 and 2001.

There have been 18 Copperfield TV specials and 2 documentaries between September 7, 1977, and April 3, 2001.

Copperfield also played the character The Magician in the 1980 horror film Terror Train and had an uncredited appearance in the 1994 film Prêt-à-Porter.

Most of his media appearances have been through television specials and guest spots on television programs.

His illusions have included the disappearance of a Learjet (1981), the vanishing and reappearance of the Statue of Liberty (1983), levitating over the Grand Canyon (1984), walking through the Great Wall of China (1986), escaping from Alcatraz prison (1987), the disappearance of an Orient Express dining car (1991) and flying on stage for several minutes (1992).

One of his most famous illusions occurred on television on April 8, 1983: A live audience of 20 tourists was seated in front of a giant curtain attached to two lateral scaffoldings built on Liberty Island in an enclosed viewing area.

Copperfield, with help from Jim Steinmeyer and Don Wayne, raised the curtain before lowering it again a few seconds later to reveal that the space where the Statue of Liberty once stood was empty.

A helicopter hovered overhead to give an aerial view of the illusion and the statue appeared to have vanished, with only the circle of lights surrounding it still present and visible.

Before making the statue reappear, Copperfield explained in front of the camera why he wanted to perform this illusion.

He wanted people to imagine what it would be like if there were no liberty or freedom in the world today and what the world would be like without the freedoms and rights we enjoy.

Copperfield then brought the statue back, ending the illusion by saying that "our ancestors couldn't (enjoy rights and freedoms), we can and our children will".

Both the disappearance and the reappearance of the statue were filmed in long take to demonstrate the absence of camera tricks.

In 1986, Copperfield debuted a new variation on the classic sawing a woman in half illusion.

Copperfield’s Death Saw illusion was presented as an escape gone wrong, sawing himself, rather than an assistant, in half with a large rotary saw blade which descended from above.

Copperfield’s Death Saw has become one of his most well-known illusions.

In 1996, in collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola, David Ives, and Eiko Ishioka, Copperfield's Broadway show Dreams & Nightmares broke box office records in New York at the Martin Beck Theatre.

As of 2006, he has sold 33 million tickets and grossed over US$4 billion, more than any other solo entertainer in history by a large margin.

In 2015, Forbes listed his earnings at $63 million for the previous 12 months and ranked him the 20th highest-earning celebrity in the world.

When not performing, he manages his chain of 11 resort islands in The Bahamas, which he calls Musha Cay and the Islands of Copperfield Bay.

This illusion was featured in season four of The Americans, in an episode entitled “The Magic of David Copperfield V: The Statue of Liberty Disappears,” and in the 2019 HBO documentary Liberty: Mother of Exiles.