David Copperfield: The Magic Behind the True Superhero

When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty vanish on television in April 1983, Americans gasped. The 305-foot, 62,000-pound statue disappeared before a live audience in a magical trick recorded by the Guinness Book of Records as the Largest Illusion Ever Staged.

David Copperfield's behind-the-scenes magic

What fans didn’t know was that the magician had worked diligently behind the scenes to pull off the prime-time event with the help of filmmaker Frank Capra. Initially, the producer of It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, wanted no part of David Copperfield’s idea, adamant that ‘liberty’ could not be seen to disappear in the US.

"I spent four hours with him trying to convince [Capra] that it's about the fragility of freedom, that we have to vanish the Statue of Liberty to kind of show symbolically how we can take it for granted too much," David Copperfield later said. At the time, the US was still in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and liberty and freedom were at risk.

The US government granted permission for the disappearing act - but only for a few minutes - and Capra eventually relented, helping the magician write the story around the spectacular event that left fans astonished for decades. (The secret behind the illusion was finally revealed in 2016.)

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