The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 145

The Cover Story llr. II folr LU lit! To Henning Magic Is More Than Just Sawing a Woman in Half if i I ft 1' ''El Television on 'OUG Henning doesn't look Mark Henning and Julie Newmar have supernatural strength; he can escape, he asserts, because he is a skilled illusionist. Out of respect for real "magic" laws of nature as yet undiscovered Henning repudiates the false pretense of unnatural powers. Unnatural or not, the hour-long "The World of Magic," telecast from Hollywood, will feature five bewildering Doug Henning illusions never before seen on television. illusions will be new presentations Henning hopes "will fool even the top magicians of the world." One is completely unprecedented: Henning and Bill Cosby will saw apart Julie Newmar not in the conventional two halves, but in segments.

Orson Welles will read minds he studied with the legendary Houdini. Folksin-ger Lori Lieberman will also be on hand. Or will she? People and things, Henning promises, will be appearing and dissolving all over the place. Doug Henning has performed on national television before he once sawed Barbara Walters apart. But Henning sees "The World of Magic" much like a magician he's a shaggy-haired 28-year-old whose stage attire is a pullover, denims and red tennis shoes.

He doesn't sound much like one, either. Especially when he's talking about magic, which he insists he really believes in. "By that, I mean I really believe there are things in the world we don't understand telepathy, for instance," explains Henning, star of the Broadway hit "Magic Show," who will have his first TV special at 8 P.M. Friday on NBC. The hour of illusion, titled "The World of Magic," will be colorcast live before a studio audience.

Bill Cosby will be on-cam-era host, with actor-producer-director Orson Welles as guest star. "A lot of magicians claim supernatural powers. tural' means beyond nature. I don't think there's anything beyond nature. I think there's nature that we don't understand yet." In other words, when Henning escapes from a padlocked wooden box in "The Magic 2 Show," he doesn't pretend to als save one.

Houdini, who offered cash to anyone who proved it possible to obtain air inside the locked tank, billed the escape, "a feat which borders on the supernatural." Characteristically, Henning doesn't. "People actually thought Houdini could dissolve right through a solid," he explains. "I present the water torture escape as a spectacularly dramatic illusion. I mean, Houdini was a brash man with a strong ego he said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I can do But that's not me. I say to my audience, There's mgic" in the world, isn't it I j)lay myself.

I'm not playing a role." If Harry Houdini seemed to defy the limits of human strength and ingenuity, Henning presents an enigma at least as puzzling: He claims he can free himself from a locked tankful of water without magic. It's an illusion or is it? as a unique challenge. "Magic has never been done really successfully on television," he believes. "It's difficult to do well because the audience is prone to think there's trick photography involved. "We've tried to overcome the problems by doing the show live and by having a live audience.

We'll also have a man on stage with a hand-held camera that can poke around to see that there are no mirrors or whatever just the sort of thing you'd love to do when you watch a magic show in the theater." Credibility is essential to Henning's piece de resistance: To climax "The World of Magic," he'll be shackled hand and foot, then locked upside down in a narrow tank filled with water. Houdini, who invented the "water torture," called it his most dangerous escape: it's possible no one has successfully negotiated it since. Henning's water torture will duplicate Houdini in all essenti.