The velvet and gold braid

The thing I like about magic is that it’s connected with circus, and with a kind of corny velvet-and-gold-braid sort of world that’s gone and that fascinates me and that I like. That’s really it. It’s not the skillful wonder-worker part of it but the ambience, the atmosphere of a magic show that delights me. I never saw anything in the theatre that entranced me so much as magic—and not the wonder of it: it’s the kind of slightly seedy, slightly carnival side of it. I’m a terrible pushover for all forms of small-time show business anyway. Small theaters, small circuses, magic, and all that. It isn’t the facility—that’s not a conscious part of it to me…But magic to me is a very special kind of thing. It’s just what Robert-Houdin, who was the greatest magician of all time, defined a magician as being: “A great actor playing the part of a magician.”

—Orson Welles, to Peter Bogdanovich in This Is Orson Welles