How Magician William Woodfield made ‘Mission Impossible’ possible..
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation thrums into theaters on Friday, with quinquagenarian Tom Cruise again taking up the mantle of Ethan Hunt, executing bad guys and actuary-defying stunts with equal gusto. Like the other great movie spies, your Bonds and your Bournes, Hunt didn’t get famous on the silver screen. Where the other two had literary origins, the IMF agent got big on television. Still, Mission Impossible owes a great deal to the printed page and, more specifically, an obscure, long since discontinued conjurers trade magazine:Woodfield’s Magicana.
William Woodfield would eventually work as a producer on the TV series that introduced the IMF to the world, but in 1946, he was an 18-year-old amateur illusionist armed with a newsletter, Woodfield’s Magicana: A Trade Paper for Magicians. The subject matter reads today like a video game site’s nav bar. There were tips, tricks (the illusion kind), reviews, news, and rankings of famous mages. Here’s a taste of Woodfield describing a trick he subsequently breaks down for would be practitioners of the magic arts.