Audience to miss modernized magic of Doug Henning

Beth Gardiner

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2000 | 8:57 a.m.

NEW YORK -- Doug Henning, the mellow, long-haired magician who modernized the ancient craft in the 1970s with a Broadway show and television specials, has died. He was 52.

Henning, a frequent Las Vegas performer, had suffered from liver cancer for five months. His office in Toronto said he died Monday in Los Angeles.

Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Henning -- recognizable by his trademark long hair and tie-dyed shirts -- became well-known in the United States in the 1970s and '80s.

His rock musical "The Magic Show" ran on Broadway for more than four years in the 1970s. Audiences flocked to the Cort Theater to see Henning make women disappear in sections and mix his magic with music and comedy.

The attention he won on Broadway helped Henning land an NBC special called "The World of Magic."

He recreated Harry Houdini's "Water Torture Escape" before a live audience and ratings were so good that NBC made the show an annual event. The shows won an Emmy award and seven Emmy nominations and made Henning one of the world's best-known magicians.

"He was a kind of Peter Pan who led magic away from the tuxedo approach and brought it into a modern, fun format," said Phil Willmarth, executive editor of the Linking Ring magazine, in Durham, N.C. "His real genius was in bringing back the real terrific illusions of the past, which hadn't been seen by most people in generations."

Henning said he wanted to help his audiences recapture a childlike sense of wonder.

"Wonder is very necessary in life," he once said. "When we're little kids, we're fillled with wonder for the world -- it's fascinating and miraculous. A lot of people lose that. They become cynical and jaded, especially in modern day society. Magic renews that wonder."

Fascinated for years by transcendental meditation, he said his life changed when he met the movement's leader, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in 1975. He ran unsuccessfully in elections in England in 1992 and Canada in the mid-1990s as a member of the Natural Law party, which was founded by the Maharishi.

Henning spent his last years working with the Maharishi on plans for a transcendental meditation theme park in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

He is survived by his wife, Debbie.