Charles Reynolds, 78, who described his business as providing “chaste, charming, weird, wonderful, and supernatural illusions” – and who proved it by coming up with two entirely different ways to make an elephant disappear – died Nov. 4 at his home in Manhattan.The cause was liver cancer, said his wife, Regina, who is his only survivor.

Mr. Reynolds belonged to the circumspect, virtually invisible world of “backroom boys” who help magicians refine their acts.

In Merlin, a 1983 Broadway musical starring Doug Henning, he figured out how to make a live white horse and rider vanish into thin air.

He wrote or helped write a half-dozen books on magic, one of which provided insight on how to saw a woman in half with a rope. Among many honors, he was the 2004 magician of the year and was named one of the 100 most influential figures of 20th-century magic in a Magic magazine poll.

– N.Y. Times News Service

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