to emulate and improve on what he had done, thus affecting the course of stage magic history. In 1956, Indian illusionist P. C. Sorcar used a buzzsaw to cut his wife in two during a televised performance. Just when he had divided her the host quickly signed off and the show ended. This caused horrified viewers to believe she had accidentally been killed. In reality, it was a live television broadcast and time had run out. In the 1957 Friz Freleng cartoon Show Biz Bugs, Bugs Bunny asks for a volunteer for this trick, and Daffy Duck happily obliges, throughout attempting to expose the fraud of this trick. After the trick is over, Daffy tries to show the audience he isn't cut in half, only for his upper and lower halves to jump whenever he is angry. (His response: "Hmmph. It's a good thing I got Blue Cross.") Live performances by Peruvian magician Richiardi Jr are often cited as the most horrific presentations of a sawing illusion. Richiardi used a buzzsaw prop similar to that employed by Sorcar but he greatly added to the shock value by incorporating fake blood and entrails, which were sprayed over the stage (and sometimes beyond it) as the saw went to work. The 1962 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" depicted sawing a woman in half. The NBC Television Network and sponsor Revlon determined the episode was too gory and chose not to air it. In the late 1990s, stage performances by David Copperfield often featured presentations of various versions of sawing a woman in half, including "Clearly Impossible", a buzzsaw that had originally belonged to Orson Welles, and Copperfield's own "Blade" length-ways sawing. Very often, these presentations featured Copperfield's fiancée, supermodel Claudia Schiffer, as the woman being sawn in half. Critical responses and twists Jim Steinmeyer has argued that Selbit's introduction of the sawing illusion was a turning point in the history of magic after which gentler styles represented by the likes of John Nevil Maskelyne were in irreversible decline to be replaced by more sensational presentations that owed something to the shock effect of Grand Guignol theatre. In particular, Steinmeyer identifies the sawing illusion as the beginning of a fashion for magic featuring female assistants in the role of victim. He says the cliche of "pretty ladies teased and tortured by magicians" was not a cliche prior to Selbit's illusion. Male