Sawing a woman in half Sawing a woman in half Sawing a woman in half is a generic name for a number of stage magic tricks in which a person (traditionally a female assistant) is apparently sawn or divided into two or more pieces. There remains a debate about the origin of sawing illusions, with some sources saying a magician named Torrini may have performed the first version in front of Pope Pius VII in 1809. However, it is more likely that the story is a fiction which has its roots in the writings of the famous French magician Jean Robert-Houdin. In his "Memoirs", written
A House Divided (Dallas) there was consensus that a mystery with several suspects was optimal and that it should be a sudden event. Capice denied rumors that the shooting was a ploy to make it easy to write Hagman out of the script if his contract negotiations became too difficult. Producer Leonard Katzman, executive story consultant Art Lewis and story editor Camille Marchetta decided the actual culprit in mid-March by process of logical elimination with the belief that the audience should not be surprised by someone who was not important to the show as the shooter. "A House Divided" served as both an introduction