MAGICIAN'S SUIT TRIES TO MAKE TV SHOW DISAPPEAR.

Byline: Peter Hartlaub Daily News Staff Writer

The Fox Network's ``masked magician'' is scheduled to reveal the secrets of a dangerous escape trick on TV next week, despite the efforts of a legendary illusionist to prevent the broadcast.

Attorneys for Andre Kole rushed to court Wednesday, trying to stop Fox from revealing his 45-year-old ``Table of Death'' illusion during the oft-promoted ``Magic's Greatest Secrets Revealed'' special.

After considering the motion for most of the day, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert O'Brien turned down Kole's request.

Kole's attorney, David Baram, argued that the illusion is a ``trade secret'' protected by California law and the centuries-old ethical code of magicians. Baram said the lawsuit is still pending, and he may appeal O'Brien's decision before the special airs Tuesday.

During a morning hearing, Fox attorney Jeffrey Kravitz told O'Brien that the illusion on the special dates back to the 1890s. Kravitz asserted that Kole's trick was not a model for the one that will be unveiled by the masked magician.

``We don't know how he performed his (trick), he doesn't know how we performed ours,'' he said.

To those who do magic for a living, Kole is a legend. The 61-year-old Arizona resident has been credited with creating 50 percent of David Copperfield's illusions.

Kole claims that in 1954 he invented the ``Table of Death'' - where a magician is seemingly impaled by a falling wall of spikes - and he loaned it out after 1974 to top magicians, including Copperfield and Doug Henning, on the condition of secrecy.

But Kole asserts that replica of the stunt has showed up in promotional commercials for the third in a series of highly rated Fox ``Magic's Greatest Secrets Revealed'' specials, with the promise that the ``masked magician'' will tell how the trick is done.

Kole's attorneys made it clear that the lawsuit is about more than the illusionist's ability to make a profit.