Uri Geller Fails Controlled Test on The Tonight Show (1973)

Uri Geller rose to international fame in the early 1970s claiming genuine psychokinetic powers — most famously the ability to bend spoons and reproduce drawings sealed in envelopes using only mental force.

In 1973, James Randi — a professional stage magician who had identified the precise sleight-of-hand techniques behind each of Geller's signature feats — was asked by The Tonight Show's production team to help design a controlled test. Randi's advice was simple: prepare your own props, weigh the film canisters to make them indistinguishable, and allow Geller no access to any object before taping. Under those conditions, Geller performed nothing. He spent the segment explaining that he didn't 'feel strong' that evening, unable to bend, move, or identify anything.

The failure was consistent with Randi's analysis: Geller's feats depended on advance handling of objects, glimpsing sealed drawings, or confederates in the audience. An Israeli court had already ordered Geller to refund a customer's ticket price and pay court costs after finding he fraudulently claimed his feats were telepathic. His own autobiography acknowledged that his manager had arranged for a planted helper to supply car registration numbers during audience-guessing performances.

Geller built a career spanning decades regardless, partly because the Tonight Show segment brought him a wider audience than the failure erased. But every subsequent controlled scientific test — including those at Stanford Research Institute — produced results no better than chance once adequate blinding was in place.