Val Valentino

In October 2017, Valentino announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, and was given one year to live from the time of the diagnosis. Valentino refused conventional treatment, and is still fighting the disease as of 2020.

In 2012, the website of Nash Entertainment—the producers of the Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed—listed a movie called Masked Magician, about a magician who uses illusions to fight crime, was "in development".

In October 2007, a graphic novel starring the character of the Masked Magician was released by Heavy Ink.

Valentino became well known in Brazil after his sketches were broadcast in Rede Globo's Sunday newsmagazine show Fantástico from 1999 to 2000, in which he was referred by the alias Mister M.

New episodes of the show later returned to broadcast on MyNetworkTV. Episodes were also made available on Netflix and the Fox Reality Channel with Valentino reprising the role. Valentino also appeared in the Masked Magician persona on a 1999 episode of Diagnosis: Murder.

For a span of two years (1997–1999), Valentino performed, unbilled and disguised, as the "Masked Magician" in four Fox Network specials called Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed which exposed long-guarded trade secrets. The Masked Magician was also shown in the UK on the ITV network during the late 1990s and is still occasionally repeated on ITV4. In the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, the show was made available on Netflix.

Valentino's first foray into magic was at the age of five with a trick called "the ball and vase" that his father gave him. In his teens, Valentino performed with the "International Cultural Awareness Program" for over a million students throughout the Unified School Systems. The performances also included revealing magic secrets to encourage others to become magicians. By the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, Valentino had moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and was performing in casino shows including Viva Las Vegas and Splash, after having appeared on The Merv Griffin Show, as well as in the music video for Herb Alpert's "Magic Man".

Other magicians criticized Valentino's explanations for being sloppy or inaccurate, arguing that he gives a mistaken impression that the methods he's exposing are regularly used by professional magicians. Magician Mark Wilson, who hosted the 1960s Saturday morning children's' TV series The Magic Land of Allakazam, says some of Valentino's reveals were dangerous and not generally used by fellow magicians.

Val Valentino (born Leonard Montano, June 14, 1956) is an American magician. Valentino starred in a series of four television specials exposing the methods behind numerous classic magic tricks and illusions on the Fox network. In the specials, he used the stage name the Masked Magician and concealed his true identity by wearing a mask with a squid like design, being aware of the stigma amongst the magic community with publicly exposing tricks. As the finale to the final special, Valentino revealed his identity as the masked magician, garnering some notoriety amongst the magic community, and instigating several lawsuits.