I've noticed when many magicians do a trick with newspaper, either a milk in newspaper or any version of the torn and restored newspaper, there's a reoccurring theme of doing it to spy type music, either the James Bond theme or an Inspector Cleusau or Peter Gunn type music.
I've seen this so much in other performers and I'm wondering what the connection is.
I imagine there must have been a well known magician who performed it with a spy theme that they're all being influenced by, but I can't think of who. Could anyone enlighten me?

Finding music that ends with a crescendo or climax that will coincide with the trick's resolution (vanish, restoration, ... .) is not easy for some people. Much of the popular music over the past number of years ends with a fade out or repeat... Neither of which is designed to elicit applause.

So many performers go with what was written some years ago: movie themes, TV show themes, and perforce: cop shows. Cop show music is frequently, jazzy, brass and percussion driven... And other than being rather dated.. Ideal for that 1 to 3 minute routine. There was a time when many magic acts that worked to recorded music exclusively (as opposed to live accompaniment) found a treasure trove in these popular instrumentals. Marvyn Roy, whose act toured the world many times , found that when he switched from Live bands.. He had limited choices, and worked this way..

Over time, magicians found that instrumentals were not the only solution, and David Copperfield broke with this tradition on his TV specials in the 70's and 80's. Still, lots of magicians are traditionalists.. And like what they know or have seen.

Otherwise , their is no relationship between newspaper magic... And spies!

Thanks for your thoughts JNeal.
I too use a lot of TV or Movie music in my routines. They evoke a mood brilliantly and as you rightly say, often end on a very handy climax.
And indeed I use spy themed music for one of my routines (but not a newspaper trick though).
However there are definitely a noticeably large number of magicians, (certainly here in the UK) who use variations of sneaky sounding spy music specifically for tricks with newspapers, even though there's nothing in their performance per se to add to the spy idea.
So I do find myself wondering if there was some well known performance on TV years back that has just stuck in magicians minds as "the music you use to do this trick".
It may just be a British thing!

I think the allusion to mystery, a build up of suspense and then a climax seem appealing in a Magic routine.

-Mary Mowder

To your point specifically, I know of no one who has had that kind of influence on newspaper tearing magicians... Since Doug Henning!

It is probably just coincidence the magician in the UK use this type of theme music. I remember back in the late 70's and 80's, many suggested the use of television and movie theme music to be a good match for a magic act. I never could see the relationship. I also thought that as some have said, that using a familiar song would cause the audience to think of show, distracting the audiences minds from the magician and routine they are watching, or should be watching.