Long farewell for Siegfried & Roy - News

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Mar. 01, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Long farewell for Siegfried & Roy

Duo perform for charity benefit with tiger that mauled illusionist

By MIKE WEATHERFORD
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Illusionists Roy Horn, left, and Siegfried Fischbacher appear with a tiger on a special edition of ABC's "20/20" that airs on Friday. They performed Saturday at the Keep Memory Alive fundraiser.
Photo courtesy ABC

Siegfried & Roy never had a proper goodbye.

The legendary Las Vegas illusionists were never sure how long they would carry on. But retirement was forced on them in October 2003 when Roy Horn was mauled onstage by one of his show tigers.

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Six years after Horn's determined rehabilitation, the two returned for a brief performance Saturday night that was both a comeback and a farewell, performing in front of about 1,000 people at the Keep Memory Alive fundraiser for the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute.

The short performance that capped a live auction began with a hooded torch-bearing acolyte walking onstage after the introduction, "The spirit of Siegfried and Roy has just arrived."

Some audience members upfront seemed to recognize right away that it was Horn. but it wasn't until the end of the performance, when the duo materialized one of their signature white tigers, that the masks came off and the two revealed themselves to a rousing ovation.

There were no words spoken to the audience beyond brief recorded bits of wisdom played over the speakers.

While there was no mention made to the crowd, their manager, Bernie Yuman, said through a publicist that the tiger in Saturday's show was Montecore, the tiger that inflicted the near-fatal injury on Roy.

Siegfried Fischbacher and Horn were trying to figure out when and how to bow out gracefully even before the accident that put an abrupt end to their show on Oct. 3, 2003.

The Mirage hit had been running for 131/2 years and 5,750 performances.

Horn had just celebrated his 59th birthday. But Fischbacher already had passed 60.

Questions of how long their bodies were up to the task were just as relevant as whether Cirque du Soleil and the new Celine Dion spectacular had eclipsed the Mirage spectacle that reinvented Las Vegas entertainment.

The magicians' real age became part of the grand illusion, except on the rare occasions when knee surgery or the flu would force a cancelation.

"The pain and drama and all that comes with the territory. That's irrelevant," Horn once said with a dismissive wave. Audiences "come to forget their problems. They don't need to hear about ours."

But the fact is, the two had worked tirelessly, with few breaks, from their earliest inroads on the Strip, as a 12-minute Tropicana "Folies Bergere" specialty act in 1967.

"For the first 15 years in Las Vegas, we worked seven days a week with no vacation and three shows on Fridays and Saturdays," Fischbacher once noted. "And we had to do it. There was no other choice."

The duo were the highest-paid specialty act in Las Vegas by 1981, when they opened their own show, "Beyond Belief," with backing from circus impresarios Irvin and Kenneth Feld.

The Frontier opus logged 3,500 performances for more than 3 million people.

The Mirage was the next big milestone.

"Sometimes it upsets me that Cirque has become so huge and everybody puts them on a pedestal," production designer Andy Walmsley, whose stage sets include "American Idol," noted recently. "People forget it was actually that Siegfried & Roy show that really changed show business. ... It was that show that really changed the Vegas landscape."

In February 2001, MGM Mirage announced a "lifetime" contract extension that guaranteed the duo at least another four years. By then, however, the stars seemed more excited about a more sensible schedule of eight shows per week.

Magic had driven Siegfried since he was 10 years old, he noted then. "Absolutely nothing else existed in the world. I don't know if this is right, all my life, to just think about one thing."

So it was a forced retirement when the 7-year-old show tiger Montecore turned on Horn, knocking him down and then dragging him from the stage, by most eyewitness accounts.

The tiger had inflicted a deep, near-fatal puncture wound in Horn's neck that kept him on the operating table through the night at University Medical Center's trauma center.

The real damage came with a stroke hours after the initial surgery, one that left Horn with partial paralysis.

But Horn progressed enough through physical therapy that he was able to stand in front of a banquet crowd celebrating his 60th birthday a year later.

Contact Mike Weatherford at mweatherford @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.

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Please enter your name Name: Please enter your email Email: Please enter a comment COMMENTS : (word count limit is 300) You have reached the maximum number of words allowed Current Word Count: Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background. Marie wrote on March 02, 2009 04:54 PM: How insulting, telling people to believe that the tiger tried to save Roy's life. Yeah right, only a moron would believe that. bill wrote on March 01, 2009 09:39 PM: Thank god, their 15 minutes of fame was up many many years back... they have never contributed to the community, placed audience members lives in jeopard with no barrier..... hope no more S&R, who cares! WE SAW IT ALL wrote on March 01, 2009 09:22 PM: S&R will keep the video tape that captured the attack as hidden and tightly locked up along with all their tapes of YOUNG male visitors. And I mean YOUNG. patriot wrote on March 01, 2009 10:29 AM: If that tiger had been trying to kill him he would have been dead in 3 seconds. Little Miss Snippy wrote on March 01, 2009 10:19 AM: casinocon, unfortunately what we have next is Criss Angel, Carrot Top and that fat-a$$ Elvis impersonator. Danny Gans and Larry G. Jones are around, but they don't seem to have the same allure as the Rat Pack. It's gone. But then again, where is the new Liberace? Flaming! Now that could work. casinocon wrote on March 01, 2009 08:39 AM: Thank God the final Siegfried and Roy saga and drama has finally been laid to rest. Montecore tried to put us all out of our misery sooner, and the cat should be commended. They had their time just like Liberace, The Rat Pack, Wayne Newton (still hanging on) and Elvis. NEXT! me wrote on March 01, 2009 08:30 AM: Both S & G are two of the nicest and hardest working people you will ever meet. I am really surprised that anyone would have anything negative to say about them here when it would be so much easier to just not say anything. Some real classless people we have here. Now for a joke...and yes it is a joke as comedy is part of the entertainment of las vegas as well so if you don't like it don't laugh but it isn't meant in a mean way at all. Sucks when you have to give a disclaimer before telling a joke and i am sure some will still chastise me but here goes..... How do you turn a fruit into a vegetable? Feed him to his white tiger.. Thank you S & G !! Your show was the most enjoyable of all shows I have ever seen here and the look on my 9 year old's face through your entire show, sitting front and center during a performance back in 2003, said more than words ever could. She was simply mesmerized from beginning to end. There that night wrote on March 01, 2009 08:29 AM: Please stop believing this. "Trying to save him" is a line of bull that was publically debuted by a female former lighting technician on Larry King Live with Bernie Yuman waiting in the wings demanding it. It's a line of spin created to cover Roy's huge mistake. The ONLY time a male tiger will grab anything by the neck is when it's trying to kill it. It took too many people to get him off of Roy's neck for him to be "saving" him. Carrying something by the neck is the female tiger's job. Killing it by the neck is what the male tiger does. The animal handlers told Roy FOR YEARS "Don't use Montecore for the walk around". He continually ignored them because of his "I know my cats" bravado. To the animal handler who put his hands in Montecore's mouth, pressing his jowls against his teeth so he would let go, to the former Green Beret stagehand who stuck his fingers in the holes in Roy's neck, Roy has never spoken again. He's never said "thanks" or even bothered to acknowledge them. cmumike wrote on March 01, 2009 08:02 AM: I am glad to see morons read. Siegfried and Roy have done more animal conservation than almost any one. The performance with the tiger that nearly killed him shows that it wasn't just an image it was what they believe. K wrote on March 01, 2009 07:26 AM: Roy Horn has said over and over that Montecore was just trying to help him. He (Horn) had stumbled and possible suffered a small seizure that threw Montecore off. These two men raised that tiger from a cub and they didn't feel he was a risk at all. I'm glad they chose Montecore for this performance. It was a very fitting end to a sad saga. Read All Comments