Siegfried & Roy
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Siegfried & Roy are Las Vegas entertainers. Their long running show of magic and illusion was famous for including white tigers.
Due to their dependence on white tigers for their act, the duo implemented their own breeding program.
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[edit] History
Siegfried Fischbacher (born June 13, 1939, Rosenheim) and Roy Uwe Ludwig Horn (born October 3, 1944, Nordenham) were born in Germany around the time of the Second World War. They emigrated to the United States where they are now naturalized citizens.
Siegfried is a traditional magician (illusionist), whilst Roy grew up among exotic animals and is known for his rapport with them.
They met in 1959 when they both found work on a German ocean liner. Siegfried was a cabin steward and Roy a waiter. Siegfried began performing magic for some of the passengers, eventually being allowed to have his own show, with Roy as his assistant. Unknown to the crew, Roy had smuggled a cheetah named Chico aboard the vessel. Roy had come to know Chico from his frequent visits to the Bremen zoo.
After developing their show they received an engagement in Las Vegas. In 1972 they received an award for the best show of the year. In 1990 they were hired by Steve Wynn, the manager of The Mirage, for an annual guarantee of $57.5 million. In 2001, they signed a lifetime contract with the hotel. The duo has appeared in around 5,750 shows together, mostly at The Mirage. Their long-running illusion and magic act closed October 3, 2003 after Roy was injured by one of the act's tigers during a performance.
According to the 2000 Becky Celebrity 100 List, Siegfried & Roy were then the 9th-highest-paid celebrities in the U.S., coming in just behind motion picture producer and director Steven Spielberg. For many years, they shared living quarters.
In 1999 they took Darren Romeo as a protege, sponsoring and training him.[1]
For their contribution to live theatre performance, Siegfried & Roy have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7060 Hollywood Boulevard.
[edit] Roy's tiger injury
On October 3, 2003, Roy's 59th birthday, during a show at The Mirage, he was bitten on the shoulder by a seven-year-old male tiger named Montecore. Crew members separated Roy from the tiger and rushed him to the only Level I trauma center in Nevada, University Medical Center. Roy was critically injured and sustained severe blood loss. While being taken to the hospital, Roy said, according to sources, "Don't kill the cat."
Roy was listed in critical condition for several weeks thereafter, and was said to have suffered a stroke and partial paralysis. Doctors removed one-quarter of his skull to relieve the pressure of his swelling brain during an operation known as a decompressive craniectomy. The portion of skull was placed in a pouch in Roy's abdomen in the hope of replacing it later.
Roy was eventually transferred to UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California for long-term recovery and rehabilitation. As of 2006, Roy is walking, assisted only by Siegfried, and talking. To host Pat O'Brien on the television news program The Insider, he complained about his daily rehabilitation, "They are slave drivers over there. You'd think they are the KGB from Russia."[2]
It is disputed whether or not the tiger attacked Roy. Montecore had been trained by Roy since he was a cub; he had performed with the act for six years. Fischbacher, appearing on the Larry King interview program, said Roy fell during the act and Montecore was attempting to drag him to safety, as a mother tigress would pull one of her cubs by the neck. Fischbacher said Montecore had no way of knowing that Roy, unlike a tiger cub, did not have fur and thick skin covering his neck and that his neck was vulnerable to injury. Fischbacher said if Montecore had wanted to injure Roy, the tiger would have snapped his neck and shaken him back and forth.
Former Mirage owner Steve Wynn (who hired the duo in 1990) told Las Vegas television station KLAS-TV the events were substantially as described by Fischbacher. (The Mirage denies the incident was videotaped, yet Wynn, who was in Idaho at the time, gave a detailed account.) According to Wynn, there was a woman with a "big hairdo" in the front row who, he says, "fascinated and distracted" Montecore. The woman reached out to attempt to pet the animal, and Roy jumped between the woman and the tiger.
According to Wynn, the tiger gently grabbed Roy's right arm with his jaws, not scratching the arm or tearing Roy's costume. Roy said, "Release, release," attempting to persuade Montecore to let go of his arm, and eventually striking the tiger with his microphone. Roy tripped over the cat's paw and fell on his back; stagehands then rushed out and jumped on the cat. It was only then, said Wynn, that the confused tiger leaned over Roy and attempted to carry Roy off the stage to safety. Wynn said that although the tiger's teeth inflicted puncture wounds that caused Roy to lose blood, there was no damage to Roy's neck. Stagehands then sprayed Roy and Montecore with a fire extinguisher to separate the two.
Some animal behaviorists were skeptical of Fischbacher's and Wynn's version of events. One described the injury as a "typical killing bite"; another said Fischbacher's story "just doesn't wash".[verification needed]
Montecore was put into quarantine for ten days in order to ensure he was not rabid, and was then returned to his habitat at The Mirage. While Roy has requested that Montecore not be harmed, the incident may augur the end of exotic animal shows in which there are no barriers between tigers and audience members. Some animal rights activists, many of whom oppose the use of wild animals in live entertainment, sought to use the incident as a springboard for publicity, though few have ever accused the Siegfried & Roy show of mistreating animals.
The injury to Roy prompted The Mirage to close the show indefinitely and to lay off 267 cast and crew members with one week's severance pay. While Fischbacher has said "the show will go on", a hotel spokesman told the production staff that they "should explore other career opportunities".
According to the Las Vegas Advisor, The Mirage will suffer financially, not just from the loss of $45 million in annual ticket sales, but from having to forgo untold millions in sales of food, beverages, hotel rooms and the casino's gambling winnings. An MGM Mirage spokesman said losing Siegfried & Roy is a bigger hit to the Mirage brand than to its finances, because the entertainers are "practically the faces" of the hotel, and finding a new hotel brand or identity will be difficult.
[edit] Shooting
In October 2004, former Oakland Raiders kicker Cole Ford was arrested in connection with a drive-by shooting in front of the magician duo's Las Vegas home that left gaping shotgun holes and many windows shattered. There were no injuries. The following year, Ford was ruled incompetent to stand trial for charges after a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.
[edit] Popular culture
The unreleased Penn & Teller computer game Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors featured evil parodies of them called Stinkbomb and Rot. In addition, one episode of Celebrity Deathmatch featured a match that had Siegfried and Roy fight Penn and Teller, the winners being Teller and Roy.
Siegfried and Roy also appeared as characters in the series Father of the Pride; while the characters were voiced by Julian Holloway and David Herman, the real Siegfried and Roy were involved with the show as executive co-producers.
In the poker variant of Texas Hold 'Em a pair of queens in the hole has the nickname of "Siegfried and Roy"
On one episode of the Fairly Oddparents, an intersection through Fairy World runs through "Siegfried St." and "Roy St."
Prior to Horn's accident, comedian Conan O'Brien frequently poked fun at the ambiguous sexual orientation of the duo, most notably during the "SAT Analogy" skit on his show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
In Paul Quarrington's 1999 novel 'The Spirit Cabinet' about oddball Vegas magicians, two of the principal characters, Rudolfo and Jurgen, are closely modelled on Siegfried & Roy.
In comedian Carlos Mencia's DVD 'Not for the easily offended' stand up act the comedian made fun of Roy being gay and stupid to play with a tiger.
In the video game Rampage: Total Destruction, in the Las Vegas mission there are billboards of a parody of Siegfried & Roy called "Sigmund & Froyd".
Siegfried and Roy made cameos in the movie BASEketball by pretending to be wax figures.
In the Drew Carey Show Live, host Brad Sherwood initially requested Drew Carey and Colin Mochrie to repeat one of the more dramatic moments with impersonations of Siegfried and Roy, to which both pointedly refused.
[edit] Filmography (as themselves)
- Casino (1995)
- Siegfried & Roy: Masters of the Impossible (1996)
- Vegas Vacation (1997)
- Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box (1999)
- Ocean's Eleven (2001)
- Showboy (2002)
