Siegfried & Roy

From Free net encyclopedia

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 programme.

1 History
2 Roy's tiger injury
3 Shooting
4 Popular culture
5 Filmography (as themselves)
6 External links

[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 immigrated 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 1957 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. Unbeknownst 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, and the conventional wisdom in Vegas is that they are former lovers.

In 1999 they took Darren Romeo as a protege, sponsoring and training him [[1]].

For their contribution to Live theatre performing, Siegfried & Roy have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7060 Hollywood Blvd.

[edit]

Roy's tiger injury

On October 3, 2003, Roy's 59th birthday, during a show at The Mirage, he was bitten on the neck by a seven-year-old male tiger named Montecore. Crew members separated Roy from the tiger and rushed him to a hospital. Roy was critically injured, sustaining 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.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a friend of Siegfried Fischbacher, communicated with Fischbacher daily to inquire about Roy Horn's condition.

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 that "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."

Montecore was put into quarantine for 10 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 (after 5,750 performances in front of 10.5 million patrons) 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, and hotel rooms—not to mention 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

<p> In October 2004, former Oakland Raiders kicker Cole Murdoch 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

In the animated television series The Simpsons, Gunter and Ernst are tiger-tamers voiced by Harry Shearer and Hank Azaria. They are an obvious parody of Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn.

In the episode $pringfield, they were savagely mauled by their trademark white tiger, Anastasia. This episode aired around 10 years before Horn was mauled onstage by his trained tiger Montecore.

This incident happened thus:

Inside one of the showrooms, Gunter and Ernst demonstrate their talented albino tiger riding a unicycle. "A round of applause, please, for Anastasia. She loves show-business. So much nicer than the savagery of the jungle, ja?" In a flashback, we see Anastasia sleeping peacefully in the jungle. Behind her two men approach in a jeep. "Hey, tiger!" one of them calls out, "Wake up!" He shoots a tranquilizer dart into her, and she slumps over. The memory angers her sufficiently to attack her owners and tear them to shreds.

The duo appear in the episodes Viva Ned Flanders, $pringfield, and The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons. In the "Nahasapeemapetilons", their tiger is lost by the airport and accidentally sent to St. Louis, causing one to raise his hand back mystically and say "I shall send YOU to St. Louis!" while the other grabs it and says "No no..he's not worth it".

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"

[edit]