Siegfried and Roy took Las Vegas by storm with their magic-meets-tamed-tigers act.
What many fans might not realize is that the duo had a long history together, well before
they hit the strip with their menagerie of exotic animals.
Here's the untold truth of Siegfried and Roy.
Born Siegfried Fischbacher and Uwe Ludwig Horn in World War II-era Germany, Siegfried
and Roy overcame bleak childhoods to bring wonder and joy to countless kids the world
over.
Siegfried and Roy's fathers fought on the Russian front during World War II, and both
returned home broken.
In the 2008 biography of the pair, The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy: How the Tiger Kings
Tamed Las Vegas, the authors chronicle the boys' love-starved youths in post-Nazi Germany.
Siegfried's father was a prisoner of war and quickly succumbed to alcoholism after peace
was declared, and Roy, born in the middle of an air-raid, likewise watched with dread
and sadness as his father, another traumatized vet, drank himself out of a family.
When Roy's mother married another man, a short period of bliss and prosperity followed, but
that man also eventually became a slave to the sauce.
Young Siegfried, depressed and often hungry, taught himself how to do card tricks and other
illusions as a way to distract and entertain himself.
There was another bonus to Siegfried's talents for sleight-of-hand: performing the tricks
was the only way he could command his father's sparse attention.
Meanwhile, Roy was happy only when in the company of his dog, Hexe, who was half wolf
and saved Roy's life once when Roy, an adventurous kid, found himself stuck in quicksand.
Hexe ran off and alerted a nearby farmer, Lassie-style, and Roy was pulled to safety.
The two boys' futures seemed predestined, Siegfried would be a magician and Roy would
surround himself with animals, the wilder the better.
Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn met on a cruise ship in 1959.
Roy was working as a waiter and Siegfried as a steward.
One day, while on break, Roy watched, amused and impressed, while Siegfried performed magic
tricks for a few guests and members of staff.
Later, Roy approached Siegfried, asking him what would prove to be a fateful question:
"If you can make a rabbit and a dove disappear and reappear, can you do the same with a cheetah?"
Putting aside whether or not this is the best pickup line ever, it must have struck Siegfried
as a bit random, until Roy explained he had a pet cheetah named Chico in his cabin.
A life-long animal lover, Roy had managed to smuggle Chico on board the ship in a laundry
sack.
Siegfried was intrigued; he and Roy began crafting a magic act that would incorporate
large animals disappearing and reappearing.
They took their act on the road and on the water, entertaining nightclub and cruise crowds
around the world.
The compensation the two performers received for their hard work wasn't much to write home
about until, in the late sixties, they got a standing ovation from an audience in Monte
Carlo.
In the audience was a booker with Paris's famed and notoriously naughty Folies Bergere
cabaret show.
The booker tracked Siegfried and Roy down in Spain and that led to a gig at Las Vegas's
Tropicana in 1967.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Beginning in 1990, Siegfried and Roy entertained roughly 400,000 people a year at their Mirage
show, generating $44 million in revenue for the casino's owner, Steve Wynn, and earning
pretty nice salaries themselves.
"The fact of the matter is that Siegfried and Roy for 30 years, did 12 to 14 shows a
week, 48 weeks a year, and filled the showroom every single night."
The animal-rich extravaganza was, according to Variety, almost always sold out.
In addition to the trademark white tigers and white lions, the show involved an animatronic
dragon, armies of dancers, lots of groovy music, several funny gags, Siegfried and Roy
floating through burning hoops of fire, and a Rolls Royce that once belonged to Greta
Garbo.
Oh, and did we mention the moment Siegfried would make an entire elephant disappear?
Yeah.
That happened.
The Siegfried and Roy follies were basically Cirque du Soleil before
Cirque du Soleil was but a gleam in Canada's eye.
And they attracted celebrity audiences, too.
The duo wowed everyone from Michael Jackson, who, incidentally, wrote and performed the
show's theme music, to Demi Moore, whose perfume reportedly drove one tiger absolutely wild.
Makes us wonder why she was allowed to get that close.
The success of the show came as a surprise to many and was quite the coup for two poor
boys from Germany's slums who could have never imagined they would one day be performing
twice a day to standing-room-only crowds of 1,500.
What's the German word for "local boys make very, very good"?
"Gesundheit.
Just kidding."
When the white tiger, Mantacore, was born, he wasn't breathing.
According to a story Siegfried and Roy shared with Las Vegas Weekly, Roy cut the tiger's
umbilical cord and gave the big cat mouth to mouth.
Seven years later, the tiger would attack Roy on stage, ending the show that made Siegfried
and Roy household names and nearly killing the man who breathed life into him.
The attack happened on October 3, 2003, Roy Horn's 59th birthday, during a section of
the show that was known as "The Rapport" section of the show.
A tiger trainer who would go on to accuse Siegfried and Roy of lying about Mantacore's
motivation told The Hollywood Reporter that, in that segment, Roy would often dance with
his tigers, demonstrating the close bond he and the cats had acquired over the years.
That night, though, something went wrong and, instead of demonstrating affection for Roy,
Mantacore sunk his teeth into Roy's neck and dragged him off-stage.
Roy's injuries were severe.
The attack damaged an artery that carried oxygen to his brain and it crushed his windpipe.
He was left partially paralyzed.
To add insult to injury, the USDA found Siegfried and Roy to be negligent in the fact that they
had no precautions in place to protect the audience should an animal go rogue and leap
into the crowd.
When Roy was gravely injured by Mantacore in 2003, Roy quickly came to the tiger's defense,
claiming Mantacore was only trying to help.
He claimed in interviews that he was having a stroke when Mantacore bit him in the neck
and dragged him off stage.
In Roy's telling, Mantacore was trying to help Roy, and the effort backfired spectacularly.
The USDA's investigation into the attack did not uncover the reason behind Mantacore's
out of character behavior and the case seemed closed.
"I got a stroke, and I fall down, and I see the blue eyes still look at me, like 'What
now' forever."
Then, in March 2019, Chris Lawrence, an animal trainer with the show, came forward with his
version of events, telling The Hollywood Reporter that Roy's story was a fabrication, cooked
up to protect both Mantacore and the Siegfried and Roy brand.
Lawrence was onstage when the attack occurred, and has since publicly argued that human error
is what caused the tiger to go into fight mode, specifically, Roy's last-minute decision
not to walk the tiger in a circle as he planned but corral him with his arm instead.
Lawrence has also suggested Roy's relationship with Mantacore had deteriorated prior to the
attack, contributing to the chances that something would go terribly wrong.
Whatever the reason behind Mantacore's attack, the incident effectively put an end to the
two showmen doing what they loved best, performing wild and gorgeous and wacky stunts for sold-out
crowds in Las Vegas day after day, night after night.
Both men lived for the thrill of live performance.
The tiger attack nearly killed them both.
In Roy's case, the danger was quite literal.
Siegfried, though physically unharmed, spiraled in his personal life.
He grew depressed and directionless following the shuttering of the show, telling a New
York Post reporter,
"The depression was more for the show because it was over, without realizing it.
I went through this crazy time, I went and did a lot of crazy things."
Those crazy things apparently included hiking and backpacking around Europe, and hanging
out at a monastery for a while, none of which sounds that crazy for a man best known for
making tigers disappear.
Siegfried and Roy had been performing a flamboyant magic act with white tigers since the 1980s,
but it wasn't until 2007 when they both came out as gay.
And no one was really surprised; their relationship was an open secret in the entertainment industry,
even though they never advertised.
For the purposes of maximizing their appeal and appealing to families and old ladies,
their bread and butter during the Mirage years, they didn't address the topic, instead cultivating
a squeaky-clean image that sidestepped the subject of sexuality in general.
Part of that image meant that the dancers in their show, more accustomed to Las Vegas
burlesque acts than family entertainment, kept their tops on, at least for the matinees.
Eventually Siegfried and Roy's romantic connection ended and they became best friends, in addition
to business partners.
Their bond only grew stronger when Roy was attacked in 2003.
Siegfried became Roy's caretaker.
He told Barbara Walters in a televised interview that almost losing his soulmate really brought
home to him how close the two had become through 44 years of touring and performing together.
"Roy had these dreams.
And I had the ideas.
His dreams were always so big, but we made the dreams become a reality."
Roy Horn grew up surrounded by animals.
When he was a boy, his mother's best friend was married to a zookeeper, and Roy spent
as much time as he could among the animals.
That's how he later came to own a cheetah named Chico who had a starring role in Siegfried
and Roy's first magic shows.
Animals were essential to Roy's sense of self and equanimity, so, when Siegfried and Roy
started raking in the dough in Las Vegas, they bought a 100-acre estate outside the
city and began filling it with fauna.
They called the estate "Little Bavaria" in honor of Siegfried's home, and, according
to Las Vegas Weekly, it's now home to scores of horses, black swans, mini-donkeys, African
cranes, royal turkeys, and exotic chickens.
The estate also includes a number of fountains and athletic courts and fields.
Pathways connect it all, and when Roy was attacked by Mantacore in 2003, Siegfried saw
to it that waist-high railings were installed throughout the estate so that Roy could continue
to walk its grounds and enjoy his very own zoo.
In 2011, eight years after being dragged off stage by a 400-pound white tiger, Roy Horn
faced another battle, this one in the courts.
His personal assistant, Oliver Preiss, accused him of sexual harassment.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Preiss claimed that Siegfried and Roy regularly imported
him with unwanted attention and that Horn fired him after he rejected his advances.
In their defense, Siegfried and Roy accused Preiss of coming to work for them under false
pretenses and turning on them in order to enrich himself.
In his interviews with the pair, Preiss said he was a skilled physical therapist.
In reality, he had no such skills.
And he began filming Roy without his permission, eventually sharing video with The National
Enquirer, who published the salacious story, "Siegfried and Roy Sex Shocker."
The first judge in the case ordered Preiss to pay Roy $37,415 for bringing a baseless
claim against Horn, but then the plot thickened when three other men joined the suit, claiming
that they'd been abused by both Siegfried and Roy while under their employ.
The case fell out of the news in 2012.
Perhaps it was settled?
One thing's for sure: tigers don't talk.
The world-famous duo performed across decades, but on May 9, 2020, CBS News announced that
Siegfried and Roy were no more: Roy had passed away the prior day at the age of 75.
The official cause was complications from COVID-19; he had tested positive for the virus
in April.
Siegfried gave this heartfelt statement:
"The world has lost one of the greats of magic, but I have lost my best friend.
From the moment we met, I knew Roy and I, together, would change the world.
There could be no Siegfried without Roy, and no Roy without Siegfried.
Roy was a fighter his whole life, including during these final days."
MGM Resorts, owners of the duo's longtime performance venue The Mirage, also tweeted
condolences, saying:
"The world lost a legendary figure with the passing of Roy Horn...Our hearts go out to
Roy's family and friends, and most notably to Siegfried who shared a lifetime of magic
and friendship with this special man."
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