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| The Mystery Of Siegfried & Roy:; ( Old Article) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 26 2009, 04:12 PM (131 Views) | |
| Post #1 Jan 26 2009, 04:12 PM | bavariantiger |
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THE MYSTERY OF SIEGFRIED & ROY: 'The show is our life, and our life is the show' `They're royalty in this town. True royalty.' All his life he was a mystery," Siegfried Fischbacher said of his 44-year partner Roy Horn in a television interview last week. "We really don't know Roy." The same could be said of Siegfried & Roy, period. The reaction to Horn's mauling by a show tiger Oct. 3 proved beyond doubt they remain two of Las Vegas' half-dozen most famous citizens. But the episode and its media coverage also remind us it is a peculiar fame indeed. National radio host Howard Stern's surprise at the genuine distress of Penn Jillette in particular showed what a complex relationship it can be to celebrate someone and goof on them at the same time. Like Siegfried, we're never sure how well we know the duo, or even quite how we feel about them. Some of it is not hard to figure out. "They're royalty in this town. True royalty," said Frank Scinta of The Scintas, during a hospital visit last week. "They don't have a bad word to say about anybody. That's what hurts the most. They're so nice." But even after 30-odd years, locals are still sometimes as confused as tourists when it comes to determining which one is Siegfried - answer: the blond who conducts the stage magic and, like the rest of us, always seems a bit wary of tigers - and which one is Roy - answer: the mostly dark-haired one who, everyone now knows, trains and loves the tigers. This enigma and its surrounding nip-and-tuck cosmetic surgery once took a bizarre turn. In 1989, a rumor that the real Roy had died and been replaced by his cousin - or brother, or someone - spread so far and wide that renowned conspiracy theorist Shirley MacLaine - who is termed "a special friend" in the duo's authorized autobiography - told reporters at a Caesars Palace press luncheon she knew another celebrity who attended Roy's funeral. Much of this mystery is, of course, carefully cultivated. Like no other act in Las Vegas history, the ascent of Siegfried & Roy has been a carefully and relentlessly orchestrated bombardment of advertising, hyperbole and photo opportunities. Rare is the local newscast in the past 20 years that did not include a TV spot. How many longtime residents can still sing the jingle - "It's Siegfried and Roy, Siegfried and Roy ..." - to a show at the Frontier that closed in 1988? December often marked the "miraculous" arrival of a new batch of white tiger cubs. Journalists would be summoned en masse to the "Jungle Palace" -- which stands out surreally amid the 1960s-era ranch houses it morphed from -- to photograph the extended Siegfried & Roy family in front of a Christmas tree, mama tiger's restraining chain carefully tucked behind her. But Roy's life struggle this past week is a reality check beyond dashing the illusion that 500-pound tigers are cuddly house pets. Here are some other realities to ponder. Tom Jones does not swing on ropes. Tom Jones is 63, a year younger than Siegfried and four years older than Roy. Jones first played Las Vegas in 1968, a year after Siegfried & Roy had their first taste of the Strip as a 12-minute specialty act in the Tropicana's "Folies Bergere." (The year is sometimes cited as 1966, but 1967 is the one used in the autobiography, "Siegfried & Roy: Mastering the Impossible," with Annette Tapert.) The typical reaction to a Tom Jones concert is to note that he's still barrel-chested and mostly winning the war against his waistline, that his voice still has a trained power and that for his age, he's holding up pretty well. To see Roy swing across the stage on a rope is not to think about it at all. "A juggler will practice, practice, practice, then go out onstage and show you how hard it is. A magician will practice, practice, practice, then go out and hide it," notes Stan Allen, publisher of the Magic trade magazine. Roy has been injured before, but not by a tiger. In October 1994, when he was a mere lad of 50 and still working two shows per night, the duo took a two-month vacation -- the longest in their career -- after Roy was sidelined by knee surgery. "Biologically, I should have been out three months because that's what it takes to heal," he explained, sporting his usual wide grin, with both knees iced down on a backstage sofa after the comeback show. "But I got a clean bill of health. I just have to ice it and do two hours daily with the therapist to be really back in the swing of it." Siegfried & Roy's groundbreaking show at The Mirage pushed Las Vegas entertainment into a new era in February 1990. But the computerized lighting and robotic dragon made it easy for audiences to forget the two stars at the heart of it were very much of another era. The stars did not forget. Lance Burton, the Monte Carlo's headlining magician, took teenage inspiration from seeing the two on "The Merv Griffin Show" in the '70s. The night of the tiger mauling, he rushed to University Medical Center after his own performance. Biding the time with Siegfried while Roy was in surgery, Burton says, "We sat and talked about Roy and about magic, Las Vegas in the old days and the mob." That's right. The "Superstars of Magic" headlined the Stardust's "Lido" during the late-1970s era chronicled in Nicholas Pileggi's book "Casino" and fictionalized in the movie of the same name. Icing his knee that night in 1995, Roy said he wasn't rushing his recovery, because "Mr. (Steve) Wynn (their boss until MGM Grand bought out Mirage Resorts) definitely wants me past the year 2000." When the show ended abruptly after 13 1/2 years, the people who lamented that it couldn't go longer probably outnumbered those who marveled that it lasted as long as it did. Tom Jones doesn't work with big cats. Siegfried & Roy weren't the first stage magicians to use animals. But like everything else in show business, it's the timing and how it's packaged. Before Siegfried & Roy, animals were props, Allen notes. "They had these cats out of their cages and had this relationship with them." "They invented a whole branch of show business," says Burton. "For magic they are the Wright Brothers. The Beatles. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin," Burton adds. "When they opened at the Frontier (in November 1981), it was the first time a magic show ever played Las Vegas on a permanent basis." On Tuesday, CNN's Larry King asked Siegfried about the prospect of working alone. "You're a great illusionist," he offered. "I'm OK. I'm good," Siegfried replied. "I love the audience like Roy loves the animals, and this combination together, it worked." Animals were the silent partners from the late 1950s, when Siegfried the ocean liner magician met Roy, the cabin boy who convinced him to incorporate his pet cheetah into the act. This story is perhaps the duo's favorite: When they reported for work at "Folies" in 1967, Tropicana boss K.J. Houssels looked them in the eye and said, "Boys, I have to tell you, magic don't work in this town." If only he had said, "Magic don't work without animals." In their autobiography, the two recount how they recruited a "Folies" dancer named Virginia and transformed her into a cheetah. "It was a striking and original illusion," Roy notes in the book. The future was clear. And years down the road, the future turned white. In the early '80s, Roy worked with the Cincinnati Zoo and officials from India to breed striped white tigers in pursuit of something even more rare, a snow white. In 1984, the ever-expanding Jungle Palace had a new addition: a white-concrete tiger enclosure, complete with waterfall, celebrating the arrival of Shasadee and Sitarra "from the sacred gardens of India," as a plaque on the grounds states. "Was the snow-white tiger ever a species, or is it a freak of nature? We don't know. A sighting of one in the wild has never been recorded," Roy writes in the autobiography. Even the tigers' longtime veterinarian, Martin Dinnes, noted in 1987, "Some zoological purists don't think the whites should exist" because their color is a mutation caused by a recessive gene. But the majority ruled, and just this past summer, Roy was loaning tigers for exhibit in Cincinnati. After the mauling, fellow performers noted that while animal activists might not see a distinguishing line, Roy never made his tigers perform like circus animals. Parade them? Yes. Put them into illusions? Sure. But making them roll over or jump through hoops? Never. In interviews last week, Siegfried continued to push the notion of a glitzy Vegas spectacle with a hidden message of wildlife conservation: "Roy always said, `We have to show the audience. We can't tell them.' ... You have to educate the audience in an entertaining way." Tom Jones doesn't have 150 people depending on him. The Siegfried & Roy success formula, as Lance Burton spells it out, includes "magic and animals and Liberace glitz and over-the-top." But it also includes a work ethic that was glossed over in the interest of making it look easy. When the two got their own show in 1981, they had spent five years in the MGM's "Hallelujah Hollywood" and three as headliners of "Lido de Paris." The schedule for "Beyond Belief" at the Frontier: 7 and 11 p.m. shows Monday through Thursday, and three on Fridays and Saturdays, at 6:15 and 9:15 p.m. and 12:15 a.m. When the Frontier run ended, the two could have kicked back while The Mirage was being built. But they worked a custom-built big top in Japan instead. "Siegfried & Roy at The Mirage" locked the duo in for another long haul. Word had it the show was a 10-year deal that wouldn't get all its investors paid back for the first five. When their second contract extension with the hotel expired in 2000, the two were free to travel - Roy always said he would go to India - or follow Wynn across the street to his Wynn Las Vegas project. Instead, they settled for a lighter workload that gave them two more weeks vacation and mostly one show a night. "In my younger years I always wanted to be free," Siegfried mused at the time. But "discipline and responsibility made a human out of me." On Tuesday, when the plug had been pulled after 5,570 shows at The Mirage - and more than 20,000 altogether - Siegfried told CBS's Harry Smith: "Maybe there was something wrong, because everything was the show my whole life. And Roy's was the animals." He never seemed to forget the show also was a potential ticket gross of $157,500 for each performance, not to mention the souvenir sales. In 2001, after a vicious three-week bout with the flu, Siegfried noted: "It's tough because you have a responsibility. There are 150 people out of work when you're sick. You feel terrible about it." Tom Jones has distanced himself from his campiness. Siegfried & Roy were Las Vegas' most famous homegrown success story since Wayne Newton. But their fame often seemed to end at the city limits. If you went to Las Vegas, it was the show you were supposed to see. If you didn't go to Las Vegas, you never heard of them. But in the past few years, their names began to creep into prime-time sitcoms and late-night monologues. David Letterman offered a Top 10 list of messages Siegfried would leave on Roy's answering machine: "Want to go to Hooters and pretend to look at chicks?" Or, "Don't kid yourself, I can always find another sexually ambiguous, freaky looking, German magician/animal trainer." The duo never let it bother them. Not much, anyway. Last week, during a barrage of interviews at the Jungle Palace, an Associated Press reporter brought up an especially vicious Vanity Fair piece (written well before the tiger mauling). Bernie Yuman, the duo's longtime personal manager, jumped in to answer the question as he often does with the touchy ones. But Siegfried wasn't done. He waited until he had completed his next television interview and then made a point of finding the reporter again. "For 35 years in Las Vegas I know what's true and the audience knew what is true. That's why they come back and back," he said. Penn Jillette, the talky half of Penn & Teller, routinely made time in the duo's show at the Rio to call that other long-running show business team's production "a glitzy, stupid tractor pull with farm animals." Offstage, Jillette doesn't have to think long to come up with another icon we both cherish and mock: The Rolling Stones, and the talk-show jokes their age has inspired. "I don't think there's any difference at all in the way Letterman sees (Siegfried & Roy) and the way little kids see them," he says. "What I love about them is that they are so out and so truly themselves. They are as out and as truly themselves as Snoop Dogg. "They're living outside the law in a very real way, because they are who they want to be without compromise. Deciding what you want to be and being that openly doesn't necessarily put you in jeans and a work shirt. It can also put you in a glittery Nehru jacket." And that may be the answer to this mystery that is Siegfried & Roy. There is no mystery. "They are who they want to be," Jillette notes. "If you say to them, `You look like crazy fairies onstage in your glitter outfit prancing around,' they don't even know what you're talking about." The public may not understand that Siegfried & Roy no longer live together in the Jungle Palace, or that its tiger enclosures are empty; the exotic cats that once prowled inside having long been housed in a back-of-the-house facility at The Mirage. But these are details, and they don't deny the legend. Siegfried said it himself during his Tuesday interviews, when he had to explain that saying "The show must go on" is metaphorical. "The show is our life, and our life is the show." |
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7:53 PM Jul 10