I heard about the sale of Siegfried & Roy’s Las Vegas “Jungle Palace” for $3 million early last month, and my heart broke. Although I never personally went to any of their shows, I greatly admired the duo. I’ve watched their performances on YouTube over and over.
I find them fascinating. They are two of Las Vegas’ greatest legends.
Their Home
The Jungle Palace drips in luxury. It has a bell tower, miles and miles of labyrinth amenities and walkaways, a 10-car garage, and, while Siegfried and Roy lived there, exotic pets. The performers lived with cranes, turkeys, tigers, black swans, horses, dolphins, and a great variety of dogs and cats.
They also had a celebrity-laced collection of relics, including a clock once owned by Napoleon and gold candelabras from Liberace. There was also a gem-encrusted sword that was rumored to have once belonged to Genghis Khan.
Their Beginning
Roy Horn was born Uwe Ludwig Horn on October 3, 1944. He passed away on May 8, 2020, as a result of Covid-19 complications. Siegfried Fischbacher was born on June 13, 1939. He passed away on January 13, 2021, as a result of a long battle with terminal pancreatic cancer. Together, they were Siegfried & Roy.
At the peak of their careers, Siegfried & Roy were arguably the most famous magicians and performers since Houdini. To add sugar to candy, they had a large collection of apex predators that they performed with.
They performed together for over six decades. The nature of their relationship was always purposefully opaque. They neither denied nor confirmed that they were lovers. Sometimes they appeared as rivals, other times as lovers, and there were times that they appeared to be just friends. The duo’s manager, Bernie Yuman, once said, “They literally communicate onstage with a glance.” They knew each other better than some of us know ourselves. Siegfried was the engineer and the magician. He was the restraint, the perfectionist. Roy was the animal whisperer, the fabulist, the dreamer, and the spark.
Their first show was on board the Bremen. Siegfried performed the magic, and Roy was the unorthodox assistant with a cat. The cat was a large cheetah named Chico that he smuggled into the ship. The audience loved them and they became a shipboard staple.
They later traveled Europe, doing shows and building their brand. Their acts consisted of simple, classic tricks like someone getting into a box and disappearing, only to reappear later. The one thing that stood out for them and made them very popular was that they performed every illusion with a 100-pound cat. Crowds adored Chico.
Las Vegas
In 1967, a talent scout asked Siegfried and Roy to come to Las Vegas. At the time, none of them spoke any English, and it wasn’t obvious how they would fit in Las Vegas, which was being run by the Mob. But they did, and things were never the same again.
At first, Siegfried didn’t care much about the city, and he started campaigning for a return to Europe, but Roy had fallen in love with Vegas. Roy spent the rest of his life trying to make his partner feel at home in Sin City because he was afraid that he would remain alone. Eventually, they bought and moved into “Jungle Palace,” where they lived for over three decades.
Siegfried & Roy moved to the Frontier in 1981. They headlined a variety show called “Beyond Belief.” Among the celebrities that came to see them in the 80s included Robin Williams, Dolly Parton, Sylvester Stallone, Elizabeth Taylor, and Barbra Streisand, among many others. Michael Jackson, one of their very loyal fans, even wrote and recorded a song called “Mind Is Magic” for them as a personal favor. It became their theme song.
To understand just how big these guys were, you must know that their audiences consisted of no fewer than three American Presidents; President Carter, President Reagan, and President Bush (the first). Even Pope John Paul II came to their shows.
By the mid-90s, the duo had an incredible menagerie of big cats. They also had countless other exotic pets like alpacas, pythons, swans, goats, horses, and a turkey that they named Merlin. Some lived at “Jungle Palace,” but others lived in the “Secret Garden,” built in 1996. The big cats were usually kept there.
The Accident
In 2003, Roy had an “accident” when their tiger, Mantecore, bit him during a performance. He bled so much that he had to relearn how to walk, chew, and swallow food. It was a major tragedy that almost ended his life and with it, their performance.
They later retired.
