Roy Horn, who levitated tigers, made elephants disappear, turned himself into a python, and mesmerized Las Vegas audiences for decades as half of the famed illusionist team Siegfried & Roy, died Friday in Las Vegas, where he lived. He was 75.
The cause was complications from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to his publicist, Dave Kirvin. Mr. Horn tested positive for the virus last week and died at MountainView Hospital in Las Vegas, Kirvin said.
The German-born performers’ long-running production, one of the most successful in Las Vegas history, ended Oct. 3, 2003, Mr. Horn’s 59th birthday, when he was mauled by a 400-pound white tiger who lunged at his throat and dragged him offstage before a stunned, sold-out crowd of 1,500 at MGM’s Mirage hotel-casino.
An aide yanked the tiger’s tail, leaped on its back and tried to pry open its jaws. Another sprayed it with a fire extinguisher until it let go. But Mr. Horn’s windpipe had been crushed and an artery carrying oxygen to his brain was damaged. He suffered a stroke and partial paralysis on his left side, underwent two operations at University Medical Center in Las Vegas, and was placed on life-support systems.
After weeks in critical condition, however, Mr. Horn began a long recovery, with rehabilitation at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. In 2004, he returned to his home in Las Vegas, and within months he was walking again with assistance. There was even talk of a comeback, but medical experts and entertainment moguls considered it highly unlikely.
In February 2009, Siegfried & Roy made one final appearance with a tiger, a benefit performance for the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, and officially retired from show business in 2010.
With his partner, Siegfried Fischbacher, Mr. Horn dazzled Las Vegas crowds for 35 years with a sorcerer’s extravaganza that combined the glitz of sequined costumes and feathered headdresses with smoke-and-laser magic and the circus thrills of exotic animals, including rare white tigers and white lions. Under the illusionists’ spells, a white tiger turned into a beautiful woman, a 6-ton elephant vanished, a tiger floated out over the audience, and Mr. Horn slithered down and became a snake.
“The world has lost one of the greats of magic, but I have lost my best friend,” Fischbacher said in a statement Friday. “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.”
The showmen toured Europe, Japan, and beyond and were featured in a 1999 3-D IMAX movie and a 1994 television special, and at Radio City Music Hall in New York. They broke records for the longest-running act in Las Vegas and were among the most popular and highest paid performers on the Strip. They also wrote a book, “Siegfried & Roy: Mastering the Impossible” (1992).
Mr. Horn and Fischbacher, who were domestic as well as professional partners, kept their menageries, including dozens of exotic cats, at a glass-enclosed tropically forested habitat at the Mirage; at Jungle Paradise, their 88-acre estate outside town; and at Jungle Palace, their $10 million Spanish-style home in Las Vegas.
The entertainers, acknowledging that their acts depended on some endangered species, were prominent in various animal conservation efforts, particularly for the white tiger, native to Asia, and the white lion of Timbavati, in South Africa. They raised many of their show animals from birth and said they were not exploited and never tranquilized.
Mr. Horn insisted that the white tiger that mauled him — a 7-year-old male who had been acquired in Mexico, trained by Mr. Horn, and used in performances for 6½ years — not be harmed afterward. The tiger was quarantined for a time, then returned to his habitat at the Mirage, where many of the act’s animals were kept on display after the show ended. The tiger, whose name was reported to be Montecore at the time of the mauling, was given by Mr. Horn as Mantecore when the animal died in 2014 after a short illness.
The cancellation of Siegfried & Roy after the mauling left 267 cast members and employees out of work, prompted refunds for shows booked for months in advance, and led to millions in losses for the Mirage, which had been selling out the show’s performances for more than 13 years. With ticket prices of $110, the show, performed six times weekly for 45 weeks a year, brought in about $44 million annually to the Mirage.
“Throughout the history of Las Vegas, no artists have meant more to the development of [its] global reputation as the entertainment capital of the world than Siegfried & Roy,” J. Terrence Lanni, chairman of MGM Mirage, said. “They are so much more than the stars of the Mirage. They are the very heart of our resort.”
Roy Uwe Ludwig Horn was born Oct. 3, 1944, in Nordenham, Germany, near Bremen. Like Fischbacher, who was five years older and raised in Rosenheim, a village in Bavaria, Mr. Horn grew up in the turmoil of wartime and postwar Germany. While Fischbacher was drawn to magic, Mr. Horn was taken with animals, including his wolf-dog Hexe, and a cheetah, Chico, at a zoo in Bremen where the boy took an after-school job feeding animals and cleaning cages.
It was a chance meeting in 1957, when both were working on a German cruise ship, that led to the partnership. Fischbacher, a steward, was entertaining passengers with magic tricks, and Mr. Horn, a cabin boy, caught his act. “I told Siegfried if he could make rabbits come out of a hat, why couldn’t he make cheetahs appear,” Mr. Horn recalled. He said he smuggled Chico out of the zoo and aboard the ship in a laundry bag. The new trick, he said, was a hit with passengers.
They formed a partnership in 1959. By 1964, Mr. Horn and Fischbacher, still with Chico, were on the road, performing in cabarets and theaters in Germany and Switzerland. The results were mixed — Chico ate steak, the men potatoes — until Princess Grace of Monaco saw them at a 1966 charity benefit in Monte Carlo and gave them a rave notice.
A rush of publicity ensued. Adding animals and tricks, they were soon playing nightclubs in Paris and other European cities. They made their Las Vegas debut at the Tropicana in 1967, and by the early 1970s, having made Las Vegas their base, were under contract at the MGM Grand. In 1981, they became the main act at the Frontier Hotel, and in seven years there performed before 3 million people.
In 1987, they signed a five-year $57.5 million contract with Steve Wynn, owner of the planned $640 million Mirage casino-hotel, a deal Variety called the largest in show business history. It included $40 million more for a new theater for the show and an $18 million “Secret Garden” hotel habitat for the animals.
Animal rights activists generally oppose using wild animals in shows, but few ever accused Siegfried & Roy of mistreating animals. Mr. Horn said theirs were exercised daily by handlers, fed special diets, even had their teeth brushed three times a month. He draped big cats around his neck for photographers and was seen cuddling and petting animals. He called his training methods “affection conditioning.”
The men shared their home with tigers, jaguars, mastiffs, and other creatures who often roamed the 8-acre compound freely. Mr. Horn said he slept with a tiger or a leopard every night. He said he and Fischbacher kept separate quarters and took separate vacations. Mr. Horn’s mother, Johanna, also lived at their home for many years until her death in 2000.
Mr. Horn is survived by a brother, Werner Horn, Kirvin said.