Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy.Photo: Sipa/Shutterstock
This article was originally published on Sept. 16, 2004.
Here’s the main thing: Even thougha 600-lb. white tiger tore into his neck, punctured arteries and dragged him half-conscious across a stage in front of a live audience, legendary Las Vegas performerRoy Hornis adamant that the animal, named Montecore, never meant to hurt him. All those stories, all those headlines, he says, got it wrong. “Montecore,” he insists in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, “saved my life.”
Roy, who has taken medication for high blood pressure for years, says he had recently begun to suffer dizzy spells – and this one spell, unfortunately, occurred in the presence of a very large tiger. “I started feeling kind of weak,” says Roy, who still speaks slowly but has recovered most of his German-accented speech. “I fell over. Montecore saw that I was falling down. So he actually took me and brought me to the other exit where everybody could get me and help me. He knew better than I did where to go.”
Roy Horn (left) and Siegfried Fischbacher of Siegfried and Roy.Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images
Whatever Montecore’s intentions, the consequences were gruesome. Today, Roy promises, “I’m going to show everybody that I will come back,” he says. “That I am back. The magic is back.” Doctors who have treated him so far, while certainly not willing to predict a full comeback – he gets around in a motorized wheelchair, and has trouble standing – have learned not to underestimate Roy’s physical powers. “If you see him now,” says his long-term internist Dr. Stephen Miller, “you cannot comprehend how ill he was.” His recovery so far “is a miracle,” says UCLA Medical Center’s Dr. Katja Van Herle, who oversaw his treatment in November and December. “And I don’t say that lightly or glibly. He has an internal fire. That’s what is helping him.”
In the minutes after the incident, Roy was rushed to University Medical Center in Las Vegas with two gaping puncture wounds to the neck. Before passing out, he recalls, “I said, ‘Leave Montecore alone. Bring him back to his brother and sister. Let him be happy.’ ” Suffering from severe blood loss and shock, he was considered medically dead at one point when his heart stopped. He also suffered the stroke that would ravage the left side of his body.
Roy says he even had an out-of-body experience in the O.R. “I stepped out of my body and looked over the surgeon’s shoulder, and I sat while he was cutting me up,” he says. “And my mom [who died three years ago] is sitting in a chair, and in front of her is one of my lions I had before, and my Siberian tiger was laying there, and my brother who had passed on years and years ago. And I know everything is going to be fine.”
Siegfried Fischbacher (left) and Roy Horn.Bei/Shutterstock
Days that used to be organized around the evening’s main event at the Mirage – the anchor of what used to be a nearly $60 million-a-year empire for the duo – now begin at 8:30 a.m. with a nurse assisting Roy onto an exercise bike and strapping his feet into the pedals.
“I do about seven minutes,” says Roy, who still lives at the six-acre Jungle Palace compound eight miles northwest of the Strip but can no longer climb the staircase to his second-floor bedroom, where his pet tigers used to lie down with him. (While awaiting the construction of an elevator, he has been moved into an adjacent single-floor home on the property, equipped with access ramps.) After the bike warmup, he works in the garden until the sun grows hot. Then he attends to business issues, including producing an upcoming Havana-themed Vegas show and vetting scripts forFather of the Pride,NBC’s new computer-animated spoof based on the outlandish entertainers and their menagerie. Unable to needle his friend of 45 years onstage, he sees opportunities in television. “They send me all the scripts and I send it back and complain. I tell them, ‘I pay you $5 extra if you make Siegfried shorter than me.’ ”
Roy Horn.Kcr/Shutterstock
Many more hours are put into grueling physical rehab – including walking in a pool or straddling parallel bars – with therapists at home and in local clinics and hospitals. “The process has been a slow, methodical one,” says Siegfried and Roy’s friend and manager of 29 years, Bernie Yuman. “It’s two steps forward, then one step back. But then there are two more steps forward.”
In fact, Roy has been a new inspiration for Siegfried, who first met him in 1959 when both were working on an ocean liner. Roy was always the stronger one, says Siegfried, “the safety net. I’m born during [World War II in Germany], and I grew up in fear. And Roy took always the fear away from me. Roy tried to teach me about life.” And still teaches him. “In my life, the more successful I became, the more empty I got,” he says. “Now, my heart is filling up again, and it’s a wonderful feeling.” Siegfried, says their manager, “has unconditional faith in Roy.” He has also braved a few independent steps: “I’m doing things that I haven’t done before,” he says. “Even putting gas in my car.”
Siegfried Fischbacher (left) and Roy Horn.Alain BENAINOUS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
But showbiz, like life, goes on: Since the accident, four leopards that could one day prove natural stars were born at the Mirage’s Secret Garden, home to the exotic menagerie of 63 – tigers, lions, an elephant and the leopards that were costars in the show at the hotel. Meanwhile, the animals that used to perform haven’t forgotten. On a recent visit to the garden, says Roy, “my elephant, she was there – a good girl. I ask her, ‘Salute.’ And she raises that trunk and I give her her treat. Then I say, ‘Say hello to me. Give me your foot.’ So she lifted her foot, because she thought I was going to jump on top of her and ride with her around.” He’s not about to forget, either. When he was first reacquainted with Sitarra, a snow-white tiger, in April, he motored his wheelchair up to her glass enclosure. “He started to lean forward,” says Siegfried. “I said, ‘What you doing? You can’t stand up!’ And Roy said, ‘I have to stand up. They stood up for me for all those years. Now I have to stand up for them.’ And he did. That was the first time he stood up.”
The pair have even begun to consider the Vegas stage once more. It will only be together as a team, of course – both SiegfriedandRoy. Otherwise, “I would feel I was cheating the audience,” says Siegfried, “and I would cheat myself and I would cheat Roy.”
Adds Roy: “I wouldn’t allow you.” For now, he says, “Thank God I’m a cat with nine lives. I’m on my ninth life now, so I still have a little bit more to do.”
source: people.com
