Lions and tigers and estate sales, oh my!
The extravagant Las Vegas home and extensive personal collections of iconic entertainers Siegfried & Roy, famous for their long-running animal magic act, will hit the auction block on June 8 and 9 at Bonhams in Los Angeles.
The late duo's eclectic home reflects their outsized personalities and affinity for wild cats, with leopard print chairs, stained glass windows featuring tigers, memorabilia and more.
"Siegfried & Roy dreamed a life for themselves and then made it a reality, whether on stages around the world or their homes in Las Vegas," says Helen Hall, Director of Pop Culture at Bonhams. "This is a unique opportunity to acquire a little bit of magic from the life of these incredible entertainers and humanitarians."
The sale comes over a year after Siegfried Fischbacher's death from pancreatic cancer on Jan. 13, 2021, just eight months after the death of his partner and "best friend" Roy Horn, who died on May 8, 2020, at age 75 due to complications from Covid-19.
Over 500 items from the pair's personal and professional lives will be up for live auction, with all proceeds from the sale supporting the Sarmoti Foundation, the late duo's personal charity that aims to protect the endangered species they worked so closely with.
Highlights from the auction — which will include jewelry, furniture, decorative objects and more — include the iconic electric-blue stage costumes worn by the pair in the 1980s, as well as an 18-karat gold tiger head pendant, a leopard-patterned Tiffany & Co. porcelain tea service and more.
Other items up for sale include a baroque carved and ebonized wood throne chair, a Victorian gilt metal and bronze mounted ebonized clock, a set of nine paper or fabric and faux bamboo parasols and a Georgian-style faux (of course!) leopard upholstered chair (all pictured above).
The German-born stars met while working on a cruise ship in 1957, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Fischbacher was just starting out as a magician and Horn became his assistant.
They rose to fame while honing their act at clubs around Europe, before catching their big break in Paris one night, when they were invited to perform in Las Vegas.
They went on to debut Siegfried & Roy at The Mirage in 1990, which ran until 2003, when Horn was attacked by a 600-lb. tiger named Montecore mid-performance. He ultimately made a miraculous recovery, but it was the end of the pair's onstage career.
Still, they continued to share a residence.
The pair's estate in Las Vegas was constructed with their German roots in mind. It is made up of "Jungle Palace" and "Little Bavaria," two spaces that are brimming with treasures and luxury goods that they picked up throughout their storied career and global travels, with everything from Cartier necklaces to bronze tiger statues up for auction.
"In a way we've transported as much of Germany as possible to Las Vegas. On eighty acres in the middle of the desert, we've built a Bavarian cottage and created a landscape that is a reminder of my Bavarian upbringing…close the gates and you're in Southern Germany," Siegfried told Annette Tapert of designing Little Bavaria in her 1992 biography, Siegfried & Roy; Mastering the Impossible.
The Jungle Palace, on the other hand, was "Roy's vision of the habitat he wanted to build for the white tigers," Siegfried continued.
"I always envisaged something Bavarian: green and rocky…but Roy, well, he creates his own world, and you can only assume it's not going to be like anyone else's. 'I know exactly what it should be,' he told me… 'I'd like to give the tigers an environment in which everything is snow white.' We had endless fights over this!"
