Big cat duo set to make return

LAS VEGAS -- Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn plan to make a one-night-only comeback next February, performing their signature show at a fundraiser more than five years after a tiger attack ended their long-running production on the Las Vegas Strip.

Fischbacher, 68, and Horn, 63, will perform at the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute's Keep Memory Alive fundraiser at a location yet to be confirmed. Tickets to the charity dinner will cost $1,500; the event has raised more than $12 million in the past.

Horn was critically injured when a white tiger named Montecore dragged Horn offstage by the neck in front of a horrified audience at The Mirage hotel in October 2003. The attack ended one of the most successful casino shows in Las Vegas history.

The pair have said they believed Montecore sensed Horn was having a ministroke and was dragging him to safety, rather than attacking him.

Publicist Dave Kirvin said Monday the German-born duo are working out plans for the act, adding that he would be "very surprised if animals were not part of the performance."

"Siegfried and Roy and white lions and other endangered animals go hand in hand," he said.

The Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, designed by architect Frank Gehry, is set to open in downtown Las Vegas next year.

LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson told jailers he had been planning to host a poker game at his home in Miami before he was brought to Las Vegas to spend several nights behind bars, according to a television program transcript released Monday.

"I didn't expect to be back here so soon," Simpson laughed as he was greeted by a Las Vegas police jail officer, according to the transcript from producers of the MyNetworkTV show "Jail."

A crew was already filming at the Clark County Detention Center when the former football star was brought in by his former bail bondsman on Jan. 11, said Morgan Langley, an executive producer.

"It was not something we were expecting," Langley said of Simpson's appearance, which Langley said drew cheers from other people in an intake waiting room at the jail. "It was a little bit strange."

The segment is scheduled for broadcast Tuesday at 9 p.m.

Simpson's lawyers did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Monday.

Simpson and two other men are due for trial April 7 on charges including kidnapping and armed robbery stemming from a Sept. 13 confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers at a Las Vegas casino hotel.

He was brought back to Las Vegas for allegedly violating terms of his release on $125,000 bail by trying to contact a co-defendant in his armed robbery case. A judge doubled his bail.

According to the transcript, Simpson said he was having a good day until he was brought back to Las Vegas.

"I used to love coming to Vegas," Simpson tells a jailer. "Now (I) hate it."

"I had a poker game tonight at my house that I was hosting and today I finally found my golf swing," he says.

Simpson returned to Miami after posting the new bail amount.

Kyle MacLachlan and his wife, Desiree Gruber, are expecting their first child. The baby is due this summer, said publicist Evelyn Karamanos. MacLachlan, 48, starred in "Twin Peaks," David Lynch's short-lived ode to bizarre doings in the Northwest. His TV credits also include HBO's "Sex and the City" and ABC's "Desperate Housewives." Gruber is an executive producer on Bravo's "Project Runway." The couple have been married for six years. Karamanos made the announcement Friday.

LOS ANGELES -- The estate of "Lord of the Rings" creator J.R.R. Tolkien is suing the film studio that released the trilogy based on his books, claiming the company failed to pay a cut of gross profits for the blockbuster films.

The writer's estate, a British charity dubbed The Tolkien Trust, and original "Lord of the Rings" publisher HarperCollins filed the lawsuit against New Line Cinema on Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The lawsuit claims New Line was required to pay 7.5 percent of gross receipts from the films to Tolkien's estate and the other plaintiffs. A call to a spokesman for New Line, a unit of Time Warner Inc., was not immediately returned.

The films -- 2001's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," 2002's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" and 2003's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" -- have reaped nearly $6 billion combined worldwide, according to the complaint.

The plaintiffs seek more than $150 million in compensatory damages, unspecified punitive damages and a court order giving the Tolkien estate the right to terminate any rights New Line may have to make films based on other works by the author, including "The Hobbit."

Such an order would scuttle plans New Line has in the works to make a two-film prequel based on "The Hobbit."

"Rings" trilogy director Peter Jackson has already signed on to serve as executive producer on the project, which is tentatively slated to begin production next year, with releases planned for 2010 and 2011.

"The Tolkien trustees do not file lawsuits lightly, and have tried unsuccessfully to resolve their claims out of court," Steven Maier, an attorney for the Tolkien estate based in Great Britain, said in a statement. "New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its contractual share of gross receipts despite the billions of dollars of gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures."

Maier also claims the film studio has blocked the Tolkien estate and the other plaintiffs from auditing the receipts of the last two films.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Roy Scheider, a one-time boxer whose broken nose and pugnacious acting style made him a star in "The French Connection" and who later uttered one of cinematic history's most memorable lines in "Jaws," has died. He was 75.

Scheider died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said.

The hospital did not release a cause of death, but Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.

Scheider earned two Academy Award nominations -- a best-supporting nod for 1971's "The French Connection" in which he played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, and a best-actor nomination for 1979's "All That Jazz," the semiautobiographical Bob Fosse film.

But he was perhaps best known for his role as a small-town police chief in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film "Jaws," about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers -- as well as millions of moviegoers.

In 2005, one of Scheider's most famous lines in the movie -- "You're gonna need a bigger boat" -- was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from U.S. movies.

Widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, "Jaws" was the first movie to earn $100 million at the box office.

"I've been fortunate to do what I consider three landmark films," he told The Associated Press in 1986. "'The French Connection' spawned a whole era of the relationship between two policemen, based on an enormous amount of truth about working on the job."

'"Jaws' was the first big, blockbuster outdoor-adventure film. And certainly 'All That Jazz' is not like any old MGM musical. Each one of these films is unique and I consider myself fortunate to be associated with them."

Born into a working-class family in Orange, N.J., he was stricken with rheumatic fever at 6. He spent long periods in bed, becoming a voracious reader. Except for a slight heart murmur, he was pronounced cured at 17. He acquired the distinctive shape of his nose in an amateur boxing match.

After three years in the Air Force, Scheider sought a New York theater career in 1960. His debut came a year later as Mercutio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of "Romeo and Juliet." He also played minor roles in such films as "Paper Lion" and "Stiletto." Then he made a breakthrough in 1971 as Jane Fonda's pimp in "Klute."

"He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call 'a knockaround actor,'" Richard Dreyfuss, who co-starred with Scheider and Robert Shaw in "Jaws," told The Associated Press on Sunday.

"A 'knockaround actor' to me is a compliment that means a professional that lives the life of a professional actor and doesn't' yell and scream at the fates and does his job and does it as well as he can," Dreyfuss said.

He also appeared in the films "Marathon Man" as Dustin Hoffman's brother and "Naked Lunch," David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S. Burroughs's novel. He starred in "Jaws 2," which turned out not to be as successful as the original.

TV roles included "SeaQuest DSV" and "Third Watch."

More recently, he played the slick CEO of an insurance company that denies coverage to a young man dying of leukemia in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Rainmaker," and appeared in the direct-to-video "Dracula II: Ascension" and "Dracula III: Legacy."

Scheider was also politically active. He participated in rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a massive New York demonstration in March 2003 that police said drew 125,000 chanting activists.

Scheider had a home built for him and his family in 1994 in Sagaponack in the Hamptons on New York's Long Island, where he was active in community issues. Last summer, Scheider announced that he was selling the home for about $18.75 million and moving to the nearby village of Sag Harbor.

Although "Jaws" frightened some moviegoers out of the water for years, Scheider told the AP in 1986 that he considered his role somewhat comedic.

"If you go back and look at the way it's developed and built, that is really a funny character," he said. "He's a fumbler with all kinds of inhibitions and fears -- that's the way we built that character."