Circus family embodies a bygone era of Las Vegas entertainment

Before he could drink beers with tigers splashing around the swimming pool or shoo the full-grown lion off the kitchen counter of his Las Vegas home, Ferdinand Fercos had to learn how to fly through the air without dying.

It all began when he was a boy, his father’s waiting arms the only thing between him and a whole mess of fractured limbs.

We see footage of him as a youngster, grainy images of Fercos working in unison with his brother Tony and sisters Olga and Dasha, all of them trained from near-birth to pretzel and swing and hurl their bodies to perilous heights. They piston their legs into a Russian swing — a large, metallic circus contraption that looks kind of like a malevolent teeter-totter — eventually generating enough momentum to launch Ferdinand up into the rafters of the big top tent they’re performing beneath.

He’s propelled into a triple somersault, rocketing skyward in a succession of tight loop-de-loops, landing split seconds later seated in a chair wobbling, 25 feet above the ground, as precariously as a spinning plate atop a carny’s stick.

There is no safety net.

The audience has to be mesmerized by you — hypnotized.

That’s what Dad used to say.

And watching the scene in question — culled from the new documentary “The Flying Fercos” — it still feels like some sort of spell has just been cast.

Sixty-some years later, tens of thousands of miles away from his native Czechoslovakia, Ferdinand plucks a framed picture from the wall of Tony’s west valley home and explains how he and his siblings risked grave bodily harm on a daily basis in the name of their life’s pursuit: applause.

“So this is the swing,” Ferdinand says, eyeing an image of the apparatus. “You have to order the angles to get out from there to this angle.

“If you do it too early, you go too far — then you cannot spin again,” he explains, tracing the trajectory on the picture glass. “If you are too late, then you go up in the air and you cannot spin. That happened.”

He eyes his brother, sitting on the living room couch.

“He fell on his knees, broke his leg,” Ferdinand notes. “Me, too.”

But there was a payoff.

“We became very famous with the Russian swing,” Tony explains in the film, which chronicles his family’s one-of-a-kind journey from a rugged upbringing in an Eastern Bloc country to the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas Strip, escaping communism via extraordinary feats of the human body.

Full of vintage clips, “The Flying Fercos” is a reality-can-be-stranger-than-fiction account of one of the most physically gifted and audacious families in the history of Vegas entertainment, driven by four brash, carved-from-granite siblings destined for the spotlight, first as teenage circus performers, later as panther-catching magicians who rubbed elbows with Donald Trump on “The Apprentice,” engaged in a brief feud with Siegfried & Roy and toured with a lion in the back of a U-Haul, upon occasion.

But “The Flying Fercos,” streaming on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime, represents more than a cinematic Horatio Alger tale with teeth and claws and tails and scars.

In a city posited on perpetual reinvention, on chasing down dreams even when they occasionally become nightmares, on the near-narcotic allure of the spotlight, the Fercos don’t just inhabit Las Vegas, they embody it.

“I think that’s the beautiful thing about this family, they are constantly reinventing themselves,” says Michael Lutz, director and executive producer of “The Flying Fercos,” who’s also a longtime producer of “Dr. Phil” and other shows. “They start off as child acrobats, and then they become world-class jugglers. Their father builds the Russian swing, which launches these kids 30 feet in the air with only their parents to catch them, and then they move to Las Vegas, become lion and tiger performers with a magic show — and, again, reinvent themselves.

“It’s just a series of survival tactics that this family uses to stay relevant,” he continues. “And I just find that incredible. I love resilient people. These are the most resilient people on Earth.”

‘Pain can be an incentive’

“Search the international world of variety entertainment and you won’t find a more attractive, versatile or talented performing family than the fabulous ‘Fercos’ of the ‘Casino de Paris’ revue show at the Dunes Hotel & Country Club.” — Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dec. 17, 1980

Tony Fercos’ smile is as wide as his ambitions and much like Vegas itself: always on.

It doesn’t fade even as he recounts the time when his father first told him he was ready to perform in the Russian swing as a kid.

The son had his doubts.

“So, my father smacked me one — you know, big smack,” Fercos recalls with a clap of the hands. “And he said, ‘When I say, “You’re ready,” you’re ready.’ The smack make me like (growls), gave me the courage. Otherwise, I didn’t have the courage. I was 13, you know.

“But by giving me one smack, ‘Yes, of course, I’m not a coward,’ ” he continues. “Sometimes you need this kind of push. I needed it. And then my fears were completely off. And I made it.”

Like his siblings, Fercos was born into a life predicated upon evading death for cheers.

Mom owned a circus; Dad starred on the trapeze.

As soon as they could stand, these kids flew: Olga took the stage by the age of 3; Ferdinand did the same before he was 5.

Tony and Dasha practically exited the womb via backflip.

Their father was a dedicated, demanding presence whom they both feared and revered; training began every day after breakfast and they worked, worked, worked until they got everything right.

The family toured Europe, all six of them in a tiny van.

It was a grind: Get the routine right or go hungry.

“Imagine being in a circus and they need the act to work, and if the act doesn’t work, you don’t get food, you don’t get money,” Antony Fercos, Tony’s son, says in the documentary. “If you can’t do the flip, (expletive) do it again. Because pain can be an incentive.”

A lucrative one, it turns out.

With their model-worthy looks and well-honed routines almost tight as their abs, the Fercos became stars in the ’60s when they were still teenagers, their success propelled in large part — both literally and figuratively — by that Russian swing, which their father first saw on a trip to its titular country and then brought to the rest of Europe, where his kids played all the big circuses, Italy’s Circus Togni and Germany’s Althoff and Krone shows, among many.

While performing in Switzerland, the Fercos caught the eye of renowned Vegas producer Frederic Apcar, who offered them a spot in his pioneering “Casino de Paris” show at the Dunes in the early ’70s.

It was their way out of communism.

But it came with a price.

“They had to leave one of their sisters behind,” says Dashenka Giraldo, Olga’s daughter. “It was communist rule back then, and the only way they were able to come to Las Vegas and perform was leaving a family member in Czechoslovakia. Just coming to America was a huge feat back then.”

Once they were here, it was like being on the Russian swing all over again: There was no margin for error when it came to their careers.

“When we came here, we couldn’t go back,” Olga says in the documentary. “We had to make it work.”

A fantasia of flesh and fur

If the walls could talk, they’d roar.

Tony Fercos’ house doubles as a museum to a Vegas that no longer exists, back when big cats prowled even bigger casino stages and the circus was always in town.

In one room looms a gorgeous stuffed white tiger on its hind legs; on the floor, a lion rug complete with head and mane, maw open in a silent growl. The animal’s name was Sinbad, and Tony loved him to the end, spoon-feeding him soup as he struggled with kidney disease, as we see in the film.

There are pictures of the massive creatures all over the place, their portraits hung like those of family members — and in many ways, that’s exactly what they were. They lived in the house, slept on couches, ate and played with the dogs, occasionally climbed on the kitchen counter (a cat is a cat, right?).

Though the Fercos were initially brought to Vegas to perform their circus-style act at “Casino de Paris,” doing two shows a night, every night, they pivoted to an animal-centric magic production after being offered a deal to replace Siegfried & Roy at the MGM Grand when they departed for The Mirage.

The Fercos ended up staying at the Dunes instead, their show a fantasia of flesh and fur.

But not everyone was thrilled with the Fercos’ new direction.

With a trademark chutzpah undiminished by the passing of time, Tony recalls Siegfried knocking on the Fercos’ apartment door one day out of the blue.

“I was, like, shocked,” he remembers. “I said, ‘Siegfried, how do you find us? He says, ‘I’ve got resources.’ And he said, ‘I’ve been told you try to steal my act.’ I said, ‘Siegfried, nobody gonna steal your act. You’re Siegfried. I will do something different. I’ll be Tony Fercos; you be Siegfried.’

“And he threatened me,” he continues. “He said, ‘I’m gonna sue you, and I make sure you don’t do it.’ And that’s what make me go, ‘Hey, wait a minute, a guy cannot threaten me.’ And then we went full power into it.”

Think of his father. Think of that smack.

“Sometimes you need this kind of push.”

On training tigers: ‘You have to bite them, also’

So how did these two acrobat brothers with no animal training experience learn how to get a 400-pound lion to allow Tony to ride its back Tarzan-style across a showroom stage?

Like flying through the air with no safety net as kids, they just threw caution to the wind.

“The fearlessness to do that, I mean, they had no history working with lions and tigers, and suddenly they’re like, ‘OK, we’ve found a lion,’ ” Lutz recalls. “They drove to Oregon to pick him up, and then they purchased two baby tigers and just figured out how to train them.”

To hear the brothers tell it, the way to raise a man-eating jungle cat so that it doesn’t, you know, eat you is to incorporate it into the family at a young age, like you would a puppy.

“When they’re babies, they stayed in the house with us. Like, the leopard slept with them,” Ferdinand says, gesturing toward his brother, who responds with a grin.

“He kick me out and slept with my wife,” Tony says of the leopard in question, who was fond of cuddling in bed. “You have to give them time. And you have to somehow act like they do. When they are little, you have to wrestle with them — and you have to bite them, also.”

As we see in the documentary, there was practically no separation between the animals and the Fercos.

“They were our pets. They grew up with us,” Dashenka says. “They came to us as cubs and grew up around our dogs, and that kind of domesticated them. I have photos eating my after-school lunch, and the tiger’s next to me trying to get my plate of food. Immediately, when I got home, I would want to be with them and interact with them and give them treats.

“They were in our homes, but we also gave them their own space where they had a big pool. They had their own little areas to run around and still be themselves,” she continues. “Having friends over was always a fun time to explain to their parents what was in our backyard.”

The idea was to humanize the animals, to get them used to being around people.

“We try to show in the documentary, this is Tony and Ferdinand — and to a lesser extent their sons, Antony and Alex — working and raising and living with these lions and tigers every single day,” Lutz explains. “And if you don’t have that bond, if you don’t have that relationship with them, then you won’t be able to perform with them onstage.”

Still, the animals were caged and shuttled around the world as far removed from their natural habits as can be, which some consider abuse.

“We’ve heard some criticism a little bit about animals and cages and abuse and all that stuff,” Lutz acknowledges. “There’s no abuse. And I would say to anybody who’s like, ‘You have to abuse them to work with them,’ no, you don’t.

“If you abuse these animals, you won’t work with them,” he continues. “They will attack you and bite you — and they’ll attack you and bite you, regardless. I mean, that’s just the nature of this business.”

Tragedy strikes

The doctors told her she may never walk again.

She was 14.

It’s the spring of 2004, and the Fercos are on tour in Beijing.

After their Vegas run ended in the late ’80s, the brothers hit the road with their own show.

It wasn’t without serious familial fallout: Tony and Ferdinand replaced their sisters with their wives in the production, resulting in a lawsuit and a hefty payout to Olga and Dasha.

Still, the brothers carried on, traveling around the world from Israel to Malaysia, Reno to Atlantic City, where they performed at the Trump Taj Mahal casino, leading to an appearance on the first season of “The Apprentice.”

Lutz, who was working as a producer for HBO at the time, saw them on the hit reality show and was intrigued.

“They were on very briefly, but I wanted to know more about them,” he recalls. “So I got in touch with them, and they told me they were about to embark on a three-month tour of China and asked me to come along and join them. I took six weeks off, and I went to China.”

Among the many Fercos on the trip was a teenage Dashenka, who performed as one of the dancers in the big pink plumage at show’s end.

Before a gig in Beijing, she was onstage, marveling at the venue’s ornate murals on the ceiling when she took a step back and brushed against the curtain behind her.

It just so happened that animal handler Pavel Vitha was walking by with a tiger on the other side of the curtain.

The animal, named Victoria, saw the fabric move and lunged, gripping Dashenka by the ankle.

She screamed.

The tiger became frightened and bit down harder, dragging Dashenka through the curtain.

“When tigers panic,” Vitha says in the film, “they grab on something and don’t let go.”

Tony and others sprayed the animal with a fire hydrant and hit its nose with the thing.

Through the pain, Dashenka begged for the animal’s life to be spared — Victoria was the first tiger she ever trained.

“I understood that there was no malice behind the bite,” she says. “I knew it wasn’t anything vicious, although at the time, it was scary, since they thought that they might have to amputate my leg.”

Dashenka spent the next eight months in a wheelchair.

A model since the age of 4, she wondered if she’d ever work a runway again.

“I just lost all my muscle mass in my bone,” she notes.

It took her a year to learn to walk again.

A setback, and a comeback

Dashenka’s horrific ordeal was far from the first time that the Fercos had endured such an attack: In May 1993, Dasha had her left calf gouged in five places while feeding a trio of tigers at home.

A month earlier, Tony was badly bitten during a performance in South Korea.

In 1997, Tony’s ex-wife Virginia was mauled by a panther backstage at a show in Biloxi, Mississippi, bitten in the face. She still has a hole in her temple from the attack, which contributed to their divorce.

But this time the damage extended beyond mangled flesh and bone to the Fercos’ very livelihood: The Chinese circus that hired them didn’t insure the show and refused to pay the six-figure hospital bills.

The Fercos then had hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of show equipment confiscated as they attempted to leave the country.

What was supposed to be a triumphant tour of the Far East left them in financial ruins.

“China was a disaster,” Tony’s daughter Tatiana says in the film. “That basically destroyed what the show could have been.

“My dad definitely felt the pressure to try to get this show back together,” she continues. “If you don’t have a show, what do you have?”

Cue footage of Tony standing on the edge of the Strip, beaming into the camera.

“We now have nothing to lose,” he says in the film. “Las Vegas, here we come.”

Keeping it in the family

It was supposed to be a passing of the torch.

Instead, it was the Fercos who got burned.

In 2011, the family signed a network TV deal for a reality show chronicling the next generation of Fercos — Antony, Alex, Dashenka, among others — launching their own Vegas production, keeping the family business alive.

With Lutz on board, work on the series began — some of the footage is seen in “The Flying Fercos” — but after a fitful live performance at Planet Hollywood, the show was abruptly ended before ever making it on air.

“Suddenly, they said the show is canceled, and nobody knew why they cancel it, if maybe the animal activist was against it,” Tony says. “It was like a downer — boom! Nothing, you know? And then, maybe five years ago, (Lutz) said, ‘I got so much footage. Let’s do a documentary.’ ”

In addition to filming the family on and off for the past two decades, Lutz combed through thousands of hours of vintage footage shot by Ferdinand to include in the documentary.

“I’ve had a pretty successful career as a television producer, I tried to get this thing going in various ways and didn’t have success,” he says of his work with the Fercos. “I finally said, ‘I need to just do this myself. I need to put my resources into this and finally tell the story the way that I want to tell it, with no gatekeepers telling me no.’ That’s ultimately what I did, and I think that does reflect the resilience of the family. Maybe they rubbed off on me.”

They rubbed off on Vegas as well: If “The Flying Fercos” chronicles an end to an era for the family, it does the same for their adopted hometown.

“There is sort of a bygone era that we’re never going to see again. We’re never going to see the European circus again the way it’s depicted in this film,” Lutz says. “You’re kind of getting a glimpse into these worlds that no longer exist. When I set out to do this 20 years ago, I would never have guessed that this is where we would be, that these shows are really no more, and there’s no sign of them ever coming back.”

It’s a paradox: The Fercos are gone from the stage, but still they live on here, as it’s hard to envision Las Vegas ascending to the entertainment capital that it’s become without the extravagant, anything-goes variety shows, the boundary-pushing performers risking life and limb for hand claps, the audacity of having man-eating animals mere feet from the audience.

Here, the show must always go on — a truism that remains unchanged for Tony, even if the same can’t be said of his audience.

Near the end of the film, we see him meeting his newborn grandson for the first time in Oregon, where his daughter lives.

Before even taking his coat off, Grandpa’s in performance mode.

“These are my juggling balls,” he says, tossing a trio of them in the air. “I’m going to show you how to juggle.”

The child looks on in wonder.

The audience has to be mesmerized by you — hypnotized.