"The Clown" is the only statue of five created by the artist Montyne that continues to greet visitors to the Circus Circus hotel. Photo by John Gurzinski.
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Four of the five original statues that once stood in front of Circus Circus, Las Vegas icons photographed by thousands of visitors each year, have been hauled away and buried in a landfill by the hotel's new management.
The statues represented the most publicly visible surviving work by the artist Montyne, who lived much of his life in Las Vegas and died here in 1989. The best-known of the statues, of an acrobat balancing on a single finger, was a self-portrait. Montyne, who used only the single name in both private and professional life, also traveled the world as a stage and circus performer specializing in feats of balance and strength.
The late Jay Sarno, founder of both Caesars Palace and Circus Circus, and considered to have originated in those hotels the heavily themed resort concept that dominated the gaming industry for decades, commissioned Montyne in 1967 to sculpt the statues. They were erected the following year, when Circus Circus opened, and were removed about three months ago.
Montyne's surviving son, Lamont Sudbury, said the destruction violated one of the terms of Sarno's agreement with his father, that Montyne and his family would have first right of refusal if the statues were ever to be sold or otherwise disposed of.
"I would have loved to take 'The Balancer' and put it in the cemetery where my dad is," Sudbury said. "But they didn't even call us. The only way I learned about it was when a friend of mine went over there to show the statues to one of his business associates, and they were gone."
The other statues that were removed included one of a young female acrobat gracefully balancing on a board atop a cylinder. The person who posed for that statue was Montyne's wife, theatrical assistant and favorite model, China, who remarried after his death and still lives in Las Vegas. Also removed were statues of Gargantua, the "World's Largest Gorilla" once exhibited by the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and of a male lion. Only one of the five is left: a clown.
Sudbury said he was told by Circus Circus executives that the four removed statues were hauled to the landfill at Apex, a few miles north of Las Vegas, and buried there.
Montyne painted the classical ceiling murals in the original MGM Grand casino, which were destroyed in the disastrous MGM fire of 1983. The resort is now Bally's. He also created smaller paintings and sculptures for the homes of Las Vegas' elite.
In the 1970s and '80s Circus Circus grew from a single property to one of the world's most successful publicly traded casino corporations, and changed its name to Mandalay Resorts before it was merged into MGM Mirage in March 2005. Yvette Monet, a spokeswoman for MGM Mirage, explained, "We removed four of the five statues out front because they were very old and had been painted over many times. They had deteriorated to the point that the statues no longer represented what we thought was the great Montyne's original vision when he created them in the 1960s.
"At the time we discarded the statues we were not aware that they had been promised to Montyne's family, and we regret the family's disappointment.
"We are in the process of contacting Lamont Sudbury to offer him the remaining clown statue," Monet added. At present, she said, there are no plans to use the space the statues once occupied, near the west sidewalk of the Strip.
Two of Sarno's daughters reacted differently to news of the statues' removal. "They were cute," said Heidi Sarno Straus. "I used to sit in the gorilla's big hand when I was about 10."
Her sister, September Sarno, said, "My immediate thought is that over time every building that winds up remaining gets a face-lift. The hotel's present management is running a business, not a nostalgia factory, and the bottom line isn't just the main thing, it's the only thing."
The acrobat model whose image was hauled to the dump, China Montyne-Dushek, thought the statues were an artistic asset which could have remained a business asset as well, especially had they been better maintained, or restored. "People came from all over the world to look at those statues," she said.
"It really doesn't matter so much who created them," she added. "What matters is somebody tore down art. And they cavalierly tore down something that really mattered to the public."
