For anyone who's curious as to why we're we're pairing these two questions, it's for a number of reasons, among them that both are magicians, neither is currently performing, and they used (briefly) to be a couple themselves.
First up, the lowdown on Lance.
When he opened at the Monte Carlo in 1996, Lance Burton had already performed successfully on the Strip for a number of years, firstly in Folies Bergère and then in his own show at the Hacienda. The 13-year contract he signed with the Monte Carlo was the longest contract given to any entertainer in Las Vegas history and included the property building him his own custom 1,274-seat theater.
The family-friendly show was a popular staple of Strip entertainment, so it did not seem particularly significant, other than for the performer himself, when in early May 2009 Lance was forced to cancel a string of performances after he broke his foot during a show. However, rumors then began to swirl as the perfomer's return was delayed and it became known that his contract had not been renewed.
The plot then thickened when, on June 30, 2009 Lance Burton announced at a press conference that his contract had been extended, by not two (as rumored) but six years, meaning he would've performed at the Monte Carlo through 2015.
However, when we came to negotiate an offer for the show for the 2010 Member Rewards Book, Lance's manager explained that he could not guarantee any performances at the Monte Carlo after May of that year. Hence, it came apparently as less surprise to us than to the rest of the Las Vegas entertainment community when, on April 4, 2010, it was announced that Burton was to quit the Monte Carlo and perform his final show there on Labor Day of that year, thus curtailing his new contract by five years.
While sources close to the magician informed us that it was differences with the management at the property that persuaded the performer to leave, as opposed to any diminished desire to continue performing, when we dropped a line to a source in the course of researching this answer, the reply came back that, "I think he's pretty much retired, unless something comes up on the horizon."
So, it doesn't sound as if you can expect to see Lance Burton performing anywhere in Las Vegas (where he still resides), or anywhere else, anytime soon. He's still active on Twitter at @LanceBurtonMM and Facebook, so Follow and/or Friend him if you want to stay in the loop.
As to Melinda, we tackled her life in a previous QoD (7/26/2009). Here's what we wrote, updated for factual accuracy:
Las Vegas local Melinda Saxe comes from a showbiz family – her mother was a dancer-turned-producer and her brother David Saxe is a prolific show producer, behind many of the current productions at V Theater and the David Saxe Theater, both located in the Miracle Mile Shops.
Under the name "The First Lady of Magic," Melinda started out at a small theater in Las Vegas' Bourbon Street hotel-casino at the age of 20 and went on to have her own residencies at the Trump Taj Mahal, Atlantic City, her own 3,000-seat theater in Branson, Missouri, and the Venetian in Las Vegas (see below), plus movie and television appearances including the "World’s Greatest Magic II" and "World's Most Dangerous Magic" specials. Although derided by many as a "dumb blonde" who got by on her looks, in 1998 the International Magicians' Society named her "Magician of the Year."
Melinda’s signature illusion, and the reason for her inclusion in "World's Most Dangerous Magic," was an act called "The Drill of Death." A "penetration illusion," (yes, the double-entendres fly around this one), it was an act developed especially for her in which she was apparently impaled on a massive drill bit. You can see it here on YouTube.
Having previously dated Rich Little, in 1993 Melinda was married to Lance Burton, after proposing to him live on television. The marriage was short-lived, however, lasting less than a year. In 2000 she married Mark Evensvold, after being set up on a date by her sister. Evensfold, a managing partner in the P F Chang's restaurant chain, apparently had no idea who she was and had never seen her peform. "I think he thought I pulled rabbits out of hats [until he came to see the show]," she commented in an interview. Two years later, in September 2002, Melinda retired from her gig at the Venetian in order to raise a family. She now has two children, a boy and a girl, and, as far as we know, continues to live with Evensvold in Scottsdale, Arizona.
As an aside, we caught Melinda's show not long after it opened at the Venetian and reviewed it in the November, 2000 Las Vegas Advisor. Overall, we were impressed with her performance, but she did get hit with one massive and memorable technical snafu. It was during an illusion in which Melinda was supposed to "vanish" a car, except something went wrong with the drapery and the car remained in clear sight, leaving the unprepared "First Lady of Magic" on stage exclaiming, "Oh sh!t, oh sh!t!"
