He'd gone to the bigger venue in the sky — "Ian Cognito: Comedian dies on stage in Bicester" (BBC).
ADDED: From Wikipedia’s long list of performers who have died on stage, here are 2 more where a comedian died and people in the audience thought it was part of the act:
Comedian Dick Shawn died on stage while performing at UC San Diego after suffering a fatal heart attack. He lay motionless on the stage for several minutes, while audience members (thinking it was part of his act) began shouting comments, such as: "Take his wallet" and "How long is this going to go on?". The stage manager came out to check on Shawn several times before realizing it was not part of the show. A doctor was called up from the audience to perform CPR on the comedian until the paramedics arrived. He was later pronounced dead at Scripps Memorial Hospital....
Magician and comedian Tommy Cooper suffered a heart attack during a performance on the TV variety show Live From Her Majesty's. Cooper was known for getting his illusions deliberately and comically wrong. After Cooper collapsed, his audience laughed for almost a minute, thinking that his stage character had swooned at the appearance of a pretty magician's assistant (even she thought Cooper was improvising a comic bit.) The TV show cut away to an unscheduled break. Efforts to revive Cooper backstage failed, and he was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
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59 comments:
A Dick Shawn finale!!
That's what you call bombing on stage.
I'm glad I wasn't in that crowd. I'd feel horrible. Five minutes is a long time.
Didn't some kind of health guru die on the Dick Cavett Show? I think it's much funnier when a health guru dies on air. Way more ironic and cerebral. Really gives you something to contemplate. I would be entertained if some climate change alarmist had a heart attack during one of his jeremiads. The world is going to end in twelve years, but not for you, poor soul.
Wikipedia omitted the death of oboeist William Bennett in 2013 from a cerebral hemorrhage while performing a concerto. That's one dangerous instrument!
Cary Grant died during a rehearsal. Not sure that counts.
He killed while dying.
What comic could ask for a better exit? Added bonus, knowing the misanthropic nature of most comics: If he was floating above the crowd, he would have been amused by their eventual discomfiture.
I wonder if the same thing could happen to blog commenters? As there's no live audience, I guess we'll never know.
Red Foxx died of a heart attack.."The big one!"
When I was in college, we held a massive reunion for the 100th year of the college band's existence. All former members who could be there were called out on the field at half time. While assembling for the performance, one alumni had a heart attack right on the 50 yard line.
Fortunately for him, two people on either side of him were trained paramedics, and the football team doctor was on the sideline. CPR was performed until an ambulance could get the alumni to the hospital to complete recovery. I always thought that was more impressive than the intended performance.
That’s not funny?
If you gave him the option, I’m sure he’d rather die on stage literally rather than metaphorically.
The topic of dying while performing reminds me of an old chicken soup joke.A Salute to Chicken Soup.
During a performance at a Yiddish Theater the leading man keels over. A doctor rushes to the stricken actor, when, from the balcony, they hear a bubbe’s voice:
“Give’em some chicken soup. Give him some chicken soup!”
The doctor looks up. “Madam, it wouldn’t help.”
“It vouldn’t hoit.”
Not Waving but Drowning Launch Audio in a New Window
BY STEVIE SMITH
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Comedian’s panic: “I’m dying out here.”
I want to go while performing in the marital bed.
“I’m cumming I’m cumming, I’m going... love you!”
For a long time I’ve always finished my conversations and text convos with my wife and kids with “I love you”
Just in case
"Didn't some kind of health guru die on the Dick Cavett Show? I think it's much funnier when a health guru dies on air. Way more ironic and cerebral. Really gives you something to contemplate. I would be entertained if some climate change alarmist had a heart attack during one of his jeremiads."
Jerome Rodale. He had expected to live to 100 but died at 72.
Unlike you, I'm never entertained by anyone getting a heart attack.
Now a climate alarmist freezing to death on his way to a climate change rally, now that would be hilarious.
My Dad died waiting to have his blood typed, but as he was dying he left an inspiring message: "Be positive!"
Jeezums, my blood type is B Negative, that probably explains some things.
"All part of the act, folks"
Hello, I must be going
In 1972 I was taking an Intro Psych class, the professor was a very strange older guy. He would do and say some bizarre things just to get a rise out of us. Once in the middle of a lecture he looked at us and said, “Excuse me,” then walked out of the classroom. After 5 minutes I got up and looked out the door, the dude was laying in the middle of the hallway. I walked over to him, looked down and said, “Hi.” He just looked at me with a strange expression. I went back and told everyone what just happened, we all laughed thinking he was pulling some trick on us. Five minutes later I looked out again, the paramedics were working on him. He had some kind of attack and was hospitalized. It blew our minds.
Women never die on stage. They're too smart for that.
I'm surprised this happened in 2019, but it used to happen to men all the time. Our next door neighbors father "dropped dead" while mowing the grass in the 1970s. Another neighbor's father died at 46 at work. Adlai Stevenson dropped dead while walking in Manhattan.
Never happened to women. 'cause like I said, they're too smart.
Just "dropping dead" is the best way to go. Lingering on till your death by cancer or whatever is the worse. Martha Gellhorn had one medical problem after another in her 80's but was still hanging on - half-blind and crippled - when she committed suicide at 90.
I don't see what the big deal is: Stephen Colbert gets out there and dies every night. It's not called the Late Show for nothing.
p.s. Colbert's middle name is Tyrone ----talk about "cultural appropriation"!
From the Wikipedia list cited by Althouse: 1820: Madame Delinsky, the female half of a magic act, was accidentally shot and killed while performing the "bullet catch" trick. One of the six gunmen mistakenly loaded his rifle with a live bullet.
This seems rather suspicious. Probably apocryphal.
That's what you call bombing on stage.
That's what I call hitting the Russian roulette jackpot on the first spin.
I vaguely recall that Ethan Hawke's co-star had a heart attack during a performance off-Broadway, but he didn't completely die. They revived him.
(googles).
Yes. Richard Easton. (Link)
The Graham Norton show clip in which Hawke describes it -- at the link -- is entertaining.
Back in the 1960s there was a morning team on WNEW-AM in New York, Klavan and Finch. They were sort of like an audio Mad Magazine. Gene Klavan wrote a book about the experience "We Die at Dawn".
My neighbor had a heart attack. Went down on the tennis court. 50 years old.
98% blockage in some weird artery that runs around the back of the heart.
Anyway -the tennis club had a defibrillator. They got it out and used it. btw - the thing won't work unless the sensors agree it's dire. It took 12 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Once in the ambulance, they had to zap him 2 more times to keep him alive.
After stents - he's 100% back to normal. Without that defibrillator machine - he would be dead.
Super Dave Funkhouser and Albert Brook's dad died in Milton Berles lap right after he roasted Lucy and Dezi in 1958. Told to Seinfeld in CICGC
I hope Bernie takes away our access to defibrillators. It's not fair.
I hope Bernie takes away our access to defibrillators. It's not fair.
Are you able to name a single Republican politician or policy that increased access to needed, affordable care?
Ritmo - We must punish the maker of the defibrillator and make sure access is only provided thru government Bernie.
R policy: The success of our life-saving system is staying the hell out of the way.
I have nothing to offer here excluding the trite.
"You must be bored, Mr. Rodale."
Classic story, recounted by Mr. Cavett himself.
(Really good retelling.)
https://youtu.be/-FjM3qOIfQA
I can understand people thinking Dick Shawn was kidding. But you would believe the number of opera singers who died or were shot on stage.
That sounds to me a lot like the famous Widow Maker blood clot that suddenly completely blocks the Left Anterior Descending Artery. It is always fatal in minutes unless a heart surgeon is there to immediately go in by cardioscope, suck out the clot, then restart the flatlined heart and induce a 4 day intubated coma, and pray.
I know because that happened to me 9 years ago next week. The extended recovery time is what made me a commenter on Althouse.
Emory Heart Surgeons, don't leave home without one.
BleachBit-and-Hammers said...
So in other words, you cannot name a single Republican politician or policy that increased access to needed, affordable care. Got it.
You're ok with offering care to kings and caliphs, though. That's apparently the only yardstick by which you measure your system's success. Not this.
It's good that deplorables like yourself are doing so much for the elites of this country and those abroad.
Fuck you, Pedro.
America's going into its fourth straight year of declining life expectancy; April Apple finds this to be a dandy reflection of our superior healthcare system.
Hey. At least they got the Duck Dynasty guy to go on Neil Cavuto's show and explain to him why healthcare is a sham anyway. (Because Jesus saves you with "eternal healthcare." Plus it's free, he says.)
This is the level of moronic, fantasy-based retardation that guides the right-wing "problem-solving" process.
Tell it to all the deplorable Americans your policies are killing off, Jon Ericson.
On the first day of filming a dream sequence on a railroad trestle for a movie about Gregg Allman, a train "unexpectedly" appeared killing one and injuring six. Given the history of the Allman Brothers Band … appropriate, although really it should have been Gregg. They never made the movie.
Ha Ha. Fuck you, Pedro.
From Wikipedia’s long list of performers who have died on stage, here are 2 more where a comedian died and people in the audience thought it was part of the act:
We should laugh, right? I'm sure they'd want it that way.
Former Omaha Mayor and US Senator Ed Zorinsky died shortly after he appeared at the Omaha Press Club show.
Selfish and arrogant people should be afraid of dying before they get to say "hey I was just kidding about being arrogant and selfish"....
Death is nothing to be afraid of, dying stupid is something, though, that one should not want to do.
No idea if this stand up comic was selfish and arrogant. Most stand up comics are, though, which is sad.
Did you have a tag #funnynotfunny or something like that?
Always leave them wanting more.
Walk towards the(spot)light.
Today I was in a nursing home visiting a high school friend who is really messed up as the result of a stroke. Wheelchair, unintelligible speech, the whole bit.
With me was a fellow classmate. He and I have both have had a-fib incidents. In his case they recur, in mine not, after the first (and only?) four years ago.
We both take xarelto, and both wondered whether someday, after its patent runs out, that millions of at-risk people take it to prevent clotting leading to heart attack and stroke.
Leonard Warren, one of the biggest stars of the opera world at the time, died on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera at the age 48. He had just finished singing an aria “Morir, tremenda cosa” (to die, a momentous thing).
How do you remain upright on a stool for five minutes, whilst DEAD?
Ritmo - You guys are the "I'm a baby please give me a policy" government whores..
I know I cannot get through the day without some government policy.
POLICY! oh sweet sweet government policy.
FWIW, the company with a lock on the manufacture of EpiPens - Mylan - an outfit heavily left-leaning and with Joe Manchin's daughter in highest levels of management, took the price of EpiPens from about $50 apiece in 2008 to +$700 each in 2017. Obama admin reax? Crickets. Saw the other day the Trump FDA is approving a competitor's product, which should cause a drop in price of this device. Someone asked for a Republican policy decision?
Also FWIW, and it's largely irrelevant to anything, the wide availability of AEDs (Automatic External Defibrillators) is a good thing by any measure, but it helps to understand their purpose and function. They don't really "jump-start" a genuinely stopped heart and aren't designed to. They allow a shock ONLY if a specific kind of rhythm problem is detected by their sensors that can - possibly - be restored to a regular rhythm with a shock. They will not administer shock to someone who is flatlined.
Last item of random interest. Hal Holbrook's famous (in my time, at least) MARK TWAIN TONIGHT routines, which set off a smallish semi-tsunami of historic celebrity impersonations, included a bit where Twain, in an armchair on stage, apparently dozes off in mid-sentence: creepy, in retrospect.
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