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Musicians / Actors / Artists Dying During Performances Or Productions

Absolutely. It's all about audiences and money.

The LLBS disaster was about a real death, though, whereas Ghostwatch and The Paul Daniels Halloween Special were elaborate and well-done hoaxes. Plus, we didn't see Michael Lush die. There's no footage of the accident. If there were, I'd expect it to have surfaced on the 'net at some point to haunt Noel Edmonds.

This happened with film of the death of Tommy Cooper, which you can find if you dig a bit. He died on stage and his collapse looks like part of the act.

Cooper's friends have said it wasn't so bad to die that way, as the last thing he'd have heard would have been the audience laughing.


Agreed. In many ways I think that's how Tommy Cooper would have wanted to go. As a bystander I think he'd have found it darkly humourous a notion to literally die on stage.

The footage does exist. I've never felt that I wanted to seek it out though. Somehow seems a little disrespectful (to me at least).

The Michael Lush death was different. I perhaps shouldn't have included it in that bracket. I was thinking more in terms of tabloid negative coverage and reaction against the BBC.

While it was an accident it was obviously concluded that the BBC was at a level of fault. It was a rehearsal. I'm glad we have no footage. I agree that there's no way that wouldn't have found it online somehow.

Edmonds did of course resign. He wasn't pushed. It was a hiatus and the BBC did not instantly opt to can the show. Edmonds chose to walk away from the show, and that largely made the whole thing a moot point.

Within two years mind, he was re-devised and relaunched as the king of Saturday Early-Evenings. First the Saturday Roadshow, then Noel's House Party.

Live broadcasted Family-friendly Saturday evening TV, serving both as light entertainment and (through guest appearances) covert publicity for some of the Channel's other programmes.

It's the kind of thing The Beeb don't really do anymore. There was an intentional house style to their Saturday programming in the early 90s. A very cohesive, safe and inclusive brand - beginning with the likes of Going Live and Live and Kicking in the morning, moving onto Sports coverage through Grandstand in the afternoon, and then Noel and company in the early Evening.

And in many ways that is exactly why Ghostwatch jarred with/duped so many viewers. Because to all intents and purpose it carried on with that BBC One House-style (which had been flowing for over 12 hours of very safe Saturday programming by that time of the evening) only to then have something a little bit creepy starting to happen within it.

Shaking up that safe sequence of programming is why it worked so well. :)
 
The footage does exist. I've never felt that I wanted to seek it out though. Somehow seems a little disrespectful (to me at least).

It's quite weird and doesn't look like an emergency. Cooper just sinks slowly to the floor and sprawls there against the curtain. The audience laugh their heads off.
 
Somebody posted it on here as part of a compilation of onstage deaths....I hadn't seen it before.

It's morbidly compelling, the look of complete non-comprehension on Tommy's face is the bit that sticks in my mind.
 
Somebody posted it on here as part of a compilation of onstage deaths....I hadn't seen it before.

It's morbidly compelling, the look of complete non-comprehension on Tommy's face is the bit that sticks in my mind.

And that's why I never want to see it. I believe Channel 5 showed most of it in one of their compilations of footage nicked off YouTube. Very glad I didn't see it at the time, I wouldn't want that as my last memory of him.
 
And that's why I never want to see it. I believe Channel 5 showed most of it in one of their compilations of footage nicked off YouTube. Very glad I didn't see it at the time, I wouldn't want that as my last memory of him.
I saw it as it happened on TV and immediately got the feeling that something wasn't quite right.
I was really sad about it afterwards. First person I'd ever see die for real.
 
And that's why I never want to see it. I believe Channel 5 showed most of it in one of their compilations of footage nicked off YouTube. Very glad I didn't see it at the time, I wouldn't want that as my last memory of him.
My parents were watching it live with my sister, my Dad was video recording it but deliberately recorded something else over it straight away then my sister ran upstairs and told me the news .. I've seen it since though ..
 
Right on, Mytho. ^
Sans tatts and goatee, I'm the spit of the fat cunt who won this competition. Loveable lardearse.
 
Peter Sellers died before Blake Edwards began filming the 1982 film Trail of The Pink Panther, so his few appearances in the film are actually scenes that were cut from earlier entries in the series.

David Niven makes a brief cameo and was suffering the later stages of ALS that ended his life the following year. This affected his voice so badly that his lines were overdubbed by the American impressionist Rich Little.

A truly dire film which IMO should never have been made.
 
Rich Fulcher ~ Might be just me and the two overweight babes who were laughing.
 
Right on, Mytho. ^
Sans tatts and goatee, I'm the spit of the fat cunt who won this competition. Loveable lardearse.
Took their time. Blimey!
 
For the morbidly curious, there is a YouTube compilation of clips (which I shall not post here) showing actual deaths of reporters, actors, politicians and comedians in their final performances. Amongst them are Vic Morrow, Tommy Cooper, an Indian politician, a young Asian reporter. It's tragic and sad and quite upsetting, but it's out there if you want to go in search of it.
 
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For the morbidly curious, there is a YouTube compilation of clips (which I shall not post here) showing actual deaths of reporters, actors, politicians and comedians in their final performances. Amongst them are Vic Morrow, Tommy Cooper, and Indian politician, a young Asian reporter. It's tragic and sad and quite upsetting, but it's out there if you want to go in search of it.

Tommy Cooper's death looked absolutely like part of his act.
I didn't see it at the time and it's only available now if you look hard.
 
There's a video shared on here of it somewhere - I think Swifty posted it?
 
The hilarious comedian Dick Shawn (who played hippy actor LSD in Mel Brooks The Producers) died while giving a performance, and it was timed in such a way that the audience thought it was part of his act. From the Wikipedia:
On April 17, 1987, during a performance at University of California, San Diego's Mandeville Hall—which included his portrayal of a politician reciting such campaign clichés as "If elected, I will not lay down on the job"—Shawn suffered a fatal heart attack and collapsed face-down on the stage. The audience initially assumed that it was part of his act; but after he had remained motionless on the stage for several minutes, a stage hand examined him and asked if a physician was present.[7]
After CPR had been initiated, the audience was asked to leave the auditorium, but most remained, still assuming that it was all part of Shawn's act. Many began leaving—still unsure of what they had witnessed—only after paramedics arrived.[8] A notice in the following day's San Diego Union newspaper announced that Shawn had indeed died during the performance.[9] He was 63 years old.

During the filming of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In the West, actor Al Mulock, who played one of the three bad guys who Charles Bronson's character encounters at the beginning of the film, jumped to his death still in costume from a building. What he had already shot is still in the film, but I think some shots were filmed with a double in far shots.

Eric Fleming of tv western Rawhide fame drownded shooting a scene for a film. Again from the Wikipedia:
After Fleming left Rawhide at the end of the 1964–1965 season (the series continued for only 13 more episodes before it was canceled by CBS), he took part in a Doris Day vehicle, The Glass Bottom Boat, playing a suave spy. He was then signed to star in High Jungle, a MGM adventure film shot in Peru. During a scene in the final stages of the film's production, Fleming and co-star Nico Minardos were in a dugout canoe that overturned in the Huallaga River. Minardos managed to swim to safety, but Fleming was swept away by the current and drowned on September 28, 1966.[7] Fleming was 41 years old.
 
The hilarious comedian Dick Shawn (who played hippy actor LSD in Mel Brooks The Producers) died while giving a performance, and it was timed in such a way that the audience thought it was part of his act. From the Wikipedia:


During the filming of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In the West, actor Al Mulock, who played one of the three bad guys who Charles Bronson's character encounters at the beginning of the film, jumped to his death still in costume from a building. What he had already shot is still in the film, but I think some shots were filmed with a double in far shots.

Eric Fleming of tv western Rawhide fame drownded shooting a scene for a film. Again from the Wikipedia:
Buster Keaton was nearly killed while filming a canoe/rapids sequence.

He was rescued in time and the shots of him waving desperately for help were left in, being so splendidly authentic!
 
During the filming of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In the West, actor Al Mulock, who played one of the three bad guys who Charles Bronson's character encounters at the beginning of the film, jumped to his death still in costume from a building. What he had already shot is still in the film, but I think some shots were filmed with a double in far shots.

Eric Fleming of tv western Rawhide fame drownded shooting a scene for a film. Again from the Wikipedia:


Al Mulock, who played one of the three gunmen in the opening sequence, committed suicide by jumping from his hotel window in full costume after a day's shooting. Production Manager Claudio Mancini and Screenwriter Mickey Knox, who were sitting in a room in the hotel, witnessed Mulock's body pass by their window. Knox recalled in an interview that while Mancini put Mulock in his car to drive him to the hospital, Director Sergio Leone said to Mancini, "Get the costume! We need the costume!" Mulock, who had appeared as the one-armed bounty hunter in Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly(1966), was wearing the costume he wore in the movie when he made his fatal leap.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2
 
Tommy Cooper's death looked absolutely like part of his act.
I didn't see it at the time and it's only available now if you look hard.
I saw it as it happened. I thought 'that's odd' and noted the look on his face before he went down.
Didn't look like part of the act to me.
 
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