Discover Hollywood discovers 'The Show Won’t Go On’!

 The Show Won’t Go On, the new book by Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns, as featured in the Fall 2019 issue of Discover Hollywood magazine!

The Show Won’t Go On: A dark, delicate subject gets a lively response at Burbank’s legendary Dark Delicacies bookstore

The Dark Delicacies “home of horror" book store and gift shop in Burbank was the second stop for  the "died-onstage" roadshow by Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns, authors of The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage.

Just as the book highlight the careers and final scenes of performers from many genres of the performing arts, so was the crowd that jammed the aisles at Dark Delicacies Saturday afternoon populated by major players in from all walks of show business, including television, film, literature, memorabilia broadcast journalism -- even professional wrestling.

Dark Delicacies owners Del and Sue Howison were gracious hosts for the event, and the ever-witty and cheerful Del launched the discussion by introducing guest moderator Mark Evanier. The renowned writer, producer, show business historian and comic book and cartoon legend brought real insight and knowledge to the questions fielded by Abraham and Kearns in a lively -- and laugh-filled affair.

Mark Evanier had the questions.

Asked by Evanier if they're planning a sequel, the authors responded with exciting news, saying they have many more stories of deaths onstage -- and are already working on a book that focuses on deaths of movie and television stars and stunt people -- on camera.

Jeff Abraham makes a point

Hours earlier, Abraham and Kearns had been featured on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday program, in an interview with host Scott Simon. Simon revealed that he had personally experienced a “death onstage” thirty years ago, when haiku poet Nick Virgilio suffered a fatal heart attack in the NPR studio while Simon was interviewing him.

Burt Kearns lists the six -- or seven -- performers who died onstage in recent weeks

THUMBS UP from television news correspondent and producer Doug Bruckner 

Dark Delicacies is known for its gleeful embrace of death, and the Howisons managed to give Burt  a chill when they mentioned that actor Dick Miller, filmmaker Larry Cohen and wrestling legend and They Live star “Rowdy" Roddy Piper -- all died within weeks of appearing at Dark Delicacies signing events!

A lively affair...

More Southern California dates are ahead for the deadly duo of Abraham and Kearns: October 19 at the Dearly Departed Artifact Museum in Hollywood and October 21 at Stories Books and Cafe in Echo Park.

The Day The Critics Cried: 'The Show Won’t Go On’ authors defend Jerry Lewis’ lost Holocaust film on the Shut Up I Love It podcast

The authors of The Show Won't Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage go back to their roots, lay it on the line and challenge the conventional snark propagated by some of the biggest names in comedy, in an appearance on the popular comedy podcast, Shut Up I Love It.

Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns defended their obsession during the ninety-minute podcast hosted by comedy performers and writers Sasha Feiler and Steve Cohen. Shut Up I Love It "celebrates those aspects of pop culture that make you go OOH and others go YUCK.”  In this case, in the podcast episode launched this morning, the topic is Jerry Lewis, and his infamous lost Holocaust drama from 1972, The Day The Clown Cried.

Two guys one mic

Abraham and Kearns are recognized Jerry Lewis aficionados.  Abraham is a top Hollywood publicist, show business historian and comedy archivist.  Kearns is a documentary writer, producer and director.  The pair met when Abraham represented Kearns' 1999 book, Tabloid Baby.  They bonded over a love of Jerry Lewis.  Abraham had worked and spent time with Lewis often.  Kearns had a production job on one of the Jerry Lewis Telethons and was allowed unprecendented access behind the scenes of the telethon when filming a documentary report in 1989.

Steven Cohen and Sasha Feiler in the podcast studio

On the podcast, Feiler notes that Kearns has not one but two Jerry Lewis tattoos on his arm.

“These aren’t fake Jerry Lewis fans, just trying to hop onboard the hype train,” Cohen points out.

“Absolutely,” Abraham says. "I sit here wearing my Jerry Lewis watch and shirt."

"Why are you asking us to shut up and love him?” Feiler asks the authors.

"He's also been a very divisive figure in entertainment," Kearns says.  "Some people love Jerry Lewis. Some people hate Jerry Lewis."

Due to rights issues, lawsuits and other factors, The Day The Clown Cried was never released, and for forty years the only word on the subject -- the single review -- came from satirist Harry Shearer.  In a 1979 article for Spy magazine, Shearer claimed to have seen a bootleg version of the film and compared it to “a painting of Auschwitz on black velvet.”  Decades later, hipster comedian Patton Oswalt produced mocking readings of the script on stages in Hollywood and New York, laughing and denigrating at Lewis along the way. In part because of these comics who actually owed so much to Lewis, The Day The Clown Cried became a joke.

In recent years, however, clips from the film have surfaced. A German assembly of the footage, combined with dramatic readings of missing scenes by the film’s actors, created a 31-minute rough cut that led to a reappraisal of the work.

"It’s unfortunate that Shearer, who seems to revel in the snarky spotlight, turns out to be the movie’s sole critic," Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker. "If these clips suggest anything of the rest of the film, any tastelessness, sentimentality, or clumsiness of Lewis’s effort would be beside the point. He was working in the dark, in a self-inflicted state of moral shock, and attempting the impossible."

On the Shut Up I Love It podcast, Abraham and Kearns go farther. 

After the team summarizes the script and quality of the production, Kearns actually states: "I think it's an Oscar-worthy film. I think Lewis' performance is an Oscar-winning performance."

Comedy talents Feiler and Cohen are left to weigh the evidence and give their verdict as to where Jerry Lewis and The Day The Clown Cried land on the Shut Up I Love It spectrum. 

 And as they do in The Show Won’t Go On, Abraham and Kearns are rewriting history with their frank and honest appraisal of The Day The Clown Cried!

The podcast was videotaped for posterity.

Burt Kearns & Jeff Abraham surround the SHUT UP I LOVE IT team, Sasha Feiler, consultant and technical adviser Jay Hunter and Steven Cohen

A lively, historic event! Book Soup hosts Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns, authors of The Show Won’t Go On

Book Soup, the legendary “bookseller to the great and infamous” on the Sunset Strip, hosted both on Sunday as the authors of The Show Won’t Go On debuted the first of their live discussions and signings for a crowd that indeed included the great, infamous and acclaimed.

Cowriters Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns turned out to be great raconteurs, and had the audience enthralled with stories from the book about “the most shocking, bizarre, and historic deaths of performers onstage.” A lively question-and-answer session followed.

A special treat for the audience was the appearance of guest moderator Ray Richmond.  The popular and esteemed journalist, entertainment critic, author and playwright set the stage and tone for the afternoon by reminding Abraham and Kearns that the best possible publicity for their book would be for one of them to keel over and pop his clogs right then and there.  (Abraham reminded the crowd that Richmond had moderated a discussion featuring Abraham's client George Carlin days before the legendary comedian suffered a fatal heart attack.)

While all who attended survived, the book event was almost declared DOA that morning.  Hours earlier, an automobile careened out of control down Sunset Boulevard and plowed into the “parklet” of Book Soup tables and benches on the street. Miraculously, no one was seated (or, as too often, sleeping) there at the time.  Most of the car (see photo below) was hauled away before the book event, and the discussion and book signing went off without a hitch.

Numerous celebrities and performers were among the crowd, including top magicians, authors, producers and at least one multiple Tony award winner. We will, however, respect their privacy...

Burt Kearns & Jeff Abraham

The Show Won’t Go On was published by Chicago Review Press on September 3.  It’s received very positive reviews, and is available wherever books are sold.

“Recommended if you like: Staring into the Abyss"

Abraham and Kearns continue their roadshow on Saturday, September 21 at Dark Delicacies on North Hollywood Way in Burbank. That event, moderated by comic book and comedy legend  (and top entertainment blogger) Mark Evanier, kicks off at 4 pm.

Future events include the Dearly Departed Artifact Museum in Hollywood on Sunday, October 19, and Stories Books and Cafe in Echo Park on Tuesday, October 22.

Due to the writing duo’s lively and very entertaining performances on widely-heard shows including Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast and Coast to Coast AM, there has been demand for appearances in other cities beyond Los Angeles. Watch this space for the latest news.

Montreal Times on 'The Show Won’t Go On': “You will be immediately hooked with every story!"

The new book by Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns, The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage, has been getting rave reviews in the US and UK.  Now, Canada has weighed in!   Stuart Nulman writes in the Montreal Times:

Book Review
By STUART NULMAN
The Show Won’t Go On by Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns (Chicago Review Press, $22.99)

In the world of comedy, when a comedian does a set onstage and it barely gets a laugh or a chuckle from the audience, people in the industry would say that the hapless comedian just “died”.

But what happens when a performer takes that literally, and really dies onstage?

Ever since there has been entertainment for the masses, there have been instances when entertainers (not just comedians, but also actors, magicians, singers, musicians, circus performers and even symphony orchestra conductors), have made their unexpected final bows in mid performance in front of a live audience ... and yet some have thought that it was part of their act, not realizing the performer has tragically expired, and won’t live to entertain for another day.

Showbiz publicist and pop culture expert Jeff Abraham and journalist/writer/producer/director Burt Kearns have held a rather morbid fascination on the subject of the grim reaper’s dabbling in the performing arts, and the duo have come up with a page-turning catalogue of these bizarre examples of literal “farewell performances” in their book The Show Won’t Go On.

The book runs the gamut of onstage showbiz deaths over a 500-year time period. Although the majority cause of death is a heart attack, there are also shootings, suicides, and onstage mishaps (such as having a ton of lighting equipment falling on you during a windy outdoor concert, which happened to soul singer Curtis Mayfield). Although the stories involve well-known and not-so-well-known entertainers, Abraham and Kearns have a penchant for thorough, meticulous research, that is so prevalent throughout the book, you may find these stories spooky, tragic, sad or weird, but I guarantee that you will be immediately hooked with every subsequent story that you read (and probably in one or two sittings).

Some of the stories that caught my attention in The Show Won’t Go On include:

-Popular British comedian/magician Tommy Cooper, who dropped dead of a heart attack in mid- performance ... during a live broadcast of the TV show “Live At Her Majesty’s” on April 15, 1984, and how other British performers such as Eric Morecambe, Dustin Gee, Sid James and Kenneth Horne – either preceding or following Cooper’s death – fell victim to the “Tommy Cooper Effect”.

-Nutritionist and health expert J.I. Rodale suddenly died from a heart attack during a live taping of “The Dick Cavett Show” on June 8, 1971, after he proclaimed that thanks to his healthy living habits he would live to be 100 years old. The show never aired and it took Cavett about 40 years before he could muster up the courage to watch a recording of that never seen broadcast.

-Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo, whose claim to fame was his bullet-catching trick, was shot and killed onstage during a performance in 1918 when one of the guns used in his act contained a real bullet. The audience in attendance that night were shocked by two things: that Chung Ling Soo was accidentally shot to death at point blank range, and that he wasn’t Chinese at all. He was English and uttered his final words perfectly in that language.

-And probably one of the saddest stories to come from the book deals with dialect comedian Harry Einstein, whose was better known for his alter ego “Parkyakarkus” and as the father of future actor/comedians Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein (aka “Super Dave Osborn”). In 1958, during a low point in his career, Einstein did a comedy routine during a star-studded Friars Club gala testimonial dinner that honoured Lucille Ball and Desi Anraz. Einstein had the audience in gales of laughter with his routine (which is practically reprinted word for word in the book) and got himself a standing ovation. Immediately afterward, Einstein was chatting with Milton Berle, when he suddenly put his head on Berle’s lap and died from a heart attack. The 1200 people who attended the event that night were so shocked at the sudden death of Einstein, the dinner was cut short at Arnaz’s request.

So whether it was Dick Shawn, Tiny Tim, Owen Heart or Jax the Axehandler (a hip hop singer from Atlanta), they have all become a sort-of deadly group of entertainers whose tragic endings have now been immortalized in The Show Won’t Go On, which offers in luridly fascinating detail, a rather dark type of showmanship: keeping your audience entertained until the final curtain actually falls upon you for eternity.

***
Stuart Nulman’s “Book Banter” segment is a twice-a-month feature on “The Stuph File Program” with Peter Anthony Holder, which now has almost 150,000 listeners per week. You can either listen or download it at www.peteranthonyholder.com, Stitcher.com or subscribe to it on iTunes. Plus you can find it at www.CyberStationUSA.com, www.KDXradio.com, True Talk Radio, streaming on www.PCJMedia.com, and over the air at World FM 88.2fm in New Zealand, Media Corp in Singapore and WSTJ, St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Stuart can be reached at bookbanter@hotmail.com.

First bookstore appearance! Authors Jeff Abraham & Burt Kearns to discuss & sign 'The Show Won’t Go On’ at Book Soup on Sunday, Sept 15

The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage, the first comprehensive study of that show business phenomenon, is selling briskly and has been getting great coverage and rave reviews from the likes of Vanity Fair, The New York Daily News, The Daily Mail and the Telegraph.

Authors Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns have been hitting the podcast and radio circuit, beginning with a side-splitting ninety minutes on Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast.

Next up: appearances and book signings. The first takes place at 3 pm this Sunday, September 15, at the legendary Book Soup on The Sunset Strip.  Author, critic and authors' pal Ray Richmond will moderate what promises to be a lively discussion about the deadly topic.

Future appearances include

Dark Delicacies in Burbank, hosted by truly legendary television and comic book writer Mark Evanier,  4 pm  on Saturday September 21

The Dearly Departed Articaft Museum in Hollywood on Saturday October 19

and Stories Books and Cafe in Echo Park on  Tuesday October 22.

The boys are sticking close to home in this first go-round.

Watch this space for updates and more appearances.

Abraham & Kearns are guests on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast

This show is on!  On the eve of the official publication date of The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage, authors Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns are featured guests in the latest episode of Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast.  The Amazing Colossal website says it all:

Comedy historian Jeff Abraham and producer-filmmaker Burt Kearns discuss their new book, The Show Won’t Go On and provide fascinating backstories on the untimely (and unusual) passings of Dick Shawn, Joe E. Ross, Al Kelly, Parkyakarkus and Karl Wallenda (among others). Also, Moe Howard wears a dress, Sid Caesar packs heat, Burt Reynolds gets a paint job and Paul Anka tears down Wayne Newton. PLUS: Carmen Miranda’s final bow! The poetry of Buddy Hackett! The history of the “bullet catch”! The strange death of Washington Irving Bishop! And Jeff and Burt attend the Jerry Lewis auction!

Frank & Gilbert were in New York City;
Jeff & Burt (serious author photos below) were in Hollywood

 

It turned out to be a rollicking ninety minutes of repartee and laughter among Jeff, Burt, Gilbert and Gilbert's cohost Frank Santopadre, and a perfect kickoff for the book.  Look for Jeff and Burt all over the media in the coming weeks, as The Show Won’t Go On, from Chicago Review Press, heads up the charts!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO JEFF AND BURT 

ON GILBERT GOTTFRIED'S AMAZING COLOSSAL PODCAST!