Genii, ‘The Conjurors’ Magazine,’ the pre-eminent and classiest mag for magicians, reviews The Show Won't Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage, the new book by our pals Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns, in the December 2019 issue (the one with Broadway sensation Derren Brown on the cover). We encourage you to buy the magazine, or subscribe to the website. It’s that good.
And according to the review by Tom Frame, so is The Show Won’t Go On!
BOOKS
TOM FRAME
Your tricks failed. Your patter and presentations weren’t entertaining. Your performance generated no applause, only the stodgy stridulating of crickets. In show-biz parlance, you died on stage.
But that’s merely a macabre metaphor for your pitiful performance. You didn’t literally drop dead, but you may wish you had. If you do eventually perish during your performance, you may wind up in a future edition of The Show Won’t Go On.
Jeff Abraham is a public relations executive and a Hollywood and pop-culture historian. Burt Kearns is an award-winning television and film producer, director, writer, journalist, and author of the memoir Tabloid Baby.
In The Show Won’t Go On, the authors recount the on-stage deaths of146 performers, some who are remembered as much for how they died as for what they did.
They didn’t include athletes, fighters, toreadors, race car drivers, or others for whom death is always a potential outcome. The number of performers who have died and continue to die onstage was too vast to be contained within a single volume. So they chose onstage fatalities that stood dead and shoulders above the rest.
Mr. Abraham and Mr. Kearns grouped the performers into the categories of The Guinness World Record, Theater, Comedy, The Tommy Cooper Effect, Magicians & Escape Artists, Dance, Classical Musicians & Opera Stars, Rock ’n’ Roll and Hip-Hop, Country & Gospel Music, Jazz, International Pop Music, Television, Radio, Social Media, Vaudeville and the Circus.
The authors write well and perform the amazing trick of making this grim material entertaining. The photographs, dare I say, enliven the text.
I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of these thanatographies, so I’ll provide only enough detail to whet your morbid appetite.
Jane Little played the double bass in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. During a concert on May 15, 2016 at the age of 87, Miss Little died while performing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” You’ll learn which Guinness World Record she achieved.
In the Theater chapter, you’ll encounter memorable onstage deaths in which an actor recited a line and then took his leave from the mortal coil, as if on cue. Death imitating art?
The Comedy section describes comedians whose material often served as a foreboding set-up for the ultimate punchline.
The Magicians & Escape Artists section features 27 magicians, and will likely be of the most interest. The authors describe the creepy behind-the-curtain details of Tommy Cooper’s televised death and its eerie repercussions. One magician said, “When I die, I hope it’s like Tommy—on stage, surrounded by laughter.” Be careful what you wish for.
I wasn’t familiar with the lives and deaths of “Amazing Joe” Burrus, Trevor Revell, Charles Rowan, Royden Genesta, Walter Edwin Floyd, Bernhard Eskilsen, or Gordon Williams. I knew about Washington Irving Bishop, but I wasn’t aware of his appetite for cocaine and morphine, which he occasionally used during performance. I had no idea how lethal an Egg Bag could be until I read the tale of Adolphe Blind.
The Bullet Catch is so infamous that it got its own sub-chapter. Chung Ling Soo is the most famous Bullet Catch casualty. But you may not have heard the tragic tales of Professor Adam Epstein, Michael Hatal, Edvin Lindberg, or Professor Otto Blumenfeld.
One magician was preparing to perform the effect, but his faithful assistant used the gun to bash in his brain instead.
A female magician performed the Bullet Catch with a firing squad consisting of six shill soldiers with blank cartridges. One of the shills, apparently displeased with his boss, loaded and fired a real cartridge.
A performer’s father served as his gun-toting assistant. After shooting and killing his son, the father was convicted of “homicide through imprudence” and sentenced to six months in prison.
One magician was killed when a volunteer from the audience secretly dropped nails into the barrel of the rifle.
One unhappy performer “perverted the trick” to commit suicide.
A trusting performer handed a gun to an audience member and directed the man to shoot him. The man did just that, killing the magician instantly.
The double-header in Deadwood: during a performance in South Dakota, a magician was killed by his angry wife, who then killed herself. Hell hath no fury.
As a magician was about to perform the effect, a man in the audience jumped up, shouted, “Catch this one, Professor,” and shot him dead. The man was tried for murder, but received only a fine and probation after testifying that he truly believed that the professor could catch the bullet.
Penn Jillette provides a brief respite from the grisly goings-on by discussing Penn and Teller’s philosophy of the Bullet Catch. They adhere to Houdini’s policy of never doing anything more dangerous than sitting in his living room. The duo believe that it’s immoral to perform any effect that might physically harm them. Furthermore, they contend that anyone who attends any performance hoping to see anyone get hurt is also immoral.
To elevate the effect beyond its built-in brutality and horror, they never say that they’re going to catch bullets. They say that they’re going to move the bullet from one side of the stage to the other, using magic wands.
The authors accompany Death as it visits the other calamitous categories. Dancers drop dead, classical musicians croak, and opera stars succumb.
I was surprised to learn that rappers don’t suffer the greatest number of on-stage deaths, and I’m still stunned by the group of performers who do.
Country singers buy the farm and gospel singers meet their maker. Celebrities die live on television and radio.
On wretched social media, people continue to broadcast themselves getting killed while engaging in all manner of pathetic, narcissistic “performances.”
In the Epilogue, Abraham and Kearns describe the ultimate display of audience participation. During a performance by a folk music group, a man upstaged the performers by hurling himself to his death and landing on the stage several feet from them.
As if that wasn’t enough to satisfy your blood lust, the authors conclude this terminal tome with an appendix of Fifty More Who Died Onstage—a Chronological Selection.
All of these performers died doing what they loved. Was it really the way they wanted to go? If these spectral sorcerers could speak, I suspect that many of them would say “yes.” Perhaps that affirmation would provide some measure of consolation to their friends and loved ones.
Clearly, this book is not for everyone. Think of it as a litmus test for ghouls. If reading and thinking about death arouses negative emotions in you, then don’t go anywhere near this book, unless you’re a masochist. You have been warned.
The intended reader is someone who is at least comfortable with, if not fascinated by, accounts of people’s deaths. Someone who appreciates gallows humor. Someone who likes true crime stories. Someone with a rather dark sensibility and an appetite for the macabre. Someone like me. I enjoyed The Show Won’t Go On immensely. Come on baby, don’t fear the reaper.
Highly Recommended.
The Show Won’t Go On * Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns * 6” x 9” *
paperback * 240 pages * 43 photographs * www.amazon.com
• $16.99
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