The Show Won’t Go On goes on author's arm

The Show Won’t Go On tattoo, freshly inked on 21 December 2019

Burt Kearns, who, with Jeff Abraham,  wrote The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage, has commemorated the publication with a different kind of ink.

Crankee of the Inkpire Tattoo Studio in Northridge, California, was the artist.  Kearns also has a tattoo for his book, Tabloid Baby.

Is this the world's first Jerry Lewis-Jacques Tati tattoo?

Cinephiles and comedy aficionados know the effect that French filmmaker and comedic actor Jacques Tati had on Jerry Lewis (and some would say, vice versa).

Now, that connection is more than skin-deep, with this tattoo, inked by Crankee at his Inkpire Tattoo Studio in Northridge, California, on the forearm of a producer and author we all know.  (It is his second Lewis inking but his first Tati tat).

The Lewis picture is based on the  work by American caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.  The drawing of Tati is from French comic strip artist and caricaturist Cabu (Jean Maurice Jules Cabut), who died in the January 2015 attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office.

JERRY LEWIS BY CRANKEE, BASED ON AL HIRSCHFELD CARICATURE

JACQUES TATI’S MONSIEUR HULOT BY CRANKEE, BASED ON CABU CARICATURE