I’m sitting here watching SportsNight on DVD, and in the middle of a show, the team finds out their executive producer, who was on his way back from vacation, has suffered a serious stroke and is in the hospital. Casey, one of the show’s anchors tells Dan about the stroke just before the show comes back from a commercial break. After the tech counts down 3-2-1, Dan looks up, puts a smile on his face and reports the news.
I realize this is a fictional show, written for entertainment purposes, but I know things like this happen. One of my former choir directors, for example, found out that her parents were in a car wreck on their way to one of our concerts (I believe she found out before the concert started), but chose not to tell any of us about it until class the next day (they were ok).
I imagine, more than once, a newscaster, sportscaster, radio host, entertainer, conductor, athlete, etc. has been told something or gone through something personally worrying or devastating and then had to put on a happy face and go on in front of the public.
Tell me some you know of.
NOTE: I’m not really talking about breaking news here. Breaking news (9/11, for example) implies the newscasters immediately begin reporting whatever the news they were just told was. I’m talking about performers (of whatever sort) working through whatever it was they were told and doing their thing anyway.
Shoot, I’ve got a real-life example that involves the SDMB.
Over spring break, I was casually surfing the Dope while I was doing a radio shift. At the top of MPSIMS, there was an announcement that Persephone had died. I knew her and considered her a friend, so her death came as a total shock. When the song ended, I went right back on the air and pretended that nothing had happened.
What you’re asking about is professionalism. Sometimes you don’t have the luxury of taking a few minutes to digest whatever news you’ve just gotten. You have to deal with it on your own time.
There was a shoot out in the Bronx, and the news helicopters were above it. Chuck Scarborough of NYC’s Channel 4 local news said “Let’s go back to the Bronx shoot out,” looked down at this monitor, turned whtie and said “Let’s go to a commercial now.” The other people gave him a WTF? look.
When they came back, everyone was obviously shaken and they were covering another story.
Turns out the Channel 4 helicopter had crashed. Channel 2 was right above it and got the whole thing on tape.
Many years ago, one of the local news sportscasters, a very popular guy, suffered a heart attack during the 10 PM news. I’m fuzzy on some details, but if I remember right, he was off-air, waiting for his segment when he died. A sub came on without mentioning what was happening, and it was only the next day that the station reported the man had died.
Story of the show going on that doesn’t actually involve any devastaing events or live boradcast.
In high school, I was in a play. The play was directed by a married couple. Mrs. Director was pregnant–expected to go into labor scarily close to the dates of performance. Mrs. Director was not around for the last week or two of rehearsals. Midway through the final performance, Mrs. went into labor and called Mr., who then dropped everything and left. The cast found out at the next intermission. The two young men who had been drafted to run sound and lights had decided that maybe the cast should know what was going on–since Mr. Director had been expected to handle them, the cues were not very well written out, and there were minor details missed. Mr. Director claimed that if he hadn’t had the guys around to handle the cues, he would simply have pushed up the stage lights, and left. This would have been much more distracting, but not the end of the world.
A year later, in a different high school, I was involved backstage with a production of a musical. About a week before the show opened, about the time when the pit orchestra was supposed to show up to rehearse with the cast for the first time, the son of the music director died. (This was somewhat anticipated, although it hadn’t been certain, and the timing was incovenient.) So, instead of having 3 days of rehearsals with cast, crew, and orchestra-- we added the orchestra the night before opening night. It was a little nerve racking, but it all worked out in the end.
We’ve had at least three well-known/well-respected media figures die under tragic circumstances, and one anchor whose son whose son killed another man. These deaths were grisly enough that the media would have reported them even if the killers and victims had been completely unknown, but you could see the strain on the reporters’ faces.
It was nine years ago tomorrow. It was a big weekend for us; my daughter had her first dance recital and my mother was coming up to see her dance.
And I was fired from my job.
I got home just as my mother was pulling in. I didn’t want to put a damper on the weekend, and so I didn’t tell anyone. I went through the weekend pretending things were normal. There were slips (Lisa had the wrong color tights and when they asked us about buying a pair for her, I froze), but no one guessed the real reason until Monday morning. I had to go back to clean out my desk and, when I got home at around 9:30, I spilled everything. But I wasn’t going to ruin Lisa’s weekend.
It all worked out: I ended up working where I am now, and I love my job. Maybe that was my reward.
For an event closer to the OP, there is the death of Gower Champion. He was a major, Broadway dancer, choreographer, and director, and he died on the opening night of what turned out to be his longest running show: 42nd Street. The producer, David Merrick never told anyone until the final curtain call. What’s especially interesting is that the musical (at least, the film version) has the director dying on opening night, too.
Last week the girl I was seeing and I got into a huge fight on our way to theater where I would be performing and she’d be watching me perform for the first time. She dropped me off in front and was going to go park the car. I got a voice mail from her a little while later saying she was driving home and didn’t want to speak to me again. I went on with the show and was awesome.
“Weird Al” Yankovic didn’t cancel any concerts after his parents died a couple years ago (carbon monoxide poisoning in their home), not even the day after their death. In a message on his website, he wrote, “I’ve heard from so many people over the years that my music has cheered them up in times of tragedy… well, I thought maybe my music would help me too.”
As many people are probably aware, Jonathan Larson (the writer of Rent) died the night before the show’s premiere. Some think that part of the show’s initial success was due to people’s slightly macabre interest, and all the publicity that ensued.
I’ve been lucky enough never to have anything really traumatic happen to me, but I remember the most serious car crash I’ve been in (not all that serious… my passenger door was caved in, and no one was injured. Still, it was jarring to see a minivan crashing into my car and knowing it was happening). After the crash, and after wating for the cops, and being eternally grateful that the family in the other car had all their kids in car seats, I got back in my car, with its passenger door caved in, and… I drove the rest of the way to the pizza place to pick up the pizza I’d ordered. It sure felt weird.
I’m not entirely sure, but I do think that one of the KTVU newsanchor’s homes was specifically threatened while s/he was reporting on the 1991 Oakland Hills firestorm.
Part of what I do inRL is the beginning stages of journalism for our local newspaper here in Carson City, and the other part is working stage work for the International Alliance of Theatre and Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 363. So with us, it really IS “The show must go on.”
The first story comes from here at the newspaper. I have a different editor now, but our first editor was a great guy. Shortly after I started working here, his mother passed away. He received the unexpected news at work on a Tuesday. He finished up his work week with our condolances and then flew to Southern California to take care of arrangements. The whole week! Not just the day. The whole week. He was a wreck, of course, but he stuck through it. Said his mom would have “hated to have gotten in the way.”
Second one comes from the union. Anyone who’s done union work knows that union brothers and sisters go through a lot of crap for each other and we get really close. Even the brothers and sisters that you don’t like, you’ll help out in a hard spot, because union brothers and sisters stick together. It’s like the 'hood, but with a sound board.
We were doing a large-scale Broadway production shortly before Thanksgiving this year when our steward gathered us all together on the loading dock and told us that he had received word that a very well-known and well-liked union brother, Andy, had died as the result of a motorcycle accident about two hours before. After the shock and a few tears, we shrugged it off, and I like to think that it was one of the better performances we’ve done - partly out of professionalism, and partly in his honor. No one in the cast knew what had happened until after the show.
I know all three your talking about…the only one that i didn’t grieve for was the one that did a plane dive down at chesterfield…arsehole got caught in a trap and was too coward to deal w/ it…
