John Ritter - death by roller coaster at a Disney park. Maybe.
It’s not been widely publicized (probably due to Disney/ABC wishing to hush the matter up and Ritter’s wife filing a negligence lawsuit against a doctor that failed to diagnose his aortic dissection 2 years earlier, but this much is known:
John Ritter had a congenital (unknown to him) heart defect.
The day before he died, ABC (the network broadcasting his latest show, 8 Simple Rules) had a private party at Disney’s California Adventure theme park in Anaheim. Ritter rode the California Screamin’ rollercoaster at least twice.
California Screamin’ is a LIM-launched coaster, that propels riders from 0-60 MPH in four seconds. Such launches have been known to cause aortic dissection in people with previously-unknown heart problems. Thus the “no riders with heart conditions” disclaimer sign. Obviously, anyone with a known aortic dissection would have known better than to ride.
The next day, on the set of 8 Simple Rules, he complained of severe chest pains, collapsed, and fell into a coma and died later that night, less than 24 hours after riding California Screamin’.
Steve Allen died as the result of a fender bender. He had a weak heart and the jostling caused by another car backing out and hitting him at very low speed which seemed totally “meh” at the time and that he even joked about with the person responsible caused him to have a heart attack later in the day. (Allen’s page From Find-a-Death, which has a lot of great dirt on celebrity deaths.)
One I remembered to day while thinking of The Producers:
Dick Shawn, who starred as Lorenzo St. Dubois(LSD), the hippie who starred as Hitler in the original movie of The Producers, and much later as the title character’s transvestite friend Mae in '80s camp thriller classic Angel died of a massive heart attack while performing his stand-up act, and the audience began booing because they thought it was part of his act that had gone on too long. (Cite.)
Novelty act Tiny Tim, most famous for his one hit Tiptoe Through the Tulips and for having his first wedding on The Tonight Show, also died onstage. He had a massive heart attack while playing his ukelele. (In an industry known for chronic wierdos he may have been the weirdest of those not confined to state care.)
Tommy Cooper had a heart attack and died onstage in 1984, live in front of millions of TV viewers. Many people, including the production crew, thought that his collapse through the curtain was part of the routine. (It’s available on Youtube…)
Dustin Gee and Les Dennis were wheeled out to continue the show and performed their routine in the space between the edge of the stage and the curtain whilst medics battled to revive Cooper where he fell.
A year later, Dustin Gee had a heart attack onstage, but recovered to return to his show a month later. On New Year’s Eve 1985, however, he had another heart attack whilst in pantomime with Les Dennis, and died the next day. Les Dennis has been spared the Reaper’s scythe and continues to torment us all.
Jill Dando, a popular television presenter and newsreader, was shot dead, execution-style, on her doorstep in 1999. As a “nice” girl, with no skeletons in her closet, no motive has been established for her killing, but an eccentric loner, Barry George, was fitted up on the flimsiest circumstanial evidence and served 7 years before being cleared upon appeal.
Favourite theory appears to be that Dando was killed in retaliation for the NATO bombing of Serb TV HQ, when several popular presenters were killed. She had also fronted an appeal for Kosovan Albanian refugees from the Balkan conflict, and it is suggested this attracted the attention of hardline Serb activists. No official theory has been put forward since Barry George was acquitted…
Dammit, too late to edit my post, but Tommy Cooper’s last moments are here: http://www.downvids.net/the-sad-death-of-comedian-tommy-cooper-456938.html complete with laughter of the audience as he shudders and draws his last breath. Probably what he’d have wanted, going out with the sound of laughter in his ears (but preferably about 30-odd years later than it actually happened…)
I recall speculation that Ernie Kovacs died because he was lighting his cigar. He died in a car crash after leaving a baby shower at Milton Berle’s house and had been drinking there. Apparently he had a habit of always striking his match on the underside of his shoe. And an unlighted cigar was found with him. They thought maybe he lost control while trying to strike a match.
Not quite. LSD was the flamboyant director of the (hoped to be) ill fated play. I don’t think the Big H himself appeared as such. The IMDb doesn’t list a Hitler character per se, but has several uncredited listings for Auditioning Hitler.
Wrong. The director was Roger DiBris, the transvestite. LSD wandered on-stage seeking the try-outs for another play, and Max convinces him to perform, which he does. He then performs repeatedly as Hitler.
Nobody mentioned Cliff Burton from Metallica yet? While the official explanation is being thrown out the window of the tour bus while in his bunk, I’d previously heard other urban legend type rumours about hiding under the wheels of the bus from local law enforcement officers in Sweden, when the bus drove over him. I assume the former explanation.
Lesser known celeb would be Will Sin from the Shamen, who drowned in Tenerife being dragged out in the currents after rescuing his girlfriend from the current. Might not mean much, but the band changed so much for the worse after that. I really should dig out that first album again.
What’s amazing about that is that it looks like part of the act - if it had happened during another part of the show it might have looked like “Eek! Something’s wrong!” But it plausibly looked like part of the routine. And I suppose it’s what many comedians would want their last moments to be…
That is wow, watching him collapse and dying on stage and no one realizing it, but Hippy Hollow is right, it looks like it’s intentional. His act appears to be made up of him bumbling through his magic. So suddenly collapsing into sleep in the middle doesn’t seem any more out of place than the exploding box with the bird in it.
One would think someone saw him rehearse or knew his routine would catch on, like the assistant, but the audience doesn’t have any indications things are amiss. Until the act just kinda ends.
D. Boon of the Minutemen, whose best known song is “Corona” and is used as the “Jackass” theme, was sleeping in the back of a van that was being driven by his fiancee, en route to meet his father, because he wasn’t feeling well. She fell asleep at the wheel and the van drifted off the road, and was barely damaged but the van’s back door popped open, he slid out, hit his head on the pavement, and died instantly from a broken neck.
There’s a fantastic documentary about this band called “We Jam Econo”. All the band members were intellectual and musical geniuses.
On a recent episode of Museum Secrets, they presented evidence that Rasputin was actually targeted for assassination by the British Secret Service for undermining Russia’s participation in the First World War.
The death of David Niven’s wife was particularly tragic because he had fallen in love with her at first sight from a distance without even knowing her name, and then happened to encounter her again some time later by pure chance.
I’ve always thought the death of Jon-Erik Hexum was due to the episode of Hill Street Blues that had aired a couple of weeks earlier, in which Howard Hunter had attempted suicide with his .44 Magnum and survived with only powder burns to his temple.
I saw a movie or TV show not long ago that mentioned the suicide of the starlet in Los Angeles as the only thing she’s remembered for, but for the life of me I can’t think of what the title was! :smack:
