Home shopping ladder demonstration gone very wrong.
Very much in a lighter vein, BBC children’s programme Blue Peter once invited a baby elephant into the studio. Hilarity ensued…
That was Jack Paar.
I understand that theater productions have plans for various things that can go wrong - a failed prop, a blown entrance, etc. The performers rehearse what they will do to cover when these events - inevitably - happen.
A couple months ago, Robin Meade had a tickling in her throat while on air, so she went to commercial early, she said, to clear her throat. When she came back, the first 30 seconds or so was nothing but a shot of Robin coughing up a lung before she was able to croak out, "Oh, Jen. Jennifer Westhoven, one of Robin’s co-hosts, took over the broadcast after another early commercial break.
SFC Schwartz
OK, but did he mean to hit the cowboy in the crotch? I’m thinking that was totally unscripted.
And nobody has mentioned this. I was watching it live from my college rooming house.
No, the location was unscripted. I like Carson’s comment, “I didn’t know you were Jewish.” Carson later said that this was the funniest thing that ever happened on his show.
Nitpick, actually it was Jack Paar in 1960. He had wanted to tell a shaggy dog story about a tourist confusing a “Wayside Chapel” (WC) with a water closet (what we Americans call a toilet.) Paar walked off, left his announcer (Hugh Downs) to do the show, and cooled off for three weeks. When he came back, his first words were “As I was saying…” and that while he thought there had to be a better way to make a living, he discovered there wasn’t.
That “young blonde” was the biggest star in network news–the equivalent of Brian Williams melting down today. Died a horrible death shortly thereafter.
It wasn’t live–well, not *broadcast *live–but Carmen Miranda suffered a heart attack while filming *The Jimmy Durante Show *in 1955. She dropped to one knee, and Jimmy took her lines (they were both Professionals). She died from a second attack later that night.
The whole show is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-h2xujhrwQ
This was one of the first viral videos that I can remember, of a morning show’s grape-stomping competition going horribly–but amusingly–wrong.
The broken record is my favourite though.
MLB Umpire John McSherry suffered a fatal heart attack seven pitches in to the Opening Day game in 1996
I remember long ago seeing Penn Jillette on David Letterman, or maybe it was when Johnny Carson was still running the Tonight Show. He was horsing around dunking things like bananas and flowers into this coffee pot of liquid nitrogen. Then he pulls out this live mouse and does some slight of hand, drops an obviously fake mouse into the nitrogen, pulls it out and smashes it.
About a minute later, the real mouse runs out of his pocket, down his arm, he tries to grab it and it falls into the liquid nitrogen.
End of that bit. He put the LN behind the chair and they just talked for the rest of the segment.
NHL
1989
St. Louis Blues vs Buffalo Sabres
Clint Malarchuck has his internal carotid artery severed during a routine play.
Buckets of blood ensue.
He lived.
Also in 1955, kid show host Pinky Lee suffered what was variously described as a heart attack, a perforated stomach ulcer or something else while performing on the air, in front of a studio audience full of kids. Although the camera cut away from him quickly, the live audio feed continued, complete with Lee’s moans and the shrieks of horrified children.
What football game was it that caught the dogs screwing on the football field?
~VOW
WOW. That is…a lot of blood. A lot.
Jerome Rodale (the organic gardens, guy) died on the Dick Cavett show. Cavett turned away to talk to another guest, turned back to Rodale, and the guy was gone.
This sounds like their act. Are you sure it was really a mistake?