Here is the list of 50 popular entertainers that died during performance
1. 1986: Actress Edith Webster died onstage from a heart attack while performing her death scene in the play "The Drunkard," in a lodge in Baltimore. The role called for her to sing "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone," and then slump to the floor, which she did.
2. 1987: Andrei Mironov, a Russian actor, collapsed on stage while performing the lead role in The Marriage of Figaro. He was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead due to a ruptured cerebral aneurysm two days later.
3. 1984: Actor Jon-Erik Hexum died after shooting himself with a blank pistol. On October 12, 1984, the cast and crew of the TV series Cover Up were filming the seventh episode of the series, "Golden Opportunity", on Stage 17 of the 20th Century Fox lot. One of the scenes filmed that day called for Hexum's character to load blanks into a .44 Magnum handgun. When the scene did not play as the director wanted, there was a delay in filming. Hexum became restless during the delay and began playing around to lighten the mood. He had apparently unloaded all but one blank round when, at 5:15 p.m., he spun the cylinder and, as if playing Russian roulette, put the revolver to his right temple and pulled the trigger.
4. Former lead singer of The Spinners Philippe Wynne suffered a heart attack on July 13 while performing at Ivey's nightclub in Oakland, California, and died the following day.
5. Saxophonist Warne Marsh collapsed at a Los Angeles jazz club while soloing on the song "Out Of Nowhere."
6. Comedian Dick Shawn fell down during his act and accidentally struck his head on the stage. He lay on stage for five minutes until the audience realized that it was not part of his act. He died later in hospital, of a heart attack.
7. Ferial Karim, a Lebanese actress, died on stage in July 4 while she was acting.
8. Comic Redd Foxx, best known for his role in Sanford and Son, suffered a fatal heart attack while on the set of his upcoming sitcom The Royal Family. His death had gone unnoticed initially after it was thought he was acting in the guise as Fred Sanford of Sanford and Son, known for comedically faking heart attacks.
9. Jazz/cabaret singer Sylvia Syms died of a heart attack during a set at New York City's Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel
10. February 22, Tadeusz Łomnicki, renowned Polish actor, died of a heart attack during one of the last dress rehearsals of Shakespeare's King Lear, in which he was playing the lead role, much awaited by public and critics. The piece was due to be premiered a week later.
11. 1993: Brandon Lee, son of martial artist Bruce Lee, died while filming the movie The Crow. A prop gun had been squib loaded, causing the blank cartridge to propel the bullet into Lee and kill him. Contrary to urban legend, the footage of his death was not kept in the movie. Instead, they re-shot the scene using a different actor, whose death in the film was by a throwing knife.
12. French Canadian actor Michel Noël of Quebec died of a heart attack on 22 June 1993 while giving a performance at Mont-Saint-Hilaire. The crowd initially thought it was part of the show and it took about 15 seconds before someone from the first row took a good look and asked if there was a doctor in the audience.
13. 1994: Longtime radio deejay Jack Spector died during his daily broadcast on Long Island radio station WHLI. His death was discovered when he failed to speak following the end of a record.
14. 1995: Beat Farmers singer/drummer/guitarist Country Dick Montana suffered a massive heart attack and died three songs into the band's set at the Long Horn in Whistler, BC, Canada.
15. Actor Ken Steadman was killed in a dune buggy accident while filming in Victorville, California for the television show Sliders.
16. Singer Tiny Tim suffered a fatal heart attack while turning to leave the stage during a benefit concert in Minneapolis.
17. Opera singer Richard Versalle died on stage at the Metropolitan Opera during the company's première performance of The Makropulos Case when he suffered a heart attack while standing on a sliding ladder attached to a file cabinet. He was stricken after singing the line, "Too bad you can live only so long."
18. Guitarist/singer Johnny "Guitar" Watson collapsed and died onstage during a performance in Yokohoma, Japan. The cause of death was a myocardial infarction.
19. Dutchman Coen van Vrijberghe de Coningh died from cardiac arrest during a performance of the television series Flodder. He and another actor drove in a Chevrolet. While jumping onto the hood, he fell and died. The audience thought it was part of the show, but the actors were aware of what had happened.
20. 1998: Paolo "Feiez" Panigada, member of the Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese, died of a brain haemorrhage while performing onstage.
21. English reggae performer Judge Dread died from a heart attack as he walked off stage after performing at The Penny Theatre in Canterbury.
22. 1999: Owen Hart, a Canadian-born professional wrestler for WWF, died during Over the Edge, a pay-per-view event, when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Hart come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Hart dropped 78 feet (24 m), bouncing chest-first off the top rope resulting in a severed aorta, which caused his lungs to fill with blood.
23. Mark Sandman, bassist and lead vocalist for the band Morphine, collapsed on stage at the Giardini del Principe in Palestrina, Latium, Italy (near Rome) while performing with Morphine. He was pronounced dead of a heart attack.
24. 2000: Actor Renato Di Paolo was portraying Judas in a play outside of Rome on the day before Easter. During the hanging scene he accidentally hanged himself
25. Conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli died of a heart attack while conducting Giuseppe Verdi's Aida at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.
26. 25 June 2001: Argentine actor Pablo Lisazo, 34, died of an aneurysm while practicing for a theatrical play at Buenos Aires
27. 23-26 October 2002: During the Nord-Ost Siege at Russia's Dubrovka Theater, 17 actors and members of the orchestra were murdered during the initial terrorist raid or in the following days.
28. 20 February 2003: Ty Longley, guitarist for the band Great White, died in The Station nightclub fire, which led to the deaths of 100 people in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
29. 11 September 2003: While rehearsing a scene for the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, John Ritter was stricken with a previously undiagnosed aortic dissection. He was rushed to hospital, but died soon afterwards.[36]
30. 26 November 2003: Scottish Actor Gordon Reid collapsed and died on stage from a heart attack at the Finborough Theatre, London, halfway through Act Two of a performance of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
31. 8 December 2004: Ex-guitarist of the heavy metal band Pantera, "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, was murdered on stage by a gunman while performing with his new band Damageplan at the Al Rosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio.
32. 3 October 2005: Franco Scoglio, Italian football manager and sport TV commenter, died of a heart attack while on the air during a program on the Genoan private TV station Primocanale, after a heated discussion over the phone with Genoa chairman Enrico Preziosi. He passed out in his seat while Preziosi continued with his call.
33. 22 February 2006: classical/gospel pianist and multi-award winner Anthony Burger had a massive heart attack while performing a piano piece entitled "Hear My Song Lord" during a cruise aboard the Holland America cruise ship the Zuiderdam.
34. 4 September 2006: Steve Irwin, known as "The Crocodile Hunter", was stung and killed by a stingray while filming an underwater documentary entitled Ocean's Deadliest.
35. 3 October 2007: M.N. Vijayan, an Indian writer, orator and academic, died of cardiac arrest during a televised interview.
36. 2008: 9 November 2008: Miriam Makeba suffered a heart attack shortly after singing her hit song "Pata Pata" in a concert held in Castel Volturno, near Caserta, Italy.
37. 13 June 2009: Japanese wrestler Mitsuhara Misawa suffered a cervical spine injury while taking a suplex move during a match, causing cardiac arrest.
38. 20 November 2009: Russian radio host and actor Roman Trakhtenberg had a heart attack during his live radio broadcast and died on the same day.
39. 2011: 3 March 2011: Swedish comedian Lasse Eriksson died during the final number of his show Fyra lyckliga män 2 (Four happy men 2) at Reginateatern in Uppsala, Sweden. He was one of Sweden's first stand-up comedians.
40. 2012: 23 December 2012: American guitarist Mike Scaccia (Rigor Mortis, Ministry, The Revolting Cocks) collapsed on stage during a special Rigor Mortis performance in Fort Worth, Texas. Scaccia was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Cause of death was listed as a heart attack.
41. 23 February 2013: San Francisco Symphony Orchestra principal oboist William Bennett suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while performing the oboe concerto by Richard Strauss. He collapsed on stage while playing, and never regained consciousness. He died on 28 February 2013.
42. 29 June 2013 Cirque du soleil acrobat Sarah Guyard-Guillot died after plummeting 90 feet during a performance of Kà at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The harness she had been wearing slipped from its safety wire. She died on her way to the hospital.
43. 7 July 2013: Funk ostentação singer and rapper MC Daleste was fatally shot in the abdomen during a free performance in Campinas, São Paulo before a crowd of four thousand people.
44. 7 December 2014: Italian singer Mango suffered a heart attack on stage while performing the song "Oro" and died shortly after
45. 29 January 2015: conductor Israel Yinon collapsed and died during a concert in Lucerne, Switzerland in the middle of conducting Strauss' Alpine Symphony.
46. 21 March 2015: Mexican wrestler Perro Aguayo Jr. suffered cardiac arrest caused by cervical spine damage during a match. The severity of Aguayo's condition was not immediately apparent because he fell awkwardly and was draped limply onto the ring ropes, a position that is typically assumed by opponents of Rey Mysterio, another wrestler in the match.
47. 30 October 2015: Four of the five members of the Romanian metal core band Goodbye to Gravity died during the Colectiv nightclub fire. The band's pyrotechnics, consisting of sparkler firework candles, ignited the club's flammable polyurethane acoustic foam, and the fire spread rapidly, killing 62 people in total. Guitarists Mihai Alexandru and Vlad Țelea were pronounced dead on the scene, while drummer Bogdan Enache and bassist Alex Pascu died shortly thereafter in the hospital due to injuries sustained in the fire. \
48. 24 April 2016: Congolese Musician Papa Wemba (Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba Jules) collapsed on stage during a concert at Abidjan, Ivory Coast performing in the "festival of urban music" organized by the Magic System group. He died shortly after being transported to the hospital.
49. 15 May 2016: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Principal Bass Emeritus Jane Little collapsed and died on stage during the last 30 seconds of the orchestra's final encore of There's No Business Like Show Business, from the musical Annie Get Your Gun by Irving Berlin. Little was 87 years old and had been a member of the orchestra for 71 years.
50. 21 May 2016: Former Megadeth drummer Nick Menza collapsed and died of heart failure during a performance with his band OHM at The Baked Potato in Los Angeles.
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