Return to Forever alumnus Al Di Meola was stricken last eve onstage in Romania amid a Bucharest performance, and is being treated by physicians after his bandmates cancelled their concert.

Let's hope Di Meola doesn't join Dick Shawn, Carmen Miranda, Tyrone Power*, Tommy Cooper and J.I. Rodale** in that unlucky*** group who've expired soon after collapsing onstage****.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
------------------------------------
* Power wasn't onstage in front of an audience, but WAS being filmed in a dueling scene with George Sanders in Spain in November 1958.
** Rodale is the health mag publisher/editor who died on a never-aired edition of The Dick Cavett Show on Tuesday, June 8, 1971, two days before Klaatu portrayer Michael Rennie died.
*** Well, MANY actors and other entertainers have claimed in interviews they hoped to go out that way, but you gotta wonder if they really meant it. And then there's the late Jackie Wilson, the terrific vocalist who collapsed during a New Jersey casino performance in 1975, yet remained comatose--with a short-lived 1976 rally--until his 1984 death.
**** Now, you might also say former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller--sometimes a spellbinding if non-singing vocalist himself!--was "performing" when he expired on Friday, January 26, 1979--though Rocky notoriously wasn't onstage, but rather on Megan Marshack.
==================https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/guitarist-al-di-meola-suffers-severe-heart-attack-18395572.php

In article <04476481-ce86-4e1b-9e84-d6e51cfab7ebn@googlegroups.com>,
<"radioacti...@gmail.com"> wrote:

> Return to Forever alumnus Al Di Meola was stricken last eve onstage in
> Romania amid a Bucharest performance, and is being treated by physicians
> after his bandmates cancelled their concert.
>
> Let's hope Di Meola doesn't join Dick Shawn, Carmen Miranda, Tyrone Power*,
> Tommy Cooper and J.I. Rodale** in that unlucky*** group who've expired soon
> after collapsing onstage****.
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
> ------------------------------------
> * Power wasn't onstage in front of an audience, but WAS being filmed in a
> dueling scene with George Sanders in Spain in November 1958.
> ** Rodale is the health mag publisher/editor who died on a never-aired
> edition of The Dick Cavett Show on Tuesday, June 8, 1971, two days before
> Klaatu portrayer Michael Rennie died.

Rodale didn't collapse onstage. He died quietly, sitting in a chair on
the Cavett set. Cavett thought he had dozed off and make a joke.

Appreciate your correction, AF, but isn't a TV talk show set's couch (or chair) rightfully considered onstage? I mean, there WAS an audience witnessing the sad spectacle, no?

Oh, and the late Pete Hamill--longtime NYC columnist, "Blood on the Tracks" liner-notes author* and sometime Jackie Kennedy boytoy--was talking to Cavett when the host heard Rodale's death rattle, mistook it for snoring, so then inquired (to his soon regret) something to the effect of, "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale**?"

STYBLE/Florida
============* Hamill won a Best Liner Notes Grammy for that prose.
** I'm confident top-notch broadcaster Cavett correctly pronounced it "row-DALE".

In <51769d6e-d2d5-41b8-a3fc-83cc2ed40935n@googlegroups.com> "radioacti...@gmail.com" <radioactiveseattle@gmail.com> writes:

>Oh, and the late Pete Hamill--longtime NYC columnist, "Blood on the Tracks"=
> liner-notes author* and sometime Jackie Kennedy boytoy--

Let's not forget Pete Hamill's assignations with...

with... ...

SHIRLEY MACLAINE !

--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

In article <51769d6e-d2d5-41b8-a3fc-83cc2ed40935n@googlegroups.com>,
<"radioacti...@gmail.com"> wrote:

> Appreciate your correction, AF, but isn't a TV talk show set's couch (or
> chair) rightfully considered onstage? I mean, there WAS an audience
> witnessing the sad spectacle, no?

I would take an onstage death to mean someone who died while
performing. Cf. Dick Shawn. I would not consider a news anchor who
died during a broadcast to have died onstage.

On 9/29/2023 6:45 PM, A Friend wrote:

> I would take an onstage death to mean someone who died while
> performing. Cf. Dick Shawn. I would not consider a news anchor who
> died during a broadcast to have died onstage.

Wikipedia counts it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deaths_onstage

Other related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Filmed_deaths_of_entertainers

A Friend wrote:
>radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:

>>Appreciate your correction, AF, but isn't a TV talk show set's couch (or
>>chair) rightfully considered onstage? I mean, there WAS an audience
>>witnessing the sad spectacle, no?

>I would take an onstage death to mean someone who died while
>performing. Cf. Dick Shawn. I would not consider a news anchor who
>died during a broadcast to have died onstage.

Harry Einstein, Parkyakarkus from the Eddie Cantor show, died onstage. His
son Albert Brooks made a joke about it in Defending Your Life (1991).

While I knew that Albert Brooks--an underrated talent in my view who was one of several standouts in "Taxi Driver"--is was born Albert Einstein (!), not to mention the not-very-close brother of the late Super Dave comic stuntman, I had no idea he was a second-generation entertainer, much less that his dad died onstage, and even MORE SO much less that he might dare to joke about it in one of his quirky but always-interesting films.

I've only seen a few scenes of "Defending Your Life"; now you've given me good reason to screen it straight through; appreciate that heads-up, Adam!

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida