List of entertainers who died during a performance

Through history, many entertainers have died while performing live or while recording a performance. The following list excludes deaths involving film and television stunt persons, as they are listed separately.

17th century 1673: Molière, the French actor and playwright, who suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, died after being seized by a violent coughing fit while playing the title role in his play Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid). However, he did not die on stage — as he was able to finish the play — but died a few minutes later at his home. The superstition that green brings bad luck to actors is said to originate from the colour of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.

19th century 1817: An actor known as Mr. Cummins died on stage while playing the part of Dumont in The Tragedy of Jane Shore by Nicholas Rowe, at the Leeds Theatre in Hunslet. He died of "ossification of the heart" (aortic stenosis) on 20 June having uttered his final words from the play "May such befall me at my latest hour...".Leeds Mercury, 21 June 1817 1829: Sam Patch, an American daredevil, died in Rochester, New York, during a jump into the High Falls of the Genesee River. He had successfully leapt into High Falls one week previously. 1844: Dancer Clara Vestris Webster's dress caught fire during The Revolt of the Harem at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Webster was badly burned and died three days later. 1861: The four Gale sisters were a team of British ballerinas who were appearing at Philadelphia's Continental Theater. They were among eight dancers who died when Zelia Gale's gauze dress caught on fire from a gas tube. The deadly flames spread to the other three sisters Hannah, Ruth, and Adeline when they tried to rescue their sibling. 1872: Lion tamer Thomas Macarte, known as Massarti the Lion Tamer, who had previously lost an arm when attacked by one of the lions, entered the lion's cage for a performance with a travelling menagerie in Bolton market on 3 January. Attacked by the lions, he attempted to fight them off with his sword and a pistol loaded with blanks but they overcame him. Although other members of the show eventually forced the animals back into an inner cage they dragged Macarte with them. Eventually rescued, he died on the way to the hospital. 1873: The actress Matilda Pascaly died from injuries suffered on stage while playing the part of an angel in Don Juan de Maraña. Stagehands mishandled her wires and sent her crashing upside down into a wall. 1882: The actress Annie Von Behren died during a performance of Si Slocum at Cincinnati's Coliseum when a firearm wielded by her castmate, Frank Frayne, accidentally discharged, shooting her in the head. 1888: Frederick Federici had a heart attack as he descended through a trap door just after singing his last note as Mephistopheles in Gounod's opera Faust at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. 1897: Operatic bass Armand Castelmary died onstage at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House during a performance of Friedrich von Flotow's Martha. The audience, believing his collapse to be a stroke of brilliant acting, rewarded him with a loud ovation as the curtain was lowered.

20th century 1903: Aerialist Nellie Reed, performing in the musical Mr. Blue Beard, was one of the 602 victims of the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago, Illinois, on 30 December. Reed's role was to fly as a fairy over the audience on a trolley wire, showering them with pink carnations. She was trapped above the stage while waiting for her entrance and fell during the fire. She died from burns and internal injuries three days later. 1904: Emil Hasda, a Polish comic actor, took six curtain calls after a performance in Nimptsch, Germany (now part of Poland), on 11 April before shooting himself in the head in front of the audience, apparently because a female member of the company had rejected his marriage proposal. 1911: On 9 May: Sigmund Neuberger, a vaudeville performer known as "The Great Lafayette", died in Edinburgh's Empire Palace Theatre while performing his "Lion's Bride" illusion after a stage lamp sparked a fire that killed Neuberger, his double, the lion, and ten other performers. 1912: William Theodore Brailey, Roger Marie Bricoux, John Frederick Preston Clarke, Wallace Hartley, John Law Hume, Georges Alexandre Krins, Percy Cornelius Taylor, and John Wesley Woodward were the eight musicians hired to entertain on board the RMS Titanic. The band reportedly continued playing music until the sinking ship's last moments in an effort to calm the passengers. 1918: William Ellsworth Robinson, a magician performing in the yellowface stage identity of "Chung Ling Soo", was shot in the chest on stage during a bullet catch illusion gone wrong. 1920: Aviator and movie actor Ormer Locklear crashed in an airplane he was piloting while filming a nighttime movie scene for the movie The Skywayman. 1922: Eugenie Blair, actress, was performing in the original production of Anna Christie. Despite feeling unwell and suffering a headache, she declined the opportunity to be replaced by an understudy. After completing her last scene, she went offstage to sit down and died in the chair. 1924: Jack Pleasants, music hall entertainer, is said to have dropped dead on stage at age 49 during a pantomime performance. 1930: Cinematographer Conrad Wells, director Kenneth Hawks, six other crew members and two pilots were killed in a two-plane collision off the Santa Monica coast while filming aerial scenes for the film Such Men Are Dangerous. 1931: Acrobat Lillian Leitzel died after falling from her rigging during a performance in Copenhagen. 1937: Louis Vierne, a French organist and composer, died while performing his 1,750th organ recital on 2 June 1937, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. 1938: On 1 April 1938, actor Joseph Greenwald died during a West Coast premiere performance of Golden Boy at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, California. Greenwald collapsed and died on the stage after saying the line "I wait for this moment all my life." 1941: British swing bandleader Ken "Snakehips" Johnson died while performing at the Café de Paris, London, when it was hit by a German bomb in the Blitz during the Second World War. 1943: Albert Stoessel was conducting an orchestra for the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, when he died of a heart attack on 12 May 1943. 1944: Aroldo Lindi, a 55-year-old Swedish tenor, died during a performance of Pagliacci in San Francisco after finishing the aria "Vesti la giubba". 1951: Concert pianist Simon Barere died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Carnegie Hall while playing Grieg's Piano Concerto. 1953: Gaetano Merola, San Francisco Opera General Director and co-founder, collapsed and died of a heart attack on August 30, while conducting an outdoor concert in Stern Grove. San Francisco legend is that he fell as soprano Brunetta Mazzolina, singing "Un bel dí" from Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini, reached the word "morir", meaning "to die". 1955: Actress Isabel Bonner suffered a heart attack while on stage at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, during a performance of The Shrike. 1958: , a Takarazuka Revue actress, died during the 1 April performance of Spring Dance at Takarazuka Grand Theater in Takarazuka, Japan. Her clothes were caught in a stage lift, which ripped her body in two.Kobayashi Koichi, ed., Hundred Years' History of Takarazuka Revue, Hankyu Communications, 2014, pp. 52–53 [小林公一監修『宝塚歌劇100年史　虹の橋 渡り続けて（人物編）』阪急コミュニケーションズ、2014年、52–53頁], . Gareth Jones was portraying a character who died of a heart attack in a live science fiction play Underground in ABC Television's Armchair Theatre television series (30 November) when he died of a real heart attack between his scenes. The actors and director improvised to account for his absence. Comedian Harry Einstein, father of Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein (the latter also known for his Super Dave Osborne character), died almost immediately after performing as "Parkyakarkus" (a pun on "park your carcass"), at the Friars Club of Beverly Hills roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. When he died, he collapsed onto Milton Berle. Tyrone Power was stricken by a massive heart attack while filming a dueling scene with his frequent co-star and friend George Sanders for the film Solomon and Sheba. He died while being transported to the hospital in Madrid on 15 November, aged 44. South African actor Morry Barling suddenly died onstage during a performance at the National Theatre, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. 1960: Actor Louis Jean Heydt died of a heart attack upon conclusion of the first act of the Boston production of There Was a Little Girl, also featuring Jane Fonda. Singer Leonard Warren died after performing in the opera La forza del destino at the New York Metropolitan Opera. He had sung Don Carlo's act III aria, which begins Morir, tremenda cosa ("to die, a momentous thing"), when he started coughing and gasping. He fell face first to the ground and it was revealed he had died of a massive heart attack. Pianist and conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos died of a heart attack on 2 November while conducting a rehearsal of Mahler's Third Symphony at Milan's La Scala Opera House. 1961: Actor Alan Marshal died on stage while appearing with Mae West in her play Sextette in Chicago. Composer Joseph E. Howard, best known for co-writing "Hello! Ma Baby" and "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now", died onstage at Chicago Opera House on 19 May. He collapsed with a heart attack while taking a curtain call after having led the audience in a singalong of the song "Let Me Call You Sweetheart". 1962: German conductor Franz Konwitschny died of a heart attack while conducting a rehearsal in Belgrade on 28 July. 1965: Wagnerian bass-baritone Hermann Uhde died on stage of a heart attack during a performance in Copenhagen's Royal Danish Theatre on 10 October 1965. 1966: Vaudeville doubletalk comedian Al Kelly died immediately following his performance at the New York Friars Club roast of Joe E. Lewis, after returning to his seat on the dais and during the applause. 1967: Singer and actor Nelson Eddy, famous for his roles in such movie musicals as Rose Marie, died on 6 March after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while performing onstage at a Miami Beach hotel. Comedian and singer Jodie "Butterbeans" Edwards, the surviving member of the long-running vaudeville duo Butterbeans and Susie, died on 28 October as he walked onstage at the Dorchester Inn outside Chicago. 1968: Joseph Keilberth, conductor, died in Munich after collapsing while conducting Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Bavarian State Opera, in exactly the same place as Felix Mottl did in 1911. 1969: Professional wrestler Mike DiBiase suffered a heart attack in the ring while wrestling his opponent Man Mountain Mike on 2 July in Lubbock, Texas. CPR was unsuccessful, and an autopsy revealed coronary artery disease. DiBiase was the adoptive father of wrestling star Ted DiBiase. Country music star Spade Cooley died from a heart attack while backstage during the intermission of a benefit concert in Oakland, California, on 23 November. Cooley was serving a life term in prison for beating his wife to death in front of their daughter, and played the show on a weekend furlough. He was scheduled to be paroled three months later, in February 1970.The Oaklahoman, 5 March 2018 Performer Kenneth Horne, star of the radio comedy show Round the Horne, died of a heart attack while hosting the annual Guild of Television Producers' and Directors' Awards at the Dorchester Hotel in London, moments after the show scriptwriters had received an award and Horne had urged the audience to tune into its next series which had been due to commence shortly. 1970: