HEARTBREAKING: British actor d!es during live TV show broadcast as cast unknowingly carries on
In a tragic incident, a British actor d!ed during a live television broadcast of Armchair Theatre while the rest of the cast unknowingly continued with the show and covered his absence.
He tragically holds the Guinness World Record for ‘first actor to die on live TV'(Image: x)
A British actor tragically d!ed during a live television broadcast and the rest of the cast unknowingly carried on their performance — without realising their co-actor had passed away.
Welsh actor Gareth Jones suffered a heart attack off-camera during a live television broadcast of ITV ’s Armchair Theatre anthology drama series. In a shocking irony, his character on the show was supposed to suffer from a weak heart and have a heart attack as well, tragically turning the famous saying ‘life imitates art’ into reality.
The actor from Lampeter, Wales, d!ed during the transmission of a live television play on November 30, 1958, making him the ‘first actor to die on live TV’ — a devastating tragedy he posthumously holds the Guinness World Record for. Gareth was reportedly around 33 at the time of his de@th, although his actual age remains unverified.
Armchair Theatre was an anthology drama series of single plays that were broadcast on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974 and produced by Sydney Newman — co-creator of the original 1963 Doctor Who — between 1958 and 1962.
The actor d!ed during a live broadcast of the drama anthology series Armchair Theatre(Image: ITV/ABC Studios)
Gareth d!ed during the live broadcast of the television play Underground in which he played the character of a businessman named Carl Norman, and he had previously starred in three other Armchair Theatre live television plays in 1958.
Underground was directed by William ‘Ted’ Kotcheff, one of ITV company ABC’s regular directors at the time, and the live play was set in a tube station following a nuclear attack
What happened on the fateful day
Piecing together an account of the details of the tragic incident from various media reports and interviews of individuals involved with the live production, British Television Drama states that the cast travelled to ABC studios — which opened in Didsbury, Manchester, in 1956 — on Friday, November 28. It was in a television studio there that the live broadcast was going to be filmed.
This gave the team the whole of Saturday and most of Sunday, which was the day of the live broadcast, for rehearsals in the studio. Underground was then televised live on November 30, 1958, and 10.05pm.
The Daily Express was reportedly told by an unnamed actor later that Gareth ‘did not look well’ before they began, and that he was ‘quiet, but I thought he was concentrating on his part’.
British Television Drama states the Daily Mail reported Jones had ‘complained of feeling unwell, but was determined to carry on’ during the rehearsals. The play then began as scheduled, and had progressed well into the second of its three acts when tragedy struck.
Recalling the tragic events, The Guardian reports fellow Underground actor Peter Bowles remembered seeing Gareth collapse from the set itself: “During transmission a little group of us was talking on camera while awaiting the arrival of Gareth Jones’s character, who had some information for us.
“We could see him coming up towards us and he was going to arrive on cue, but we saw him drop, we saw him fall. We could see people tending to him.”
Peter’s is the only direct account of the events which places Gareth making his way back to the set when he collapsed, as most others recall the young actor collapsing during the application of make-up itself, although these are supposedly not direct witness accounts.
Gareth was reportedly attended to by a doctor on hand straight away, and the other actors only learned that something was wrong between acts. The production carried on as best it could, with actors improvising lines and the cast being re-assigned Gareth’s dialogues within minutes when they’d get a moment off-camera. It was only after the live telecast was done that everyone learned of Gareth’s sudden de@th.
ABC Studios in Didsbury, Manchester, where Armchair Theatre’s ‘Underground’ was filmed(Image: Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives)
In a slightly different version of events, according to British Television Drama, producer Sydney Newman later recounted the tragic incident and shared: “Gareth took his turn to be made-up, and whilst the girl was slapping on the make-up, he said that he felt sick.”
Gareth reportedly ‘took a sip of brandy from a flask’ and then told the make-up girl Miss Lee Halls that he didn’t ‘feel well’, and blamed it on ‘perhaps just the nerves’. According to multiple accounts, Gareth then reportedly collapsed in the chair.
British Television Drama reports director Ted Kotcheff as saying: “Halfway through act two, in the background of one of the sets, I saw a body being carried by two men. I cried out to the assistant director to clear the set. The make-up girl came running into our control room where I was, crying out to me that while she was applying black smudges to Gareth Jones’s face, he had fainted and fallen face forward onto her makeup tray.
“He had been taken backstage, and a doctor was coming. We were still live on the air.”
Ted explained how they were still broadcasting live on camera, and when the other five actors, who were a part of the scene and awaiting Gareth’s arrival, couldn’t find him there, they had a ‘tense moment of indecision’ after which the lead actor ‘quick-wittedly ad-libbed’ his way out of the scene, saying: ““Let’s go down this tunnel. Carl must be waiting for us further down.”
As the play finally faded to black, Ted reportedly told the floor manager to ‘get all the actors together, and the make-up girl apparently rushed into the control room and said: “It’s Gareth. The doctor declared him dead — heart attack.”
Underground was a television dramatisation by James Forsyth of Harold Rein’s 1955 novel Few Were Left and no recording of the play exists, as it was not common practice to automatically record or preserve live broadcasts at the time.
It was also a common belief that the ABC studios in Didsbury were ‘haunted’ by Gareth Jones’ ghost for a long time — until the studio building was demolished in 1992.
The Stage newspaper reportedly called Gareth ‘a good actor, a hard worker, a real pro and a man of great personal charm’ in their obituary, while Gareth’s agent, Joan Reddish, reportedly said he had been ‘all set to become a star’ when he d!ed.
