Actor Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally shoots himself with a prop gun - October 12th, 1984

On this day in 1984, TV star Jon-Erik Hexum mistakenly shot and killed himself after misfiring a prop gun on the set of his show.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello, and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that honors the dead by sharing their stories
with the living. I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode,

(00:20):
we're looking at the shocking accidental death of John Eric Hexham,
an up and coming TV actor whose life was cut
short by an offhand joke gone wrong. The day was
October twelfth, four. TV star John Eric Hexham mistakenly shot

(00:45):
and killed himself after misfiring a prop gun on the
set of his show. The twenty six year old actor
had been filming a scene for the CBS by Adventure
series Cover Up, in which he played an undercover CIA
agent posing as a male model. Hexham was reportedly playing
around with a forty four magnum pistol loaded with blank

(01:07):
cartridges when he jokingly put the gun to his head
and pulled the trigger. He was rushed to the Beverly
Hills Medical Center, where he underwent five hours of brain surgery. Sadly,
the damage was too severe, and Hexham was declared brain
dead six days later. John Eric Hexham was born on

(01:27):
November fifth, nineteen fifty seven, in Englewood, New Jersey. He
showed interest in music at a young age and learned
to play both the violin and the French horn. He
later attended Michigan State University, where he majored in philosophy,
worked as a DJ, played football for the Spartans, and
most importantly, began acting in minor stage roles. Shortly after

(01:50):
graduating in nineteen eighty, Hexham moved to New York City
to pursue a career in acting. It was rough going
at first, and he had to take a job cleaning
up apartments just to make ends meet. Strangely enough, the
cleaning job actually gave Hexham the push he needed to
get serious about acting. That's because one of his clients
turned out to be Bob Lamont, a talent agent who

(02:13):
represented John Travolta, among many others. Lamond thought Hexham was
leading man material, so he encouraged the young actor to
move to Los Angeles and start auditioning for movies. Hexham
took his advice to heart and moved to Hollywood in
September of nine eight one. He lost out on several roles,
but was eventually cast as the lead actor on an

(02:35):
NBC sci fi show called Voyagers. The show was canceled
after just one season, but Hexham's performance as time traveler
Phineas Bogg earned him a major role in the TV
movie Making of a Male Model, alongside British star Joan Collins.
In four, Hexham guest starred on ABC's primetime drama Hotel,

(02:57):
and later that year, he played a terminally ill quarterback
in a film called The Bear, a tribute to University
of Alabama football coach Paul Bear Bryant, as portrayed by
Gary Busey. That role turned out to be Hexham's one
and only feature film credit, with the movie being released
just three weeks before his death. During the summer of four,

(03:21):
Hexham took on a lead role in the upcoming CBS
series cover Up. The show followed fashion photographer Danny Reynolds,
who learns that her recently deceased husband was actually an
undercover CIA agent. After learning that her husband was murdered,
she enlisted the help of Hexham's character, Mac Harper, a
former Green Beret who pretends to be one of Danny's models,

(03:44):
to help find her husband's killers. And yes, if you're
keeping track, that was Hexham's second time playing a male model.
He may have been typecast, but at least it was flattering.
Cover Up premiered on September twenty two, eighty four, and
on the day of Hexham's death three weeks later, the
crew was filming the seventh episode of the season, titled

(04:07):
Golden Opportunity. One of the scenes on the docket that
day required Hexam's character to load cartridges into a forty
four magnum handgun. The gun he was given was fully functional,
but the cartridges were blanks. In other words, they didn't
contain a projectile like a bullet or a pellet, but
still contained enough gunpowder to produce a muzzle flash and

(04:30):
an explosive sound. They also contained a bit of wadded
up paper or plastic to act as a stopper, ensuring
that the gunpowder wouldn't fall out of the cartridge. There
were several delays in filming that day, and Hexam grew
increasingly frustrated with the process. He took a few naps
to pass the time, but when he learned there would

(04:51):
be even more delays, he decided to play a joke
to help lighten the mood. Imitating the maccab game of
Russian roulette, Hexam unload at all but one blank cartridge
from the handgun. He reportedly asked the crew, can you
believe this crap? Then he spun the chamber, placed the
barrel to his right temple, and squeezed the trigger. The

(05:12):
resulting blast discharged the wad of paper from the cartridge,
and although it wasn't powerful enough to penetrate his skull,
the impact caused a fracture and drove a bone fragment
the size of a quarter straight into his brain. The
actor suffered severe hemorrhaging and lost several pints of blood
on the way to the hospital. He underwent five hours

(05:34):
of emergency surgery and was then placed on life support.
He remained comatose for the next six days and was
pronounced brain dead on October eighth. Hexham was an organ donor,
and with his family's permission, his heart, eyes, kidneys, and
skin were donated to six different patients, saving some of
their lives in the process. The actor's body was cremated

(05:57):
in southern California, and his shoes were scattered in the
Pacific Ocean by his mother, Greta Hexham. The producers of
Cover Up carried on with the show, eventually writing out
Hexham and killing his character off screen. He was replaced
with British actor Anthony Hamilton's who played a different undercover
agent posing as a model. Despite the change, an air

(06:20):
of tragedy clung to the show, and it was ultimately
canceled after just one season. Hexham's death was ruled accidental,
but a few years later his mother received an undisclosed
out of court settlement from twentieth Century Fox Television and
Glen Larson Productions, the company that had produced Cover Up.
In the wake of Hexham's tragic passing, Hollywood made several

(06:43):
changes to the way weapons were used on film sets,
most notably, the position of weapons handler was created, a
crew member whose sole responsibility is to oversee the safe
and appropriate handling of all firearms used in a production.
Despite at addition, though there have still been several notable
gun deaths on movie sets. In Bruce Lee's son Brandon Lee,

(07:08):
was fatally wounded by a prop gun while filming the
movie The Crow, and in one cinematographer Halenia Hutchins was
killed on the set of Rust after Alec Baldwin accidentally
shot her by mishandling a prop gun. These incidents are
disturbingly similar and show that all these years later, there's
still a lot of room for improvement in Hollywood's use

(07:30):
of firearms. John Eric Hexham was a promising young talent
lost far too soon, and the same is true of
Brandon Lee and Halenya Hutchins. The best tribute to their
memory would be for the film industry to do better
and prevent more needless deaths like their's from ever happening again.
In the meantime, though, producer Glenn Larson offered his own

(07:53):
fitting memoriam. It appeared on screen at the end of
an episode of Cover Up that aired five weeks after
or Hexham's death. It said, quote when a star dies,
it's light continues to shine across the universe from millennia.
John Eric Hexham died in October of this year, but
the lives he touched will continue to be brightened by

(08:14):
his life forever and ever. I'm Gabe Lousier and hopefully
you now know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. You can learn even more about history
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d I HC Show, and if you have any comments

(08:35):
or suggestions, you can always send them my way at
this day at i heeart media dot com. Thanks to
Chandler May's for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
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