The Amazing Johnathan, irreverent magician and stand-up comedian, dies at 63

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The Amazing Johnathan, irreverent magician and stand-up comedian, dies at 63

John Edward Szeles was a fixture on late-night TV and the Las Vegas Strip.
By Andrea TowersFebruary 23, 2022 at 04:16 PM EST










The Amazing Jonathan, the audacious magician and stand-up comedian who was a longtime headliner on the Las Vegas Strip and a fixture on late-night TV, died Tuesday following a long battle with heart disease. He was 63.
His wife, stuntwoman and fellow magician Anastasia Synn, confirmed the news to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His sister Gail McGuire also paid tribute to him on Facebook, writing, "Our hearts are broken. John lived life as he wanted and brought so many laughs to thousands with his brand of humor… The world is a little less funny today."
Johnathan Edward Szeles was born Sept. 9, 1958, in Detroit. The self-described "Freddy Krueger of comedy" got his start as a street magician in San Francisco and became known for shocking stunts like (seemingly) spiking his own tongue and sucking on his own dangling eyeball.
The Amazing Johnathan

| CREDIT: BOBBY BANK/WIREIMAGE
He appeared on dozens of TV shows over the course of his career, including Comedy Central's One Night Stand and Premium Blend, Criss Angel's Mindfreak, HBO's Young Comedian's Special, and Late Night With David Letterman. Szeles had a popular residency at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, performed for two presidents, co-created a game show called Ruckus with Merv Griffin, and scored his own one-hour special, Wrong on Every Level.

In 2007, the Las Vegas Journal-Review reported that Szeles had been diagnosed with a serious heart condition. During an interview with The Guardian in 2014, Szeles said he'd been told he had a year to live.
Szeles' life, career, and health struggles were also explored in the 2019 Hulu film The Amazing Johnathan Documentary.

 

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The Amazing Johnathan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

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The Amazing Johnathan, Celebrated Comic-Magician and Las Vegas Stalwart, Dead at 63

The Amazing Johnathan, the over-the-top magician and comedian, has died at the age of 63.

www.rollingstone.com

The Amazing Johnathan, Celebrated Comic-Magician and Las Vegas Stalwart, Dead at 63

The performer had long been battling a heart condition, stating in 2014 that he had just one year left to live

By
JON BLISTEIN
&
JOSEPH HUDAK

The Amazing Johnathan performing in 2013.
Bobby Bank/WireImage/Getty
The Amazing Johnathan, the magician and comedian who was a longtime fixture on late-night television and the Las Vegas strip, died Tuesday, Feb. 22, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. He was 63.
The cause of death was end-stage heart failure, per the New York Times, with the entertainer — born Johnathan Edward Szeles — previously revealing he had been diagnosed with a heart condition. Szeles’ wife, the performer Anastasia Synn, confirmed her husband’s death, telling the Review-Journal he died in his sleep Tuesday night.
“The last thing I said to him was, ‘I love you, honey, I’ll be with you when you get up from your nap,’ ” Synn said. “We were feeding him oranges and strawberries. He was so peaceful. He said, ‘Yay!’ He had the most pure and sweetest look on his face.”


With his mix of magic tricks, pranks, and gross-out humor, Szeles carved out a unique lane for himself in the Eighties and Nineties. He was a frequent guest on Late Night With David Letterman, helmed several comedy specials, and was a major Vegas headliner for over a decade.







Props were a signature of the Amazing Johnathan’s performances. During a 1997 appearance on Letterman, he claimed he had a compulsion to run naked and proceeded to drink glass cleaner. “This prevents me from streaking,” he quipped. Later, he appeared to remove his eyeball with a power drill and bat the orb around with his tongue. At one point, he asked the host if he liked birds, manifested one beneath a handkerchief, and then smashed it into feathery death with his palm. The capper was slicing a knife through his bloody forearm. “It’s a fake blade, it’s fake!” Szeles admonished the shocked audience.

Born Sept. 9, 1958, in Detroit, Szeles moved to California in the Seventies where he began practicing magic on the streets of San Francisco. By the late Eighties and into the Nineties, his star had risen and he was seemingly all over TV, appearing on the late-night circuit and on standup specials like Just for Laughs and An Evening at the Improv.
In 1991, he hosted the series Ruckus, a Beat the Clock-type game show, while continuing to do standup and cement his reputation not just as a comic but as a magician. He became friends with Criss Angel, a fellow Vegas performer, and made cameos on Angel’s TV illusions series Mindfreak. In a tweet, Angel remembered Szeles, who was diagnosed with a heart condition in 2007, as “a pioneer who paved the road for comedy magicians in so many ways.”
But for all Szeles’ gore humor — he liked to call himself the “Freddy Krueger of Comedy” — the Amazing Johnathan’s most shocking moment came onstage in 2014, when he revealed to an audience in Las Vegas that he had just one year left to live. “The greatest time of my entire life has been here. I’ve made millions of dollars, I have two beautiful houses, and…,” he said, with a long pause, “everything came crashing down when I was told I had a year to live.” While the audience laughs awkwardly, he chastises them that it’s not a joke.
“My heart is failing — my wife would’ve said it failed long ago — but it is actually failing for real,” he said, announcing his retirement. “I can’t do shows anymore because my legs lock up and my hands lock up, and that’s kind of shitty for a magician.”

Szeles, however, lived well past that year and actually returned to performing in 2017. In 2019, he was the subject of a documentary, The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, directed by Ben Berman, which examined his career, a possible comeback, and his illness — yet it also openly wondered whether Szeles, who was using meth during filming, had actually faked his terminal diagnosis.
Berman suggests that possibility to his subject during a particularly tense scene. “Are you disappointed I’m not dying in your time frame?” Szeles asks, before walking out on the interview.
In paying tribute to Szeles, Berman wrote on Instagram, “The way Johnathan lived, I respect immensely. He lived on his own terms… He really was so many things. Creator, destroyer, charmer, fighter, fucking weirdo, next level artist, and of course a BRILLIANT COMEDIAN. He really made things, and broke them (intentionally), and made more things. The dude shot from the hip, worked from instinct, and it worked! He did things wrong, and I’m inspired by that. He shook it up like we all should.”



“Don’t feel sorry for me, because I’ve had the best most incredible life that you could have,” the Amazing Johnathan said after tearfully revealing his diagnosis onstage in 2014. “Everything I ever wanted, I got — there’s a lot to be said for devil worship.”

 

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