Paul Gilmore - Near Fatal Accident

Near Fatal Accident

Three months after the death of his wife, Gilmore was nearly killed in a production of The Musketeers in Phoenix, Arizona. On Dec. 16, 1899, Gilmore and two other actors were critically wounded when they were shot with live rounds that had accidentally been loaded into a stage pistol. Gilmore received six wounds, the most serious in his legs. Gilmore was at first not expected to live; when he did, doctors gave him little chance of being able to return to the stage. A bullet was removed from his knee in March 1900, after which he began to recover. By October of that year, he was again on the road, appearing in Under the Red Robe.

Actor Lewis Monroe died of lockjaw a month after the accident as the result of a bullet wound to the hand.