Danny Gans' longtime manager and friend, Chip Lightman, said he was shocked to learn the late entertainer's chronic back pain was so severe he needed to combat it with hydromorphone, the prescription painkiller that ultimately lead to his death last month.

"Dan wasn't a complainer," he told the AP after the coroner's report was released Tuesday. "If he was in pain, he would just suck it up and go on  with the show."

Lightman said that the ease in which Gans brought to his physically-demanding show masked his deteriorating condition.

• TAGS

• AP
• Chip Lightman
• Danny Gans
• Hydromorphone
• Painkillers

Danny Gans and Elvis Presley had something else in common besides dying young and being Las Vegas showstoppers. Both entertainers were linked after their deaths with Dilaudid, a highly addictive opiate nicknamed "drug store heroin."

Las Vegas Coroner Mike Murphy ruled Tuesday that Gans' death on May 1 was caused by toxic levels of the painkiller, officially known as hydromorphone. Murphy characterized it as an accidental death.

Dilaudid, said to be two to eight times more potent than morphine, was Presley’s favorite drug.

• TAGS

• Celebrity Death
• Danny Gans
• Elvis Presley
• Hydromorphone
• overdose