Danny Gans' Agent: "Who Gave Him This Prescription?"

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.

"I think Julie, like me and everyone else who knows Dan, is thinking, 'How could he be doing this with chronic pain? But Danny was an athlete -- he  worked through it."

He told the AP that he always thought Gans was put off by pain medications in fear it would have an impact on his singing voice.

Said the agent: "I'm being haunted by the question that everyone else is -- who gave him this prescription?"

That's an answer Lightman won't be getting anytime soon -- authorities Tuesday said they would not identify the late entertainer's doctors or  medical history, citing patient and family confidentiality. (Photo: Landov)