Archive for the ‘Theatre’ Category

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Obit watch: April 30, 2019.

Tuesday, April 30th, 2019

These are mostly for the historical record at this point, since I took a few days off. (More on that later.)

John Singleton. THR.

Richard Lugar, former Indiana Senator.

Manuel Luján Jr., former Congressman from New Mexico and Secretary of the Interior under George H.W. Bush.

Jo Sullivan Loesser, actress:

After paying her dues as an understudy and a member of the chorus, she created the role of Polly Peachum in a concert version of Marc Blitzstein’s acclaimed translation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera” in 1952. She reprised the role when a full-fledged theatrical version opened in 1954 at the Theater de Lys in Greenwich Village.

She also co-starred in “The Most Happy Fella”, which is significant because she ended up marrying Frank Loesser and left acting. After Mr. Loesser’s death in 1969, she became the keeper of his legacy.

She raised their two daughters and, after Loesser died of lung cancer at 59 in 1969, she managed his music publishing company, Frank Music, until it was bought by CBS in 1976. (It was subsequently sold to Paul McCartney, but she retained creative control over her husband’s theater music and productions for Frank Loesser Enterprises.)
In 1977, feeling free of business obligations and with her daughters grown, Mrs. Loesser attended a party where Morton Gottlieb, a theatrical producer, urged her to return to singing — specifically, to perform her husband’s repertoire at the Ballroom, a restaurant and cabaret in SoHo.
She did, billed as Jo Sullivan, and her comeback was triumphant.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 25, 2019.

Thursday, April 25th, 2019

Wow. Lots going on.

This is breaking news: Lawrence beat me to it (because I had to wait for my lunch hour to post).

Former Williamson County DA Jana Duty was found dead in a South Texas condo yesterday.

I have a WCDA tag for reasons: if you go back and look, or read Lawrence’s post, you’ll see that former DA Duty was controversial and apparently had some issues during her tenure. But this is still a sad and awful thing.

Mark Medoff, playwright. He was best known for “Children of a Lesser God”, which won multiple Tony awards and was the basis for the Oscar winning Marlee Matlin movie.

This one is for Mike the Musicologist: Heather Harper, soprano.

An unanticipated performance in 1962 brought Ms. Harper international attention when, on 10 days’ notice, she substituted for Galina Vishnevskaya in the premiere of Britten’s “War Requiem.” The work was written to dedicate the new Coventry Cathedral in England, the original 14th-century structure having been bombed into ruin during World War II.
As a gesture of reconciliation, Britten, a pacifist, had intended the soloists to be the tenor Peter Pears (an Englishman), the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a German) and Ms. Vishnevskaya (a Russian). But the Soviet government refused to allow Ms. Vishnevskaya to travel to Coventry for the premiere. Ms. Harper, just turned 32, took her place and triumphed.

She did a lot of work with Britten (including Ellen in the 1969 BBC production of “Peter Grimes”) but she had a larger repertoire, including singing “Lohengrin” at Bayreuth.

Fay McKenzie, actress. Her story is interesting:

Ms. McKenzie made her screen debut in 1918, when she was 10 weeks old, cradled in Gloria Swanson’s arms in “Station Content,” a five-reel silent romance. Her last role was a cameo appearance with her son, Tom Waldman Jr., in “Kill a Better Mousetrap,” a comedy, based on a play by Scott K. Ratner, that was filmed last summer and has yet to be released.

She was also in five Blake Edwards movies and five Gene Autry movies. Ms. McKenzie was 101 when she passed.

Ken Kercheval. He did a lot of TV work (no “Mannix”, though) and was probably most famous as Cliff Barnes on “Dallas”. (He was also in “Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell“, which I’d kind of like to watch. Lawrence, however, does not seem to care much for movies involving demonic dogs.)

Finally, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg. Noted:

As the crown prince, he fled Luxembourg with the grand ducal family after Germany invaded the country in May 1940 and found refuge in France, Portugal, the United States and Canada before moving to Britain to join the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army, as a private in 1942.
He participated in the Allies’ invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Battle for Caen there. Three months later he took part in the liberation of Brussels.
Among other honors, he received a Silver Star from the United States, a War Medal from Britain and the French Croix de Guerre. He was promoted to colonel in the Irish Guards in 1984 and was made an honorary general of the British Army in 1995.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV, Wagner, WCDA | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 16, 2019.

Tuesday, April 16th, 2019

Thanks to Alan Simpson for providing Gene Wolfe obit links. I’m still holding off a bit on posting here, as I’d like to see some things come together first.

In the meantime: Georgia Engel, Ted Baxter’s girlfriend/wife on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. Apparently, she also had a gig on “Everybody Loves Raymond”, but I was one of the people who didn’t love Raymond. And she had a pretty substantial theater career, both before and after MTM.

“I was walking down the street one day after ‘Dolly’ closed to cash my unemployment check for $75,” Ms. Engel told The Toronto Star years later, “when I ran into John and he told me I had to be in his play ‘The House of Blue Leaves.’ I was so thrilled, until I got my first paycheck. I was making $74, one dollar less than unemployment.”

Posted in 1970s, Books, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 2, 2019.

Saturday, March 2nd, 2019

Katherine Helmond. Alzheimer’s got her at 89. THR. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

I didn’t watch “Who’s the Boss?” and my parents wouldn’t let me watch “Soap” first run. But:

Ms. Helmond became a well-regarded stage actress in New York and beyond. In 1966, working with the Trinity Square Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., she took on the role of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Her TV credits go back to 1955, and include “Car 54, Where Are You?”, “Hec Ramsey”, “Harry O”, “Meeting of Minds” (she played Emily Dickinson)…

…and, believe it or not, two episodes of “Mannix”. (“A Fine Day for Dying” and “A Rage to Kill”.)

And she was in three Terry Gilliam movies: “Time Bandits”, “Brazil”, and “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas”.

She sounds like someone I would have enjoyed hanging out with, maybe over a cheeseburger and the amusing house red.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 1, 2019.

Friday, March 1st, 2019

Edward C. Nixon, youngest brother of Richard M. Nixon.

Edward earned a bachelor of science degree in geology from Duke University in 1952 and a master’s in geological engineering from North Carolina State University in 1954. He served in the Navy as an aviator, helicopter flight instructor and in the Naval Reserve as a professor of naval science at the University of Washington.

André Previn.

He collected Oscars for scoring “Gigi” (1959), “Porgy and Bess” (1960), “Irma La Douce” (1964) and “My Fair Lady” (1965). He did not write classic songs like “Summertime” and “I Could Have Danced All Night”; rather, he arranged and orchestrated them, creating the soundtrack versions.

By way of Mike the Musicologist, an amusing story from Previn’s memoir:

I had an idea. “Let’s call Shostakovich,” I offered.

It surprises me a little that Previn wasn’t an EGOT. He never picked up an Emmy or a Tony (though he was nominated for both).

Posted in Movies, Music, Nixon, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 27, 2019.

Wednesday, February 27th, 2019

Dick Churchill passed away earlier this month at the age of 99.

The Germans captured Mr. Churchill, a squadron leader at the time, after they shot down the bomber he was flying over the Netherlands in 1940. In 1942 he was transferred to Stalag III, a camp in what is now Zagan, Poland, a little more than 100 miles southeast of Berlin and then a part of Germany, where a few hundred prisoners soon began excavating escape tunnels.

…

Mr. Churchill helped dig the three main tunnels, which the prisoners called Tom, Dick and Harry. It was arduous, nerve-racking work, conducted with improvised tools and the constant risk of discovery or a cave-in.
“You didn’t have any air,” Mr. Churchill said, “and you had a little fat lump lamp which was Reich margarine, which spluttered, with a bit of pajama cord or something similar, which sucked up the oil and gave you a little bit of a light. And you hacked away at your sand, pushed it behind you where another fool took it further back.”
The tunnels were cleverly concealed, but Tom was discovered by the Germans in 1943 and Dick proved unusable. On a frigid night in March 1944, Mr. Churchill was one of 76 prisoners to make their way through the tunnel called Harry and out of Stalag III.

…

Most of the escapees were recaptured in days — only three made it to freedom — and 50 were killed for the attempt. Mr. Churchill said he thought he was spared because his captors believed he might be related to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and could be a useful bargaining chip. (After he made it back to England he said that they were not related as far as he knew).

Mr. Churchill was the last surviving member of the escape party.

Jeraldine Saunders.

Ms. Saunders, who also wrote a widely syndicated astrology column for the Tribune Company as well as a book on hypoglycemia, had an eclectic résumé to say the least. She was a model as well as an author; a practitioner of numerology and palm reading as well as an astrologer. She liked dating younger men and at age 89 filmed a segment for the TLC series “Extreme Cougar Wives” (with a boyfriend, not a husband).

She was most famous as the author of The Love Boats (link goes to revised edition on Amazon, and yes, I will get a tiny kickback if you buy the book), about her time as a cruise ship hostess and cruise director. That book inspired three TV movies, and ultimately “The Love Boat” television series.

Mark Bramble, who wrote the book for the musical “Barnum” and co-wrote the book for “42nd Street”. Oddly, when I was in my late teens, I saw “Barnum” with Stacy Keach in the title role. But I don’t remember very much about the music or the book…

I’ve avoided writing about Brody Stevens because:

  • I wasn’t familiar with his work. I’ve seen him described, mostly on Twitter, as “a comedian’s comedian”.
  • Everything I’ve seen before now has been on Twitter. Yesterday’s NYT was the first reliable report I’ve seen.
  • I find his death at 48 depressing, and don’t know what else I can say about it.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.

Posted in 1970s, Boats, Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 23, 2019.

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019

Russell Baker, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the NYT.

Kaye Ballard, noted actress.

I apologize for giving these short shrift, but Ms. Ballard was before my time.

I also want to call out this one, not out of any malice or ill will, but because when you read the details in the obit, it’s kind of disturbing: Brandon Truaxe, “the founder of the disruptive Canadian cosmetics company Deciem”.

If you need help, please don’t be ashamed to ask for it. Anyone who would shame you for needing help…well, their opinions don’t matter.

Posted in Media, Planes, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 16, 2019.

Wednesday, January 16th, 2019

I wanted to give the Carol Channing obit a chance to shake out before posting it. I’m kind of glad I did: now they’re leading off the obit with the Hirschfeld drawing, which fills me with delight down to the bottom of my coal black heart.

By the time she returned to the role on Broadway in October 1995, Ms. Channing had played Dolly more than 4,500 times, missing only one performance — in June of that year, when she left the show for a day to fly to New York from San Diego to accept a Tony Award for lifetime achievement. She had appeared onstage in a cast, a neck brace and a wheelchair, and with viruses that would have felled anyone with lesser determination. (By her own count, she went on to surpass the 5,000 mark.)

…

Ms. Channing’s own motion picture career never really took off, although she received an Academy Award nomination and won a Golden Globe for her performance in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967). She did enjoy some success on television, and in her later years she did a lot of cartoon voice-over work. But the theater was her natural home.

As Lawrence pointed out to me yesterday, she was also in “Skidoo“. (Honest to Ghu, I thought that had been released on Criterion, but apparently not.)

This one goes out to my friend Todd: Alan R. Pearlman, synthesizer pioneer and founder of ARP Instruments.

ARP’s analog synthesizers — particularly the compact, portable ARP Odyssey, introduced in 1972 — grew ubiquitous in pop and electronic music. By the mid-1970s, ARP was the leading synthesizer manufacturer, commanding 40 percent of the market and outselling its predecessors and competitors, Moog and Buchla.
ARP sounds were central to numerous songs, including Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein,” Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon,” Kraftwerk’s “The Robots,” Underworld’s “Rez,” Nine Inch Nails’ “The Hand That Feeds” and the early-1980s version of the theme to the television series “Doctor Who.”
The five-note signature motif of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was played on an ARP 2500 synthesizer, which is seen in the film. An ARP 2600, mixed with natural sounds, provided the voice of R2-D2 in the first “Star Wars” movie.

Posted in Geek, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: December 21, 2018.

Friday, December 21st, 2018

Donald Moffat, noted actor.

Mr. Moffat was rarely accorded top billing. But when he played Falstaff, Shakespeare’s bravest coward, wisest fool and most ignoble knight, in Joseph Papp’s 1987 production of “Henry IV, Part 1” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, he was the indisputable star. Mainly a comic figure, Falstaff, a sidekick to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V, embodies a depth more common to major Shakespeare characters.

…

On television, Mr. Moffat appeared as Dr. Marcus Polk in the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live” (1968-69), as Rem the android in the CBS science-fiction series “Logan’s Run” (1977-78) and as the Rev. Lars Lundstrom in “The New Land,” the 1974 ABC drama series about Swedish immigrants. He was also seen in episodes of “Mannix,” “Ironside,” “Gunsmoke” and “The Defenders.”

…

“All the Dead Were Strangers“. He also did shots on the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Mission: Impossible”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”, among many other TV credits. (Seasonally appropriate: he was “Dr. Chandler” in the horribly misguided adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” for the 1985 “Twilight Zone”.)

Among Mr. Moffat’s better-known film roles were as Garry, the station commander, in John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), about an extraterrestrial monster that terrorizes researchers in Antarctica; as Lyndon B. Johnson in Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff” (1983), about America’s first astronauts; and as an arrogant corporate lawyer in Costa-Gavras’s “Music Box” (1989), about a Hungarian immigrant accused of having been a fascist war criminal.

And “President Bennett” in “Clear and Present Danger”.

For the record, since I’m a little behind: Penny Marshall.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 13, 2018.

Tuesday, November 13th, 2018

I was in cars all day yesterday, and wanted to give this a chance to shake out after it was announced

For the historical record: Stan Lee. NYT. LAT. WP.

Douglas Rain, “who performed for 32 seasons with the Stratford Festival in Ontario”.

Mr. Rain was somewhat more famous as the voice of HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 2, 2018.

Friday, November 2nd, 2018

Bernard Bragg, actor.

He graduated from the New York School for the Deaf in 1947 and enrolled at what was then Gallaudet College, studying theater there and acting in school plays. Though he enjoyed performing, there was no obvious career path in show business for a deaf person; instead he took a teaching job at the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley, occasionally performing skits and directing small shows at conventions and clubs for the deaf. Then, in 1956, he made a life-changing trip to see Marceau perform in San Francisco.
Marceau’s ability to hold the crowd’s attention without words so struck Mr. Bragg that he sought Marceau out after the show and, with a note, introduced himself and asked where he could study mime. Marceau asked him to return the next day with a sample of his work, which he did: He performed two original sketches, one in which he played Noah and all the animals on the ark, the other in which he depicted all the instruments of an orchestra. Marceau invited him to study with him in France.
He spent the summer of 1956 doing just that, and when he returned to the United States he began performing in nightclubs, schools and universities in the San Francisco area. His routines were generally a mix of set pieces and improvisation.

He went on to become one of the founders of the National Theater of the Deaf.

Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman, SI writer. I really didn’t follow his work for the magazine, but I do have a copy of A Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football somewhere. (I’ve heard good things about it.)

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 30, 2018.

Tuesday, October 30th, 2018

Wow.

My brother and Mike the Musicologist sent this to me literally within seconds of each other, which goes to show you how well they know me:

James “Whitey” Bulger is dead. He was apparently stabbed to death in a Federal prison in West Virginia.

Details are kind of sketchy right now. Here’s the Boston Herald coverage: apparently he had just been moved to the WV facility from one in Florida.

This is still a developing story, and I’m not finding much coverage outside of the Boston papers: it may be best to wait and post an update tomorrow.

Also among the dead: Victor Marchetti, former CIA agent and author who challenged the agency’s prior approval rule.

Ntozake Shange, noted playwright.

Edited to add: preliminary NYT coverage of Whitey Bulger, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.

…was found beaten to death on Tuesday in a West Virginia prison. He was 89.
Two Federal Bureau of Prisons employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public, said Mr. Bulger had been beaten unrecognizable by inmates. No other details were immediately available.

Interesting. The anonymous sources are saying he was beaten to death, not stabbed. But…

He was found unresponsive at 8:20 Tuesday morning, according to a statement from the federal Bureau of Prisons. The bureau said that lifesaving measures had been initiated and that he was pronounced dead by the Preston County Medical Examiner. The statement did not indicate a cause of death.

Posted in Books, Law, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 16, 2018.

Sunday, September 16th, 2018

Some from the past day or two:

David Yallop, author and journalist. He was perhaps most famous for In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I which argued that the Pope “had been poisoned by a cabal connected to a secret Masonic lodge that had infiltrated the church and the Vatican Bank.”

Peter Donat, character actor. He was Mulder’s father on “The X-Files”, but he also did a lot of theater: “Over the years he played Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero, Shylock, King Lear and Hadrian VII.”

Also:

He worked regularly in television, guest-starring on series like “The F.B.I.,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mannix,” McMillan & Wife,” “Hill Street Blues” and “Murder, She Wrote,” on which he played three different roles over several seasons. On “Dallas,” he portrayed a doctor who treated the notorious Texas oilman J. R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) after he had been shot in a famous cliffhanger episode in 1980.

Walter Mischel, of “marshmallow test” fame.

In a series of experiments at Stanford University beginning in the 1960s, he led a research team that presented preschool-age children with treats — pretzels, cookies, a marshmallow — and instructed them to wait before indulging themselves. Some of the children received strategies from the researchers, like covering their eyes or reimagining the treat as something else; others were left to their own devices.
The studies found that in all conditions, some youngsters were far better than others at deploying the strategies — or devising their own — and that this ability seemed to persist at later ages. And context mattered: Children given reason to distrust the researchers tended to grab the treats earlier.

…

In the late 1980s, decades after the first experiments were done, Dr. Mischel and two co-authors followed up with about 100 parents whose children had participated in the original studies. They found a striking, if preliminary, correlation: The preschoolers who could put off eating the treat tended to have higher SAT scores, and were better adjusted emotionally on some measures, than those who had given in quickly to temptation.
The paper was cautious in its conclusions, and acknowledged numerous flaws, including a small sample size. No matter. It was widely reported, and a staple of popular psychology writing was born: If Junior can hold off eating a marshmallow for 15 minutes in preschool, then he or she is headed for the dean’s list.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Geek, Mannix, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 26, 2018.

Sunday, August 26th, 2018

Running a little behind. These are all pretty much just for the hysterical record: they’ve been well covered elsewhere, and I just don’t have a lot to add.

Neil Simon.

John McCain. NYT. WP. Lawrence.

Robin Leach.

Posted in History, Obits, Politics, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 12, 2018.

Tuesday, June 12th, 2018

Eunice Gayson. You may not recognize the name, but you may recognize the face: she was “Sylvia Trench” in “Dr. No”, the very first Bond girl.

After appearing in the Bond films, she acted in television shows, among them two 1960s spy series, “The Saint” (which starred a future James Bond, Roger Moore) and “The Avengers.” She remained a fixture in London theater. Among other productions, she appeared in the comedy “The Grass Is Greener” in 1971 and, in the early ’90s, in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” as the grandmother.

…

In 1953, she married the producer and journalist Leigh Vance on the CBS television show “Bride and Groom,” sponsored by Betty Crocker. The couple were flown to New York for the wedding, and it was chronicled in London’s newspapers. Critics, though, panned the show. The wedding was described in Billboard magazine as an example of bad taste that could “end the British way of life.” The couple divorced in 1959.

I’ve been holding on to this one for a couple of days, because I wasn’t sure if I could note it without coming across as a jerk.

Charlotte Fox passed away on May 24th. She was a mountain climber: she was the first woman to summit Gasherbrum II and Cho Oyu, both over 26,000 feet high.

She also summited Everest, making her the first woman to summit three mountains over 26,000 feet high. More interesting: her Everest summit attempt was during the 1996 expedition chronicled in Into Thin Air.

She was descending from the summit when a rogue storm swept across the mountain with wind chills of 100 degrees below zero. The blizzard, which lasted for hours, had killed eight climbers from four expeditions. Ms. Fox nearly froze to death, but she and others were rescued and evacuated by helicopter.

…

“My eyes were frozen,” she was quoted as saying in “Into Thin Air.” “I didn’t see how we were going to get out of it alive.”
“I didn’t think I could endure it anymore,” she added. “I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly.”

She survived a husband and a boyfriend: one was killed in an avalanche, and the other in a paragliding crash.

I think the death of any survivor of the 1996 expedition would be worthy of note. But this is the part that makes me afraid of sounding like a jerk: Ms. Fox died apparently as a result of a fall in her home.

Returning from dinner, weekend guests discovered her body at the bottom of a 77-step hardwood staircase connecting the four stories of her house on Tomboy Road, which undulates along a mountainside. Her front door is on the top floor.

I guess this is just another reminder that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.

By the way, the paper of record, as far as I can tell, still has not published an obit for Gardner Dozois.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

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