Archive for the ‘Theatre’ Category

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Obit watch: May 19, 2022.

Thursday, May 19th, 2022

Vangelis (Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Chariots of Fire”, “Blade Runner”…

…in the late ’60s, he found success as a member of the Greek rock band Forminx and then with the progressive group Aphrodite’s Child, which had hits with the single “Rain and Tears” in 1968 and the influential album 666 in 1972.
He enjoyed a partnership with Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, and they released four albums as Jon & Vangelis from 1980 through 1991. (He had been asked to join Anderson’s prog rock band in the wake of keyboardist Rick Wakeman’s departure but declined.)

…

His other big-screen work included Costa-Gavras’ Missing (1982), the Japanese film Antarctica (1983), Roger Donaldson’s The Bounty (1984), Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon (1992) and Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004).

How about a musical interlude?

Ray Scott, pioneer of bass fishing as sport.

The idea for a bass fishing tour came to Mr. Scott, then an insurance salesman, when rain cut short a fishing outing with a friend in Jackson, Miss., in 1967. Stuck in his hotel room watching sports on television, he had an epiphany: Why not start the equivalent of the PGA Tour for bass fishing?
He held his first tournament at Beaver Lake, in Arkansas, where 106 anglers paid $100 each to compete over three days for $5,000 in prizes. A second tournament followed that year; in 1968 he formed a membership organization, the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, or BASS.
In 1971, Mr. Scott started what has become known as the Super Bowl of bass fishing: the Bassmaster Classic, his organization’s annual championship tournament, which he paired with a merchandising expo for manufacturers of bass fishing boats and gear.

…

Mr. Scott was the showman of BASS, the umbrella company for tournaments, magazines and television shows. Easily recognized in his cowboy hat and fringed jackets, Mr. Scott memorably served as the M.C. for tournament weigh-ins, entertaining thousands of fans with his exuberant patter as anglers pulled flopping fish out of holding tanks.
“Now, ain’t that a truly wonderful fish?” he asked one tournament crowd. “How many of you want to see more fish like that? C’mon, let’s hear it for that fish!”

NYT obits for Rosmarie Trapp and Sgt. Maj. John L. Canley.

John Aylward, actor. Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “The X-Files”, and “3rd Rock from the Sun”. He also did some theater:

He appeared in stage roles at the Kennedy Center with Kentucky Cycle, and at Lincoln Center with the play City of Conversation. A classically trained actor, Aylward performed everything from Shakespearean roles to farce with plays by Alan Ayckborne, and dramas by David Mamet, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
His standout roles included playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Richard III, Scrooge in Inspecting Carol and Shelley Levine in Glengarry Glen Ross, a role he played twice.

Marnie Schulenburg, actress. (“One Life to Live”, “As the World Turns”) She was only 37, and died from cancer.

Posted in Fish, Music, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 13, 2022.

Friday, May 13th, 2022

Fred Ward. Damn.

Credits include the titular character in “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins”, “Sgt. Hoke Moseley” in “Miami Blues”, “Quincy M.E.”, “Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann”, “Tremors”, “The Right Stuff”, and “Det. Harry Philip Lovecraft” in “Cast A Deadly Spell”.

Bruce MacVittie. Other credits include “Waterfront”, “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Spenser: For Hire” and “The Equalizer”.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, head of state of the U.A.E. As always, don’t look to me for geo-political takes, as I know nothing.

I have not found a good obit yet, but Randy Weaver apparently passed away. Here’s Reason‘s take.

…an FBI sniper opened fire as Randy was entering the cabin. The shot missed Randy and struck Vicki as she was holding their newest daughter, 10-month-old Elisheba. Vicki was killed instantly.

That sniper was Lon Horiuchi. Lon Horiuchi murdered Vicki Weaver.

The RRTF report to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) of June 1994 stated unequivocally in conclusion (in its executive summary) that the rules that allowed the second shot to have been made did not satisfy constitutional standards for legal use of deadly force. The 1996 report of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Arlen Specter [R-PA], chair, concurred, with Senator Dianne Feinstein [D-CA] dissenting. The RRTF report said that the lack of a request by the marshals to the Weavers to surrender was “inexcusable.” Harris and the two Weavers were not believed to be an imminent threat (since they were reported as running for cover without returning fire). 
The later Justice task force criticized Horiuchi for firing through the door, when he did not know if anyone was on the other side of it. While there is a dispute as to who approved the rules of engagement which Horiuchi followed, the task force condemned the rules of engagement that allowed shots to be fired without a request for surrender.

Posted in FBI, Law, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 10, 2022.

Tuesday, May 10th, 2022

Lawrence sent over an obit for James R. Olson. He passed away on April 17th, but I haven’t seen anybody else cover this. (THR put up a story literally as I was writing this.) Which is odd, because he had a pretty interesting career before he retired in 1990.

After serving in the U.S. Army, Olson moved to New York to study in Lee Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio. He subsequently starred in several Broadway productions in the 1950s and 1960s, including J.B. (1958), Romulus (1962), The Three Sisters (1964), and Of Love and Remembrance (1967). He also appeared in numerous touring productions throughout North America.

He also did a lot of TV and movie work. He was another one of those actors who hit the NBC Mystery Movie trifecta: appearances on all three of the original series (“McCloud”, “Columbo”, “McMillan and Wife”). Other credits include “Moon Zero Two”, “The Andromeda Strain”, “The Bold Ones: The Lawyers”, “Lancer”, “Ironside”, “The Rookies”, “Police Story”, “The F.B.I.”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Game Plan“, season 8, episode 2. “Odds Against Donald Jordan“, season 2, episode 21.)

Jack Kehler. Other credits include “Karen Sisco”, “NYPD Blue”, “NCIS: Original Recipe”, “NCIS: Los Angeles”, and something called “The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards”.

Midge Decter.

Ms. Decter was in the forefront of an ideologically evolving generation of public intellectuals. Cutting their teeth on leftist politics in the 1930s and ’40s, they settled into anti-communist liberalism in the 1950s and early ’60s. Jolted by the turbulence of the student and women’s movements, they later broke from liberals to embrace a new form of conservatism — championing traditional social values, limited free-market economics and muscular American foreign policies — that reached its zenith in the early 21st century in the administration of President George W. Bush.
Ms. Decter wielded her influence as editor of Harper’s and other magazines, as an author and book editor, and as a political organizer and frequent speaker.

…

Ms. Decter’s ideological shift in the late ’60s stemmed from a rising concern that she expressed in her 2001 memoir, “An Old Wife’s Tale: My Seven Decades in Love and War.” Liberalism, she said, rather than speaking to the common man and woman as it had in the past, was veering off the tracks into “a general assault in the culture against the way ordinary Americans had come to live.”
She and her husband, the writer and fellow former liberal Norman Podhoretz, worried about the effect the new thinking, particularly that of the counterculture, might have on their children and succeeding generations.

Also by way of Lawrence: Adreian Payne, basketball star at Michigan State.

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

More things I did not know.

Friday, May 6th, 2022

I was reading an article on Damn Interesting the other night, and it set me on a wiki wander.

1. The Damon Runyon Cancer Fund still exists, but it is now known as the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. And it has a four star Charity Navigator rating.

2. You can buy Broadway tickets through the foundation.

How it works: Tickets go on sale on the first business day of each month for performances taking place the following month (for example, our June tickets go on sale May 1). The ticket price is typically twice the box office price, half of which is a tax-deductible donation. You will receive an email voucher to present at the theater box office on the day of the performance.

3. “Runyon died in New York City from throat cancer in late 1946, at age 66. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered from a DC-3 airplane over Broadway in Manhattan by Eddie Rickenbacker on December 18, 1946. This was an infringement of the law, but widely approved.”

I like the way they put that: “an infringement of the law, but widely approved”. (Also: Eddie Rickenbacker for the win.)

4. Jackie Chan’s “Miracles” is an adaptation of “Lady for a Day” and “Pocketful of Miracles” (both directed by Frank Capra), which in turn were based on Runyon’s story “Madame La Gimp”. According to Wikipedia, Chan added “several of his trademark stunt sequences”.

5. I don’t remember the 1980 remake of “Little Miss Marker”, and if I did, it probably would have made me gag when it came out. But: Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis, Julie Andrews, and Bob Newhart?

6. We should probably watch both “A Slight Case of Murder” (Edward G. Robinson!) and “Stop, You’re Killing Me” (the remake with Broderick Crawford and Margaret Dumont).

Posted in History, Movies, Theatre | Comments Closed

Three things I’m kind of looking forward to.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022

1. The Bunk lies down on Broadway.

Wendell Pierce is ready for another run as Willy Loman.
The American actor, best known for his work in “The Wire,” first took on the titanic title role in “Death of a Salesman” in London in 2019, and even then he hungered to bring the performance to New York.

Rod Dreher and his family saw the London production, and he raved about it. This might actually be enough to get me to go to NYC. (Also, Mike the Musicologist and Andrew the Colossus of Roads were talking about Peter Luger on Saturday, and I’d like to take a shot at that.)

2.

(The Last Dangerous Visions explained, for those of my readers who are not SF fans.)

3. There’s a movie tentatively scheduled for February 2023. It sounds like trash, but fun trash.

Cocaine Bear follows an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of the white powder and goes on a coke-fueled rampage seeking more blow — and blood.

That’s right, a movie inspired by the true story of Cocaine Bear. How can you not be entertained?

Posted in Beef, Books, Food, Mammals, Movies, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 3, 2022.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022

I know this sounds like the setup to a joke, but it isn’t: Ric Parnell has passed away.

Mr. Parnell was perhaps best known as “Mick Shrimpton”, one of Spinal Tap’s many drummers.

Parnell played in multiple bands, including Horse, Atomic Rooster, Nova and Stars. He claimed he declined invitations to play in Journey and Whitesnake, but is credited with playing drums on Toni Basil’s song “Hey Mickey” in 1981.

David Birney.

Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”
Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.

…

Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.

He also did a lot of TV work, including a recurring role on the first season of “St. Elsewhere”. Credits other than “Bridget Loves Bernie” include one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, “FBI: The Untold Stories”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, Serpico on the “Serpico” TV series, “McMillan & Wife”, and “The F.B.I.”

Ron Galella, photographer and historical footnote. He was one of the early “paparazzi” – indeed, it seems to me that he was one before the term came into common use.

He was perhaps most famous for relentlessly photographing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Mrs. Onassis waged a running court battle with him throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, testifying in one court hearing that he had made her life “intolerable, almost unlivable, with his constant surveillance.” Mr. Galella in turn claimed the right to earn a living by taking pictures of famous people in public places.
In 1972, a judge ordered him to keep 25 feet away from Mrs. Onassis and 30 feet away from her children. A decade later, facing jail time for violating the order — hundreds of times — Mr. Galella agreed never to take another picture of them. And he never did.

…

Reviewing “Smash His Camera,” a 2010 documentary about Mr. Galella, the critic Roger Ebert articulated the ambivalence many felt toward him, whether or not they knew the name of the photographer behind the memorable pictures he took. “I disapproved of him,” Mr. Ebert said, “and enjoyed his work.”

Posted in 1970s, History, Law, Movies, Obits, Photography, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 21, 2022.

Thursday, April 21st, 2022

Robert Morse, actor. THR. Other credits include “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (both the Broadway musical and the film version), “Night Gallery”, “Trapper John, M.D.”, “Wild Palms”, the 1985 “Twilight Zone” revival, and a short called “Why I Live at the P.O.” based on the Eudora Welty story.

Dede Robertson, Pat Robertson’s wife.

CNN+. NYT

Posted in Media, Movies, Obits, Religion, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 7, 2022.

Thursday, April 7th, 2022

Eric Boehlert.

A frequent commentator on television and radio, as well as a prolific writer, Mr. Boehlert never shied away from searing critiques of what he saw as bias in the mainstream press and the circular impact of media on politics.
After more than a decade as a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, Mr. Boehlert had in recent years started his own newsletter, Press Run, as a vehicle for his commentary.

According to reports, he was hit by a train while bicycling.

Justice John Michalski, “an acting justice of the [New York] State Supreme Court”.

But last month, Justice Michalski came under renewed scrutiny, and his cases were once again reassigned, after federal and state investigators raided his home. He had not been charged with any crime, but he had drawn the authorities’ attention because of his ties to Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of a strip club in Cheektowaga, another Buffalo suburb.
Mr. Gerace was charged in federal court in Florida last year with sex trafficking, drug distribution and bribery of a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent. He denies the charges, and the case has since been transferred to the Western District of New York.
The former agent, Joseph Bongiovanni, has been charged with bribery, obstruction and conspiracy. An indictment detailing the charges against the two men says that Mr. Bongiovanni’s associates included people “he believed to be members of, connected to or associated with” organized crime.
Another man identified in the indictment as having links to organized crime is Michael Masecchia, a longtime Buffalo schoolteacher now facing up to life in prison after pleading guilty to gun and drug charges.

According to reports, the judge committed suicide. He had tried to kill himself last year on the same day Mr. Gerace was indicted.

Rae Allen, actress. Other credits include “Lou Grant”, “Soap”, and “The Untouchables”.

Posted in Cycling, Law, Obits, Theatre, Trains, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 9, 2022.

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

Conrad Janis, jazz musician and actor.

“Conrad Janis Is Glad to Live Three Lives,” the headline on a 1962 Newsday article read. At the time he was starring in the romantic comedy “Sunday in New York” on Broadway and, after the Friday and Saturday night performances, playing trombone with his group, the Tailgate 5, at Central Plaza in Manhattan. (On Sundays he’d trek to Brooklyn to play at the club Caton Corner.) When not onstage or on the bandstand, he could often be found at his father’s art gallery.
Sixteen years later he found himself on one of the most popular shows on television when he was cast on “Mork & Mindy,” which premiered in September 1978, as the father of Mindy (Pam Dawber), a Colorado woman who befriends an eccentric alien (Robin Williams). On Sundays during this period, he played in the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band at the Ginger Man, a club in Beverly Hills, Calif., whose owners included Carroll O’Connor of “All in the Family.”

…

In the movies, he played alongside some famous names: Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple in the notoriously bad “That Hagen Girl” (1947), Charlton Heston and other prominent stars in “Airport 1975” (1974), Lynn Redgrave in “The Happy Hooker” (1975), George Burns in “Oh God! Book II” (1980).
He was on television from the medium’s earliest days, playing numerous roles in the late 1940s and ’50s, many of them on shows like “Suspense,” “Actor’s Studio” and “The Philco Television Playhouse” that were broadcast live. Some of those roles took advantage of his familiarity with musical instruments.

Among other credits, he did a few cop shows: “Baretta”, “Banacek”, “Cannon”. And he was a regular (“Palindrome”) on “Quark”.

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

Obit watch: January 21, 2022.

Friday, January 21st, 2022

Marvin Lee Aday, also known as “Meat Loaf”. THR. NYPost. IMDB.

(I can’t confirm it now, but I remember a legend that the NYT did a story about Meat Loaf…and, as is their custom on second and subsequent reference, referred to him as “Mr. Loaf”.)

Edited to add 1/22: Since I posted this obit, the NYT has added a note to their coverage discussing the “Mr. Loaf” story. They assert it is not true. And apparently he preferred to be called “Meat”:

In 1971, Meat Loaf was cast in the Los Angeles production of the musical “Hair.” He later joined the original LA Roxy cast of “The Rocky Horror Show” in 1973, playing the parts of Eddie and Dr. Everett Scott. After the success of the musical, Meat Loaf was asked to reprise his role as Eddie in the 1975 film adaptation, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which became one of the most beloved cult films of all time.

Later, Mr. Steinman was trying to write a post-apocalyptic musical based on “Peter Pan,” but, unable to secure the rights for the tale, he turned the work into “Bat Out of Hell,” bringing in Meat Loaf to give the songs the style and energy that made them hits. The title track alone is a mini-opera in itself, clocking in at nearly 10 minutes and featuring numerous musical breakdowns. The album’s seven tracks also included the songs “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”

In 2013, he told The Guardian that he was definitely retiring from music after another farewell tour. “I’ve had 18 concussions,” he said. “My balance is off. I’ve had a knee replacement. I’ve got to have the other one replaced.” He wanted to “concentrate more on acting,” he added, since “that’s where I started and that’s where I’ll finish.”

…

According to his autobiography, Meat Loaf was born on Sep. 27, 1947, but news reports of his age varied over the years. In 2003, he showed a reporter from The Guardian newspaper a passport featuring a birth date of 1951 and later said about the discrepancy, “I just continually lie.”

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 14, 2022.

Friday, January 14th, 2022

Terry Teachout, critic, blogger, playwright, cultural commentator, and biographer, passed away yesterday.

“About Last Night” blog. WSJ (through archive.is). National Review.

I wrote briefly about him and his blog when his wife died. I was still an irregular follower – I tried to check in once a week – but I knew he had found a new love and was excited about that. This seems especially unfair.

On Twitter, he described himself as a “critic, biographer, playwright, director, unabashed Steely Dan fan, ardent philosemite.”

Though he led a sophisticated life of culture in New York, Mr. Teachout retained some of his small-town earnestness. “I still wear plaid shirts and think in Central Standard Time,” he wrote in his memoir. “I still eat tuna casserole with potato chips on top and worry about whether the farmers back home will get enough rain this year.”

I never met Mr. Teachout, though I would have liked to. He seems like one of those good decent people whose passing leaves a void in the world.

Edited to add: tribute from Rod Dreher.

Posted in Art, Books, Media, Music, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 22, 2021.

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021

Sally Ann Howes.

She was most famous as “Truly Scrumptious” in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. She did some TV work, including “Mission: Impossible” and “Run For Your Life”.

She also did a fair amount of theater:

Ms. Howes moved to New York in 1958 when she married the composer-lyricist Richard Adler and made her Broadway debut in Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady.” She replaced the original star, Julie Andrews, in the role of Eliza Doolittle, the smudged Cockney flower girl who is transformed by the demanding speech lessons of Professor Henry Higgins to a radiant lady from a draggletailed guttersnipe.

…

Ms. Howes toured Britain in 1973 in “The King and I,” and the United States in 1978 in “The Sound of Music.” In the 1970s and 1980s, she sang operettas like “Blossom Time” and “The Merry Widow” in American regional theaters. A half-century after her triumph as Eliza Doolittle, Ms. Howes toured the United States in 2007 in “My Fair Lady,” playing Mrs. Higgins, the mother of Henry Higgins. It was her 64th year in show business.

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

Obit watch: November 27, 2021.

Saturday, November 27th, 2021

Stephen Sondheim. THR (I love the Meryl Streep “don’t f–k it up” story). Variety.

I am not the person who should be writing this. I am hoping that the person who should be writing this will send me something I can use here.

But what little I know about musical theater, I know because Mike the Musicologist introduced me to it…by playing me lots of Sondheim’s work.

NYT interview conducted last Sunday. It sounds like he was in full possession of his facilities until the end, and didn’t have any more complaints than the average 91 year old would.

MtM sent me this last night. I confess, I haven’t watched all of it yet (it is over two hours). But: this is the complete original production of “Pacific Overtures“, recorded on June 9, 1976 for broadcast in Japan.

“Pacific is, I think, the least appreciated of Sondheim’s shows, and is probably his most brilliant one.”

I often say, when people die, that the world is a smaller, colder, lesser place. I mean that: there are people whose contributions are so great or important or enlightening or just so much damn fun that, when they die, they leave a hole in the world. Richard Feynman. Ricky Jay. Stephen Sondheim.

Posted in Music, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 17, 2021.

Wednesday, November 17th, 2021

Still playing catch up on obits. Please to excuse the shortness here.

Terence Wilson, of UB40.

Graeme Edge, of the Moody Blues.

Clifford Rose, noted actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also did some movie and TV work, including “Doctor Who”.

Geir Vegar Hoel, Norwegian actor. Lawrence and I knew him from “Dead Snow“, a fun little horror movie about Nazi zombies.

Posted in Movies, Music, Nazis, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 8, 2021.

Monday, November 8th, 2021

Camille Saviola, actress.

Onstage, she was best known for originating the role of Mama Maddelena, a spa manager, in the original production of “Nine,” the Arthur Kopit-Maury Yeston musical about a film director having a midlife crisis, which opened on Broadway in May 1982 and ran for almost two years. She was featured in a comic number, “The Germans at the Spa.”
But she wasn’t limited to comedy. In 2005, for instance, she starred in a production of “Mother Courage and Her Children,” Bertolt Brecht’s famed antiwar play, in Pasadena, Calif.

She also did some TV and movie work, including multiple appearances on a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.

JoAnna Cameron. Lots of TV work as well, including “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Columbo”, and most famously, “Isis” on the Saturday morning series.

Aaron Feuerstein. Some of you may remember him from 1995, when he was in the news.

Mr. Feuerstein owned Malden Mills, which made Polartec fabric.

Then, on the night of Dec. 11, 1995, a boiler in one of the factory’s five hulking plants exploded. The shock wave knocked out the state-of-the-art sprinkler system Mr. Feuerstein had just installed, and 45-mile-an-hour winds blew the ensuing fire to three other buildings. The blaze burned for 16 hours, injuring more than 30 workers.
Three days later, most of the plant’s 1,400 workers lined up to receive their paychecks, figuring it might be their last from Malden Mills. Mr. Feuerstein joined them. He handed out holiday bonuses and then announced an even greater gift: He would immediately reopen as much of the plant as he could, replace the buildings he had lost and continue to pay the idled workers for a month — a promise he later extended twice.
Working nonstop, he and his workers got the surviving building, the finishing plant, back in operation just one week later. Mr. Feuerstein bought an empty factory nearby to hold new equipment. By the first weeks of January, hundreds of his employees were back at work. And just 20 months later he opened a gleaming new $130 million complex.

…

But no good deed goes unpunished, and Mr. Feuerstein’s rebuilding efforts left Malden Mills saddled with debt, even as Polartec sales soared in the late 1990s. In 2001 the company went into bankruptcy; it emerged, two years later, with a restructuring plan that stripped Mr. Feuerstein of his management roles. His attempt to buy the company back was rejected by the new board, and he left in 2004.

…

Malden Mills did not survive long after Mr. Feuerstein left. The new owners moved Polartec production to New Hampshire and Tennessee in the late 2000s, and in December 2015 — on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the fire — announced that the factory would close at the end of the year.

Posted in Leadership, Obits, Theatre, TV | 3 Comments »

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