Obit watch: November 8, 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.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2021 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Leadership, Obits, Theatre, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Obit watch: November 8, 2021.”

  1. Jimmy McNulty says:
    November 8, 2021 at 5:42 pm

    I remember ISIS well. Gave Saturday mornings a little different meaning to this then 12 year old. Maybe paganism would be ok, to get a little of that skirt!

  2. RoadRich says:
    November 9, 2021 at 6:37 am

    Rest In Peace, Mighty Isis.

  3. stainles says:
    November 9, 2021 at 9:13 am

    I only have very faint memories of “Isis”, but I was in the single digit age range at the time.

    Also, as I may have mentioned before, my parents believed that Saturday morning was not for cartoons, but that it was a time to put the children to work around the house.