Tag: Dies

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Politics

Bo, the Obamas’ Portuguese Water Canine, Dies

Bo, the Obamas’ Portuguese Water Dog, Dies

Bo, the Portuguese water dog who became the President’s first pet to riot in the Halls of Power at the Obama White House, died on Saturday.

Bo, who was 12 years old, had cancer, Michelle Obama said on Instagram. President Barack Obama said the family has lost “a true friend and companion”.

“Bo has been a constant, gentle presence in our lives for over a decade – happy to see us on our good days, our bad days, and every day in between,” wrote Obama on Twitter.

“He tolerated all the excitement of staying at the White House, had a big bark but no bite, liked to jump into the pool in summer, was unwavering with kids, lived for junk at the dining table, and had great hair. ”

Bo arrived at the White House in April 2009 as a 6-month-old puppy, a gift from Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his wife Victoria to their first children Malia and Sasha Obama.

The girls named the dog Bo because their cousins ​​had a cat of the same name and because Mrs. Obama’s father was nicknamed Diddley after the musician Bo Diddley.

The dog was an instant object of national fascination, the youngest in a long line of four-footed White House residents that included the Beagles of President Lyndon B. Johnson, him and her, the King Charles Spaniel of President Ronald Reagan, Rex and that of President Bill Clinton included Cat, Socks, and President George W. Bush’s Scottish Terrier Barney.

President Biden resumed the tradition with his two German Shepherds, Champ and Major, in January after President Donald J. Trump’s tenure ended as the first in decades without pets living in the residence. Major was recently sent off for training after a series of biting episodes.

Bo was known to frolic outside the White House press corps on South Lawn, barking at press conferences, and attracting fan mail from children across the country.

He also posed with his tongue out for an official White House portrait and was the subject of a children’s book, Bo, America’s Commander on a Leash, written by Naren Aryal and illustrated by Danny Moore.

In 2013, Bo was joined by a second Portuguese water dog, Sunny, at the White House after Ms. Obama said Bo needed more interaction with other dogs.

Ms. Obama said, although Bo was originally intended to be a companion for Malia and Sasha, “We had no idea how much he would mean to all of us.”

She said the dog had been a “constant comforting presence in our lives” and strolled into her offices “as if he owned the place, a ball clamped in his teeth.”

He was there for the traditional Easter egg roll on the South Lawn and when the Pope came to visit she said.

After Malia and Sasha went to college, Bo helped the couple get used to life as empty nests, said Ms. Obama in a post on Instagram signed “Michelle, Barack, Malia, Sasha and Sunny”.

“Last year, no one was happier than Bo when everyone was home during the pandemic,” she wrote. “All his people were under one roof again – just like the day we got him.”

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Entertainment

Tawny Kitaen, Star of 1980s Music Movies, Dies at 59

Tawny Kitaen, Star of 1980s Music Videos, Dies at 59

Tawny Kitaen, an actress best known for her roles in rock music videos in the 1980s and starring with Tom Hanks in the movie Bachelor Party, died Friday at her home in Newport Beach, California. She was 59 years old.

Ms. Kitaen’s death was confirmed by a daughter, Wynter Finley, who said the cause was unknown.

Ms. Kitaen became a mainstay of MTV in the 1980s when the network had its greatest cultural influence with music videos that played all day.

With her flowing red hair and acrobatic moves, Ms. Kitaen appeared in videos for bands like Whitesnake and Ratt and looked both sultry and playful. She danced on the hood of a white Jaguar in the Whitesnake music video “Here I Go Again” and graced the cover of Ratt’s 1984 album “Out of the Cellar”.

Julie Kitaen was born in San Diego on August 5, 1961. She studied ballet and gymnastics until she was 15. After appearing in a Jack LaLanne commercial, as well as television shows and films, she was best known as Mr. Hanks’ fiancée in the 1984 comedy Bachelor Party.

But it was her appearance on music videos that cemented her image in Generation X’s imagination as a free-spirited beauty who had the time of her life.

She once described working with Paula Abdul on the set of a video.

Ms. Abdul, then a choreographer, asked her what she could do. Ms. Kitaen said she showed Ms. Abdul some of her moves. Ms. Abdul then turned to director Marty Callner and said, “She has that and doesn’t need me.” Then she left, said Mrs. Kitaen.

“That was the biggest compliment,” she said. “So I got in the cars and Marty said ‘Action’ and I did what I wanted.”

She married Whitesnake front man David Coverdale in 1989 and the couple divorced two years later. In 1997 she married Chuck Finley, a major league baseball pitcher. They had two daughters, Wynter and Raine. The couple divorced in 2002.

Ms. Kitaen later appeared on reality shows and spoke openly about her struggles with addiction to cocaine and pain medication.

In a 2010 interview with The Daily Pilot, she described her volunteering work at a women’s shelter that had abandoned abusive relationships and said she herself was a domestic violence survivor. Ms. Kitaen said that after her divorce from Mr. Finley, she became involved with a man who was physically and verbally abusive.

“You don’t want to tell anyone because if you stay you will feel like an idiot – you are protecting them,” she said. “You do everything you can to keep other people from finding out that he is abusing you.”

Michael Goldberg, Ms. Kitaen’s agent, said she had appeared on various podcasts and radio shows over the past few years and enjoyed talking about her time as a character in rock history.

“People still love hearing these stories because the rock and roll lifestyle is something we all dream of, right?” he said. “And she lived it. And had so much to say. “

Ms. Kitaen is survived by her two daughters and a brother and a sister.

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Business

David Swensen, Who Revolutionized Endowment Investing, Dies at 67

David Swensen, Who Revolutionized Endowment Investing, Dies at 67

Other money managers studying at universities have sought advice from Mr. Swensen. He always suggested that they keep their offices on campus if possible, and he was sensitive to issues that the students had brought up, like climate change. The students continued to press Yale to take a stronger stance on the matter.

Mr Swensen acknowledged that greenhouse gas emissions are a serious threat and urged managers to consider the financial risks of climate change, especially when the government imposes carbon taxes. The investment bureau recently estimated that 2.6 percent of foundations are invested in fossil fuel producers, a multi-year low, and expects the decline to continue.

In 2018, Swensen said Yale would not invest in outlets that sell assault weapons. Most recently, he encouraged foundations to employ more women and members of minorities.

Over the years he has served as a trustee or advisor to a variety of institutions including the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Corporation, Courtauld Institute of Art, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Mr. Swensen’s first marriage to Susan Foster ended in divorce. In addition to Mrs. McMahon, three children survive from his first marriage, Alexander Swensen, Timothy Swensen and Victoria Coleman; his mother Grace; two brothers, Stephen and Daniel; three sisters, Linda Haefemeyer, Carolyn Popp, and Jane Swensen; and two grandchildren. He lived in Killingworth, Conn.

Mr. Swensen was just as concerned about the small investor as he was about his talent. In his book, Unconventional Success: A Basic Approach to Personal Investing (1995), he advised people to keep their costs low and stick to exchange-traded funds that invest across an entire stock index, rather than investing with money managers or mutual funds who pick individual stocks and where costs can reduce profits. It is virtually impossible for the average investor to get into the best private funds, he said.

Alex Traub contributed to the coverage.

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Entertainment

Vira Sathidar, Cultural Determine Who Fought India’s Caste System, Dies at 62

Vira Sathidar, Cultural Figure Who Fought India’s Caste System, Dies at 62

This obituary is part of a series about people who died from the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

NEW DELHI – Vira Sathidar played the role of a protest singer caught up in India’s frustrating legal system in Court, a 2014 film that won awards in India and around the world. Still, Mr. Sathidar, a lifelong injustice activist with little screen experience, was uncomfortable calling himself an actor.

Acting, he said, was just another tool in the protest toolbox – besides organizing, pamphleting, editing, writing poetry, and singing.

“Singing and dancing were a weapon of our struggle,” he once said. “It still is.”

Mr Sathidar died on April 13 in a hospital in Nagpur, Maharashtra state, as a result of Covid-19, said his son Ravan. He was 62 years old.

Mr. Sathidar agitated against the deeply rooted caste system in India, under which the lowest – its Dalits or Untouchables – are systematically abused. A high school dropout, he wrote books and articles, edited magazines, and organized street performances. For a short time he ran a bookcase. He was the head of the Maharashtra Chapter of the Confederation of Human Rights Organizations.

“It was a living library,” said his friend Nihal Singh Rathod, “about political science, about social science.”

Vira Sathidar was born on June 7, 1958 in the village of Parsodi near Nagpur, the son of Rauf and Gangubai Sathidar. His father, a farmer, was a staunch supporter of BR Ambedkar, one of India’s most influential thinkers and political figures. Mr. Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, was part of the Indian independence movement and played a central role in drafting the constitution for the future republic. He was also a tireless opponent of the caste system, and Mr. Sathidar often cited his influence to set him on the path to activism.

Mr. Sathidar said his father wanted him to be a scholar. But he was a distracted student and left school after 10th grade to work in a cotton thread mill.

Mr. Sathidar’s activism began when he was a union organizer at the mill. In the 1990s he worked with the radical Maoist movement called the Naxalites.

He went underground for a while but became disillusioned. His friend Pradeep Maitra, the Nagpur correspondent for the Hindustan Times, said in an interview: “He was disappointed with the Naxal movement because it emphasized the classless society and ignored the Ambedkar notion of casteless society.”

Together with his son, Mr. Sathidar, who lived in Nagpur, his wife Pushpa Viplav Sathidar and three brothers and a sister survive.

Mr. Sathidar became more widely perceived after the “court”, an investigation into the injustices that India’s labyrinthine legal system perpetuates against the marginalized. The director Chaitanya Tamhane was looking for a cast of largely unprofessional actors.

For months, his team made casting calls in several states, trying to recruit theater groups and street performers. He struggled to star, Narayan Kamble, a Dalit protest singer and poet accused of performing songs that caused a sewer worker in Mumbai to commit suicide.

Understand India’s Covid Crisis

Then Mr. Tamhane discovered Mr. Sathidar through a group of activists. He threw it just before filming began.

“I thought they would include me in the film because they couldn’t find a good actor or didn’t have enough budget,” Sathidar said in a video interview. He said he was impressed with how much his character Narayan looked like him.

“He worked in a factory, I worked in a factory,” said Mr Sathidar. “He writes articles, I also write articles. He’s an editor, I’m an editor too. He works in a union, I also work in a union. He sings songs, I also sing songs. He’s going to jail; I’ve also been to jail many times. His house is being raided, my house is being raided too. “

“What he shows is my life,” said Mr. Sathidar. “What surprised me was that he wrote all of this without meeting me.”

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Entertainment

Nancy Lassalle, Longtime Promoter of Ballet, Dies at 93

Nancy Lassalle, Longtime Promoter of Ballet, Dies at 93

Nancy Lassalle, a longtime patron of the New York Ballet and its School of American Ballet, died on April 26 at her Manhattan home. She was 93 years old.

The death was confirmed by her daughter Honor Lassalle.

As a teenager, Ms. Lassalle attended the young ballet academy founded by George Balanchine and now the School of American Ballet. She wasn’t meant to be a ballerina – she was too big and too scratchy, her daughter said – but she loved the dance and mission of Balanchine and his collaborator Lincoln Kirstein. She became a lifelong patroness of ballet and a tireless promoter of Balanchine’s legacy.

She was a founding member of the boards of the city ballet and the SAB, as the school is called. She organized numerous exhibitions and events for the company, including the centenary celebrations for Mr. Kirstein in 2007.

“She was the ultimate board member,” said Albert Bellas, SAB chairman emeritus. “She was financially supportive, knowledgeable, and dedicated.”

She was also in daily, touring with the company and giving parties for the dancers in her Fifth Avenue apartment, said Kay Mazzo, who was once a solo dancer with City Ballet and now heads the school’s faculty.

“Because she was an early student at the school, she understood what Mr. Balanchine and Mr. Kirstein had in mind,” said Ms. Mazzo. “She has kept her ideals and made sure that the school stays on course over the years.”

Ms. Lassalle was editor with Leslie George Katz and Harvey Simmonds of “Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalog of Works,” which was first published in 1983 by Eakins Press. She was also the editor of Lincoln Kirstein: A First Bibliography. (1978). In 2016, her photographs of Balanchine, who taught a two-day master class in 1961, were published as “Balanchine Teaching”, also by Eakins.

“She was a demanding person, which could be frustrating,” said Peter Kayafas, editor and director of Eakins Press. “There was a time when I was much younger when it was difficult to have a conversation with Nancy without her correcting my grammar. And then came a time when that stopped. “Not because she was tired of the exercise, Mr. Kayafas added,” It’s like I finally learned my lessons. Whenever Nancy was around, the bar was raised. “

Alastair Macaulay, former chief dance critic for the New York Times, wrote in a social media post: “The dance world has a number of generous donors, but there was one in Nancy who combined acute intelligence with a unique devotion to the two visionaries whose work she discovered in her own youth: Balanchine and Kirstein. “

Last year, the SAB launched the Lassalle Cultural Program, which allows older students to explore ballet history and gain free access to New York cultural institutions. When she died, Ms. Lassalle was the emeritus director of the city ballet and the school.

Born a privileged child in New York City on November 10, 1927, Nancy Norman grew up in a eclectic modernist townhouse filled with contemporary photography, pre-Columbian art, and a steady stream of guests, including notable figures of post-war America Culture like Alfred Stieglitz, Aaron Copland, Allen Ginsberg and Ralph Ellison. Her mother, Dorothy Norman, was a photographer, newspaper columnist, and promoter of the arts, and an advocate for social justice and political causes. Mr. Stieglitz was her mother’s mentor and lover. Her father Edward Norman was a son of a founder of Sears Roebuck.

Ms. Lassalle attended Dalton School and the Balanchine Dance School at the age of 14. Her classmates included ballerinas Patricia McBride Lousada, founding member of City Ballet, and Tanaquil Le Clercq, Balanchine’s muse and fourth wife. The three were lifelong friends.

In addition to her daughter Honor, Mrs. Lassalle survived another daughter, Diana Lassalle Turner; one son, Philip Lassalle; and five grandchildren. Her marriage to Edmundo Lassalle ended in divorce.

In 1991 Ms. Lassalle was cast by Jerome Robbins in the lead role of Mother Goose in a bizarre children’s ballet. (It wasn’t a dancing part: As Jennifer Dunning wrote in the New York Times, she was sitting in a chair on the stage when the curtain opened and dancers were spread around her.) It was a gesture that took her place in the Embodied ballet community. Ms. Mazzo said and she loved doing it.

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Entertainment

Jacques d’Amboise, an Early Male Star of Metropolis Ballet, Dies at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, an Early Male Star of City Ballet, Dies at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, who broke stereotypes about male dancers when he helped popularize ballet in America and became one of the most respected male stars in New York Ballet, died Sunday at his Manhattan home. He was 86 years old.

His daughter, actress and dancer Charlotte d’Amboise, said the cause was complications from a stroke.

Mr. d’Amboise embodied the ideal of a purely American style that combined the nonchalant elegance of Fred Astaire with the classicism of the Danseur nobleman. He was the first male star to emerge from the City Ballet’s School of American Ballet, joining the company’s corps in 1949 at the age of 15. Its extensive presence and versatility were central to the company’s identity in the first few decades.

He had choreographed 24 roles and became the lead interpreter of the title role in George Balanchine’s seminal “Apollo” before leaving the company in 1984, a few months before his 50th birthday. He has also choreographed 17 works for the city ballet, as well as many pieces for the students of the National Dance Institute, a program he founded and directed.

The energy, athleticism, infectious smile of Mr. d’Amboise (which critic Arlene Croce once likened to that of the Cheshire Cat), and the appeal of a boy next door made him popular with audiences and made ballet more attractive to boys in a world of tutus and pink toe shoes.

He also helped bring the ballet to a wider audience, danced on Ed Sullivan’s show (then called “Toast of the Town”), played important roles in several film musicals from the 1950s, including “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and ” Carousel “, and has appeared in appealing” Americana “ballets such as Lew Christensen’s” Gas Station “and Balanchine’s” Who Cares? ” In the early 1980s he directed, choreographed and wrote a number of dance films.

Although Mr. d’Amboise was never seen as a virtuoso dancer, his repertoire was demanding and extraordinarily broad, ranging from the princely “Apollo” to the daring head cowboy of Balanchine’s “Western Symphony”. He was one of the company’s best partners, including the cavalier of ballerinas Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent and Suzanne Farrell.

Mr. d’Amboise, Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times in 1976, “is not just a dancer, he is an institution.”

Mr. d’Amboise was astonished when Balanchine invited him to the City Ballet in 1949, one year after the start of the first season. He was 15 years old. “I can’t do it, I have to finish school,” he recalled in his autobiography of “I was a dancer” (2011). His father advised him to become a stage worker, but his mother loved the idea and Mr d’Amboise left school to dance professionally, as did his sister Madeleine, who was known professionally as Ninette d’Amboise.

Although Balanchine was generally more interested in creating roles for his dancers than his male performers, Mr. d’Amboise identified with many of the key roles Balanchine played in ballets such as “Western Symphony” (1954), “Stars and Stripes” ( 1958), “Jewels” (1967), “Who Cares” (1970) and “Robert Schumanns Davidsbundlertanze” (1980). Early in his career, he also created roles in ballets by John Cranko and Frederick Ashton, and received praise for this. (“Balanchine was upset” with the Cranko Commission, he wrote in his autobiography.)

In a 2018 interview, urban ballet dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring described the qualities that Mr. d’Amboise embodied as a dancer: “There is this machismo that is sometimes needed on stage – this bravery, this boasting, this self-confidence and us all I have to learn to cultivate this and yet it is a huge canon of work. There are poets and dreamers and animals in it. Jacques reminds us that all of this can be contained in one body. “

Mr. d’Amboise was born Joseph Jacques Ahearn on July 28, 1934 in Dedham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, to Andrew and Georgiana (d’Amboise) Ahearn. His father’s parents were immigrants from Galway, Ireland; his mother was French-Canadian. In search of work, his parents moved the family to New York City, where his father found a job as an elevator operator at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The family settled in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. To keep Jacques, as he was called, off the streets, when he was 7 years old, his mother and sister Madeleine enrolled him in Madam Seda’s ballet class on 181st Street.

After six months, the siblings moved to the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934 by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Energetic and athletic, Jacques immediately faced the physical challenges of ballet. After less than a year he was selected by Balanchine for the role of Puck in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

In his autobiography, he wrote of how his mother’s decision had changed his life: “What an extraordinary thing for a street boy with gang friends. Half grew up cops and half grew up gangsters – and I became a ballet dancer! “

In 1946 his mother persuaded his father to change the family name from Ahearn to d’Amboise. Her explanation, wrote Mr. d’Amboise in “I was a dancer”, was that the name was aristocratic and French and “sounds better for ballet”.

After joining City Ballet, Mr. d’Amboise soon danced solo roles, including starring in Lew Christensen’s “Filling Station,” which led to an invitation from film director Stanley Donen to join the cast of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” (1954).

In 1956 he married the soloist of the city ballet Carolyn George, who died in 2009. In addition to his daughter Charlotte, his two sons George and Christopher, a choreographer and former main dancer of the city ballet, survive. another daughter, Catherine d’Amboise (she and Charlotte are twins); and six grandchildren. Two brothers and his sister died before him.

Mr. d’Amboise starred in two films in 1956 – “Carousel” alongside Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones and Michael Curtiz’s “The Best Things In Life Are Free”. But he remained committed to ballet and balanchine.

“People said, ‘You could be the next Gene Kelly,” said Mr. d’Amboise in a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I didn’t know if I could act, but I knew I was a great ballet dancer could be, and Balanchine laid the carpet for me. “

His faith was rewarded when Balanchine revived his “Apollo” in 1957, the ballet that marked his first collaboration with Igor Stravinsky in 1928, and cast Mr. d’Amboise in the title role. For this production, Balanchine took off the original, elaborate costumes and dressed Mr. d’Amboise in tights and a simple scarf over one shoulder.

It was a turning point in his career; Dancing, wrote Mr d’Amboise, “became so much more interesting, an odyssey towards your Excellency.” The role, he felt, was also his story, as Balanchine had explained to him: “A wild, untamed youth learns nobility through art.”

For the next 27 years, Mr. d’Amboise continued to be a strong member of the city ballet, creating roles and appearing in some of Balanchine’s major ballets, including Concerto Barocco, Meditation, Violin Concerto and Movements for piano and violin . “

Encouraged by Balanchine, he also choreographed regularly for the company, although the reviews of his work have mostly been lukewarm. In his autobiography, he wrote that both Balanchine and Kirstein had assured him that one day he would lead the city ballet, but Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins took over the company after Balanchine’s death in 1983.

Mr d’Amboise appeared to have resigned himself to this result: he withdrew from the performance the next year and turned to the National Dance Institute, which brings dance to public schools, which he founded in 1976.

The institute grew out of the Saturday morning ballet class for boys that Mr d’Amboise began to teach in 1964, motivated by the desire that his two sons learn to dance without being the only boys in the class. The classes were expanded to include girls and moved to numerous public schools.

Now the goal is to offer free courses to everyone, regardless of the child’s background or ability. Today the institute teaches thousands of New York City children ages 9-14 and is affiliated with 13 dance institutes around the world. The Harlem-based institute where Mr d’Amboise lived was featured in Emile Ardolino’s 1983 Oscar winning documentary “He Makes Me Feel Like a Dancer”.

“That second chapter brought something more fulfilling than my career as an individual artist,” wrote Mr d’Amboise in his autobiography. He told the story of a little boy who, after many attempts, had succeeded in mastering a dance sequence: “He was on the way to discovering that he could take control of his body and learn from it to take control of his life . “

For his contribution to arts education, Mr. d’Amboise has received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990, a Kennedy Honors Award in 1995, and a New York Governor’s Award, among others.

He saw himself as a dancer all his life, but was also a passionate New Yorker. When asked in a 2018 article in The Times that he wanted his ashes scattered, he replied, “Spread me out in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”

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Entertainment

Olympia Dukakis, Oscar Winner for ‘Moonstruck,’ Dies at 89

Olympia Dukakis, Oscar Winner for ‘Moonstruck,’ Dies at 89

Olympia Dukakis, the confident, croaking actress who often played world-weary and worldly characters and won an Oscar for her role as such a woman in “Moonstruck”, died on Saturday at her Manhattan home. She was 89 years old.

Her death was announced by her brother, actor Apollo Dukakis, who said she was in hospice care.

Ms. Dukakis was 56 years old and an East Coast veteran of three decades when she starred in John Patrick Shanley’s “Moonstruck” (1987), a romantic comedy about a young Italian-American widow, Loretta Castorini (played by Cher), the life of a young woman it is turned upside down when she falls in love with her fiancé’s brother (Nicolas Cage). Ms. Dukakis stole scene after scene as Rose, Loretta’s sardonic mother, who saw the world clearly and advised accordingly.

“Do you love him, Loretta?” she asks her daughter, referring to the boring fiance. When Loretta says no, Rose replies, “Good. When you love them they drive you crazy because they know they can. “

The role earned Ms. Dukakis the 1988 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (Cher also won) and a host of other awards – that same year her cousin Michael Dukakis won the Democratic President nomination. The price resulted in more film roles.

She played a crazy southern widow in the mostly female cast of “Steel Magnolias” (1989); the mother of Kirstie Alley’s character in the three “Look Who’s Talking” films (1989-93); the growing transgender landlady of San Francisco, Anna Madrigal, from 1993 to 2019 in the four TV miniseries from Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” stories; and Frank Sinatra’s mother Dolly in the 1992 television movie “Sinatra”.

That was a far cry from her first mature roles. At the age of 40 she had played the mother of 36-year-old Joseph Bologna in “Made for Each Other” (1971), and at 38 she was the mother of 32-year-old Dustin Hoffman in “John and Mary” (1969).

“I’ve always played older,” she told the New York Times in 2004. “I think it was the voice.”

She played different ages on the stage where her career began. And in a way, she owed it all to Nora Ephron.

Updated

April 26, 2021 at 12:32 AM ET

Ms. Ephron saw Ms. Dukakis in Christopher Durang’s Off Broadway play “The Marriage of Bette and Boo” and decided she wanted Ms. Dukakis in Mike Nichols’ 1986 film “Heartburn,” based on Ms. Ephron’s novel à Clef. Mr. Nichols then cast Ms. Dukakis on his next Broadway Social Security project. Norman Jewison saw “Social Security” and cast Ms. Dukakis in a film he was about to make: “Moonstruck”.

Despite the awards and her other successes on screen, Ms. Dukakis never gave up the theater work. In 2011 she starred in an off Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here”. Charles Isherwood, who reviewed her performance in The Times, called her “macabre, hilarious, and strangely touching” with an “attention-grabbing bullying valor.” The next year she played Prospero (actually Prospera) in “The Tempest” for Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts.

Olympia Dukakis was born on June 20, 1931 in Lowell, Massachusetts, the elder of two children of Constantine and Alexandra (Christos) Dukakis, both Greek immigrants. Her father worked in a variety of settings including an ammunition factory, printing company, and Lever Brothers quality control department. He also started an amateur theater group.

Olympia graduated from Boston University with a degree in physiotherapy and practiced this profession. During the worst days of the mid-century polio epidemic, she traveled to West Virginia, Minnesota, and Texas. Eventually she made enough money to return to the BU and study theater.

Before receiving her MFA, she embarked on her new career, making her stage debut in a summer stock production of Outward Bound in Maine in 1956. She moved to New York in 1959 and made her New York stage debut the next year in “The Breaking Wall” at St. Mark’s Playhouse.

Her first screen appearance was in 1962 in the television series “Dr. Kildare. “Her first film role was an uncredited psychiatric patient in” Lilith “(1964). She received an Obie Award in 1963 for her role as widow Begbick, the canteen owner, in Bertolt Brecht’s drama” A Man is a Man “and another , 22 years later, for the role of the grandmother of Mr. Durang’s character in “The Marriage of Bette and Boo.”

On the way she married Louis Zorich, a fellow actor who had appeared with her in a production of “Medea” in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Together they helped found the Whole Theater Company in Montclair, New Jersey, where they lived while growing up children. The company produced Chekhov, Feigling, and Williams for nearly two decades. Ms. Dukakis also taught acting at New York University.

Mr. Zorich died in 2018. In addition to her brother, her three children Christina, Peter and Stefan Zorich survived. and four grandchildren.

In recent years she has played recurring characters on several television series, including “Bored to Death,” in which her character had a hot affair with Zach Galifianakis. In her last film, “Not to Forget”, due to open this year, she plays a judge who sentenced a millennium to care for his grandmother.

When The Toronto Sun asked her in 2003 if she wanted to retire, she replied, “From what? I love this messy, contradicting, loving mess that was my life. “

She reflected on her success in a 2001 interview with London’s The Guardian newspaper. “Maybe happiness comes to you for the same reason as bad,” she said. “It’s about understanding more: you learn a lot of things when you struggle and other things when you are what the world calls successful. Or maybe something just happens. Some days it’s cold and some days it’s hot. “

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Health

Manisha Jadhav, Key Administrator at Mumbai Hospital, Dies at 51

Manisha Jadhav, Key Administrator at Mumbai Hospital, Dies at 51

This obituary is part of a series about people who died from the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

When Dr. Manisha Jadhav’s mother died, she tried to cope with her grief. Her husband encouraged her to take a karaoke singing class as a distraction, and she soon posted videos of her performances on social media.

“She bought two karaoke sets for each of us,” said her husband, Dr. Navnath Jadhav. “And in a very short time I was singing with her too.”

Dr. Jadhav, the chief medical officer of the group of tuberculosis hospitals in Mumbai, found other outlets for her excitement. After taking an interest in photography last year, her husband, a pathologist, said she took a class, watched experts explain their craft on YouTube, took photo tours, and filled notebooks with observations on camera angles, focus, exposure, and lighting . She also gave her husband a camera so he could share her interest.

Dr. Jadhav died on April 19 in a hospital in Mumbai. She was 51. The cause was complications from Covid-19, her husband said.

Her approach to her hobbies reflected her dedication to her job, which included managing hospital staff and handling operations. When the pandemic hit Mumbai in March 2020, she quickly organized personal protective equipment for hospital staff, made sure they had food, and made travel arrangements for staff when public transport was suspended during the lockdown.

She was one of 13 doctors honored for her efforts by the Governor of Maharashtra State in December.

“Doctors are like soldiers,” she would say. “You may not be unavailable.”

Manisha Ramugade was born on May 11, 1969 in Mumbai to Ram and Ratan Ramugade. Her father was a postal worker, her mother a housewife. She was the youngest of four siblings.

“As a child, she told us she wanted to be a doctor and joked about injections,” said her sister Sunita.

Manisha studied at Utkarsha Mandir High School in Mumbai and graduated from MVLU College from her secondary school. She received a medical degree from Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College in Mumbai, where she met Navnath Jadhav. She also received degrees in breast medicine and hospital administration.

She joined the group of tuberculosis hospitals as a clinician in 1996 and moved to administration six years ago. The hospital has been at the center of many strikes and protests, and Dr. Jadhav often negotiated with the union that represented the staff, persuading them not to take any action that she believed could affect patient care.

“If she persuaded us to abandon a protest, she would also make sure we comply with our demands until they are met,” said Pradeep Narkar, a senior union member.

On April 14th, she was named Aspiring Photographer of the Year in her photography class. “She attended the online ceremony even though she was uncomfortable,” said her photography teacher Vinayak Puranik.

Together with her husband and sister Sunita, Dr. Jadhav survived by her son Darshan, a medical student in Ukraine, and another sister, Anita. Her brother Ravi died last year.

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Jill Corey, 85, Coal Miner’s Daughter Turned Singing Sensation, Dies

Jill Corey, 85, Coal Miner’s Daughter Turned Singing Sensation, Dies

Norma Jean Speranza was born on September 30, 1935, the youngest of five children. Her father, Bernard Speranza, worked in a coal mine in Kiski Township, Pennsylvania; When Norma became Jean Jill, she bought it for him and renamed it Corey Mine. Her mother, Clara (Grant) Speranza, died when she was 4 years old.

Her first appearances in the amateur lessons of the school were not unforgettable: typically enthusiastic Carmen Miranda imitations, for which she took last place. However, when she was 13, she won a Lion’s Club sponsored talent competition that featured a spot on local radio. The next year she was hired by a local orchestra to sing standards, $ 5 a night, 7 days a week. For the demo she sent to Mr. Miller, she sang a Tony Bennett song: “Since My Love Has Gone”.

She sang often at home, said Ms. Hoak, her only immediate survivor. Ms. Corey sang her daughter to sleep – mostly Judy Garland and Billie Holiday – so much that her daughter complained, “Don’t you know any happy songs?”

Ms. Corey’s voice remained distinctive and it retained its flair. A few years ago she fell into her house and called 911. When the fire department emergency team arrived, she received them with typical calm, a scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The firefighters shrank from the cigarette.

Ms. Hoak remembered: “Mom said to you: ‘Oh come on! You guys know how to put out a fire, don’t you? «”

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Wayne Peterson, Pulitzer Prize-Profitable Composer, Dies at 93

Wayne Peterson, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer, Dies at 93

Wayne Peterson, a prolific composer whose winning 1992 Pulitzer Prize sparked the debate over whether the best judges of music were the experts or the average listener, died in San Francisco on April 7th. He was 93 years old.

His son Grant confirmed the death in a hospital that he said came just seven weeks after that of Mr. Peterson’s decade-long companion, Ruth Knier.

Mr. Peterson won the Pulitzer for his composition “The Face of the Night, the Heart of Darkness”, but it was only after the 19-member Pulitzer Committee rejected the advice of the three-member music jury that Ralph Sheay’s “Concerto Fantastique” received the award.

The jury consisted of composers who had the opportunity to study the scores of the works under consideration, while the members of the committee, mainly journalists, had no particular musical expertise. The dedusting began when the jury’s recommendation to the committee only presented one piece, Mr. Shapey’s, and not the usual three candidates.

The committee returned the recommendation and requested at least one more name. When the jury responded with the work of Mr. Shapey and Mr. Peterson and indicated that Mr. Shapey’s work was the first choice, the committee awarded the award to Mr. Peterson instead. The judges responded with a sharply worded complaint, which in part said: “Such changes by a committee with no professional musical expertise, if continued, will guarantee a regrettable devaluation of this uniquely important award.”

The incident sparked considerable contemplation as to whether experts or a more general body should determine the winner of the music award, an issue the Pulitzers previously faced in other genres. The argument was puzzling because, as the New York Times music critics later wrote, it wasn’t necessarily that Mr. Peterson’s work was more listener-friendly than Mr. Shapey’s – both men wrote atonal works. Some authors suggested that it was simply the Pulitzer Committee, which reiterated its dominance over the jury.

In any event, the controversy put Mr. Peterson in an awkward position because he knew the judges who had objected to the decision and because he showed admiration for Mr. Shapey’s work.

“He would have been thrilled to finish second,” said Grant Peterson.

“There was no bad blood,” he added. “It was just kind of crap because he didn’t do it.”

Mr Peterson himself admitted that the argument left him with mixed feelings.

“I had submitted the work as a lark and I didn’t think I had any remote chance of winning at all,” he told The Times in 1992. “I’ve won other awards, but the Pulitzer’s prestige is greater than that.” that of the others. The controversy made it a little different. I just hope the Pall that cast it doesn’t jeopardize what the Pulitzer could mean to get my music into circulation. “

Grant Peterson said the episode turned out to be a plus in that regard – the award increased his father’s notoriety and earned him more lucrative jobs.

Wayne Turner Peterson was born on September 3, 1927 in Albert Lea, Minnesota. His father, Leslie, was “a victim of the Depression,” he told The Associated Press in 1992, who “jumped from one thing to another”. ;; His mother, Irma (Turner) Peterson, died when he was young, and he lived with his grandmother afterwards, his son said.

His musical skills, which he said came from his mother’s side, showed up early on.

“I was very interested in jazz piano and was a professional jazz musician from the age of 15,” he said. “I made my way through college playing jazz, three degrees from the University of Minnesota” – a bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree, all of which were earned in the 1950s.

In 1960 he became professor of music at San Francisco State University, where he taught composition for more than 30 years. He was living in San Francisco when he died.

Mr. Peterson’s career as a composer began in 1958 with the performance of his “Free Variations” by the Minnesota Orchestra. He composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles and other, sometimes unusual, groups. “And the Winds Shall Blow”, which premiered in Germany in 1994, was described as a fantasy “for saxophone quartet, wind instruments and percussion”. There was also his duo for viola and violoncello.

“The duo is a nervous, effectively written piece, filled with dark melodies that are well suited to these lower string instruments. It reaches a quick and exciting climax,” wrote Michael Kimmelman in The Times when the work was on 92nd Street in 1988 Y was listed.

Mr. Peterson felt it was important for a composer to hear the works of others across a broad spectrum.

“I don’t limit myself to a group of composers,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1991. “I try to hear everything and when I hear something I like it gets distilled in my psyche and comes out somewhere in my music. “

His love for jazz found its way into his compositions, including “The Face of the Night, the Heart of Darkness”.

“There’s a lot of syncopation that can be associated with jazz,” he said of the work, “but it’s not a jazz piece.”

It was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in October 1991. George Perle, the chairman of the Pulitzer jury who recommended the Shapely piece, endeavored to praise Mr. Peterson’s composition despite the controversy.

“It’s absolutely worthy of a Pulitzer Prize,” he said in 1992. “But the Pulitzer Prize is supposed to be for the best job of the year, and on that occasion we felt there was one job that was more impressive.” ”

Even Mr Shapey, who died in 2002 and was known for being open-minded, came to view his missed award with a touch of humor.

“A Chicago critic called me ‘Ralph Shapey the Non-Pulitzer Prize Winner,'” he told The Times in 1996. “You have to put that on my tombstone.”

Mr. Peterson’s marriage to Harriet Christensen ended in divorce in the 1970s. In addition to his son Grant, three other sons, Alan, Craig and Drew, as well as two grandchildren survive.

Grant Peterson said that since his father’s death he had looked through his papers and marveled at his productivity – not just about his 80 or so finished compositions, but also the countless fragments.

“There is the stuff that is bound and ready and released,” he said, “but mixed in with it is the chicken scratch on yellow tablets. The guy was a music machine.”