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    Marie Irvine, Makeup Artist to Marilyn Monroe, Dies at 99

    Late in Ms. Monroe’s life, Ms. Irvine was her go-to makeup artist in New York City. Earlier this month, she became a TikTok sensation.Marie Irvine was 99 years old when a chapter in her long-ago career became a TikTok sensation. During a crucial period late in Marilyn Monroe’s life, Ms. Irvine had been her makeup artist in New York City. When a TikTok star learned her story, it blew up the internet.In 1958, Life magazine commissioned Richard Avedon to reimagine Ms. Monroe as the screen and stage sirens Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Theda Bara, Jean Harlow and Lillian Russell. It was Ms. Irvine who assisted with her makeup — turning her into Ms. Russell’s candy-box pinup, and Ms. Dietrich’s steamy Lola Lola from the film “The Blue Angel.”It ran in the Dec. 22 issue of the magazine, with a piece written by Ms. Monroe’s husband at the time, the playwright Arthur Miller, with the headline, “My Wife Marilyn.” He described the photos “as a kind of history of our mass fantasy, so far as seductresses are concerned.”And when Ms. Monroe, having been sewn into her skintight sequined gown, sang a breathless “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy at a Democratic fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden in May of 1962, it was Ms. Irvine who prepared her beforehand in Ms. Monroe’s apartment on East 57th Street, and then rushed to the Garden later with the star’s drop earrings, because she had left them behind.Erin Parsons, a 45-year-old makeup artist and TikTok star with a passion for vintage makeup and Ms. Monroe, had read of Ms. Irvine’s small part in these iconic moments, and she tracked her down to learn more. And when she posted about her search on Jan. 8, her video went viral.More than a million people have viewed it, and it has accrued more than 1,600 comments. One woman was particularly moved by the $125 fee Ms. Irvine had charged for her services on the night of the Garden event, the equivalent of more than $1,200 today. (Ms. Parsons had a photo of the bill, an artifact which sold at auction for $1,152, and showed it in her video.)“We stan a queen that knows what her skills were worth!” the commenter wrote. “I bow down.”Ms. Irvine circa 1967. She helped transform Marilyn Monroe into stars like Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow for Richard Avedon’s famous Life magazine shoot in 1958.Courtesy Horan family, via Charlotte BentleyMs. Irvine died a week after Ms. Parsons’ post, on Jan. 15, at a care facility in Sarasota, Fla. Her daughter, Jane Bentley Sullivan, announced her death.Ms. Irvine was not the architect of Ms. Monroe’s signature look. Her sleepy, bedroom gaze, articulated by the swoop of her liquid eyeliner; her bright red moue; and that beauty mark were the star’s own creations, conceived with her longtime West Coast-based makeup artist, Whitey Snyder. Her fans and fetishists, from Norman Mailer to Ms. Parsons’ audience, knew that she used a secret blend of three shades of lipstick and a gloss made with Vaseline. Mr. Mailer spends a page describing it in his 1973 biography, “Marilyn.”Ms. Irvine met Ms. Monroe because she was an on-call makeup artist to Mr. Avedon in the 1950s, and he hired Ms. Irvine to help with the Life magazine project. It took three months to complete, largely because of Ms. Monroe’s erratic schedule.“We could shoot it only when Marilyn felt like it,” Ms. Irvine told an interviewer in 2014. “Sometimes it was in the middle of the night with a short notice. One time it was such a short notice, that I couldn’t find a babysitter so Marilyn said, ‘Bring your baby to the set.’”(That was Ms. Sullivan, who was 9 months old at the time.)“So it was like a family atmosphere,” Ms. Irvine added. “She told me how much she wanted a baby.”Ms. Irvine was self-effacing and discreet. Her earliest clients were society figures, like Thelma Foy, the daughter of Walter Chrysler, the automobile magnate, a swan who often appeared in Vogue and on an annual list of the 10 best-dressed women in the United States. When Ms. Foy became ill with leukemia, Ms. Irvine’s role shifted from preparing her for photo shoots to helping her hide the ravages of cancer. Ms. Foy died of the disease in 1957, in her early 50s.Marie Irvine was born on Dec. 16, 1924, in Pawling, N.Y., in Dutchess County, the only child of William and Theresa (Brendlin) Irvine. She attended a one-room schoolhouse through grade school. She moved to New York City in her late teens and trained to be a secretary at the Katharine Gibbs School — otherwise known as Katie Gibbs to generations of white-gloved young women — but found the prospect of secretarial work too boring.She found a job at Elizabeth Arden, at the flagship salon with the distinctive red door at 691 Fifth Avenue that served the ladies of the carriage trade, where she became a beauty adviser and color specialist for the company.Toward the end of World War II, Ms. Irvine met a naval officer at Delmonico’s restaurant when he was on leave; they married in 1947. In addition to her daughter, Ms. Sullivan, Ms. Irvine is survived by a son, who requested anonymity for himself and his father, whose name he shares, and two grandchildren. Ms. Irvine’s husband died in 1994.When her daughter was born in 1957, Ms. Irvine left Elizabeth Arden and became a freelance makeup artist, working for photographers like Mr. Avedon, Irving Penn, John Rawlings and Harold Krieger. She did commercial work, too, notably coating the actors who played the Jolly Green Giant, the mascot created to sell canned vegetables, in layers of green greasepaint.In the late ’60s, Ms. Irvine and her family moved from Queens to Essex County, N.J. Her husband, general counsel for a security firm, did not want his wife to continue working, so she retired — and learned to drive at 44.Once she left the fashion world behind, she rarely spoke of it.Ms. Parsons, the TikTok star, had many questions for Ms. Irvine that she was unable to answer before her death. She hoped the former makeup artist could illuminate the histories of the sort of esoterica that transfix Monroe obsessives: For instance, did Robert Champion, a hairdresser who was at the Garden when Ms. Monroe sang, really touch up her makeup and blot her lips with a tissue (an artifact that belongs to the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum in Orlando, Fla.)? Did Ms. Irvine recognize a gold lipstick tube that once belonged to Ms. Monroe that Ms. Parsons had won at auction for $15,625?Ms. Irvine was pleased she’d had her own moment of fame, though she wished, as she told her daughter, that the attention came when she had more energy to pursue it.“I told her that the important thing was that it had happened at all,” Ms. Sullivan said. “She was an original and one of a kind laboring in obscurity to create many beautiful images with the pioneering photographers of the 20th century. After all, how many 99-year-olds who attended one-room schoolhouses go on to be TikTok stars?” More

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    Kristen Stewart at the Sundance Film Festival

    She stars in two of the festival’s most discussed films so far: “Love Me,” opposite Steven Yeun, and “Love Lies Bleeding,” with Katy O’Brian.Ever since Parker Posey was dubbed the queen of Sundance in the late ’90s, festival-watchers have been eager to pass that title on each year to whichever actress proves most ubiquitous.This year, the tiara goes to Kristen Stewart, who I expect would wear it with Chanel and Converse. The 33-year-old actress stars in two of the fest’s most discussed movies: “Love Me,” a postapocalyptic story about a buoy that falls in love with a satellite, and “Love Lies Bleeding,” an ultraviolent thriller that casts her as a gym employee engaged in a dangerous affair with an ambitious bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian).Aside from the fact that these two love stories feature Stewart in her go-for-broke, just-have-fun-with-it era, “Love Me” and “Love Lies Bleeding” couldn’t have less in common, which makes them a delightfully whiplash-inducing demonstration of what Stewart is capable of. Here are some of the things I’ve watched her do over the last few days, whether onscreen or off:inject a love interest’s rear end with steroids, as foreplaycheerily extol the virtues of Blue Apron quesadillasdispose of corpses (multiple times)sing the theme song to “Friends” (multiple times)catfish Steven Yeunsink to the bottom of the ocean for fear of being rejectedpage through the book “Macho Sluts”choose her Sim avatardigressively describe “Love Me” at a post-premiere Q. and A. as “such a cool way into all of our stories. Like, it could be a relationship movie but also self-love, but not in the way that word … just make new words for that. When you’re like ‘no’ or you’re like, ‘hey, I identified a thing and I think I enjoy that,’ but then, like, seconds later it’s a different thing and you don’t have to feel bad about that or feel like, ‘Ooh, I didn’t know myself, maybe I’m different.’ Like, no. It’s like” — she snapped twice — “yeah. And now I’m, like, trying to be with a person? Yeah. It’s like this is the most honest relationship movie slash people movie.”realize she has just served an endearing amount of word salad and then mutter, “Wow. Wow. That was really … thank God I’m here!” More

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    6 Highlights of Maria Callas’s Opera Career at La Scala

    The soprano appeared in more than two dozen productions at the house in Milan as she rose to become opera’s leading lady. Here are six highlights.No opera house has been more instrumental to the enduring myth of Maria Callas than the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.Her more than two dozen productions at La Scala mirrored the peaks and troughs of her life and marked her finest years as an opera singer.It was near the start of her La Scala years that Callas underwent a physical transformation, losing some 80 pounds and becoming a global celebrity; and it was toward the end of that period that she left her husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini for the wealthy magnate Aristotle Onassis, who then married someone else (Jacqueline Kennedy).Callas’s many performances at La Scala “have passed into legend,” said Neil Fisher, executive culture and books editor, The Times and Sunday Times in London. “If La Scala is a temple to opera, then Maria Callas is one of the goddesses.”Callas during a rehearsal for Cherubini’s “Medea” with the Canadian tenor Jon Vickers at La Scala in 1961. “Medea” was her final show at La Scala.Associated PressLa Scala’s reputation, in turn, is “almost inseparable” from her, Mr. Fisher added: “Postwar, the glamour of opera, and also its mystique, swirls around this character of Maria Callas.”Why does a soprano who died in 1977 remain the single most celebrated opera singer of all time?Because she made opera “about the story and the drama and the narrative,” said the American soprano Lisette Oropesa. “It wasn’t just about the beauty of the voice: She used her voice to tell a story.”Crucially, Ms. Oropesa noted, Callas became the story herself — a “hot-topic, controversial figure” — after her life became mixed up with those of Onassis and Kennedy. As a result, “people to this day cannot stop talking about her,” Ms. Oropesa added. She’s “a legend.”Callas appearing as Violetta in “La Traviata” by Giuseppe Verdi, in a 1955 production at La Scala. The character is widely considered one of her three finest roles.DeAgostini/Getty ImagesFollowing is an overview of some of Callas’s career highlights at La Scala.“Aida” (Verdi): April 12, 1950Callas’s very first performance onstage at La Scala was as a substitute for the much-adored Renata Tebaldi, who was unwell. It was, by all accounts, a tepid debut. A skin condition had given the 26-year-old soprano facial blemishes that she awkwardly covered with veils. In “Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography,” by Anne Edwards, the director Franco Zeffirelli (who would go on to work with Callas) recalled “this overweight Greek lady, peeping out from behind her trailing chiffon,” with an “unevenness” in her voice. Her two remaining performances of “Aida” went much better, but this inaugural “Aida” was a blow to the young prodigy’s self-confidence.“I Vespri Siciliani” (Verdi):Dec. 7, 1951This was the first time that Callas was headlining a La Scala production — kicking off the opera house’s season, in fact — and it was a triumph. She was understandably nervous at the start. “The miraculous throat of Maria Meneghini Callas did not have to fear the demand of the opera,” the music reviewer Franco Abbiati wrote in the newspaper Corriere della Sera (according to the biography “Maria Callas: The Tigress and the Lamb,” by David Bret). Mr. Abbiati lauded the “phosphorescent beauty” of her tones, and “her technical agility, which is more than rare — it is unique.”“Lucia di Lammermoor” (Donizetti): Jan. 18, 1954This was Callas’s first time with the renowned conductor Herbert von Karajan at the baton, and she didn’t disappoint. In the famous “mad scene” — where Lucia stabs her new husband on her wedding night — Callas appeared barehanded, in a nightgown and messy hair, on a dimly lit staircase; she had turned down the dagger and fake blood that are usually used to portray the murder. Yet her performance was so realistic that mesmerized audience members jumped up mid-performance, clapping and cheering, and tossed red carnations onstage that Callas touched as if they were gobs of blood. In Opera News, the critic Cynthia Jolly hailed “Callas’s supremacy amongst present-day sopranos,” and “a heart-rending poignancy of timbre which is quite unforgettable,” according to the Bret biography.“La Traviata” (Verdi): May 28, 1955The character of Violetta in “La Traviata” is widely considered one of Callas’s three finest roles — along with Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Bellini’s “Norma.” And the May 1955 staging by the director Luchino Visconti is, in turn, considered her finest “Traviata.” It was “a revolutionary production” that was “renowned for its realism, the intimacy and the gorgeousness of the setting, the painterly qualities,” said Mr. Fisher of The Times. It also “encapsulated so much” of the Maria Callas that audiences have come to know and revere. Set in La Belle Epoque, with ornate décor and costumes, the show triggered another audience frenzy on opening night. People cried out Callas’s name, sobbed uncontrollably and showered the stage with red roses, which a tearful Callas picked up as she took a solo bow. The conductor Carlo Maria Giulini later confessed that he, too, had wept in the pit. Yet Callas’s monopolizing of attention in her solo bow was too much for the tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano, who quit the show that night.“Anna Bolena” (Donizetti):April 14, 1957This was another Visconti spectacular, and another triumph. Callas played Anne Boleyn, a doomed wife of Henry VIII, in a somewhat lesser-known Donizetti opera. Queenlike, she appeared in a dark blue gown and enormous jewels at the top of a grand staircase, surrounded by royal portraits. Musically, she gave it her all, triggering 24 minutes of applause (according to the Edwards biography), a La Scala record.Yet offstage, in Milan, her star was starting to fade, after she had refused to perform a fifth time with the La Scala opera company on a tour in Edinburgh (she was only contractually obligated to four performances, and was feeling unwell). Protesters awaited her as she headed to the “Anna Bolena” premiere, the Edwards biography reported, and she was accompanied inside by armed police officers. When she got home on the last night of the show, there were obscenities scribbled with animal excrement on her front door and windows.“Medea” (Cherubini): May 29, 1962By the time of her final performances at La Scala, Callas was divorced and in a relationship with Onassis. Her voice was still dazzling audiences worldwide. Just 10 days before this performance of “Medea,” she had sung two arias from the opera “Carmen” at a celebration of President John F. Kennedy’s 45th birthday (where Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday”).Yet as she was performing “Medea” that night, a sinus infection led Callas’s voice to waver in parts, though she sang all the way to the end, and still managed to draw some press acclaim.Long after her passing, Lord Harewood, a Callas supporter and onetime director of the Royal Opera House, recalled in an Evening Standard article that was excerpted in the Bret biography that it was “evident that her voice had deteriorated markedly,” and attributed it to her “being at sea with Onassis in his boat” and attending “too many parties.”“You felt that this wonderful career was coming to an end,” he was quoted as saying in the Bret biography. “But I thought that she still had great power, a tremendous grandeur about everything she did. In spite of everything, she never lost that.” More

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    An American Soprano on the Importance of Opera

    An American soprano who sang when the United States rejoined UNESCO weighed in on the agency’s addition of Italian opera singing to a heritage list.Is opera an endangered art form that needs to be protected and preserved for the generations to come?For a group of about 30,000 Italian music professionals and practitioners, the answer was yes. Consisting of singers, musicians, scholars, composers, conductors and directors, the group formed a committee supported by Italy’s leading opera houses and musical institutions, then persuaded UNESCO to add “the practice of opera singing in Italy” to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The inscription was made official in December.The list identifies what UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, calls “fragile” nonphysical elements that play a crucial role in “maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization.”Five months earlier, UNESCO celebrated the U.S. rejoining of the organization in a ceremony in Paris attended by the first lady, Jill Biden. (The United States had withdrawn from UNESCO during the Trump administration.)Pool photo by Bertrand Guay At the ceremony, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung by a leading American soprano, Lisette Oropesa. In a recent phone interview, Ms. Oropesa discussed the UNESCO inscription (which she played no part in) and what is special about opera. The conversation has been edited and condensed.How do you feel about this UNESCO inscription?Delighted. Any opportunity where opera and classical music are brought into the limelight is important.What’s significant about opera, and what I love about it, is that it’s the last truly human art form. It’s sung by voices, unamplified, and created by human beings who compose the music and play an instrument in an orchestra. The costumes are designed and made by people. Opera is directed by people, and is meant to resonate in an acoustic and natural space built by people. That’s what’s special about it.Will this UNESCO distinction help protect it in the future?I certainly hope so. Opera can often be stereotyped as this archaic museum piece. We think of it as very elitist nowadays. But it was originally a people’s art form. Just a few generations ago, it was in cartoons: The youngest of the young were learning about characters such as the Barber of Seville.Nowadays, a lot of young people when first exposed to opera say, “This is so pompous and old-fashioned, and it doesn’t speak to me.” What is your response?I believe opera doesn’t get marketed properly. I don’t think there has ever been a generation that wasn’t interested in history. If history is presented well, and interestingly, everybody wants to know. People watch “The Crown,” “Downton Abbey.” People want to be transported. What alienates young people is how opera can often be presented. If you just say, “Opera is about romance and beauty and passion and fabulous costumes,” you take all the meat off the bone. There are plenty of extremely forward-looking pieces that have been written about women, power struggle, class struggle, race.Opera is all narrative. The stories are there: You’re reading lines, and you’re following what’s going on. It’s like reading a book. And the sound of the voice is simply the sound of the trained voice.Now, it’s not to everybody’s taste. I get that not everybody likes it. But not everybody likes the sound of rock singers, or the sound of country singers. There is an ear for everything. Ultimately, nine times out of 10, the music sells people on opera, because the music is simply divine.Are you personally concerned about opera’s future?During the pandemic, I was really concerned about it. I thought that gathering in theaters would be the last thing to come back — that people would say: “This is so unnecessary. Let’s drop it. We’re going to put everything online, and stream it, and it’ll be the same thing.” We learned that it’s not the same thing, that you don’t have the same experience.What concerns me nowadays is that we have to compete for people’s time.The committee that applied for UNESCO inscription felt that opera was in danger.In Europe, opera and the arts are generally funded by the government. So there’s an assurance that the art form will go on, because there’s funding for it. In the United States, there’s very little state funding for high art. You have to ask people to give money to it. And it often operates on a flimsy budget. So the business model of opera in the United States is very unsustainable.When it comes to the arts in general, people feel like there are more important things to spend time and money on. They’re not wrong. But I can also tell you that without a safe emotional outlet for pain and negativity and suffering, all you will have is more pain, negativity and suffering.If you take music away from your everyday person — going to work, coming home, and taking care of their family — all they will be left with is politics, war, pain, suffering, disease and poverty. If you take away music and drama and theater and movies, you rob people of their ability to process and cope with the more important things. More

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    In a New ‘Simon Boccanegra,’ Family Ties Are Tightened

    “Simon Boccanegra,” a story of fathers, politics, love and duty, is returning to La Scala, where personal connections to the opera run deep.Fathers and history loom large, both onstage and off, in the new La Scala staging of the Verdi opera “Simon Boccanegra,” running in Milan for seven performances from Feb. 1 to 24.For the director and conductor, it is an opportunity to embrace the opera professionally after a lifetime of personal connection. It is also an exciting undertaking for the baritone performing the title role.The director, Daniele Abbado, 66, is taking on his first “Simon Boccanegra” (he is also a designer, with Angelo Linzalata, in a production he describes as modern and abstract). Mr. Abbado attended the now-famous 1971 staging, which was conducted by his father, the prolific Claudio Abbado, who died in 2014. That staging helped make the opera a hit at La Scala — 90 years after its debut at the house.The conductor Claudio Abbado, who died in 2014. He conducted the 1971 staging, and his son Daniele Abbado will be directing the new “Simon Boccanegra” at La Scala next month.Jeremy Fletcher/RedfernsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    The Legal Question at the Center of the Alec Baldwin Criminal Case

    The actor was told the gun he was rehearsing with on the “Rust” set, which fired and killed the cinematographer, held no live ammunition. Can he be found guilty of manslaughter?Now that a grand jury has indicted Alec Baldwin on a charge of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust” in New Mexico in 2021, the contours of the looming legal battle are coming into focus.If the case reaches trial, the challenge prosecutors face will be convincing a jury that Mr. Baldwin was guilty of either the negligent use of a firearm or of acting with “total disregard or indifference for the safety of others” — even though investigators found he was told on the day of the shooting that the gun he was rehearsing with contained no live rounds, and even though the film set was not supposed to have any live ammunition at all.The challenge Mr. Baldwin’s defense team faces will be to explain why the gun fired. Mr. Baldwin has maintained all along that he did not pull the trigger that day as he rehearsed a scene in which he draws a revolver, saying that the gun discharged after he pulled the hammer back and released it. A forensic report commissioned by the prosecution determined that he must have pulled the trigger for the gun to go off, a finding that contributed to its decision to revive the criminal case against Mr. Baldwin.Legal experts were divided on the merits of reviving the case, noting that traditional gun safety rules — such as never pointing a functional gun toward someone — do not always apply on film sets, and that investigators found he had been assured by the film’s safety crew that the gun did not contain live ammunition.“The notion that you never point a gun at someone would sort of undo westerns for the past 100 years,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge.The outcome of the case at trial — the State of New Mexico vs. Alexander (Alec) Rae Baldwin — would hinge on how jurors view two key questions: Should Mr. Baldwin have known of the danger involved in his actions that day? And, using a term of art in criminal law, did he act with a “willful disregard for the safety of others”?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Sundance Film Festival Kicks Off With Jodie Foster, Robert Downey Jr, and More

    At the opening night gala for the film festival, celebrating its 40th edition, actors and filmmakers reflected on what kept them coming back.On Thursday night, the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, which is celebrating its 40th edition this year, was bustling. Banners hung on snowy Main Street, Leon Bridges was performing at a new music venue and the Eccles Theatre was packed for one of the opening films: “Freaky Tales.”And around 7 p.m., some 500 guests shuttled to a convention center about 20 minutes away in Kamas, Utah, for the festival’s Opening Night Gala, hosted by the Sundance Institute. The organization, which puts on the festival and has the mission of supporting independent filmmakers, held this type of fund-raising event for the first time last year.The Sundance Institute brought together a crowd of people, which included film industry players like Christopher Nolan, who found early success through the festival. They filed into a cocktail reception, spread across two floors.The dress code, listed as “upscale mountain chic,” led to ensembles ranging from boxy sweaters to velvet suits. Guests discussed the film lineups, ate dates wrapped with bacon and drank espresso martinis. Nearby, actors and actresses posed for photographers and dredged up old festival memories.Sundance has become known for propelling little-known films and filmmakers into the spotlight. “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), “American Psycho” (2000), “Napoleon Dynamite” (2004) and “CODA” (2021) all emerged from Park City.Jodie Foster remembered the festival in the 1980s. “I was on the jury for the year of ‘Sex, Lies, and Videotape,’ which was a big year,” she said, referring to Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 film.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Menachem Daum, Filmmaker Who Explored the World of Hasidim, Dies at 77

    His acclaimed documentary “A Life Apart” presented a complex portrait of a religious group usually depicted as somber and impenetrable.Menachem Daum, a filmmaker who co-produced a groundbreaking 1997 documentary that illuminated the cloistered world of America’s Hasidim, died on Jan. 7 in a hospital near his home in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He was 77.His death was confirmed by Eva Fogelman, a friend and the author of a book about Christian rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. She said Mr. Daum had been treated for congestive heart failure.What made the documentary, “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America,” so striking was Mr. Daum’s ability to get people who scorn movies and television sets to sit on camera for revealing interviews, allowing him to chronicle their mores and rituals. The resulting film offered a complex portrait of a religious group usually depicted as somber and impenetrable; here it offered scenes of Hasidim joyfully dancing.That achievement was not a given. Mr. Daum, though ultra-Orthodox, was not Hasidic himself. And although he had earlier made a film about caregivers for the aged, he was scarcely a seasoned filmmaker.But he was well versed in the Torah, the Talmud and the intricacies of Orthodox Jewish observance. He spoke Yiddish — the Hasidic lingua franca — and lived in a Hasidic neighborhood. He teamed with an experienced filmmaker, Oren Rudavsky, the son of a Reform rabbi, to produce and direct the documentary.The Hasidic movement was founded in the 18th century in Eastern Europe by a rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov, who felt that Judaism had overemphasized intellectual qualities to the detriment of spiritual fervor and sincerity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More