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      The Artists We Lost in 2021, in Their Words

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      This year, as pandemic deaths ebbed and flowed, a distinctive, eternal beat — that of artist’s deaths — played on as usual, bringing its own waves of collective grief. Some, such as Cicely Tyson and Stephen Sondheim, held the spotlight for generations. Others, like Michael K. Williams and Nai-Ni Chen, left us lamenting careers cut short. Here is a tribute to just a small number of them, in their own words.Cicely TysonAssociated Press“I’m not scared of death. I don’t know what it is. How could I be afraid of something I don’t know anything about?”— Cicely Tyson, actress, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)Melvin Van PeeblesMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“I want people to be empowered and also have a damn good time.”— Melvin Van Peebles, filmmaker, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“I want my steps to speak.”— Liam Scarlett, choreographer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)“I remember my childhood often, I remember a lot of the past. But when it comes to music, I always look forward.”— Nelson Freire, pianist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Bob AvianKarsten Moran for The New York Times“When my parents went out, I would push back the furniture, clear an open space, turn on the record player and leap around the apartment.”— Bob Avian, choreographer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“School was a crashing bore and a terrible chore, until one day when I was cast as the girl with the mandolin in ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”— Carla Fracci, dancer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“As I grew up in Kyoto, the wood of the Buddhist statues, trees, the grain of the wooden pillars, the patterns on the floor, the stones in the gardens, the bamboo, trees and plants in Kyoto are all a part of me — and as I read a script, I borrow from all these things.”— Emi Wada, costume designer, born 1937“I still feel sky-deprived when in the forested places. Many, many people born to the skies of the plains feel that way.”— Larry McMurtry, novelist, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Ed AsnerWally Fong/Associated Press“My father told me, ‘You didn’t make a success as a student, you’re not going to make a success as an actor.’ I said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’”— Ed Asner, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Olympia DukakisAbramorama“I came to New York with $57 in my pocket.”— Olympia Dukakis, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Charlie WattsEvening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“When I first went to New York with the Stones, the first thing I did was to go to Birdland. And that was it. I’d seen America. I mean, I didn’t want to see anywhere else.”— Charlie Watts, drummer, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Jacques D’AmboiseJohn Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images“Spread me in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”— Jacques D’Amboise, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“If you have a leading character, they should be in a hurry. You can slow it down when you’re shooting, but it helps in the writing: Even if they’re not moving, they’re thinking about moving on, or getting away from the scene they’re in.”— Robert Downey Sr., filmmaker, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Joe AllenJim Cooper/Associated Press“I always said I lacked ambition — but that does not mean I was lazy.”— Joe Allen, theater district restaurateur, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t assume an audience’s interest. I assume the opposite.”— Charles Grodin, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jerry PinkneyJoyce Dopkeen/The New York Times“I solve problems — visual problems.”— Jerry Pinkney, children’s book illustrator, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Larry KingAlberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images‘‘If you’re combative, you never learn.”— Larry King, TV host, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Anna HalprinSam Falk/The New York Times“I started to teach people how the body actually works. I looked at the skeleton. I did human dissection. I did all these things to understand the nature of movement, not just my movement.”— Anna Halprin, choreographer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)“I’m not interested in the intentions of artists; I’m interested in consequences.”— Dave Hickey, art critic, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Nai-Ni ChenStephanie Berger for The New York Times“My thirst for expressing myself, both East and West, could only happen through creating my own company.”— Nai-Ni Chen, choreographer and dancer, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)Virgil AblohDavid Kasnic for The New York Times“When I studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, it was the humanities classes that I had put to the side that ultimately started me on this path of thinking about creativity in a much more cultural context — not designing for design’s sake, but connecting design to the rhythm of what’s happening in the world.”— Virgil Abloh, designer, born 1980 (Read the obituary.)Yolanda LópezAlexa Treviño“Those of us who make images must always be very conscious about the power of images — about how they function — especially in a society where we are not taught our own history.”— Yolanda López, artist, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“You’re more anarchic onstage than you are anywhere else.”— Helen McCrory, actress, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)Michael K. WilliamsDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times“The characters that mean the most to me are the ones that damn near kill me. It’s a sacrifice I’ve chosen to make.”— Michael K. Williams, actor, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)bell hooksKarjean Levine/Getty Images“We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor.”— bell hooks, writer and scholar, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Norm MacdonaldMargaret Norton/NBC, via Getty Images“Making people laugh is a gift. Preaching to them is not a gift. There are people who can do that better. Preachers.”— Norm Macdonald, comedian, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)“The thing that everybody thinks is going to work will not. The thing that nobody thinks will work will.”— Elizabeth McCann, theater producer, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“The success of my books is not in the characters or the words or the colors, but in the simple, simple feelings.”— Eric Carle, author and artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I think children want to read about normal, everyday kids.”— Beverly Cleary, author, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)Young DolphPaul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated Press“My whole thing is about giving these folks the real.”— Young Dolph, rapper, born 1985 (Read the obituary.)“I try to use words that fit a pattern, that are musical and expressive, but do not sound mechanical. Above all it should have a speech rhythm that is like the rhythms that the audience would speak.”— Carlisle Floyd, composer, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“Birds were the first composers. They like to sing in spring. Purely serving of the beauty — that’s what we try to do.”— Louis Andriessen, composer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Cloris LeachmanAssociated Press“I don’t have a lot of trappings, I think, in my personality. I’m just a simple person, with a silly bone.”— Cloris Leachman, actress, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“I’m a witness of my time, you know, of a history.”— Hung Liu, artist, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Technology is changing the way people work. With electronic mail, the internet, teleconferencing, people are starting to ask, ‘What is a headquarters or office environment?’”— Art Gensler, architect, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Christopher PlummerTom Jamieson for The New York Times“I’ve made over 100 motion pictures, and some of them were even good. It’s nice to be reborn every few decades.”— Christopher Plummer, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“After you see your work, you always want to go right back and do it all over again.”— Lisa Banes, actress, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“I think of the art as dead when it leaves my studio. I don’t even own it anymore. Installing in a museum or a show that’s coming up, I’m not allowed to touch my own work ever. It just seems strange to me. If somebody puts me in front of my drawings, I’d put more text in it. It’s never finished, but none of my work is ever finished.”— Kaari Upson, artist, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)SophieFrazer Harrison/Getty Images For Coachella“I don’t have the need to bring any more clutter into the physical world. And I like the fact that musical data is weightless and spaceless in that way.”— Sophie, pop producer and performer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)Etel AdnanFabrice Gibert, via Galerie Lelong & Co.“My paintings are not usually titled. Art should make people dream, and when you have a title, you condition the vision.”— Etel Adnan, author and artist, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Michael NesmithMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“We’re a couple of old men, but we sound the same when we play this music — and it nourishes us the way it nourishes you.”— Michael Nesmith, musician, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“We always put music first and marriage second. One night after dinner, for instance, I was going to do the dishes and Jerry said, ‘Forget the dishes. Let’s practice. I’ll do the dishes later.’”— Dottie Dodgion, drummer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Jessica WalterDove and Express, via Hulton Archive/Getty Images“Even my ‘leading ladies’— you know, in air quotes — were characters. They were not Miss Vanilla Ice Cream. They weren’t holding the horse while John Wayne galloped into the sunset.”— Jessica Walter, actress, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“The last note, the high last note — it must say something.”— Edita Gruberova, soprano, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)DMXChad Batka for The New York Times“I’m going to look back on my life, just before I go, and thank god for every moment.”— DMX, rapper, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)Stephen SondheimFred R. Conrad/The New York Times“Life is unpredictable. It is. There is no form. And making forms gives you solidity. I think that’s why people paint paintings and take photographs and write music and tell stories that have beginning, middles and ends — even when the middle is at the beginning and the beginning is at the end.”— Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, born 1930 (Read the obituary.) More

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      TikTok Made Them Famous. Figuring Out What’s Next Is Tough.

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      Before Charli D’Amelio became the most popular creator on TikTok — she currently has 132 million followers — she danced on the competitive contemporary-dance circuit in the Northeast, the sorts of theatrical styles you might know from “So You Think You Can Dance?” Once she began posting to TikTok in 2019, and especially after her videos began taking off and her family moved to Los Angeles to support the viral dreams of her and her older sister, Dixie (56 million followers), that sort of dance became an afterthought, a relic of an old life.The D’Amelios made a leap from the phone screen to the small screen this year with the Hulu docuseries “The D’Amelio Show,” which captures, in sometimes excruciating detail, the thrills and the wages of TikTok success. Its most curious subplot is about Charli’s side quest to return, at least temporarily, to her precapitalist self, squeezing in time to work with a coach to relearn what those old dances require of her body, and pushing herself to remaster them.For Charli, TikTok stardom is a rocket ship, and potentially a ceiling, too. The past year or so has been a kind of testing ground for what the app’s biggest creators — the D’Amelio sisters, Noah Beck (32 million followers), Chase Hudson (32 million followers), Addison Rae (86 million followers) and others — might do next, either voluntarily and enthusiastically, or simply to satisfy the insatiable maw of demand that their sheer existence occasions.It’s been a mixed bag, a chaotic blend of behind-the-scenes vulnerability, eager-to-please willingness, bro impudence and performed resistance. Navigating the chasm between the instinctual charisma that fuels the app and the long(er) form seriousness and vision that might make for a stable, sustainable career in entertainment has been playing out across reality television, pop music, film, books, other social media platforms — and even TikTok itself.What’s become clear is that the skill set that led to big-tent triumph on the app in 2019 and 2020 is, by and large, sized to the medium. Given more room to breathe in other formats, most of TikTok’s superstars are still figuring out how to create beyond the phone.Throughout many of these projects, what you sense is the offscreen number-crunchers hoping to hang potential franchises on the heads and necks of these young people, who are less fully formed creative thinkers than fan-aggregation platforms in desperate need of content.“Noah Beck Tries Things,” which appears on AwesomenessTV’s YouTube channel, is the ne plus ultra of this phenomenon — an entire series, two seasons deep, wholly devoted to figuring out what to do with this uncooked meal of a man.Beck, 20, is a deeply affable former soccer player who, of all of the current crop of TikTok crossover stars, appears most baffled about how to amplify it. “Noah Beck Tries Things” is a slapdash trifle of consequence-free content production. It simply winds Beck up, places him in unlikely scenarios — cooking a steak, dancing the tango, recording a dis track — and watches him gulp for air. In one episode, when someone shows him how to do a handstand on a hoverboard, his awe is genuine — not the practiced “gosh!” of someone used to being filmed for reactions, but more like the off-the-cuff “derp” of someone who understands he has landed somewhere near the deep end and has no idea how to swim.On his show, he’s mostly hapless, apart from the occasional athletic task. But what’s emerging as his calling card is his almost raging commitment to goodnaturedness. The only times Beck’s brow ever genuinely furrows are in scenes in the D’Amelios’ Hulu show when Dixie, his girlfriend — she refers to him as a “golden retriever,” a familiar TikTok good-boy archetype — can’t quite muster the optics of a reciprocative relationship. In those moments, he looks frazzled, as if an Apple IIc is being updated with this year’s operating system.Beck is genial and gentle — in short bursts on the app, he’s a palliative. But he never seems truly hungry. In stark contrast to that approach stands Addison Rae, or rather, revs Addison Rae. Of this generation of TikTok stars, she is the most intentional, the most iron-willed, the most determined. Off camera, she has been loosely adopted into the Kourtney Kardashian orbit. Her parents have been game TikTokers. (The D’Amelios play along, too, but much less so.) Even when Rae, 21, was focused more intently on her social media presentation — she’s now often comically late to trends on the app — she always appeared to have her eyes somewhere beyond the phone.Unsurprisingly, Rae’s star turn in “He’s All That,” the updating of the 1999 teen rom-com “She’s All That” (itself an update of “Pygmalion”/“My Fair Lady”) is the most vivid post-TikTok performance of the year. That’s because Rae understands viral stardom not just as a job, but as an archetype.Like “The D’Amelio Show,” “He’s All That” is a metacommentary about the falsity of viral fame, albeit fictionalized. Rae plays Padgett (pronounced, more or less, “pageant”), a social media influencer falsifying her bona fides. After a fall from grace, she sets about remaking a surly outcast classmate (who wears a G.G. Allin T-shirt) as her new hottie. High jinks ensue, followed by love.Beauty and popularity are inventions, and have been long before TikTok came along. “He’s All That” plays those constructions for chuckles and awws. And the end of the film savvily mimics the turn away from polished inaccessibility toward Emma Chamberlain-type relatability. Padgett returns to social media, but posting more naturalistic photos, taken by her new paramour: She found herself an Instagram boyfriend after all.“He’s All That” still valorizes and reinforces Big Algorithm, even converting the punk skeptic. But the some of the young men who thrived on the app in 2020 decided to pivot in the opposite direction: refusenik. Most notably, this has been the direction taken by two stars trying to transition into music careers — Chase Hudson, 19, who records music as Lilhuddy, and Jaden Hossler, 20, who records music as jxdn.Unlike Rae, who this year released a peppy club pop single, “Obsessed,” a perfectly textureless workout anthem, Hudson and Hossler (nine million followers) swerved hard into dissident territory, embracing pop-punk and, in places, the grittier textures that emerged from SoundCloud in the late 2010s. They’re heavily tattooed, wear haute mall-goth clothing and paint their fingernails — their pushback against TikTok’s centrism is highly aestheticized (as opposed to, say, Bryce Hall, he of the Covid-era partying, drug arrest and boxing match, whose post-TikTok direction seems inspired by Jake Paul).For creators determined to make it clear they are not bound by TikTok’s cutesy videos and algorithm, it is a purposeful choice. Hossler’s debut album, “Tell Me About Tomorrow,” traverses anxiety and addiction. He has a reedy voice, and when he’s singing self-lacerating lines like “I don’t like taking pills, but I took ’em anyway,” he still sounds like an accessible teddy bear, albeit one whose stuffing is coming undone.By contrast, Hudson comes off as if he’s spoiling for a fight on his debut album, “Teenage Heartbreak.” He’s a sneerer: “I’m not sorry that I crashed your party.” In “Downfalls High,” the surprisingly puckish long-form music video-film that accompanies Machine Gun Kelly’s latest album “Tickets to My Downfall,” Hudson plays Fenix, a ghoulish loner with punk charisma — basically, the kind of guy Padgett tries to clean up in “He’s All That.” When his girlfriend, who is popular and rich and slumming it, asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, he replies sullenly but not terribly convincingly, “Dead.” It all feels like one long elaborate Halloween performance. (Hudson is also one of several TikTokers featured in the long-simmering reality show “Hype House,” which will have its premiere on Netflix next month.)Hudson’s and Hossler’s albums kill two urges with one groan: the need for these TikTokers to find a viable path forward in music, and the music industry’s need to amplify and reinforce the still-emergent revival of pop-punk, the music of white rebellion most readily available to new arrivals with little history or experience.Given the apparent craving for safe spaces, it’s notable how, on both “The D’Amelio Show” and in “He’s All That,” nonwhite characters are deployed as foils who are far more knowing and worldly than the white protagonists. Deliberately or not, they serve as reminders that the world beyond the app is far more diverse and complex. “Noah Beck Tries Things” undertakes a version of this as well with queer collaborators, striking given that one of the most frequent critiques of Beck during his rise has been of queerbaiting. (That said, the show’s first episode, where Beck learned how to apply makeup from James Charles, appears to have disappeared from the internet.)This year TikTok stars tried their hands at Hulu shows, streaming series and music careers.Simoul AlvaIt’s tough to know how purposeful these indictments about privilege are — they generally serve the narratives of the shows while reifying their stars, who are presented as being open to personal growth.“The D’Amelio Show,” however, often comes off as quietly ruthless toward its stars, whether in its array of more-experienced secondary characters, its lingering on the excruciating challenges of growing up in public on the internet, or even in the fish-out-of-water talking head shots juxtaposing the relentlessly normal family members against their relentlessly grand Southern California mansion.Ultimately, “The D’Amelio Show” is about the toxicity of viral fame and also about child labor. (Charli is 17 now, and was 15 and 16 when the show was taping. Dixie is 20.) It is presented as a moral victory, near the end of the season, when after a period of deep decompression by Charli, it is determined that she will only work three days a week, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.On TikTok, though, life itself is labor. You feel that burden perhaps most acutely in how Dixie navigates the fame that has arrived at her feet in the wake of Charli’s breakthrough. Dixie is older, a little more cynical and a lot less comfortable. For her next step, she chooses music, and the show captures, with discomfiting intimacy, just how challenging that decision is, artistically and emotionally. Her voice is rough, her confidence is low and she is besieged by online naysayers. (The persistent Greek chorus of negative online comments, represented on the show in on-screen pop-up graphics, is both effective and perverse.) Her worldview is encapsulated in the opening lines of her first single, “Be Happy”: “Sometimes I don’t want to be happy/Don’t hold it against me/If I’m down just leave me there, let me be sad.”Perhaps this heartbreaking transparency will be the ultimate legacy of this era of TikTok crossover. It’s there in Charli’s book “Essentially Charli: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping It Real,” which came out in late 2020, which juxtaposes workbook-esque pages about friendship and style with confessions about anxiety and therapy. (An even more involved discussion of this fundamental viral-stardom tension is in “Backstory: My Life So Far,” the memoir of the TikTok superstar Avani Gregg, 19, a close friend of Charli’s (38 million followers). Gregg’s book is striking for its matter-of fact-conversations about self-doubt and mental health.)Charli’s anxiety is a recurrent topic on “The D’Amelio Show,” which can often feel like crisis footage: Charli having a panic attack in the car when she spies paparazzi waiting for her, or Dixie breaking down after being bullied online.But Charli’s most revealing content may well be in the form of her secondary TikTok account, @user4350486101671, which she began in April, during a trip to Las Vegas for, of all things, a Jake Paul boxing match. It has a mere 15 million followers, and Charli treats it far more casually. The videos are in general looser than those on her main account, with a broader range of emotions, from exuberance to exasperation. The dancing is a little smoother, a little less performed.Sometimes the gap between the two accounts is as vast as the one between burden and freedom, and sometimes it’s just enough for her to zestily lean into lip-syncing a curse word that might not fly on her main account. She might owe the most commodified version of herself to TikTok, but here she’s trying on different selves, and in nearly every video, her smile is broad and relaxed. She looks like someone fully at home. More

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      Sally Ann Howes, Star of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,’ Dies at 91

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      The English-born actress captivated children in the 1968 film, which became a holiday favorite. It was one of around 140 productions she appeared in during a six-decade career.Sally Ann Howes, an English-born grande dame of American and British musical comedy who captivated children as Truly Scrumptious in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” the 1968 film featuring a magic jalopy that floats and flies into fantasy adventures, died on Sunday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. She was 91.Her son, Andrew Hart Adler, confirmed the death, in a hospital. Ms. Howes had homes in West Palm Beach and London.Born into show business, the daughter of a popular London comedian and his singer-actress wife, Ms. Howes was cast in her first movie at 12 and had a stage, screen and television career that spanned six decades. She starred in some 140 productions — musicals and plays in New York and London, Hollywood movies and television mini-series.She toured Britain and America in musicals; sang at the White House for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; was a frequent guest on television game and talk shows; became a Barbie doll; sang operettas; and later in life lectured, made documentaries and raised funds for AIDS research and other charities.Ms. Howes had starred in a dozen British films and several American musicals, including “My Fair Lady,” “What Makes Sammy Run?” and “Brigadoon,” when, toward the end of 1968 — a tumultuous year of assassinations, a divisive war in Vietnam and widespread political protests — a madcap movie opened in Britain and the United States as a zany antidote for a troubled world.Based loosely on a children’s book by Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond spy tales, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” a British production, starred Dick Van Dyke as a nutty widowed inventor and Ms. Howes as the love interest, Truly Scrumptious. Together, with his two children and his marvelous flying-boat car, they journey to the land of Vulgaria to battle the nasty tyrant Baron Bomburst.Ms. Howes in a London hotel in 1968. She was in the city to attend the premiere of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”Leonard Burt/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesCritics were mixed about the film, directed by Ken Hughes with a script by Mr. Hughes and Roald Dahl, but children were ecstatic. Its popularity spawned mass-marketing phenomena on both sides of the Atlantic, with Truly Scrumptious Barbie dolls, lunchboxes and toys, and a revival of Edwardian fashions, which the cast wore.The critic Roger Ebert called “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” “about the best two-hour children’s movie you could hope for.” Renata Adler, in The New York Times, said: “There is nothing coy, or stodgy or too frightening about the film. And this year, when it has seemed highly doubtful that children ought to go to the movies at all, ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ sees to it that none of the audiences’ terrific eagerness to have a good time is betrayed or lost.”While it lost money initially, the film became a perennial children’s favorite and made Ms. Howes an international film star, her fame renewed every Christmas on video and DVD. It was nominated (though not chosen) in 2006 for the American Film Institute’s list of the 25 Greatest Movie Musicals.Ms. Howes moved to New York in 1958 when she married the composer and 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 into a radiant lady by the demanding speech lessons of Professor Henry Higgins.Audiences and most critics adored her as George Bernard Shaw’s gamine. “Sally Ann Howes, the current Eliza, is a strikingly beautiful young lady with a rapturous voice that sounds like Julie Andrews,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The Times. “Radiating intelligence and guile,” he went on, “she is an alert and versatile actress.”Ms. Howes returned to Broadway in 1961 for “Kwamina,” a musical written for her by Mr. Adler. An interracial love story set in Africa with an almost entirely Black cast, it was apparently too controversial in the turbulent early civil rights era, closing after 32 performances.Ms. Howes and the British actor Peter Wyngarde publicizing a production of “The King and I” on a barge on the River Thames in 1973.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesIn 1962, Ms. Howes starred in a limited-run City Center revival of “Brigadoon,” Lerner and Loewe’s fantasy about two American boys who stumble upon a Scottish village that comes to life only one day every century.“Sally Ann Howes has grown accustomed to Lerner and Loewe songs,” Milton Esterow said in a review for The Times. “She has grace, beauty and a lovely voice.” Since “Brigadoon” was soon to vanish, Mr. Esterow suggested, “Broadway should hurry and find a new show for Miss Howes. Otherwise some smart gentlemen in Scotland might decide to nominate her for public office.”In 1964, Ms. Howes joined Robert Alda and Steve Lawrence in “What Makes Sammy Run?” a Broadway musical written by Budd Schulberg and based on his novel about a ruthless young man who betrays friends and lovers to scheme his way to the top of a Hollywood studio. The show ran for 540 performances, although Ms. Howes, pressed by other engagements, left after a year.Throughout the 1960s she turned increasingly to television, appearing on the Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan shows, and on “The Bell Telephone Hour,” “Kraft Music Hall” and “The United States Steel Hour.” She also had roles in “Mission: Impossible,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Bracken’s World.”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 ’80s she sang operettas like “Blossom Time” and “The Merry Widow” in American regional theaters. In 1990, she joined a New York City Opera staging of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” in the role of the theater actress Desiree Armfeldt; the production was shown on public television’s “Live From Lincoln Center.” And a half-century after her triumph as Eliza Doolittle, she toured the United States in “My Fair Lady” in 2007, playing Mrs. Higgins, the mother of Henry Higgins. It was her 64th year in show business.Sally Ann Howes was born in London on July 20, 1930, to the comedian Bobby Howes and the actress Patricia Malone. Her maternal grandfather, Capt. J.A.E. Malone, directed stage musicals; an uncle, Pat Malone, was an actor.Sally Ann and her older brother, Peter, a musician, grew up in a prosperous household with nannies and visits by her parents’ theatrical peers. During World War II, the family moved to its country estate in Essendon, 20 miles north of London, for the duration.Ms. Howes at a reception at the New York Public Library in 2012. The film historian Robert Osborne was at right.John Lamparski/WireImageMs. Howes’s acting in school plays and her family connections attracted an agent, and in 1943 she appeared with Stewart Granger in her first movie, “Thursday’s Child.” It launched her career. She played children’s roles in “Dead of Night” (1945), with Michael Redgrave, and “Anna Karenina” (1948), with Vivien Leigh. At 18, she appeared with John Mills in “The History of Mr. Polly” (1949).Ms. Howes began taking stage roles in the 1950s. With singing lessons to lower her high-pitched voice, she performed in West End musicals, including “Paint Your Wagon,” with her father, and in the stage drama “A Hatful of Rain.” Ms. Howes’s marriage in 1950 to Maxwell Coker ended in divorce in 1953. She divorced Mr. Adler in 1966. Her marriage in 1969 to A. Morgan Maree III, a financier, also ended in divorce. In the 1970s, she married the literary agent Douglas W. Rae, who died this year. In addition to her son, she is survived by two grandchildren. In 2012, Ms. Howes joined 1,500 film fans on a Turner Classic Movies cruise that featured “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and she discussed her life as an entertainer.“The moment you hit 45 — now it’s 55 — your career changes,” she said. “You have to rethink everything, and you have to adjust. I was always aware of it because of the people I was brought up with. We saw careers go up and down and be killed off.“I’ve never prepared for anything,” she continued. “I’ve always jumped into the next thing, and therefore it’s been a strange career. I enjoyed experimenting.”Alex Marshall and Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Sing 2’ Review: Taking the Show on the Road

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      The amateur ensemble is back, this time in animal Las Vegas.There was a karaoke charm to the first “Sing,” a cartoon about a parade of amateurs — Ash the porcupine (Scarlett Johansson), Rosita the sow (Reese Witherspoon), Meena the elephant (Tori Kelly) and Johnny the gorilla (Taron Egerton) — who put on a show to save their small town’s bankrupt theater. No more.“Sing 2,” a grasping sequel by the returning director, Garth Jennings, opens with the troupe attempting to impress a talent scout with the kind of ramshackle ditty that won over fans in the original. But when the scout (Chelsea Peretti) sniffs that a fluffle of bunnies wailing “Let’s Go Crazy” on electric guitars is merely a “cute little show,” an offended Buster (the theater owner, played by Matthew McConaughey) and company set out to conquer Redshore City, the animal world’s Las Vegas. (One senses that Illumination, the studio behind the franchise, is itself increasingly dissatisfied that the only little gold men on its shelves are the billion-dollar Minions.)The sequel is all glitz and no heart. With cash from a media mogul, Jimmy Crystal (Bobby Cannavale), and with a Suge Knight-esque wolf who threatens his underlings with defenestration, Buster stages a mega-musical spectacular that crossbreeds Cirque du Soleil with the old Pigs in Space sketch on “The Muppet Show.”There’s also a scattered plot that involves zip lines, snooty choreographers, disgruntled construction workers and an egomaniacal yak. At least the cover songs still have pep. A gorilla belts Coldplay, a slug raps Drake, and, in what passes for the emotional climax, Bono croons one of his own classics in character as a reclusive rock star lion who, in this parallel universe, wrote one of U2’s greatest hits.Sing 2Rated PG, for those afraid of the big bad wolf. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Velvet Queen’ Review: Searching for an Elusive Leopard

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      The documentary follows the photographer Vincent Munier and the writer Sylvain Tesson on a mission to catch a glimpse of a rare snow leopard in Tibet.The documentary “The Velvet Queen” asks viewers to experience solitude in a way that is difficult to achieve in a movie theater. (Another of this week’s releases, “Memoria,” comes closer to the combination of image, sound and pacing it takes to inspire that kind of contemplative state.)“The Velvet Queen” follows the wildlife photographer Vincent Munier and the writer Sylvain Tesson on a mission in a mountainous region of Tibet. They hope to catch a glimpse of a rare snow leopard. Their journey, with no guarantee of success, requires extreme patience and a disconnection from what Tesson, who narrates, calls the “puppet show of humanity.” At the end, he likens seeing the animal to the Promethean feat of stealing fire.The movie operates on two basic levels. One is philosophical, as the camera watches two men who are themselves looking through viewfinders experience the sensations of a place where humans rarely disrupt the natural order.Munier directed “The Velvet Queen” with the wildlife filmmaker Marie Amiguet, whom Tesson includes in a drawing he makes for children in the area, but whose presence generally goes unacknowledged. The end credits note that the film was shot with a small team and that great care was taken not to disturb the animals. Still, the men might not always be quite as alone as the film makes them look.On another level, “The Velvet Queen” is a wondrous nature documentary. While it’s hard to imagine the film will conclude without a snow leopard, there are other animal stars along the way: wild yaks, Tibetan foxes, bears and the Pallas’s cat, whose cuddliness, to paraphrase Tesson, belies the fact that it might leap at your throat if you tried to pet it.The Velvet QueenNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The King’s Man’ Review: Suiting Up and Shooting Down

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      This prequel to the “Kingsman” series presents the confusing origin story of the elite British spy agency, founded by Ralph Fiennes (naturally).Any movie that lists “Rasputin dance choreographer” in the credits deserves at least a look. And, to be fair, “The King’s Man” — a prequel to Matthew Vaughn’s jacked-up series about elite British spies headquartered in Savile Row — has more than a gyrating monk up its impeccably tailored sleeve.Mainly, it has Ralph Fiennes to ensure that the center holds. As Orlando, Duke of Oxford and the spy agency’s founder, Fiennes might read more cuddly than studly, but he lends a surprising gravitas to this flibbertigibbet feature. Try doing that when you’re being head-butted by an angry goat.Set during World War I, as Orlando and his allies race to prevent a nefarious cabal from erasing Europe’s ruling class, “The King’s Man” leads us through a dense thicket of violence to present the origin story of an agency whose raison d’être, we are told, is world peace. (A mission apparently concealed from the characters in the two previous films.) International skulduggery fills the frame, the hopelessly convoluted screenplay (by Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek) swerving from loony (a mountain lair guarded by the aforementioned livestock) to reverent (an impressive battlefield rescue, realized without digital assistance).Buffering the gobsmacking action sequences, Ben Davis’s stately, wide-screen images allow our eyes to refocus. Gusto performances, including Gemma Arterton as a nanny running a secret network of servant-spies, help atone for the plot’s nuttiness. The franchise’s always-simmering homoeroticism, though, boils over whenever Rasputin (an ecstatically demonic Rhys Ifans) is around.“Take your trousers off and sit down,” he commands Orlando, before licking a battle wound on the aristocrat’s thigh. On the evidence of Fiennes’s face, the Duke’s only desire at that moment is for a strong cup of tea.The King’s ManR for leg licking, opium drinking and dirty dancing. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Beyoncé Edges Closer to Her First Oscar Nomination as Shortlists Are Revealed

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      “Be Alive,” which the superstar wrote with Dixson for “King Richard,” made the academy’s cut in preliminary voting. So did Lin-Manuel Miranda, Billie Eilish and Van Morrison.Will Beyoncé and Lin-Manuel Miranda compete against each other at the Oscars? That matchup became a possibility on Tuesday when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlists for best song and nine other categories.Beyoncé and the songwriter Dixson made the cut for “Be Alive,” from “King Richard,” a biopic about the father of Venus and Serena Williams. If the song makes it through the next round, it would be Beyoncé’s first Oscar nomination. Miranda was included for “Dos Oruguitas,” which he wrote for “Encanto,” the animated tale about a gifted family in Colombia. Other contenders in the category include Billie Eilish and Finneas (for the Bond song “No Time to Die”) and Van Morrison (for “Down to Joy,” from “Belfast”), who has made news recently for songs protesting Covid-19 lockdown measures. (Eilish was also the subject of a documentary that made the shortlist.)For best score, Jonny Greenwood and Hans Zimmer might be competing against each other and themselves. Both are included twice: Greenwood for “The Power of the Dog” and “Spencer”; Zimmer for “Dune” and “No Time to Die.”Another notable twofer: “Flee,” the animated documentary about an Afghan refugee in Copenhagen, made the documentary and international feature lists. The documentary finalists included several films that made critics’ year-end best lists, including “Summer of Soul” and “The Velvet Underground.” The same goes for the international feature category, with “Drive My Car” (Japan’s submission) and “The Hand of God” (from Italy) making the cut.Members will begin voting on Jan. 27, and the final nominees will be announced on Feb. 8. The winners will be revealed in a ceremony scheduled for March 27.Here are the shortlists:Original Song“So May We Start?” (“Annette”)“Down to Joy” (“Belfast”)“Right Where I Belong” (“Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road”)“Automatic Woman” (“Bruised”)“Dream Girl” (“Cinderella”)“Beyond the Shore” (“CODA”)“The Anonymous Ones” (“Dear Evan Hansen”)“Just Look Up” (“Don’t Look Up”)“Dos Oruguitas” (“Encanto”)“Somehow You Do” (“Four Good Days”)“Guns Go Bang” (“The Harder They Fall”)“Be Alive” (“King Richard”)“No Time to Die” (“No Time to Die”)“Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” (“Respect”)“Your Song Saved My Life” (“Sing 2”)Original Score“Being the Ricardos”“Candyman”“Don’t Look Up”“Dune”“Encanto”“The French Dispatch”“The Green Knight”“The Harder They Fall”“King Richard”“The Last Duel”“No Time to Die”“Parallel Mothers”“The Power of the Dog”“Spencer”“The Tragedy of Macbeth”Documentary Feature“Ascension”“Attica”“Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”“Faya Dayi”“The First Wave”“Flee”“In the Same Breath”“Julia”“President”“Procession”“The Rescue”“Simple as Water”“Summer of Soul”“The Velvet Underground”“Writing With Fire”International FeatureAustria, “Great Freedom”Belgium, “Playground”Bhutan, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom”Denmark, “Flee”Finland, “Compartment No. 6”Germany, “I’m Your Man”Iceland, “Lamb”Iran, “A Hero”Italy, “The Hand of God”Japan, “Drive My Car”Kosovo, “Hive”Mexico, “Prayers for the Stolen”Norway, “The Worst Person in the World”Panama, “Plaza Catedral”Spain, “The Good Boss”Sound“Belfast”“Dune”“Last Night in Soho”“The Matrix Resurrections”“No Time to Die”“The Power of the Dog”“A Quiet Place Part II”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Reopening Night’ Review: The Show Goes On

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      This HBO documentary goes behind the scenes of the Public Theater’s post-shutdown, modern adaptation of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” featuring an all-Black cast.Rudy Valdez’s documentary, “Reopening Night,” takes viewers behind the scenes of “Merry Wives,” the Public Theater’s first production after the coronavirus pandemic shut down Broadway and other venues until earlier this year.The documentary, which is streaming on HBO, shows the difficulties of mounting a show outdoors while contending with the ever-looming threat of coronavirus: A cast member tests positive, the weather leads to cancellations, and the set pieces are constantly at risk of water damage if it rains.“Merry Wives,” a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” was staged last summer as part of the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park program. The play, which was set in South Harlem, included an all-Black cast.So many things can and do go wrong, but this production diary’s most intriguing element is the way it considers the value of art at a time when the country seems to be on fire. Shakespeare feels “frivolous,” says one of the cast members, in the face of a national health crisis, protests against police brutality and calls for racial justice.Interviews with the members of the cast, crew and staff — like the playwright Jocelyn Bioh (who adapted the play), the Public’s managing director, Jeremy Adams, and the “Merry Wives” director, Saheem Ali — reveal complex and deeply personal reasons for such devotion to the theater.There would seem to be “a chasm between people of color and Shakespeare,” but many of the performers find his work particularly suited to experimentations with language and the expression of diverse lineages. “Merry Wives” is a showcase for the possibilities of theatrical adaptation.But there’s nothing fresh about the execution, and Valdez’s inspirational tone can feel overly saccharine. Nevertheless, “Reopening Night” should offer a certain kind of satisfaction for those among us who’ve waited for the return of live theater with jittery anticipation.Reopening NightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More