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      Paul Huntley, Hair Master of Broadway and Hollywood, Is Dead at 88

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      The many famous heads he worked on included those of Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Channing. Some actors requested him in their contracts.Paul Huntley, the hair stylist and wig designer who gave Carol Channing her expansive bouffant in “Hello, Dolly!,” Alan Cumming his plastered curl in “Cabaret” and Sutton Foster her golden bob in “Anything Goes,” died on Friday in London. He was 88. His death was confirmed by a friend, Liz Carboni, who said he had been hospitalized for a lung infection.Mr. Huntley left New York for London, his native city, in February, and made clear in an interview with The New York Times that his work on “Diana: The Musical,” which is to begin performances on Broadway in November, would be his last. The pandemic, he said, had dried up opportunities, and his fractured hip was hurting.In a 60-year career, Mr. Huntley styled hair and created wigs for more than 200 shows, including “The Elephant Man,” “Chicago” and “Cats.” He was so respected that Betty Buckley, Jessica Lange and others had contracts specifying that he would do their hair.“He put wigs on my head for every show except ‘Les Miz’ in London. He was the master,” the actress Patti LuPone said. “When I put on a Paul Huntley wig, I never felt anything but my character.”The costume designer William Ivey Long called him “by far the premier hair designer on the planet, hands down.”Mr. Huntley tried a wig on Sutton Foster in 2002 for her role in “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” for which he sought to evoke New York City in 1922 with bangs, spit curls and finger waves.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Huntley’s output was prodigious, and he typically worked on several shows at once. In 2014 alone, he turned out 48 wigs for “Bullets Over Broadway” and more than 60 wigs and facial pieces for the Shakespeare Theater Company’s two-part “Henry IV” in Washington.In 2002, when he designed the hair for the Broadway musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” he also worked on “Morning’s at Seven,” “Hairspray” and the Off Broadway comedy “Helen.”For the show “Diana” — a version of which, filmed without an audience during the pandemic, is scheduled to premiere on Netflix on Oct. 1 — he created four wigs for the actress Jeanna de Waal to portray how the style of the Princess of Wales changed over time, from mousy ingenuousness to windswept sophistication.Paul Huntley was born on July 2, 1933, in Greater London, one of five children of a military man and a homemaker. He was fascinated at an early age by his mother’s movie magazines. After leaving school, he tried to find an apprenticeship in the film industry, but the flooded post-World War II job market had no space for him, so he enrolled at an acting school in London.He ended up helping with hair design for school productions and in the 1950s, after two years of military service, became an apprentice at Wig Creations, a large London theatrical company. He went on to become the main designer, working with the likes of Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and Laurence Olivier.Mr. Huntley helped construct the signature braids worn by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 movie “Cleopatra.” Ms. Taylor introduced him to the director Mike Nichols, who a decade later enlisted Mr. Huntley to do hair for his Broadway production of “Uncle Vanya” at Circle in the Square. He eventually became the go-to designer for plays and musicals, including “The Real Thing,” “The Heidi Chronicles” and “Crazy for You.” More

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      William Smith, Action Star Known for His Onscreen Brawls, Dies at 88

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      In addition to his Hollywood legacy, the Missouri native was also a bodybuilder, a champion discus thrower and a published poet.William Smith, an actor known for his portrayals of villains and his onscreen movie brawls, died on Monday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 88.Mr. Smith’s wife, Joanne Cervelli Smith, said he died at the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Country House and Hospital. She did not specify the cause.While Mr. Smith was best known for his roles in action movies like “Any Which Way You Can” (1980), and television shows including “Laredo,” “Rich Man, Poor Man” and “Hawaii Five-O,” the real action came from his offscreen life.He was a polyglot, a bodybuilder, a champion discus thrower and an Air Force pilot during the Korean War, according to his website.Mr. Smith had more than 300 acting credits listed on IMDb from 1954 to 2020. He did many of his own stunts, and sometimes those scenes got heated. He was throwing punches with Rod Taylor for the 1970 film “Darker Than Amber” when the two began fighting each other for real. Both walked away with broken bones.“Now that was a good fight,” Mr. Smith recalled in a 2010 interview with BZ Film.The Columbia, Mo., native solidified his Hollywood status after tussling onscreen with actors like Clint Eastwood, Nick Nolte and Yul Brynner. In the 1980s, the 6-foot-2 actor earned roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders,” (1983) and in “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), for which he was cast as the father of Conan, who was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.His last role was in “Irresistible,” a 2020 film directed by Jon Stewart.In “Rich Man, Poor Man,” he played the dangerous and eccentric character Anthony Falconetti, which he would later reprise in a follow-up to the series, “Rich Man, Poor Man Book II.”Mr. Smith, who was born on March 24, 1933, grew up on a cattle ranch in Missouri owned by his parents, William Emmett Smith and Emily Richards Smith. At the ranch, he would develop a love and admiration for horses and the classic Western lifestyle, according to his website.His family later moved to Southern California, and Mr. Smith immediately began to seek work in films, finding jobs as a child performer and later as a studio extra.Ms. Smith said in a phone interview on Sunday that besides the tough guy roles that made her husband a star onscreen, he had a compassionate side as well. “He’s definitely tough as nails but he had the heart of a poet,” she said.In 2009, Mr. Smith published a book of poetry, “The Poetic Works of William Smith.”The place to find Mr. Smith, even as an older man, was the gym, Ms. Smith said. Young actors often would talk to him between workout sets, and he would share advice, sometimes inviting them to his home to discuss upcoming auditions.In addition to his wife, Mr. Smith is survived by his son, William E. Smith III, and his daughter, Sherri Anne Cervelli.Alyssa Lukpat contributed reporting. More

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      Cannes Film Festival: ‘Val,’ ‘The Velvet Underground’ and Famous Jerks

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      Two documentaries take different approaches to their star subjects. One, about the actor Val Kilmer, prefers to be hands-off. The other, about Lou Reed, welcomes complications.CANNES, France — As the documentary “Val” begins, a young, bare-chested Val Kilmer lounges on the set of “Top Gun” and claims that he’s nearly been fired from every movie he’s made. Then Kilmer’s lips twist in a smirk. He’s not playing for sympathy. He’s bragging.At the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, two documentaries debuted about famously prickly pop-cultural figures, but despite that promising first scene, “Val” would rather recontextualize the actor as a misunderstood softy. Perhaps you remember the stories about Kilmer, a major 1990s movie star whose career fizzled amid rumors that he was difficult to work with. Well, “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, lets the 61-year-old actor retell those tales more sympathetically, in his own voice.Or, to be more precise, the voice of his son Jack, who delivers the documentary’s first-person narration. Throat cancer has ravaged Val Kilmer’s signature purr, and Jack Kilmer, an actor, is an acceptable voice substitute who nevertheless sounds far more easygoing than his father ever did. Kilmer has been recording himself since childhood, and over decades of home movies, he and his son paint the picture of an undervalued artist who always wanted to give his all, even when Hollywood wasn’t interested.Jack’s narration is so good-natured that it may take you a little while to realize that Kilmer dislikes nearly every film on his résumé that a fan might want to hear about. “Top Secret,” his first film, was “fluff” that Kilmer says he was embarrassed to appear in, and he practically had to be strong-armed into making the jingoistic Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun.” On “Batman Forever,” Kilmer claims the studio machine thwarted his attempts to deliver an actual performance, so he instead patterned his Bruce Wayne on soap-opera actors.All the while, Kilmer was recording elaborate audition tapes for the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, efforts that “Val” devotes nearly as much screen time to as the roles he actually booked. Here’s the funny thing, though: Kilmer was a much better actor in the movies he hated! In the clips of “Top Gun,” you see Kilmer at his most loose and playful because he isn’t taking anything about the movie seriously, but when we watch his “Full Metal Jacket” audition — or when he practices lines from “Hamlet,” a dream role he never got to play — Kilmer’s charisma calcifies, and he becomes far too preening and pretentious.Much of the footage in “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, was shot by Kilmer over the years.Amazon StudiosSo was he as big a jerk as had been rumored? “Val” sidesteps the story about his stubbing his cigarette out on a cameraman or the “Batman Forever” director Joel Schumacher’s claim that the actor was “psychotic”; here, Kilmer simply says he quit playing Batman because the suit was too arduous. In a segment about the notorious 1996 flop “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” Kilmer portrays himself as the troubled production’s serene moral compass; you’d never know that a fed-up Brando threw Kilmer’s cellphone in the bushes and reportedly said, “Young man, don’t confuse your ego with the size of your salary.”Much is made, too, of Kilmer’s romance and marriage to the actress Joanne Whalley, though we hardly hear her speak in all of Kilmer’s home-video footage. After they divorce and he fights for more time with their children, the film lets his noble, aggrieved phone calls to Whalley play out nearly in full. I’d expect that unchallenged point-of-view from a celebrity memoir. I’m not sure I buy it in a documentary.By contrast, the new Todd Haynes documentary “The Velvet Underground,” which also debuted at Cannes on Wednesday, is all too happy to confirm every story you’ve ever heard about the singer-songwriter Lou Reed being a self-obsessed jerk. Like Kilmer, Reed claimed that anyone who beefed with him was simply interfering with his artistic process, but unlike “Val,” this film isn’t afraid to show how badly Reed wanted to be famous, and how much he resented collaborators who could wrest the spotlight from him.Todd Haynes’s documentary examines Lou Reed (center, with a reclining Andy Warhol in sunglasses), and his band, the Velvet Underground. Apple TV+Reed died in 2013, and other important figures in the film like Andy Warhol (credited with steering the early career of Reed’s band, the Velvet Underground) and the singer Nico have long since passed. Haynes isn’t interested in incorporating a lot of archival clips to bring those lost voices to life; instead, this artsy documentary lets the living members of the band, like the instrumentalist John Cale and drummer Moe Tucker, do more of the heavy lifting.“The Velvet Underground” is no conventional music documentary: For one, it uses hardly any performance footage, though some of the band’s most iconic songs, like “Candy Says” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” play often in the background. Haynes is more invested in conjuring a vibe, placing the viewer smack in the middle of the mid-60s milieu that produced seminal figures like Reed and Warhol.And though Haynes is clearly a fan of his subject, he isn’t afraid to complicate that vibe, either. One of the film’s most welcome talking heads is the critic Amy Taubin, who recalls what was so beguiling about Warhol and Reed’s artistic scene, then adds a spiky observation: If you weren’t pretty enough, Taubin claims, all those men eventually lost interest in you.Let’s face it, famous people are narcissists: If you’re going to will yourself into fame and then stay there, it’s practically required. Haynes explores that concept in a way “Val” can’t quite bring itself to do. Even if “The Velvet Underground” is less of a comprehensive documentary and more of a perfume that lingers for a while, evoking a time and place, at least it’s not afraid to add a few sour notes in pursuit of a more full-bodied scent. More

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      Robert Downey Sr., Filmmaker and Provocateur, Is Dead at 85

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      His movies, most notably “Putney Swope,” didn’t make a lot of money. But they attracted a lot of attention and influenced a lot of younger directors.Robert Downey Sr., who made provocative movies like “Putney Swope” that avoided mainstream success but were often critical favorites and were always attention getting, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.The cause was Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Rosemary Rogers, said.“Putney Swope,” a 1969 comedy about a Black man who is accidentally elected chairman of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, was perhaps Mr. Downey’s best-known film.“To be as precise as is possible about such a movie,” Vincent Canby wrote in a rave review in The New York Times, “it is funny, sophomoric, brilliant, obscene, disjointed, marvelous, unintelligible and relevant.”The film, though probably a financial success by Mr. Downey’s standards, made only about $2.7 million. (By comparison, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that same year made more than $100 million.) Yet its reputation was such that in 2016 the Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry, an exclusive group of movies deemed to have cultural or historical significance.Shelley Plimpton and Ronnie Dyson in a scene from Mr. Downey’s “Putney Swope” (1969).Cinema VAlso much admired in some circles was “Greaser’s Palace” (1972), in which a Christlike figure in a zoot suit arrives in the Wild West by parachute. Younger filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson (who gave Mr. Downey a small part in his 1997 hit, “Boogie Nights”) cited it as an influence.None other than Joseph Papp, the theater impresario, in a letter to The New York Times after Mr. Canby’s unenthusiastic review, wrote that “Robert Downey has fearlessly descended into the netherworld and come up with a laughing nightmare.” (Mr. Papp’s assessment may not have been entirely objective; at the time he was producing one of Mr. Downey’s few mainstream efforts, a television version of the David Rabe play “Sticks and Bones,” which had been a hit at Mr. Papp’s Public Theater in 1971.)Between “Putney Swope” and “Greaser’s Palace” there was “Pound” (1970), a political satire in which actors portrayed stray dogs. Among those actors, playing a puppy, was Robert Downey Jr., the future star of the “Iron Man” movies and many others, and Mr. Downey’s son. He was 5 and making his film debut.That movie, the senior Mr. Downey told The Times Union of Albany, N.Y., in 2000, was something of a surprise to the studio.“When I turned it into United Artists,” he said, “after the screening one of the studio heads said to me, ‘I thought this was gonna be animated.’ They thought they were getting some cute little animated film.”Allan Arbus in Mr. Downey’s “Greaser’s Palace” (1972), of which the theater impresario Joseph Papp wrote, “Robert Downey has fearlessly descended into the netherworld and come up with a laughing nightmare.”via PhotofestRobert John Elias Jr. was born on June 24, 1936, in Manhattan and grew up in Rockville Centre, on Long Island. His father was in restaurant management, and his mother, Betty (McLoughlin) Elias, was a model. Later, when enlisting in the Army as a teenager, he adopted the last name of his stepfather, Jim Downey, who worked in advertising.Much of his time in the Army was spent in the stockade, he said later; he wrote a novel while doing his time, but it wasn’t published. He pitched semi-pro baseball for a year, then wrote some plays.Among the people he met on the Off Off Broadway scene was William Waering, who owned a camera and suggested they try making movies. The result, which he began shooting when John F. Kennedy was still president and which was released in 1964, was “Babo 73,” in which Taylor Mead, an actor who would go on to appear in many Andy Warhol films, played the president of the United States. It was classic underground filmmaking.“We just basically went down to the White House and started shooting, with no press passes, permits, anything like that,” Mr. Downey said in an interview included in the book “Film Voices: Interviews From Post Script” (2004). “Kennedy was in Europe, so nobody was too tight with the security, so we were outside the White House mainly, ran around; we actually threw Taylor in with some real generals.”The budget, he said, was $3,000.Mr. Downey’s “Chafed Elbows,” about a day in the life of a misfit, was released in 1966 and was a breakthrough of sorts, earning him grudging respect even from Bosley Crowther, The Times’s staid film critic.“One of these days,” he wrote, “Robert Downey, who wrote, directed and produced the underground movie ‘Chafed Elbows,’ which opened at the downtown Gate Theater last night, is going to clean himself up a good bit, wash the dirty words out of his mouth and do something worth mature attention in the way of kooky, satiric comedy. He has the audacity for it. He also has the wit.”Mr. Downey with his son, the actor Robert Downey Jr., at a Time magazine gala in 2008. The younger Mr. Downey made his acting debut in one of his father’s movies when he was 5.Evan Agostini/AGOEV, via Associated PressThe film enjoyed extended runs at the Gate and the Bleecker Street Cinema. “No More Excuses” followed in 1968, then “Putney Swope,” “Pound” and “Greaser’s Palace.” But by the early 1970s Mr. Downey had developed a cocaine habit.“Ten years of cocaine around the clock,” he told The Associated Press in 1997. His marriage to Elsie Ford, who had been in several of his movies, faltered; they eventually divorced. He credited his second wife, Laura Ernst, with helping to pull him out of addiction. She died in 1994 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Downey drew on that experience for his last feature, “Hugo Pool” (1997).In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by a daughter, Allyson Downey; a brother, Jim; a sister, Nancy Connor; and six grandchildren.Mr. Downey’s movies have earned new appreciation in recent decades. In 2008 Anthology Film Archives in the East Village restored and preserved “Chafed Elbows,” “Babo 73″ and “No More Excuses” with the support of the Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation. At the time, Martin Scorsese, a member of the foundation’s board, called them “an essential part of that moment when a truly independent American cinema was born.”“They’re alive in ways that few movies can claim to be,” Mr. Scorsese told The Times, “because it’s the excitement of possibility and discovery that brought them to life.”Mr. Downey deflected such praise.“They’re uneven,” he said of the films. “But I was uneven.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Suzzanne Douglas, Star of ‘The Parent ’Hood,’ Dies at 64

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      Her four-decade acting career also included roles in the films “Tap” and “Inkwell,” as well as appearances on Broadway.Suzzanne Douglas, an actress who appeared on Broadway but was probably best known for her role as a wife, mother and law student on the sitcom “The Parent ’Hood,” died on Tuesday at her home on Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. She was 64.Her husband, Jonathan Cobb, said the cause was complications of cancer. He did not specify what type of cancer Ms. Douglas had, but he said she had been sick for more than two years.Ms. Douglas with Gregory Hines in the 1989 movie “Tap.”TriStar Pictures/Getty ImagesMs. Douglas played a wide array of roles in her career. Eight years after her first onscreen appearance, in the 1981 television adaptation of the Broadway musical “Purlie,” she starred alongside Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr. and Savion Glover in the theatrical movie “Tap,” earning an N.A.A.C.P. Image Award. In 1994, she was seen in the films “The Inkwell” (1994) and “Jason’s Lyric.”She became nationally known as the matriarch Jerri Peterson opposite Robert Townsend (one of the show’s creators) on the WB sitcom “The Parent ’Hood,” which explored the challenges of raising a family in New York City and ran for five seasons before ending in 1999.Ms. Douglas, seated at right, in an episode of “The Parent ’Hood,” a sitcom about the challenges of raising a family in New York City, which aired for five seasons on the WB network. Her co-star, Robert Townsend, is standing in the center.Warner Bros.Ms. Douglas’s other acting credits include the films “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998) and “School of Rock” (2003), the sitcom “The Parkers” and “Whitney” (2015), the made-for-TV Whitney Houston biopic directed by Angela Bassett, in which she played the singer Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother.She was also in “When They See Us,” the award-winning 2019 mini-series directed by Ava DuVernay about the teenage boys known as the Central Park Five who were convicted of rape. She played the mother of one of them. Ms. DuVernay remembered Ms. Douglas on Wednesday as “a confident, caring actor who breathed life into the words and made them shimmer.”On Broadway, Ms. Douglas was seen in the 1989 revival of “Threepenny Opera,” starring Sting, and “The Tap Dance Kid” (1983). In 2000, she became the first Black woman to play the lead role of Vivian Bearing, a poetry professor battling ovarian cancer, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Wit.” Alvin Klein’s New York Times review of the production, at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J., called Ms. Douglas’s portrayal “vibrant” and “defiant.”“I believe that artists are, and can be, the consciousness of the nation,” Ms. Douglas said in a 2015 interview. “We have a social obligation to tell a story that creates dialogue that allows us to grow and change.” She said she chose roles with social consciousness, adding, “They have to really speak to my heart and bring awareness.”Ms. Douglas, second from left, with, from left, Aunjanue Ellis, Kylie Bunbury and Niecy Nash in the 2019 mini-series “When They See Us.”Atsushi Nishijima/NetflixMs. Douglas was born on April 12, 1957, in Chicago. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State University and, much later, a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music, according to her website.She was also a recognized composer and singer, having performed with jazz musicians including the drummer and bandleader Thelonious Monk Jr., the trumpeter Jon Faddis and the saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, according to a talent agency representing Ms. Douglas.At her death, Mr. Cobb said, she was working on an album.In addition to Mr. Cobb, her husband of 32 years, Ms. Douglas is survived by a daughter, Jordan Victoria Cobb.Having done so much in her career, Ms. Douglas reflected that it was much more intimidating to perform as a singer than as an actress.“You’re more vulnerable,” she said in a 2014 interview. “It’s just you. There’s no character to hide behind. There are no costumes, no lights. It’s just you sharing the songs and telling the stories within the songs so that they have a universal appeal and touch people where they need to be touched.” More

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      Dilip Kumar, Film Star Who Brought Realism to Bollywood, Dies at 98

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      One of India’s earliest Method actors, he was the last survivor of a triumvirate of actors who ruled Hindi cinema in the 1950s and ’60s.Dilip Kumar, the last of a triumvirate of actors who ruled Hindi cinema in the 1950s and ’60s, died on Wednesday in Mumbai, India. He was 98. His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Faisal Farooqui, a family friend, who posted a brief statement on Mr. Kumar’s official Twitter account. In post-independence India, Mr. Kumar and two other stars set about defining the Hindi film hero. Raj Kapoor reflected the newly minted Indian’s confusion: his signature role was that of the Chaplinesque naïf negotiating a world that was losing its innocence. Dev Anand, known as the Gregory Peck of India, embodied a Western insouciance that still lingered; he became a stylish matinee idol.Mr. Kumar, though, delved deeply into his characters, breaking free from the semaphoric silent-movie style of acting popularized by megastars like Sohrab Modi and Prithviraj Kapoor.As one of the country’s earliest Method actors, he was often compared to Marlon Brando, another early adopter of the technique, even though Mr. Kumar claimed he had used it first.“I learned the importance of studying the script and characters deeply and building upon my own gut observations and sensations about my own and other characters,” Mr. Kumar said in his autobiography, “The Substance and the Shadow” (2014). “The truth is that I am an actor who evolved a method.”His preparation for roles became the stuff of legend. For his death scene in the 1961 megahit “Gunga Jumna,” he ran around the studio so that he could enter the set at the point of exhaustion.For a song sequence in the 1960 film “Kohinoor” (“Mountain of Light”), he learned to play the sitar. For emotional sequences in the 1982 movie “Shakti” (“Power”) and the 1984 movie “Mashaal” (“Torch”), he drew from memories of when his brother died, recalling the pain that registered on his father’s face.Mr. Kumar, right, with Raj Kapoor and Nargis in the 1949 film  “Andaz” (“Style”).via AlamyMr. Kumar was born Yousuf Khan in Peshawar (then part of British India, now in Pakistan) on Dec. 11, 1922, the fourth of Ayesha and Mohammad Sarwar Khan’s 12 children. His father, a fruit merchant, moved the family to Bombay, now known as Mumbai, and then to Deolali, in west India, where Dilip attended the Barnes School before enrolling in Khalsa College in Bombay.He wanted to play soccer or cricket professionally, but the family’s economic situation forced him to look for work elsewhere. For a time he was an assistant at an army canteen in Poona (now Pune).A chance encounter with a former teacher changed his life. When he said he was looking for a job, the teacher introduced him to the pioneering Indian actress Devika Rani, who, along with Himanshu Rai, had established the Bombay Talkies studio. The idea was to get a job, any job, but Ms. Rani asked if he would consider becoming an actor.Mr. Kumar, who had seen only one film in his life — a war documentary — was flummoxed, but the money persuaded him. Ms. Rani said that taking on a Hindu screen name to obscure his Muslim background would help his career. He became Dilip Kumar.His first film, “Jwar Bhata” (“Ebb and Flow”), released in 1944, was a flop; Baburao Patel, the acerbic critic of Film India, called him “anemic.” But three years later his performance in “Jugnu” (“Firefly”), alongside Noor Jehan, received more favorable attention. By the time “Shaheed” (“Martyr”) was released in 1948, Mr. Patel was singing his praises: “Dilip Kumar steals the picture with his deeply felt and yet natural delineation of the main role.”The hits kept coming, including “Nadiya Ke Paar” (“Across the River”), “Shabnam” (“Dewdrops”) and Mehboob Khan’s “Andaz” (“Style”), in which Mr. Kumar was cast with Mr. Kapoor and the actress Nargis. In 1954, Mr. Kumar won the newly instituted Filmfare Award for best actor for his performance as an alcoholic in the tragic love story “Daag” (“The Stain”). He won seven more Filmfare statuettes for best actor in addition to a lifetime achievement award. Guinness World Records honored him on his 97th birthday for his “matchless contribution” to Indian cinema.Many of his early films had him chasing unattainable women. The 1950 melodrama “Jogan” (“Nun”) ends with him weeping at his lover’s grave. That same year, he played a Heathcliff-like character in “Arzoo” (“Desire”), one of three variations on “Wuthering Heights” in which he acted.He earned the nickname Tragedy King after appearing in a series of dramas that a psychiatrist later said took a toll on his health. In the 1951 movie “Deedar” (“Sight”), he played a blind man whose eyesight is restored through surgery but who blinds himself again when he realizes that he and the surgeon are in love with the same woman. (To prepare for the role, Mr. Kumar observed a blind beggar at the Bombay Central railway station.)One of Mr. Kumar’s best-known tragedies is Bimal Roy’s “Devdas” (1955), about a man who becomes an alcoholic when his childhood sweetheart deserts him.Mr. Kumar with Madhubala in “Mughal-e-Azam” (1960), made long after their well-publicized relationship had ended. via Everett CollectionMr. Kumar’s love life made news; he had relationships with the actresses Kamini Kaushal, Madhubala (they co-starred in the 1960 blockbuster “Mughal-e-Azam,” about thwarted lovers, long after they broke up) and Saira Banu, whom he married in 1966 when he was 44 and she was 22. In the 1980s, while still married to Ms. Banu, Mr. Kumar married the socialite Asma Rehman in secret. The news quickly came out, and the marriage became a scandal, but Ms. Banu stuck with Mr. Kumar, who ended the second marriage.He is survived by Ms. Banu.Professionally, Mr. Kumar’s record was spotless, with films that have not only been successful but have left a lasting impact. Films like “Naya Daur” (“New Era”) in 1957, “Yahudi” (“The Jews”) in 1958, “Madhumati,” also in 1958, and “Ram Aur Shyam” (“Ram and Shyam”) in 1967 are still remembered.Mr. Kumar found fewer roles in the 1970s, with younger, more agile actors being cast as heroes, and he took a break.He returned in 1981 with a blockbuster, “Kranti” (“Revolution”), which reshaped his screen persona as an older moral center. He had similar roles in star-heavy mega-productions like “Vidhaata” (“The Creator”) in 1982, “Karma” in 1986, Saudagar (“The Merchant”) in 1991 and especially “Shakti,” in which he was cast for the first time opposite the reigning Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.Mr. Kumar’s last film was “Qila” (“Fort”), released in 1998. By then, a reviewer wrote in India Today, his style felt “more than just outdated, it’s prehistoric,” adding, “Dilip Kumar’s long-drawn-out dialogue delivery is out of sync with the times.”Mr. Kumar received the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian awards, in 1991; the Dadasaheb Phalke, India’s highest award for cinematic excellence, in 1994; and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. From 2000 to 2006, he served as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament.But these honors from the Indian government consumed far less newsprint than the decision by the Pakistani government, in 1998, to confer on him its highest civilian honor, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz. Amid heightened religious tensions, Mr. Kumar was branded an anti-national by Hindu politicians who asked him to return the award to Pakistan. He did not. He said in his autobiography that returning it “could have only soured relations further and produced bad vibes between India and Pakistan.”Those words proved that Mr. Kumar was a tactful diplomat off screen.On the screen, his characters would launch into more rebellious rhetoric. In the 1974 period drama “Sagina,” when labeled a traitor, his character responded, “If you’ve drunk your mother’s milk” — meaning, if you’re man enough — “then come get me.”Even in this larger-than-life context, there was a dash of the realism that defined him. Mujib Mashal More

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      Whitney Peak Has Fun on the ‘Gossip Girl’ Reboot

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      The teenage actress is also a brand ambassador for Chanel.Name: Whitney PeakAge: 18Hometown: Born in Uganda and raised in Port Coquitlam, a city outside Vancouver, British Columbia.Now Lives: in a loft apartment in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.Claim to Fame: A teenage actress who first made her mark playing small but pivotal roles in Aaron Sorkin’s “Molly’s Game” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” Ms. Peak stars in the reboot of “Gossip Girl.” She is a fan of the original teenage soap opera, and the glimpse of the privileged life it provided. “I just loved seeing people complain about things that were so outside of my world,” she said. “It was so ridiculous, but at the same time so good. And now that I’m living in New York, I catch myself complaining about something like that. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m doing it!’”Olivia Galli for The New York TimesBig Break: In 2015, Ms. Peak was doing background work on the TV series “Minority Report” when she was cast as the younger version of Lara Vega, played by Meagan Good. A co-star, Colin Lawrence, was so impressed that he connected her to his agency, Play Management. “For the longest time, acting was just this little thing that I did on the side, a little hobby,” she said. Things shifted, however, when she started acting classes. “That’s when I stopped looking at it as a hobby and as something I’m actually interested in.”Latest Project: The new “Gossip Girl” is a modern riff on the original from the early aughts, with a new cast of characters populating the hallowed halls of Constance Billard, a tony prep school on the Upper East Side. Ms. Peak, who got the role after just one audition, plays Zoya Lott, a new girl with a secret that is set to upend the school’s social hierarchy. “She’s very young and a little bit naïve,” Ms. Peak said.Next Thing: Ms. Peak was recently named a brand ambassador for Chanel. “There’s such a maturity and sophistication about Chanel, but I have fun with the idea of making it look street style,” she said. “That’s so sick.”Pajama Party: Ms. Peak has a more casual approach to style in real life. “If I need to clear my head or I just want dessert, my friend and I will, in our pajamas, walk over to this bakery, Martha’s,” she said. “They have this gluten-free chocolate fudge cake that is out of this world.” More

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      Robert Sacchi, Who Played Bogart Again and Again, Dies at 89

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      He was a hard-working actor and not merely a doppelgänger. But his claim to fame on film, TV and the stage was that he looked like Bogie.Lon Chaney was immortalized in a 1957 film as the “Man of a Thousand Faces.” Robert Sacchi could capitalize on only one: his conspicuous resemblance to Humphrey Bogart. He played it for all it was worth.That similitude projected him into a circumscribed but lucrative career that included the title role in the 1980 film “The Man With Bogart’s Face” and the part of Bogie himself in touring theatrical companies of Woody Allen’s comedy “Play It Again, Sam.”Mr. Sacchi died on June 23 in a hospital in Sherman Oaks, Calif., his daughter, Trish Sacchi Bertisch said. He was 89.As early as the 1940s, the decade of “The Maltese Falcon,” “Casablanca” and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” when Mr. Sacchi (pronounced SACK-ee) was attending Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, friends and neighbors noticed that he was a ringer for Bogart.Still, it would take more than two decades for him to receive notice as the irreverent, snarling and brusque actor’s look-alike. That career began in the early 1970s — first on the road in “Play It Again, Sam,” the story of a man who gets romantic advice from an imaginary Bogart, and then as the title character in “The Man With Bogart’s Face,” a comedy about a private eye named Sam Marlow (his first and last names were shared with detectives Bogart had played) who undergoes plastic surgery to look like Bogart.Adapted from Andrew J. Fenady’s 1977 book of the same name, the movie also featured several performers, including Yvonne De Carlo, Mike Mazurki and George Raft (in his final film), who years earlier had co-starred with Bogart himself.Reviewing “The Man With Bogart’s Face” (also known as “Sam Marlow, Private Eye”) in The New York Times, Tom Buckley wrote that Mr. Sacchi, “who has been doing a Bogart look-alike turn on college campuses, shows considerable acting skill in the title role, although his hopes for future employment in films would seem to be limited.”Humphrey Bogart in a publicity photo for the 1945 movie “Conflict.”Warner Bros., via Getty ImagesRobert Sacchi in a 1981 episode of “Fantasy Island.”Walt Disney Television, via Getty ImagesHe managed nonetheless to find employment as Bogart: in a one-man show called “Bogey’s Back,” in television commercials, in a Phil Collins music video and in a voice-over for an episode of the HBO horror anthology series “Tales From the Crypt” in 1995.Robert Patsy Sacchi was born on March 27, 1932, in Rome and immigrated with his parents, Alberto and Marietta (D’Urbano) Sacchi, to New York when he was a baby. His father was a carpenter.After graduating from high school, he earned a degree in business and finance from Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., and a master’s degree from New York University.In addition to his daughter Ms. Bertisch, he is survived by his wife, Angela de Hererra; a son, the producer John Sacchi; six children from an earlier marriage, Robert Sacchi Jr., Barbara Cohen, Felicia Carroll, Maria Tolstonog, Lisa Osborne and Anthony Sacchi; his brother, Mario Sacchi; and three grandchildren.Mr. Sacchi had some success in parts not related to Bogart, including roles in three 1972 films: “The French Sex Murders,” “Pulp” and “Across 110th Street.” He had some non-acting success as well: In the 1980s, he recorded a rap single, “Jungle Queen,” which was a hit in Germany, and he worked on a book with the boxer Willie Pep about slum children who grew up to achieve fame in the ring.Yet he would remain best known for how he looked. His 5-foot-8 frame, brooding eyes, furrowed brow and craggy face cried out for a famous movie line to be rewritten as “Here’s lookin’ at me, kid.”He accepted that it was his face that gained him attention. But as a teenager, at least, he would have chosen a different one.“I mean, I never thought Bogie was too terrific-looking,” Mr. Sacchi once said. “Like most kids at the time, I wanted to look like Gregory Peck.” More