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      Bill Pitman, Revered Studio Guitarist, Is Dead at 102

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      As a versatile member of the loose association of musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, he was heard on many of the biggest pop and rock hits of the 1960s and ’70s.Bill Pitman, a guitarist who accompanied Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand and others from the late 1950s to the ’70s, and who for decades was heard on the soundtracks of countless Hollywood films and television shows, died on Thursday night at his home in La Quinta, Calif. He was 102.His wife, Janet Pitman, said he died after four weeks at a rehabilitation center in Palm Springs, where he was treated for a fractured spine suffered in a fall, and the past week at home under hospice care.Virtually anonymous outside the music world but revered within it, Mr. Pitman was a member of what came to be called the Wrecking Crew — a loosely organized corps of peerless Los Angeles freelancers who were in constant demand by record producers to back up headline performers. As an ensemble, they turned routine recording sessions and live performances into extraordinary musical moments.Examples abound: Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” (1966). Presley’s “Blue Hawaii” (1961). Streisand’s “The Way We Were” (1973). The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” (1963). The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” (1966). On “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” from the Paul Newman-Robert Redford hit movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969), Mr. Pitman played ukulele.In a career of nearly 40 years, Mr. Pitman played countless gigs for studios and record labels that dominated the pop charts but rarely credited the performers behind the stars. The Wrecking Crew did almost everything — television and film scores; pop, rock and jazz arrangements; even cartoon soundtracks. Whether recorded in a studio or on location, everything was performed with precision and pizazz.“These were crack session players who moved effortlessly through many different styles: pop, jazz, rockabilly, but primarily the two-minute-thirty-second world of hit records that America listened to all through the sixties and seventies,” Allegro magazine reminisced in 2011. “If it was a hit and recorded in L.A., the Wrecking Crew cut the tracks.”Jumping from studio to studio — often playing four or five sessions a day — members of the crew accompanied the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, the Monkees, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Ricky Nelson, Jan and Dean, Johnny Rivers, the Byrds, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, the Everly Brothers, Peggy Lee and scads more — nearly every prominent performer of the era.The pace was relentless, Mr. Pitman recalled in Denny Tedesco’s 2008 documentary, “The Wrecking Crew.”“You leave the house at 7 in the morning, and you’re at Universal at 9 till noon,” he said. “Now you’re at Capitol Records at 1. You just got time to get there, then you got a jingle at 4, then we’re on a date with somebody at 8, then the Beach Boys at midnight, and you do that five days a week.”Mr. Pitman was heard on the soundtracks of some 200 films, including Robert Altman’s Korean War black comedy “M*A*S*H” (1970), Amy Heckerling’s comedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), Emile Ardolino’s romantic musical drama “Dirty Dancing” (1987) and Martin Scorsese’s gangster fable “Goodfellas” (1990).On television, Mr. Pitman’s Danelectro bass guitar was heard for years on “The Wild Wild West.” He also worked on “I Love Lucy,” “Bonanza,” “The Deputy,” “Ironside,” “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” and many other shows. He was credited with composing music for early episodes of the original “Star Trek” series.While generally indifferent toward rock, colleagues said, Mr. Pitman played it well, sometimes expressing surprise at the success of his work in that genre. He was far more enthusiastic about jazz, especially the work of composers and arrangers like Marty Paich, Dave Grusin and Johnny Mandel.Mr. Pitman, who grew up in New York City and had music tutors from the time he was 6 years old, came home from World War II and headed west determined to make a living in music. He attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, learned arranging and composing, and essentially taught himself the skills of a master guitarist.In 1951, at a club where Peggy Lee was singing, he met the guitar virtuoso Laurindo Almeida, who was quitting Ms. Lee’s band. After an audition, Mr. Pitman was hired to take Mr. Almeida’s place, and his career was launched.In 1954 he joined the singer Rusty Draper’s daily radio show. Three years later, he sat in for the guitarist Tony Rizzi at a recording date for Capitol Records. It was his big break.Word soon got around about the comer who could improvise with the best. Mr. Pitman got to know the session guitarists Howard Roberts, Jack Marshall, Al Hendrickson, Bob Bain and Bobby Gibbons, and he was soon one of them.Mr. Bill Pitman and a fellow studio musician, the bassist Carol Kaye, in a scene from the documentary “The Wrecking Crew” (2008).Magnolia PicturesHis fellow studio musicians included the drummer Hal Blaine, the guitarists Tommy Tedesco and Glen Campbell (before he had a hit-making singing career), the bassists Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn, and the keyboardists Don Randi and Leon Russell (who also went on to a successful solo singing career). They coalesced around Phil Spector, the producer known for his “wall of sound” approach, who regularly employed them.While not publicly recognized in its era, this ensemble is viewed with reverence today by music historians and insiders. Mr. Blaine, who died in 2019, claimed that he named the Wrecking Crew. But Ms. Kaye insisted that he did not start using the name until years after its musicians stopped working together in the ’70s. In any case, there was no disagreement about Mr. Pitman’s contributions.In his book “Conversations With Great Jazz and Studio Guitarists” (2009), Jim Carlton called Mr. Pitman a mainstay of the crew. “Perhaps no one personifies the unsung studio player like Bill Pitman does,” he wrote. “Few guitarists have logged more recording sessions, and fewer still have enjoyed being such a legitimate part of America’s soundtrack.”William Keith Pitman was born in Belleville, N.J., on Feb. 12, 1920, the only child of Keith and Irma (Kunze) Pitman. His father was a staff bassist for NBC Radio and a busy freelance player in New York; his mother was a Broadway dancer. The family moved to Manhattan when Bill was 6, and he attended the Professional Children’s School.Mr. Pitman in 2012. He performed in Las Vegas and on film soundtracks well until the 1980s, and continued to play guitar at home after that.Jan PittmanWhen he was 13, his parents split up. His mother joined a firm that made theater costumes. His father gave him guitar lessons, and young Bill played 50-cent gigs with musicians who would later become famous, like the trumpeter Shorty Rogers and the drummer Shelly Manne. But his schoolwork at Haaren High School in Manhattan suffered, and he dropped out. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942, became a radio operator and flew many supply missions over the Himalayas from India to China during World War II.In 1947, he married Mildred Hurty. They had three children and were divorced in the late 1960s. In the ’70s he married and divorced Debbie Yajacovic twice. In 1985 he married Janet Valentine and adopted her daughter, Rosemary.Besides his wife, he is survived by his son, Dale; his daughters, Donna Simpson, Jean Langdon and Rosemary Pitman; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.Mr. Pitman quit session work in 1973 and went on the road, performing in concert with Burt Bacharach, Anthony Newley, Vikki Carr and others for several years. In the late ’70s he moved to Las Vegas, where he joined the music staff of the MGM Grand Hotel, playing for headliners well into the ’80s. He also continued to play on film soundtracks until he retired in 1989.Mr. Pitman performed professionally only once in retirement — at a memorial concert in 2001 in Pasadena, Calif., for an old friend, Julius Wechter, leader of the Baja Marimba Band. Mr. Wechter, who died in 1999, had Tourette’s syndrome and was a spokesman for people with the disorder.Mr. Pitman continued writing arrangements, and at 99 he was still playing music — and golf.“He plays the guitar at home just about every day,” his wife said in an interview for this obituary in 2019. “I am a bass player. We play only jazz. No rock ’n’ roll.” As for golf, she said, “He can still beat me.” More

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      in Movies

      Roger E. Mosley, Actor Best Known for ‘Magnum, P.I.,’ Dies at 83

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      He played Leadbelly and Sonny Liston on the big screen. But his most high-profile role was a rugged, wry Vietnam War veteran opposite Tom Selleck on TV.Roger E. Mosley, whose knack for playing a tough guy with a mischievous streak earned him accolades playing an action-ready helicopter pilot on the hit 1980s television series “Magnum, P.I.,” as well as real-life figures like Sonny Liston and Leadbelly on the big screen, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 83.He died after sustaining injuries from a car accident in Lynwood, Calif., last month that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down, his daughter Ch-a Mosley announced on Facebook.Mr. Mosley, who grew up in a public-housing project in the Watts section of Los Angeles, appeared on dozens of television shows over four decades, starting with 1970s staples like “Cannon” and “Sanford and Son.” He also appeared in the mini-series “Roots: The Next Generations” in 1979.Aspiring to a career in film, he made early appearances in so-called blaxploitation films of the early 1970s like “Hit Man” and “The Mack.” He also appeared in “Terminal Island,” a 1973 grindhouse film that also starred Tom Selleck, who would later recommend him for “Magnum, P.I.”A strapping 6 feet 2 inches tall, Mr. Mosley was often cast as a bruiser. But his natural warmth and humor brought a depth to even the most macho parts, including the title role in “Leadbelly,” a 1976 movie about the brawling early-20th-century folk and blues pioneer Huddie Ledbetter, which Roger Ebert called “one of the best biographies of a musician I’ve ever seen.”“Leadbelly” offered Black audiences “the kind of film they’re hungry for,” Mr. Mosley was quoted as saying in a 1976 article in People magazine. “Not a Super Fly character but the story of a man who actually lived.”The next year, he earned critical praise playing Sonny Liston, the heavyweight boxing champion famously dethroned in 1964 by Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay), in the 1977 film “The Greatest,” which starred Ali as himself.While Mr. Mosley’s career continued to build momentum during that decade, it was “Magnum, P.I.,” the popular CBS crime drama that ran from 1980 to 1988, that brought him mass recognition.His character, Theodore Calvin, known as T.C., was a rugged yet wry Vietnam War veteran helicopter pilot who was continually rescuing Thomas Magnum, Tom Selleck’s Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, Ferrari-driving private investigator character, when he landed in danger in the jungles or on the beaches of Maui, where he lived in a guesthouse on a lavish estate. (According to the Internet Movie Database, Mr. Mosley was a certified helicopter pilot but was not allowed to do his own stunts on the show.)The part was originally written for a white actor, Gerald McRaney, The Hollywood Reporter wrote in its obituary for Mr. Mosley, but the producers reached out to Mr. Mosley to bring diversity to the cast.Although Mr. Mosley reportedly had little interest in the role at first because his sights were on work in feature films, he later said he was proud that he helped break stereotypes as one of television’s first Black action stars.Mr. Mosley with Dana Manno in the 1976 film “Leadbelly,” in which he played the folk and blues pioneer Huddie Ledbetter. Roger Ebert called it “one of the best biographies of a musician I’ve ever seen.” Museum of Modern Art“I’m a good actor, but I’m a Black man; there’s a lot of pride in that,” Mr. Mosley told “Entertainment Tonight” in 1985. He always aimed to set a good example for Black youth; for example, he refused to let his “Magnum” character drink or smoke.The show’s diversity, he said, was a factor in its success. “We have myself for Black people, we have John for the Europeans, we have Magnum for the ladies,” he said. (John Hillerman played Higgins, the estate’s stuffy English caretaker — although Mr. Hillerman was actually American.) “We have a little bit of everything for everyone.”When CBS rebooted “Magnum” in 2018, with Jay Hernandez as Magnum and Stephen Hill as T.C., Mr. Mosley appeared in two episodes as a barber.Roger Earl Mosley was born on Dec. 18, 1938, in Los Angeles, the eldest of three children raised by his mother, Eloise, a school cafeteria worker, and his stepfather, Luther Harris, who ran a tire shop in Watts supplying eighteen-wheelers, his son Brandonn Mosley said. (His mother later changed her first name to Sjuan, pronounced “swan.”)In addition to his daughter Ch-a and his son Brandonn, Mr. Mosley’s survivors include his wife, Antoinette, and another son, Trace Lankford. Another daughter, Reni Mosley, died in 2019. His first marriage, to Saundra J. Locke in 1960, ended in divorce.Mr. Mosley was a standout wrestler at Jordan High School in Watts, but after graduation he decided to try acting and took a drama class at the Mafundi Institute, an arts education center in the area. One day, a visiting director from Universal Pictures lectured the class on the self-discipline needed to make it in the field.“I know actors who had to eat ketchup sandwiches,” Mr. Mosley recalled him saying in 1976.Mr. Mosley fired back: “You have the audacity to tell us to eat ketchup sandwiches for our art. I know people who are eating ketchup sandwiches to survive. We need somebody to give us a break.”“Young man,” the director said, “I want to see you at the studio next Wednesday.” More

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      in Music

      Olivia Newton-John, Pop Singer and ‘Grease’ Star, Dies at 73

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      She amassed No. 1 hits, chart-topping albums and four records that sold more than two million copies each. More than anything else, she was likable, even beloved.Olivia Newton-John, who sang some of the biggest hits of the 1970s and ’80s while recasting her image as the virginal girl next door into a spandex-clad vixen — a transformation reflected in miniature by her starring role in “Grease,” one of the most popular movie musicals of its era — died on Monday at her ranch in Southern California. She was 73.The death was announced by her husband, John Easterling, who did not give a specific cause in his statement, though he cited the breast cancer diagnosis she had lived with since 1992. In 2017, she announced that the cancer had returned and spread. For years she was a prominent advocate for cancer research, starting a foundation in her name to support it and opening a research and wellness center in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. English-born, she grew up in Australia.Ms. Newton-John amassed No. 1 hits, chart-topping albums and four records that sold more than two million copies each. More than anything else, she was likable, even beloved.Ms. Newton-John and John Travolta in a scene from “Grease.” It became one of the highest grossing movie musicals ever, besting even “The Sound of Music.”Paramount/Library of Congress, via Associated PressIn the earlier phase of her career, Ms. Newton-John beguiled listeners with a high, supple, vibrato-warmed voice that paired amiably with the kind of swooning middle-of-the-road pop that, in the mid-1970s, often passed for country music.Her performance on the charts made that blurring clear. She scored seven Top 10 hits on Billboard’s country chart, two of which became back-to-back overall No. 1 hits in 1974 and ’75. First came “I Honestly Love You,” an earnest declaration co-written by Peter Allen and Jeff Barry, followed by “Have You Never Been Mellow,” a feather of a song written by the producer of many of her biggest albums, John Farrar.“I Honestly Love You” also won two of the singer’s four Grammys, for record of the year and best female pop vocal performance.The combination of Ms. Newton-John’s consistently benign music — she was never a favorite of critics — and comely but squeaky-clean image caused many writers to compare her to earlier blond ingénues like Doris Day and Sandra Dee. “Innocent, I’m not,” Ms. Newton-John told Rolling Stone in 1978. “People still seem to see me as the girl next door. Doris Day had four husbands,” she said, yet she was still viewed as “the virgin.”An entry into movies in 1978 aimed to put the singer’s chaste image behind her, starting with “Grease.” Her character, Sandy, transformed from a pigtailed square smitten with John Travolta’s bad-boy Danny to a gum-smacking bad girl. “Grease” became one of the highest grossing movie musicals ever, besting even “The Sound of Music.” Its soundtrack was the second best-selling album of the year, beaten only by the soundtrack for “Saturday Night Fever,” which also starred Mr. Travolta.The “Grease” soundtrack spawned two No. 1 hits, including the manically lusty “You’re the One That I Want,” sung by the co-stars. The doo-wop romp “Summer Nights,” which they also sang, reached No. 5. (The other No. 1 single from the “Grease” soundtrack was the title song, sung by Frankie Valli.) A ballad Ms. Newton-John sang alone, “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” earned the film’s lone Oscar nomination, for best song.Applying the evolution of her “Grease” character to her singing career, Ms. Newton-John titled her next album “Totally Hot,” and presented herself on the cover in shoulder-to-toe leather. The album, released at the end of 1978, went platinum, yielding the rock-oriented “A Little More Love” with the line, “Where did my innocence go?”Ms. Newton-John in an undated photo. In the 1980s she sought to shed her innocent image, emerging with “Physical,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 in Billboard’s rankings.The album featured Ms. Newton-John singing in a somewhat more forceful voice. Though her sales dipped as the 1970s turned into the ’80s, by early in the decade she began the most commercially potent period in her career, peaking with the single “Physical,” which spent 10 weeks on Billboard’s top perch. Later, the magazine declared it to be the biggest song of the 1980s.Olivia Newton-John was born on Sept. 26, 1948, in Cambridge, England, the youngest of three children of Brinley and Irene (Born) Newton-John. Her mother was the daughter of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. Her Welsh-born father had been an MI5 intelligence officer during World War II and afterward served as headmaster at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. When Ms. Newton-John was 6, her family immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father worked as a college professor and administrator. At 14, she formed her first group, Sol Four, with three girls from school. Her beauty and confidence soon earned her solo performances on local radio and TV shows under the name “Lovely Livvy.” On “The Go!! Show” she met the singer Pat Carroll, with whom she would form a duet, as well as her eventual producer, Mr. Farrar, who later married Ms. Carroll.Ms. Newton-John won a local TV talent contest whose prize was a trip to Britain. While tarrying there, she recorded her first single, “’Til You Say You’ll Be Mine,” which Decca Records released in 1966.After Ms. Carroll moved to London, she and Ms. Newton-John formed the duet Pat and Olivia, which toured Europe. When Ms. Carroll’s visa expired, forcing her to go back to Australia, Ms. Newton-John stayed in London to work solo.In 1970, she was asked to join a crudely manufactured group named Toomorrow, formed by the American producer Don Kirshner in an attempt to repeat his earlier success with the Monkees. Following his grand design, the group starred in a science-fiction film written for them and recorded its soundtrack. Both projects tanked.Ms. Newton-John tried to expand her acting career with the 1980 musical “Xanadu,” here in a scene with the actor Michael Beck. Its soundtrack went double platinum.Universal/Kobal, via Shutterstock“It was terrible, and I was terrible in it,” she later told The New York Times.Her debut solo album, “If Not for You,” was released in 1971, its title track a cover of a Bob Dylan song.After some duds in the United States, Ms. Newton-John released the album “Let Me Be There” (1973), which led to a Grammy win for best female country vocal performance.Two key changes in pop music boosted her career that decade: the rise of “soft rock” in reaction to the harder genres of the late 1960s, and the mainstreaming — some would say the neutering — of country music, also epitomized by stars like John Denver and Anne Murray.The latter trend became an issue in 1974, after Ms. Newton-John was chosen female vocalist of the year by the Country Music Association over more traditional stars like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. Protests led to the formation of the fleeting Association of Country Entertainers. Yet, after Ms. Newton-John recorded her “Don’t Stop Believin’,” album in Nashville in 1976, the friction eased.The second phase of her career, which began with “Grease,” found further success through a duet with Andy Gibb, “I Can’t Help It,” followed by an attempt to expand her acting career with the 1980 musical film “Xanadu,” with Gene Kelly. While the movie floundered, its soundtrack went double-platinum, boasting hits like “Magic” (which commanded Billboard’s No. 1 spot for four weeks) and the title song, recorded with the Electric Light Orchestra.A campy Broadway show based on the film opened in 2007 to some success.Ms. Newton-John performing in Chile in 2017, the year she said her cancer had returned and had metastasized.Mario Ruiz/EPA, via ShutterstockMs. Newton-John’s smash “Physical” also yielded the first video album to hit the market, with clips for all the album’s tracks. “Olivia Physical” won the Grammy in 1982 for video of the year.She was paired again with Mr. Travolta in the 1983 movie “Two of a Kind,” an attempt to repeat the success of “Grease.” But the film disappointed even as its soundtrack proved popular, especially the song “Twist of Fate.”Ms. Newton-John was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1979.By the mid-80s, her career had cooled. For several years she cut back on work to care for her daughter, Chloe Rose, whom she had with her husband at the time, the actor Matt Lattanzi. They had met on the set of “Xanadu” and married in 1984; they divorced in 1995.That same year, she met Patrick McDermott, a cameraman whom she dated, on and off, for the next nine years. In 2005, Mr. McDermott disappeared while fishing off the California coast. Three years later, a U.S. Coast Guard investigation said that the evidence suggested that Mr. McDermott had been lost at sea.In 2008, Ms. Newton-John married Mr. Easterling, the founder of the Amazon Herb Company.In addition to her husband, she is survived by her daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi; her sister, Sarah Newton-John; and her brother, Toby.After learning she had breast cancer in 1992, Ms. Newton-John became an ardent advocate for research into the disease. Her Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund is dedicated to researching plant-based treatments for cancer, and she opened a cancer research and wellness facility under her name at Austin Hospital, outside Melbourne.Despite her own treatments, she continued to release albums and tour but failed to make headway on the charts. And she continued to act in movies and on television.In May 2017, she disclosed that her cancer had returned and that it had metastasized to her lower back. She published a memoir, “Don’t Stop Believin,’” in 2018.To the end Ms. Newton-John firmly believed in her audience-friendly approach to music. “It annoys me when people think because it’s commercial, it’s bad,” she told Rolling Stone. “It’s completely opposite. If people like it, that’s what it’s supposed to be.” More

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      in Theater

      Chase Mishkin, Tony-Winning Producer of ‘Dame Edna,’ Dies at 85

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      She was nearly 60 when she began producing shows on Broadway. In 19 years, she had a hand (and her money) in 30 plays and musicals.Chase Mishkin, a prolific theatrical producer who received two Tony Awards, one for bringing the uninhibited Australian character Dame Edna Everage to Broadway, and who was something of flamboyant figure herself, chauffeured around town in her London taxicab, died on July 24 at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.Her sister Julie Kahle confirmed the death, adding that Ms. Mishkin had dementia. She had also had two strokes.After her husband died, Ms. Mishkin arrived on Broadway in 1996 with her first play, “The Apple Doesn’t Fall . . . ,” which she had produced in Los Angeles. Over the next two decades, she became one of the most prominent female producers on Broadway, with a hand, and her money, in 29 more shows.“She had a real commitment to be a Kermit Bloomgarden” — who produced “Death of a Salesman” and “The Music Man” in the 1940s and ‘50s — said Joe Brancato, a friend who is founding artistic director of the Penguin Rep Theater in Stony Point, N.Y., in Rockland County. “She had a real dedication to each show.”Working with other producers, her hits included the musical “Memphis,” for which she shared the Tony for best musical in 2010; Martin McDonagh’s Irish drama “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” (which opened in 1998); Claudia Shear’s Tony-nominated play “Dirty Blonde” (2000), and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (2005), a musical adaptation of the Frank Oz film with Steve Martin and Michael Caine as con men.“Dame Edna: The Royal Tour” was one of Ms. Mishkin’s most conspicuous successes. It starred the Australian actor Barry Humphries as a former housewife-turned-self-appointed “gigastar” who, dressed in an elaborate evening gown, mauve wig and wild eyeglasses, held court with the audience, whom she called “possums.”It was a profitable hit during its run, from 1999 to 2000, and earned Ms. Mishkin, along with her frequent producing partner Leonard Soloway and two other producers, a special Tony for live theatrical presentation. But when Mr. Humphries went on tour two years later, he stunned his producers by leaving them behind.Ms. Mishkin said she felt betrayed. Asked if she would work with Mr. Humphries again, she told Michael Riedel, who was then the theater columnist for The New York Post, “I am in the enviable position of being able to say that once you lose me, you lose me forever.”Ms. Mishkin in 1997 with, from left, Steven M. Levy, Peter Crane and her frequent producing partner Leonard Soloway, inside the Gramercy Theater, which they were converting from a movie house to an Off Broadway theater. It is now a live music venue.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShe was born Mary Margaret Hahn on Jan. 22, 1937, in Vanduser, Mo., and grew up in Sparta, Ill., and Dexter, Mo. Her mother, Violet (Phegley) Hahn, was a homemaker. Her father, Harold Hahn, was not a part of her life. She attended Washington University in St. Louis for a semester in 1955.Little is known about her next decade or so, other than that she was a dancer in Las Vegas who met her future husband, Ralph Mishkin, while modeling for an advertisement for his carpet manufacturing company. By then she had changed her given name to Chase.She and Mr. Mishkin married in 1970 and lived for a while in an estate they had bought from the singer and actress Cher in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Ms. Mishkin became known as a hostess and philanthropist, but she turned to theater after Mr. Mishkin’s death in 1993.In 1996 she staged Trish Vradenburg’s “The Apple Doesn’t Fall … ” — about a woman’s relationship with her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease — at a small theater in Los Angeles before taking it the Lyceum Theater on Broadway, with her friend Leonard Nimoy directing.It flopped, but Ms. Mishkin moved on, becoming increasingly familiar on Broadway for her flaming red hair and mink coats and her arrivals at premieres — and at Sardi’s, the theater district gathering spot — in her black London cab, which she had reupholstered in Burberry plaid.“She came on the scene in a bold way,” said Mr. Riedel, the author of “Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway” (2016) and a co-host of a morning radio show on WOR-AM in New York. “She was part of a new breed of female producers who said, ‘If I’m going to give you $500,000, I won’t be a passive investor — I want to be involved in every aspect of the show.’”Daryl Roth, another woman who started to find success as a theatrical producer in the late 1980s, wrote in an email about Ms. Mishkin, “My impression of her is one of being a ‘dame’ in the best possible way; she was outspoken but always gracious; she had a great attitude about enjoying life.”Ms. Mishkin endured failures like “Prymate,” about the battle for control over an aging gorilla between an anthropologist and geneticist, and “Urban Cowboy,” a 2003 a musical adaptation of the 1980 film about a Texas honky-tonk.In 2003, Ms. Mishkin and other producers decided that “Urban Cowboy” — devastated by bad reviews, a four-day musicians’ strike, the start of the war in Iraq and dismal ticket sales — would close after its fourth performance. But as Lonny Price, who directed the musical, walked to the stage to say goodbye to the audience, he encountered Ms. Mishkin backstage.“She said, ‘We’re not closing,’ and I said, ‘What did you say?’” he recalled in a phone interview. “She said, ‘I’ve decided not to close the show,’ and I said, ‘May I say that?’ And she said, ‘Go ahead.’ And she funded the show for the rest of its run.”The musical stayed alive — it got two Tony nominations — but closed after 60 performances.“When business didn’t pick up, she reluctantly closed the show,” Mr. Price said.She was just as persistent with Mark Medoff’s 2004 play, “Prymate.” At its center was a Black actor, André De Shields, as Graham, a 350-pound gorilla. Wearing a baggy T-shirt and shorts, Mr. De Shields grunted, screeched and scooted about onstage and, in one notorious scene, was masturbated by a sign-language interpreter.Faced with poor reviews and ticket sales, Ms. Mishkin bought an advertisement in The New York Times that urged theatergoers to see the play, which also starred Phyllis Frelich, James Naughton and Heather Tom. “Come Be Engrossed!” she wrote. But it closed after five performances.“I don’t try to defend that one,” she told New York magazine in 2009. “But I don’t throw rocks at it, either.”Ms. Mishkin also produced Off Broadway shows and earned an Emmy Award as executive producer of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street In Concert,” which Mr. Price directed on PBS in 2001. Her final Broadway show, “Doctor. Zhivago” (2015), closed after 23 performances.In addition to her sister Julie, she is survived by another sister, Dixie May; a stepson, Steve Mishkin; and five step-grandchildren. More

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      in Music

      Judith Durham, Singer of ‘Georgy Girl’ and Other Hits, Dies at 79

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      A classically trained soprano, she became a chart-topping pop star in the 1960s with the folk-based Australian quartet the Seekers.Judith Durham, the lead vocalist of the 1960s Australian folk-pop band the Seekers, whose shimmering soprano voice and wholesome image propelled singles like “Georgy Girl” and “I’ll Never Find Another You” to the top of the pop charts, died on Friday in Melbourne. She was 79.Her death, in a hospital, was caused by bronchiectasis, a lung disease that she had battled since childhood, according to a post from Universal Music Australia and the Musicoast record label on the Seekers’ Facebook page.A sunny folk-influenced quartet whose fresh-faced image and effervescent pop songs stood in marked contrast to the libidinal frenzy of 1960s rock, the Seekers sold an estimated 50 million singles and albums worldwide. They became the first Australian pop group to achieve global success, paving the way for other acts based in Australia, like the Bee Gees and Olivia Newton-John.“Judith Durham gave voice to a new strand of our identity and helped blaze a trail for a new generation of Aussie artists,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote on Twitter.Ms. Durham was a classically trained vocalist whose work was admired by other singers. Elton John, whose song “Skyline Pigeon” Ms. Durham recorded in 1971, once said that she possessed “the purest voice in popular music.”Lynn Redgrave and Alan Bates in a scene from the hit 1966 movie “Georgy Girl,” for which Ms. Durham sang the theme song.Columbia Pictures, via PhotofestJudith Mavis Cock was born on July 3, 1943, in Essendon, Australia, to William Cock, an aviator in World War II, and Hazel (Durham) Cock. “My mother apparently said I could sing nursery rhymes in perfect tune when I was 2,” Ms. Durham once said in a television interview.She was working as a secretary at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in Melbourne when an account executive, Athol Guy, invited her to sit in with his folk group, which also included Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley, and which had just lost its singer.The group released its first album, “Introducing the Seekers,” in 1963, but did not strike it big until the next year, when it took a gig on an ocean liner and ended up staying in England indefinitely.It was a portentous time to arrive on the British music scene: Bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks were performing to screaming teenage fans as they rolled toward global stardom.The Seekers were a far cry from the rock ‘n’ roll sweeping London. Ms. Durham belted out toe-tapping ditties wearing ankle-length evening gowns and a perky smile, backed by three clean-cut male bandmates in suits.“The pop charts was probably the furthest thing from any of our minds,” she said in a 2001 television interview. “You just didn’t try to do that with a folk-based quartet. Everybody was more poppy, and had the long hair and the electric instruments.”Fueled by Ms. Durham’s vocals, however, the group caught the eye of Tom Springfield — Dusty Springfield’s songwriting brother — who offered them one of his songs, “I’ll Never Find Another You,” to record.Released in 1964, it went on to hit No. 1 on the British charts and No. 4 in the United States. The hits kept coming in 1965, with “A World of Our Own” (No. 3 in Britain) and “The Carnival Is Over” (No. 1).On her 70th birthday in 2013, Ms. Durham received kisses from her Seekers bandmates Mr. Potger, left, and Mr. Guy. David Crosling/EPA, via Shutterstock“Georgy Girl,” the title song from the hit 1966 feature film starring Lynn Redgrave in the title role, was an even bigger smash. Written by Mr. Springfield and Jim Dale, it was nominated for an Academy Award and hit No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.But Ms. Durham felt the pressure of fame and was increasingly insecure about her weight, which she tried to disguise by making her own dresses. She began to shrink from the spotlight.“It was this never feeling good enough to be given the amazing opportunities we were given,” she said in a 2018 Australian television interview. “The boys were amazing, they all looked gorgeous, and so musically talented and everything. And so for me, I thought, ‘Well, they don’t really need me.’”Fans were crestfallen when she left the group in 1968. (A later version of the group, the New Seekers, would have a hit in 1973 with “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”) But Ms. Durham remained in the public eye, particularly in Australia, where she recorded solo albums, starred in television specials and performed with her husband, the pianist Ron Edgeworth, whom she married in 1969. He died in 1994 of motor neuron disease, a rare neurological disorder.Survivors include a sister, the singer Beverley Sheehan.Ms. Durham reunited with the Seekers off and on in the ’90s and again in 2013, for the group’s 50th anniversary. That tour was interrupted when Ms. Durham suffered a brain hemorrhage.In honor of her 75th birthday in 2018, Ms. Durham released her first album in six years, a compilation of previously unreleased tracks called “So Much More.”In a 2016 interview on Australian television, she admitted that fame had come to seem a burden at times when she was younger.“At one stage I really thought that I probably wasn’t going to keep singing,” she said. But, she added: “I’m glad that I’ve lived a long time. That’s helped me therefore lose the sense of burden, and see it as an honor and a privilege that people have kept me in their lives.” More

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      Lamont Dozier, Writer of Numerous Motown Hits, Dies at 81

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      With the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Mr. Dozier wrote dozens of singles that reached the pop or R&B charts, including “You Can’t Hurry Love,” by the Supremes.Lamont Dozier, the prolific songwriter and producer who was crucial to the success of Motown Records as one-third of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team, died on Monday at his home near Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 81.Robin Terry, the chairwoman and chief executive of the Motown Museum in Detroit, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. In collaboration with the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Mr. Dozier wrote songs for dozens of musical acts, but the trio worked most often with Martha and the Vandellas (“Heat Wave,” “Jimmy Mack”), the Four Tops (“Bernadette,” “I Can’t Help Myself”) and especially the Supremes (“You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Baby Love”). Between 1963 and 1972, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team was responsible for more than 80 singles that hit the Top 40 of the pop or R&B charts, including 15 songs that reached No. 1. “It was as if we were playing the lottery and winning every time,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his autobiography, “How Sweet It Is” (2019, written with Scott B. Bomar).Nelson George, in his 1985 history of Motown, “Where Did Our Love Go?” (named after another Holland-Dozier-Holland hit), described how the youthful trio had won over the label’s more experienced staff and musicians. “These kids,” he wrote, “had a real insight into the taste of the buying public” and possessed “an innate gift for melody, a feel for story song lyrics, and an ability to create the recurring vocal and instrumental licks known as ‘hooks.’”“Brian, Eddie and Lamont loved what they were doing,” Mr. George added, “and worked around the clock, making music like old man Ford made cars.”In his memoir, Mr. Dozier concurred: “We thought of H.D.H. as a factory within a factory.”The Supremes (from left, Diana Ross, Cindy Birdsong and Mary Wilson) in 1968. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team wrote and produced 10 No. 1 pop hits for the group.Klaus Frings/Associated PressLamont Herbert Dozier — he was named after Lamont Cranston, the lead character in the radio serial “The Shadow” — was born on June 16, 1941, in Detroit the oldest of five children of Willie Lee and Ethel Jeannette (Waters) Dozier. His mother largely raised the family, earning a living as a cook and housekeeper; his father worked at a gas station but had trouble keeping a job, perhaps because he suffered from chronic back pain as a result of a World War II injury (he fell off a truck).When Mr. Dozier was 5, his father took him to a concert with an all-star bill that included Count Basie, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. While the music excited the young boy, he was also impressed by the audience’s ecstatic reaction, and resolved that he would make people feel good in the same way.As a high school student, Mr. Dozier wrote songs, cutting up grocery bags so he would have paper for the lyrics, and formed the Romeos, an interracial doo-wop group. When the Romeos’ song “Fine Fine Baby” was released by Atco Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic, in 1957, Mr. Dozier dropped out of high school at age 16, anticipating stardom. But when Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler wanted a second single, Mr. Dozier overplayed his hand, saying the group would only make a full-length LP. He received a letter wishing him well and dropping the Romeos from the label.After the Romeos broke up, Mr. Dozier auditioned for Anna Records, a new label called founded by Billy Davis and the sisters Anna and Gwen Gordy; he was slotted into a group called the Voice Masters and hired as a custodian. In 1961, billed as Lamont Anthony, he released his first solo single, “Let’s Talk It Over” — but he preferred the flip side, “Popeye,” a song he wrote. “Popeye,” which featured a young Marvin Gaye on drums, became a regional hit until it was squelched by King Features, owners of the cartoon and comic-strip character Popeye.After Anna Records folded in 1961, Mr. Dozier received a phone call from Berry Gordy Jr., brother of Anna and Gwen, offering him a job as a songwriter at his new label, Motown, with a salary of $25 a week as an advance against royalties. Mr. Dozier began collaborating with the young songwriter Brian Holland.“It was like Brian and I could complete one another’s musical ideas the way certain people can finish one another’s sentences,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his memoir. “I realized right away that we shared a secret language of creativity.”From left, Mr. Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Holland in an undated photo.Pictorial Press Ltd /AlamyThey were soon joined by Brian’s older brother, Eddie, who specialized in lyrics, and began writing songs together — although hardly ever with all three parties in the same room. Mr. Dozier and Brian Holland would write the music and supervise an instrumental recording session with the Motown house band; Eddie Holland would then write lyrics to the track. When it came time to record vocals, Eddie Holland would guide the lead singer and Mr. Dozier would coach the backing vocalists.In his memoir, Mr. Dozier summed it up: “Brian was all music, Eddie was all lyrics, and I was the idea man who bridged both.”Sometimes he would have an idea for a song’s feel: He wrote the Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There” thinking about Bob Dylan’s phrasing on “Like a Rolling Stone.” Sometimes he concocted an attention-grabbing gimmick, like the staccato guitars at the beginning of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” that evoked a radio news bulletin.And sometimes Mr. Dozier uttered a real-life sentence that worked in song, as he did one night when he was in a Detroit motel with a girlfriend and a different girlfriend started pounding on the door. He pleaded with the interloper, “Stop, in the name of love” — and then realized the potency of what he had said. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team quickly hammered the sentence into a three-minute single, the Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love.”In 1965, Mr. Gordy circulated an audacious memo to Motown staffers that read in part: “We will release nothing less than Top Ten product on any artist; and because the Supremes’ worldwide acceptance is greater than other artists, on them we will release only #1 records.” Holland-Dozier-Holland stepped up: While they didn’t hit the top every time with the Supremes, they wrote and produced an astonishing 10 No. 1 pop hits for the group.“I accepted that an artist career just wasn’t in the cards for me at Motown,” Mr. Dozier wrote in 2019. “I still wanted it, but I was constantly being bombarded with the demand for more songs and more productions for the growing roster of artists.”When Marvin Gaye, who had turned himself from a drummer into a singing star, needed to record some material before he went on an extended tour, Mr. Dozier reluctantly surrendered a song he had been saving to relaunch his own career as an artist: “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You).” Mr. Gaye showed up for the session with his golf clubs, late and unprepared, and nailed the song in one perfect take.Mr. Dozier and the Holland brothers left Motown in 1967, at the peak of their success, in a dispute over money and ownership, and started two labels of their own, Invictus and Hot Wax; their biggest hit was Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold,” a Top 10 hit in 1970.“Holland-Dozier-Holland left and the sound was gone,” Mary Wilson of the Supremes lamented to The Washington Post in 1986.Mr. Dozier, center, with Eddie Holland, left, and Brian Holland in 2003.Vince Bucci/Getty ImagesMr. Dozier wrote some more hits with the Hollands (many credited to the collective pseudonym Edythe Wayne because of ongoing legal disputes with Motown) and struck out on his own in 1973, resuming his singing career.He released a dozen solo albums across the years, but without achieving stardom as a singer; he had the most chart success in 1974, most notably with the song “Trying to Hold On to My Woman,” which reached the Top 20, and “Fish Ain’t Bitin’,” with lyrics urging Richard Nixon to resign, became a minor hit when his label publicized a letter it had received from the White House asking it to stop promoting the song.Mr. Dozier had greater success collaborating with other artists in the 1980s, writing songs with Eric Clapton, the Simply Red frontman Mick Hucknall (who puckishly released “Infidelity” with the credit “Hucknall-Dozier-Hucknall”) and Phil Collins, who hit No. 1 in 1989 with the Dozier-Collins song “Two Hearts.”Information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Dozier served as an artist-in-residence professor at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and as chairman of the board of the National Academy of Songwriters, imparting his hard-won wisdom to younger writers.“Always put the song ahead of your ego,” he wrote in his memoir. And he revealed the secret to his relentless productivity: “Writer’s block only exists in your mind, and if you let yourself have it, it will cripple your ability to function as a creative person. The answer to so-called writer’s block is doing the work.”Jenny Gross More

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      in Movies

      Clu Gulager, Rugged Character Actor of Film and TV, Dies at 93

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      On TV, he played Billy the Kid on the “The Tall Man” and was seen on the long-running “The Virginian.” His movies ranged from “The Killers” to “The Last Picture Show.” Clu Gulager, a rugged character actor who appeared in critically acclaimed films like “The Last Picture Show” as well as low-budget horror movies, and who memorably portrayed gunslingers on two television westerns, died on Friday at his son John’s home in Los Angeles. He was 93.John Gulager confirmed the death. He said his father’s health had been in decline since he suffered a back injury several years ago.Mr. Gulager’s rough-hewed good looks and Southwestern upbringing made him a natural for the westerns that proliferated on television in the 1950s and ’60s. He was seen regularly on “Wagon Train,” “Bonanza,” “Have Gun — Will Travel” and other shows.An appearance as the hit man Mad Dog Coll on “The Untouchables” in 1959 persuaded the writer and producer Sam Peeples to cast Mr. Gulager as the legendary outlaw Billy the Kid on “The Tall Man,” a television series he was planning about Billy’s friendship with Sheriff Pat Garrett. (By most accounts the title was a reference to Garrett’s honesty and rectitude, and to the show’s opening credits, in which Garrett’s long shadow stretches in front of him.)“He’s exactly what we were looking for, an actor with a flair for the unusual,” Mr. Peeples said in a TV Guide profile of Mr. Gulager shortly after the show first aired in 1960. “He lends a certain psychological depth to Billy.”The friendship between the lawman (played by Barry Sullivan) and the gun-toting rustler was fictionalized and greatly exaggerated over the show’s 75 episodes; many historians believe that Sheriff Garrett actually shot and killed Billy in 1881. Their fatal encounter never happened on the show, which ended abruptly in 1962.Mr. Gulager played a more lawful character on “The Virginian,” the first of three 1960s western series that ran for 90 minutes, which starred James Drury and Doug McClure. Mr. Gulager’s character on the show, Emmett Ryker, was introduced in the show’s third season when a rich man tried to hire him to murder a rancher. Although he refused to be a hired killer, he was framed for killing the man. After clearing his name, Ryker channeled his penchant for violence into the service of the law.On the series “The Virginian,” Mr. Gulager played a character who channeled his penchant for violence into the service of the law.NBC,via PhotofestIn Mr. Gulager’s first scene, Ryker was typically unflappable. He walked into a saloon and within moments angered a man playing cards. Ryker drew his gun on the card player before he could stand up, ending the conflict.Moments later a deputy sheriff asked Ryker where he learned to draw like that.“In the cradle,” he replied.Mr. Gulager’s acting career, which lasted well into the 21st century, was not relegated to the frontier. He appeared on non-western television shows including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Knight Rider” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and in several notable movies.Mr. Gulager, right, with Lee Marvin in “The Killers” (1964).The Criterion CollectionHe and Lee Marvin played hit men in “The Killers,” a 1964 film noir directed by Don Siegel and based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway that also starred Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and, in what turned out to be his last movie, Ronald Reagan.In 1969 he played a mechanic in “Winning,” a film about auto racing with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. He played an older man who has a fling with his lover’s beautiful daughter in “The Last Picture Show,” Peter Bogdanovich’s celebrated 1971 study of a fading Texas town.He was also in more lowbrow fare, like the Keenen Ivory Wayans blaxploitation parody “I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka” (1988) and the horror films “The Return of the Living Dead” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2” (both 1985).His movie work continued well into his later years, including roles in the independent productions “Tangerine” (2015) and “Blue Jay” (2016). His final screen appearance was as a bookstore clerk in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (2019).Mr. Gulager left the cast of “The Virginian” in 1968 to focus on directing and teaching. (The show remained on the air until 1971, becoming the third-longest-running western in television history, after “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza.”) His directing career foundered after the short film “A Day With the Boys” in 1969, but he became a popular teacher, running a workshop that focused on horror film acting and directing.“I tell the young students in my class that what we do is as important as the work of a man who grows the wheat, the doctor who saves lives, the architect who builds homes,” he said in an ABC news release before he starred in the TV movie “Stickin’ Together” in 1978. “What we do, in our best moments, is provide humanity with food for the spirit.”William Martin Gulager was born in Holdenville, Okla., on Nov. 16, 1928. He often said that he was part Cherokee; the name Clu came from “clu-clu,” a Cherokee word for the birds, known in English as martins, that were nesting at the Gulager home.His father, John Delancy Gulager, was an actor and vaudevillian who became a county judge in Muskogee, Okla., and who taught him acting from a young age, well before he graduated from Muskogee Central High School. His mother, Hazel Opal (Griffin) Gulager, worked at the local V.A. Hospital for 35 years.Mr. Gulager served stateside in the Marines from 1946 to 1948 before studying drama at Northeastern State College in Oklahoma and Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He continued his education in Paris, where he studied with the actor Jean-Louis Barrault and the mime Etienne Decroux.He married Miriam Byrd-Nethery, and they acted in summer stock and university theater. In 1955 both were in a production of the play “A Different Drummer” on the television series “Omnibus.” He continued acting in New York until 1958, when the Gulagers and their infant son, John, moved to Hollywood.Mr. Gulager’s wife died in 2003. Besides his son John, survivors include another son, Tom, and a grandson.John Gulager is a director of horror movies, notably the gory “Feast” (2005), which starred Henry Rollins and Balthazar Getty. That film and its two tongue-in-cheek sequels also featured the older Mr. Gulager as a shotgun-toting bartender battling fanged monsters in a Midwestern tavern. The second “Feast” movie was even more of a family affair.“You know, there are three generations of Gulagers in this movie,” John Gulager told the blog horror-movies.ca in an interview. One of them, named after Clu the elder, was Clu Gulager’s infant grandson.“He was 11 months old when we filmed it,” John Gulager added. “My dad said, ‘We have to get Baby Clu’s career started now.’ ”Christine Chung contributed reporting. More

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      in Television

      Clu Gulager, ‘The Tall Man’ and ‘The Virginian’ Actor, Dies at 93

      by

      On TV, he played Billy the Kid on the “The Tall Man” and was seen on the long-running “The Virginian.” His movies ranged from “The Killers” to “The Last Picture Show.” Clu Gulager, a rugged character actor who appeared in critically acclaimed films like “The Last Picture Show” as well as low-budget horror movies, and who memorably portrayed gunslingers on two television westerns, died on Friday at his son John’s home in Los Angeles. He was 93.John Gulager confirmed the death. He said his father’s health had been in decline since he suffered a back injury several years ago.Mr. Gulager’s rough-hewed good looks and Southwestern upbringing made him a natural for the westerns that proliferated on television in the 1950s and ’60s. He was seen regularly on “Wagon Train,” “Bonanza,” “Have Gun — Will Travel” and other shows.An appearance as the hit man Mad Dog Coll on “The Untouchables” in 1959 persuaded the writer and producer Sam Peeples to cast Mr. Gulager as the legendary outlaw Billy the Kid on “The Tall Man,” a television series he was planning about Billy’s friendship with Sheriff Pat Garrett. (By most accounts the title was a reference to Garrett’s honesty and rectitude, and to the show’s opening credits, in which Garrett’s long shadow stretches in front of him.)“He’s exactly what we were looking for, an actor with a flair for the unusual,” Mr. Peeples said in a TV Guide profile of Mr. Gulager shortly after the show first aired in 1960. “He lends a certain psychological depth to Billy.”The friendship between the lawman (played by Barry Sullivan) and the gun-toting rustler was fictionalized and greatly exaggerated over the show’s 75 episodes; many historians believe that Sheriff Garrett actually shot and killed Billy in 1881. Their fatal encounter never happened on the show, which ended abruptly in 1962.Mr. Gulager played a more lawful character on “The Virginian,” the first of three 1960s western series that ran for 90 minutes, which starred James Drury and Doug McClure. Mr. Gulager’s character on the show, Emmett Ryker, was introduced in the show’s third season when a rich man tried to hire him to murder a rancher. Although he refused to be a hired killer, he was framed for killing the man. After clearing his name, Ryker channeled his penchant for violence into the service of the law.On the series “The Virginian,” Mr. Gulager played a character who channeled his penchant for violence into the service of the law.NBC, via PhotofestIn Mr. Gulager’s first scene, Ryker was typically unflappable. He walked into a saloon and within moments angered a man playing cards. Ryker drew his gun on the card player before he could stand up, ending the conflict.Moments later a deputy sheriff asked Ryker where he learned to draw like that.“In the cradle,” he replied.Mr. Gulager’s acting career, which lasted well into the 21st century, was not relegated to the frontier. He appeared on non-western television shows including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Knight Rider” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and in several notable movies.Mr. Gulager, right, with Lee Marvin in “The Killers” (1964).The Criterion CollectionHe and Lee Marvin played hit men in “The Killers,” a 1964 film noir directed by Don Siegel and based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway that also starred Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and, in what turned out to be his last movie, Ronald Reagan.In 1969 he played a mechanic in “Winning,” a film about auto racing with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. He played an older man who has a fling with his lover’s beautiful daughter in “The Last Picture Show,” Peter Bogdanovich’s celebrated 1971 study of a fading Texas town.He was also in more lowbrow fare, like the Keenen Ivory Wayans blaxploitation parody “I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka” (1988) and the horror films “The Return of the Living Dead” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2” (both 1985).His movie work continued well into his later years, including roles in the independent productions “Tangerine” (2015) and “Blue Jay” (2016). His final screen appearance was as a bookstore clerk in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (2019).Mr. Gulager left the cast of “The Virginian” in 1968 to focus on directing and teaching. (The show remained on the air until 1971, becoming the third-longest-running western in television history, after “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza.”) His directing career foundered after the short film “A Day With the Boys” in 1969, but he became a popular teacher, running a workshop that focused on horror film acting and directing.“I tell the young students in my class that what we do is as important as the work of a man who grows the wheat, the doctor who saves lives, the architect who builds homes,” he said in an ABC news release before he starred in the TV movie “Stickin’ Together” in 1978. “What we do, in our best moments, is provide humanity with food for the spirit.”William Martin Gulager was born in Holdenville, Okla., on Nov. 16, 1928. He often said that he was part Cherokee; the name Clu came from “clu-clu,” a Cherokee word for the birds, known in English as martins, that were nesting at the Gulager home.His father, John Delancy Gulager, was an actor and vaudevillian who became a county judge in Muskogee, Okla., and who taught him acting from a young age, well before he graduated from Muskogee Central High School. His mother, Hazel Opal (Griffin) Gulager, worked at the local V.A. Hospital for 35 years.Mr. Gulager served stateside in the Marines from 1946 to 1948 before studying drama at Northeastern State College in Oklahoma and Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He continued his education in Paris, where he studied with the actor Jean-Louis Barrault and the mime Etienne Decroux.He married Miriam Byrd-Nethery, and they acted in summer stock and university theater. In 1955 both were in a production of the play “A Different Drummer” on the television series “Omnibus.” He continued acting in New York until 1958, when the Gulagers and their infant son, John, moved to Hollywood.Mr. Gulager’s wife died in 2003. Besides his son John, survivors include another son, Tom, and a grandson.John Gulager is a director of horror movies, notably the gory “Feast” (2005), which starred Henry Rollins and Balthazar Getty. That film and its two tongue-in-cheek sequels also featured the older Mr. Gulager as a shotgun-toting bartender battling fanged monsters in a Midwestern tavern. The second “Feast” movie was even more of a family affair.“You know, there are three generations of Gulagers in this movie,” John Gulager told the blog horror-movies.ca in an interview. One of them, named after Clu the elder, was Clu Gulager’s infant grandson.“He was 11 months old when we filmed it,” John Gulager added. “My dad said, ‘We have to get Baby Clu’s career started now.’ ”Christine Chung contributed reporting. More