Deaths (Obituaries)

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      James Hampton, Bumbling ‘F Troop’ Bugler, Dies at 84

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      A character actor, he was best known for comedic roles but also appeared in “The China Syndrome” and other dramas.James Hampton, a character actor who achieved a measure of sitcom immortality with one of his earliest roles, the inept bugler Hannibal Dobbs in the 1960s series “F Troop,” died on Wednesday at his home in Trophy Club, Texas. He was 84.Linda McAlister, his agent, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Hampton had a genial countenance well suited to comedic roles characterized by bumbling or gullibility. He had appeared in a handful of television shows, “Death Valley” and “Dr. Kildare” among them, when the director of a “Gunsmoke” episode he was in brought him to the attention of a Warner Bros. casting director. That led to the role on “F Troop,” a spunky ABC comedy about a military outpost, Fort Courage, in the 1860s.The show starred Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, Melody Patterson and Ken Berry, but Mr. Hampton made an indelible impression in his secondary role as a bugler whose playing bore only a passing resemblance to music. (In the show’s opening montage, an arrow makes a direct hit into the bell end of his horn as he’s playing.) The show ran for only two seasons, but its over-the-top humor in an era of milder comedies like “The Andy Griffith Show” endeared it to a certain segment of viewers.Mr. Hampton was well known to a later generation from the 1985 movie “Teen Wolf,” in which he portrayed the father of the title character, a werewolf played by the emerging star Michael J. Fox. He was also in its sequel, “Teen Wolf Too,” which starred Jason Bateman, in 1987.Mr. Hampton played more serious roles as well, including the power company public relations man who is showing Jane Fonda’s character around a nuclear power plant when disaster strikes in “The China Syndrome” (1979).He occasionally directed, including episodes of the 1990s series “Hearts Afire,” whose cast included Billy Bob Thornton. When Mr. Thornton wrote his acclaimed film “Sling Blade” (1996), he made sure that there was a role in it for Mr. Hampton, as a hospital administrator.Burt Reynolds was another important influence in his career. They met while working together on “Gunsmoke” when Mr. Reynolds was a regular cast member. The two appeared in the 1974 football movie “The Longest Yard,” and Mr. Hampton both wrote and directed episodes of Mr. Reynolds’s 1990s series, “Evening Shade.”James Wade Hampton was born on July 9, 1936, in Oklahoma City. His father, Ivan, owned a dry cleaning business, and his mother, Edna (Gately) Hampton, worked at a millinery.He grew up in Dallas and was a speech and drama major at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas). He was drafted in the Army in 1959 and served in Europe. Returning to Texas in the early 1960s, he worked in regional theater before moving to New York in 1962.Mr. Hampton in 2012. He continued to act occasionally even after semi-retiring in 2002.Barry Brecheisen/WireImageMr. Hampton worked steadily for the next four decades and landed occasional roles even after semi-retiring and settling back in Texas in 2002. He is survived by his wife, Mary Deese Hampton, whom he married in 2002; two sons, James and Frank; a daughter, Andrea Hampton Doyle; and three grandchildren.After “F Troop,” Mr. Hampton returned to slapstick-in-uniform in the 1976 movie “Hawmps!” He played a mid-19th-century lieutenant tasked with overseeing an experiment in Texas that involved using camels in the cavalry. Mr. Hampton was a favorite of Johnny Carson in that period and was a frequent guest on his “Tonight Show,” including on the night of the Hollywood premiere of “Hawmps!”As Mr. Hampton told the story to The Community Common of Portsmouth, Ohio, in 2007, he was Mr. Carson’s first guest so that he could leave early to get to the premiere. He happened to mention to Mr. Carson that his mother was in the studio audience. Mr. Carson brought up the house lights and congratulated her on her son’s big night.His mother responded by saying: “You just go ahead to the premiere, James. I’m going to stay and watch the rest of Johnny.” More

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      Ethel Gabriel, a Rare Woman in the Record World, Dies at 99

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      For much of her more than 40 years at RCA, Ms. Gabriel was a producer, overseeing “Living Strings” and other profitable lines.Ethel Gabriel, who in more than 40 years at RCA Victor is thought to have produced thousands of records, many at a time when almost no women were doing that work at major labels, died on March 23 in Rochester, N.Y. She was 99.Her nephew, Ed Mauro, her closest living relative, confirmed her death.Ms. Gabriel began working at RCA’s plant in Camden, N.J., in 1940 while a student at Temple University in Philadelphia. One of her early jobs was as a record tester — she would pull one in every 500 records and listen to it for manufacturing imperfections.“If it was a hit,” she told The Pocono Record of Pennsylvania in 2007, “I got to know every note because I had to play it over and over and over.”She also had a music background — she played trombone and had her own dance band in the 1930s and early ’40s — and her skill set earned her more and more responsibility, as well as the occasional role in shaping music history. She said she was on hand at the 1955 meeting in which the RCA executive Stephen Sholes signed Elvis Presley, who had been with Sun Records. She had a hand in “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” the 1955 instrumental hit by Pérez Prado that helped ignite a mambo craze in the United States.She may have produced or co-produced the album that contained that tune, but April Tucker, lead researcher on a documentary being made about Ms. Gabriel, said details on the early part of her career were hazy. Ms. Gabriel often said that she had produced some 2,500 records. Ms. Tucker said officials at Sony, which now holds RCA’s archives, had told her that the number may actually be higher, since contributions were not always credited.In any case, by the late 1950s Ms. Gabriel was in charge of RCA Camden Records, the company’s budget line, and was earning producer credits, something she continued to do into the 1980s.In 1959 she began the “Living Strings” series of easy-listening albums, consisting of orchestral renditions of popular and classical tunes (“Living Strings Play Music of the Sea,” “Living Strings Play Music for Romance” and many more), most of which were released on Camden. The line soon branched out into “Living Voices,” “Living Guitars” and other subsets and became a big profit-generator for RCA — which was not, Ms. Gabriel said, what the boss expected when he put her in charge of Camden, a struggling label at the time.“I’m sure he thought it was a way to get rid of me,” she told The Express-Times of Easton, Pa., in 1992 (too diplomatic to name the boss). “Well, I made a multimillion-dollar line out of it, conceived, programmed and produced the entire thing.”Ms. Gabriel with her fellow producers Don Wardell, left, and Alan Dell at the 1983 Grammy Awards. They shared the award for best historical album for “The Tommy Dorsey-Frank Sinatra Sessions.” Ed and Nancy MauroThere were other profitable series as well. Ms. Gabriel was particularly good at repackaging material from the RCA archives into albums that sold anew, as she did in the “Pure Gold” series. In 1983 she shared a Grammy Award for best historical album for “The Tommy Dorsey-Frank Sinatra Sessions” By the time she left RCA in 1984, she was a vice president.Yet, unlike the top male record executives of the era, she rarely made headlines. Ms. Tucker, an audio engineer, said she had never heard of Ms. Gabriel until one day she went searching to see if she could find out who the first female audio engineer was. She brought Ms. Gabriel to the attention of Sound Girls, an organization that promotes women in the audio field, and soon Caroline Losneck and Christoph Gelfand, documentary filmmakers, were at work on “Living Sound,” a film about her.Ms. Losneck, in a phone interview, said they had been hoping to complete the documentary by Ms. Gabriel’s 100th birthday this November.Ms. Losneck said Ms. Gabriel had survived in a tough business through productivity and competence.“She knew who to call when she needed an organist,” she said. “She knew how to manage the budget. All that gave her a measure of control.”Many of the records Ms. Gabriel made fit into a category often marginalized as elevator music.“It’s easy to look back on that music now and say it was kind of cheesy,” Ms. Losneck said, “but back then it was part of the cultural landscape.”Toward the end of her career, as more women began entering the field, Ms. Gabriel was both an example and a mentor. Nancy Jeffries, who went to work in RCA’s artists-and-repertoire department in 1974 and had earlier sung with the band the Insect Trust, was one of those who learned from her.“Being a woman and having ambition at a record company in those days was something that just didn’t compute with most of the male executive staff, but I was fortunate enough to land in the A&R department at RCA Records, where Ethel was established as a force to be reckoned with,” Ms. Jeffries, who went on to executive positions at RCA, Elektra and other record companies, said by email. “She had developed a couple of deals that, while they weren’t particularly ‘hip,’ generated a lot of income and financed some of the more speculative workings of the department. Lesson one: Make money for the company and they will leave you be.”Mr. Mauro summarized his aunt’s career simply:“She was successful early on when the playing field wasn’t level.”Ms. Gabriel, interviewed by The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1983, had a succinct explanation of her ability to thrive in a man’s world.“I didn’t know I was somewhere I shouldn’t be,” she said.Ethel Nagy was born on Nov. 16, 1921, in Milmont Park, Pa., near Philadelphia. Her father, Charles, who died when she was a teenager, was a machinist, and her mother, Margaret (Horvath) Nagy, took up ceramic sculpture later in life.Ms. Gabriel studied trombone in her youth and formed a band, En (her initials) and Her Royal Men, that played in the Philadelphia area. While at Temple she began working at RCA in nearby Camden putting labels on records and packed them before advancing to record tester.Ms. Gabriel at her home in Rochester, N.Y., in 2019. She had a succinct explanation of her ability to thrive in a man’s world: “I didn’t know I was somewhere I shouldn’t be.”Living Sound FilmAfter graduating in 1943, Ms. Gabriel continued her studies at Columbia University and worked at RCA’s offices in New York, including as secretary to Herman Diaz Jr., who led RCA’s Latin division. She spent a lot of time listening in on studio sessions, and by the mid-1950s trade publications were referring to her as an “RCA Victor executive.”In 1958 she married Gus Gabriel, who was in music publishing. The couple counted Frank Sinatra as a friend. In a 2011 interview with The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, she said that in 1973, when her husband was dying in a hospital, she walked into his room one day and found his nurses in a tizzy.“I asked, ‘What’s wrong?’” she recalled. “They said, ‘Oh, everybody got autographed pictures from Sinatra!’”Ms. Jeffries said that Ms. Gabriel had always mentored the women at the company no matter where they were on the corporate ladder. But her helping hand was extended to men, too, as the producer Warren Schatz found out when he joined RCA in the mid-1970s, as the disco wave was building.He had an idea for an album that might catch that wave, he said, and she came up with $6,000 to get it made. It was by the Brothers and included a song, “Are You Ready for This,” that became a dance-floor staple.“So Ethel basically started my life off at RCA,” Mr. Schatz said in a phone interview. Soon he was vice president of A&R, and she was reporting to him.“Whatever she wanted to do, I would just say yes to,” he said. “She was so calm, and so knowledgeable, and so self-sufficient.”Ms. Gabriel left RCA in 1984, in part, she said, at the urging of Robert B. Anderson, a former U.S. treasury secretary, who persuaded her to turn over to him her retirement package — more than $250,000 — so that he could invest it in the hope that the proceeds would finance future music ventures. The money disappeared, and Mr. Anderson, who died in 1989, was later convicted of tax evasion.Ms. Gabriel lived in the Poconos for a number of years before moving to a care center in Rochester to be near Mr. Mauro and his family. As she died at a hospital there, Mr. Mauro said, the staff had Sinatra songs playing in her room. More

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      Paul Ritter, British Stage, Film and TV Actor, Dies at 54

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      A familiar face to British theatergoers, he was also well known for his role as an eccentric father on the popular sitcom “Friday Night Dinner.”Paul Ritter, a versatile British actor who appeared in “Harry Potter” and James Bond movies and played a key figure behind the nuclear disaster that was the subject of the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” died on Monday at his home in Kent, England. He was 54.His agency, Markham, Froggatt & Irwin, announced the death. He had been treated for a brain tumor.Mr. Ritter was a familiar face to British theatergoers and well known for his role as Martin Goodman, the eccentric father of a London Jewish family, on the popular sitcom “Friday Night Dinner,” seen on Channel 4 since 2011.He played the ill-fated nuclear engineer Anatoly Dyatlov on the award-winning HBO drama “Chernobyl” (2019), the wizard Eldred Worple in “Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince” (2009) and a devious political operative in the James Bond film “Quantum of Solace” (2008).He was also frequently seen in productions at Britain’s National Theater, including “All My Sons,” “Coram Boy” and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” in which his performance as the father of a socially challenged teenager was praised as “superb” by Matt Wolf in The New York Times.He appeared in “Art” at the Old Vic in London and as Prime Minister John Major, opposite Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, in a West End production of “The Audience.”Mr. Ritter was nominated for a Tony Award in 2009 for his performance in Alan Ayckbourn’s farce “The Norman Conquests.”He was born in 1966 in Kent. He is survived by his wife, Polly, and two sons, Frank and Noah. More

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      DMX, Rapper Who Dominated Billboard Charts, Dies at 50

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      He released a string of No. 1 albums that reflected his gritty past and featured a gruff and unmistakable lyrical style.Earl Simmons, the snarling yet soulful rapper known as DMX, who had a string of No. 1 albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s but whose personal struggles eventually rivaled his lyrical prowess, died on Friday in White Plains, N.Y. He was 50.His family announced the death in a statement. He had been on life support at White Plains Hospital after suffering what his family called “a catastrophic cardiac arrest” a week earlier.“Earl was a warrior who fought till the very end,” the Simmons family said. “He loved his family with all of his heart, and we cherish the times we spent with him.”On April 2, Mr. Simmons had a heart attack at his home in White Plains. In the days that followed, his representatives said he was on life support “in a vegetative state.” Outside of the hospital, family and friends gathered with hundreds of fans, playing DMX’s music aloud and praying, holding up their arms in the shape of an X.Mr. Simmons’s music was often menacing and dark, with the occasional nod to Christian spirituality. He committed crimes, served time in different correctional institutions and battled addiction long before he released an album, and his troubled past informed the gritty content and inimitable delivery of his rhymes.He barked over the chorus of “Get at Me Dog,” the breakout single from his 1998 debut album, “It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot.”“His throat seems to hold a fuzzbox and a foghorn, and between songs he growled and barked,” Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote of a Simmons concert performance in 2000. “In his raps, the gangsta life is a living hell, a constant test of loyalty and resolve.”He rapped with an explosive cadence on “Party Up (Up in Here),” the big hit from his 1999 album “ … And Then There Was X”; raw braggadocio on “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem,” a tribute to his record label on his 1998 debut album, “It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot”; and a more introspective, brooding delivery on “Damien,” a story about making a murderous bargain with a demonic benefactor.“Why is it every move I make turns out to be a bad one?” Mr. Simmons asks in “Damien.” “Where’s my guardian angel? Need one, wish I had one.”Mr. Simmons, who sold millions of records and was nominated for three Grammy Awards, was the first musician whose first five albums reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. He was the standout artist on the Ruff Ryders label, often rapping over tracks by the star D.J. and producer Swizz Beatz. Rappers like Eve, Drag-On and the Lox, a group made up of Jadakiss, Styles P and Sheek Louch, also recorded on the label.Mr. Simmons was known for electrifying concert audiences. In 2000, the critic Elvis Mitchell wrote in The Times about his “remarkable and combative stage presence” in the concert documentary “Backstage,” which followed him and rappers like Jay-Z and Redman on the 1999 “Hard Knock Life” tour.“Bombastic and hot-blooded, he holds court in a singular fashion, exercising sheer force of will to pull the spotlight down on himself and demanding the crowd’s attention,” Mr. Mitchell wrote.Mr. Simmons starred with the rappers Nas and Method Man in Hype Williams’s 1998 gangster film, “Belly”; appeared in the 2000 action movie “Romeo Must Die” with Jet Li and the R&B singer Aaliyah; and starred with Steven Seagal in the 2001 action film “Exit Wounds.” The BET cable channel provided a closer look at his personal life with the 2006 reality series “DMX: Soul of a Man.”The macho, streetwise persona Mr. Simmons projected in his music was reinforced by repeated arrests on charges including fraud, assault, weapons possession, narcotics possession and driving under the influence.He served jail time after pleading guilty in 2008 to animal cruelty, drug possession and theft; in 2018 he was sentenced to a year in prison for tax evasion.He released several more albums over the years, including “Grand Champ” (2003) and “Undisputed” (2012). But with his frequent run-ins with the law, he never regained the success of his earlier days.DMX performing in New York in 2012. His long struggle with drugs, the bleak circumstances of his childhood and their impact on his life informed his music.Chad Batka for The New York TimesBorn in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Dec. 18, 1970, Earl Simmons was the first and only child of Arnett Simmons and Joe Barker. He grew up in Yonkers, a city just north of the Bronx that became a hotbed of racial tension in the 1980s.His father was an itinerant artist whom he rarely saw, and his mother struggled to raise him and his half sister Bonita in a violent neighborhood. In his memoir, “E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX” (2002, with Smokey D. Fontaine), he wrote that there was often little food at home while he was growing up and that as a precocious, hot-tempered and disobedient child, he was often beaten by his mother and her lovers. (Information on his survivors was not immediately available.)Mr. Simmons turned to street crime as he grew older, spending much of his childhood and teenage years in group homes or juvenile detention facilities, where, he wrote, he sometimes faced solitary confinement. He became an adept car thief and robber, he said, often using vicious dogs to intimidate victims.“I was straight stickup,” Mr. Simmons wrote. “I’d rob three times a day: before school, after school and on the late night.”In the late 1980s he started performing as a beatboxer, creating beats using only his mouth, with a local rapper named Ready Ron. (He took the name DMX from the Oberheim DMX drum machine, a model popular in the 1980s.) He said he was 14 when Ready Ron introduced him to crack cocaine by passing him what Mr. Simmons thought was marijuana.“I later found out that he laced the blunt with crack,” Mr. Simmons told the rapper Talib Kweli in an interview last year. “Why would you do that to a child?” He became addicted to it.His long struggle with drugs, his bleak childhood and their impact on his life informed his music — he titled a 2001 album “The Great Depression” — and many of his most swaggering songs conveyed hints of lingering trauma.“All I know is pain/All I feel is rain/How can I maintain?” he raps near the start of “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem.”In 1997 he was featured, along with Method Man, Redman, Master P and Canibus, on the LL Cool J song “4, 3, 2, 1.” He was also on Mase’s “24 Hrs. to Live” and, with Lil’ Kim, the Lox’s “Money, Power, Respect.” Those high-profile guest appearances led to a contract with Def Jam, Ruff Ryders’ parent company; his first two albums came out in 1998.Before breaking through as a rap star, Mr. Simmons made a name for himself as a nasty battle rapper in the early 1990s.“I always made it personal,” he wrote in his memoir. “Nothing was too rude or vicious for me because I didn’t care.”Joe Coscarelli contributed reporting. 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      Lois Kirschenbaum, the Ultimate Opera Superfan, Dies at 88

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      In New York opera circles, an autograph request from her, the mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade said, was considered “a special type of approval.”For more than a half-century, nearly every prominent singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera could expect to be approached backstage afterward by a wispy woman in thick glasses, who held piles of memorabilia to be autographed while she praised the performance in a raspy Brooklyn accent.This was Lois Kirschenbaum, one of New York’s biggest and longest-standing opera buffs and a nightly staple at the opera since the late 1950s, before Lincoln Center was built, when the Met was located in Midtown.Few operatic performances took place at the Met without being observed through Ms. Kirschenbaum’s large binoculars (she was legally blind from birth), usually from a seat in the uppermost balcony secured for little or no money by canvassing operagoers at the entrance just before the opening curtain.And few prominent singers went home without signing numerous items for Ms. Kirschenbaum, whose constant desire to get backstage helped her befriend some of the world’s most famous opera singers, from Beverly Sills to Plácido Domingo.Ms. Kirschenbaum died on March 27 at a hospital in Manhattan after suffering from pneumonia and renal failure, her longtime friend Sally Jo Sandelin said. She was 88.Such was Ms. Kirschenbaum’s reputation at the Met, as well as at New York City Opera, that singers half-joked that they had truly arrived on the New York opera scene only after being approached by Ms. Kirschenbaum after a performance.“It was like getting a special type of approval,” the mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade said. “I never met anyone who didn’t welcome her backstage and want to hang out with her.”She added, “We’d always look out for her and bring her in early if we could, because everyone loved her, and she’d have a hundred things to sign.”The bass singer Samuel Ramey said he was first approached by Ms. Kirschenbaum in his dressing room immediately after his first major role, as Don Basilio in “The Barber of Seville” with City Opera in late 1973.“I was told, ‘You’ve made it now — Lois has asked you for your autograph,’” he recalled, adding that Ms. Kirschenbaum became a constant presence backstage after his performances and that the two became good friends.“She was something else — she always got on the backstage list,” he said.Ms. Kirschenbaum, a wisecracking native of Flatbush, defied the stereotype of a highfalutin opera aficionado. She worked as a switchboard operator for the International Rescue Committee, the humanitarian aid organization, until retiring in 2004. She lived nearly her entire adult life in a rent-controlled apartment in the East Village, from which she would travel by subway and city bus to Lincoln Center while lugging a huge handbag full of photos, programs and recordings to be signed.Ms. Kirschenbaum with the soprano Renata Tebaldi in the late 1960s. Ms. Kirschenbaum’s love of opera began when she heard a recording by Ms. Tebaldi being played in a record shop.via Ken BensonIf she was unable to score a free or cheap ticket just before the performance, she would often slip in with the help of a friendly staffer.“Everyone knew her, from the workers who cleaned the bathrooms, to ticket takers, to the administration and of course the singers,” said another longtime friend, Carl Halperin. “All you had to say was ‘Lois’ and everybody knew who you meant.”Ms. Kirschenbaum was the grande dame of a group of hard-core fans who would flock to the backstage door for autographs and chats.With the help of her formidable handbag, she would quickly find her way to the front of the line and approach singers with complimentary and detailed critiques of their performances — from that night or from years earlier.“She could tell you anything going on in your performances on any given night — this or that particular phrase and what it meant,” the soprano Aprile Millo recalled. “For a singer, it gave you the feeling that you were being heard.”“She was so much part of the opera lore of New York, like the aficionados at La Scala,” the opera house in Milan, Ms. Millo said. Working the switchboard allowed Ms. Kirschenbaum to call singers and opera insiders for updates on news like cast changes or show cancellations, information she would then relay to fellow opera buffs.“For opera, she really was the internet before there was the internet,” said Ken Benson, a manager of opera singers and another longtime friend.And before the Met began putting out detailed schedules months in advance, Ms. Kirschenbaum became known for the homemade lists she compiled of upcoming performances and featured singers.She would distribute copies to fellow buffs during intermission, while enjoying the coffee and sandwiches she routinely smuggled in to avoid the expense of buying food at Met prices.“People would say that Lois’s list was more precise than what you’d get from the press,” Ms. Millo said.Ms. Kirschenbaum “was so much part of the opera lore of New York,” the soprano Aprile Millo said. Ms. Kirschenbaum’s request for an autograph, Ms. Millo added, meant “you got the blessing.”Julie Glassberg for The New York TimesMs. Kirschenbaum gleaned much of her information while soliciting singers’ autographs.“She’d ask them, ‘When are you coming back and what are singing next year?’” Mr. Halperin recalled. “And while Luciano Pavarotti was signing something for her, he’d say he’d be singing ‘La Bohème’ and ‘Tosca’ next season. And she’d collect all this.”Ms. Millo said Ms. Kirschenbaum might have her sign up to 20 pieces of memorabilia at a time. “It was a way to keep you engaged — it was clever of her,” she said.Lois Kirschenbaum was born in New York City on Nov. 21, 1932, to Abraham and Gertrude Kirschenbaum. Her father was an optometrist.An only child, she grew up in Flatbush and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. Ms. Kirschenbaum was an avid Brooklyn Dodgers fan, but when the Dodgers left New York for Los Angeles in 1957, her obsession shifted to opera after she heard a recording by the soprano Renata Tebaldi being played in a record shop.In her later years, Ms. Kirschenbaum alternated between haunting the margins of the Met for tickets and autographs and being honored as a special guest at fancy galas held by opera organizations.For her 75th birthday, in 2007, she was feted at a party by singers like Marilyn Horne and Renée Fleming, as well as the Met’s musical director, James Levine — “Jimmy” to Ms. Kirschenbaum — who gave her a ring and an autographed operatic score of “La Bohème.”In 1980, she won a raffle to see Beverly Sills’s farewell performance gala at City Opera, after having seen every role Ms. Sills sang in New York, except one, for 25 years.“Beverly saw me after that and said, ‘Lois, it was fixed,’” Ms. Kirschenbaum laughingly told The New York Times in 2012.In recent years, Ms. Kirschenbaum had begun using a wheelchair and went to the Met only sporadically. She continued to listen to opera (and to Yankees games) on the radio.Friends said she never married and never spoke of any surviving family members.It was unclear what would become of the trove of autographs, programs and photographs left behind in Ms. Kirschenbaum’s apartment.“There was no one more devoted to opera and the artists she loved than Lois,” Ms. Fleming said. “She was a beloved member of the Metropolitan Opera family, like a favorite aunt. I will miss knowing she is watching from the balcony and seeing her afterward at the stage door.” More

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      Gloria Henry, ‘Dennis the Menace’ Mother, Dies at 98

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      She was a prolific B-movie actress early in her career, but she became best known for her role as Alice Mitchell, the gentle mother of Dennis, on the CBS show.Gloria Henry, a B-movie actress of the 1940s and ’50s who became best known as the sunny, preternaturally patient mom on the television series “Dennis the Menace,” died on Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 98.The death was confirmed by her daughter, Erin Ellwood.Ms. Henry was 36 and a veteran of more than two dozen films in 1959 when she was cast as Alice Mitchell, the gentle, tolerant but constantly horrified mother in “Dennis the Menace,” a sitcom based on Hank Ketcham’s popular comic strip. Dennis (played by Jay North) was an angelic little boy on the surface, but every time he tried to help or just do something nice, it somehow backfired. The show ran for four seasons on CBS.Gloria Eileen McEniry was born in New Orleans on April 2, 1923, and attended Worcester Art Museum School in Massachusetts. She moved to Los Angeles in her teens and began working in radio, where she began using the last name Henry.She made her movie debut in the 1947 drama “Sport of Kings,” set in Kentucky horse country. Ms. Henry started at the top in the B-movie genre, starring in the film as a young veterinarian.Over the next three years she appeared in at least 17 films, more often than not in the starring role. A number of her films were westerns, like “Adventures in Silverado” (1948), “Law of the Barbary Coast” (1949) and “Lightning Guns” (1950). In two films — “The Strawberry Roan” (1948) and “Riders in the Sky” (1949) — she starred opposite Gene Autry, getting third billing, after Autry and his horse.She also appeared in several sports comedies, including “Triple Threat” (1948), with Richard Crane, and “Kill the Umpire” (1950), with William Bendix. Her best-known film was probably “Rancho Notorious” (1952), which was directed by Fritz Lang and starred Marlene Dietrich.Once Ms. Henry had made her television debut, in a 1952 episode of “Fireside Theater,” she devoted her career almost exclusively to series TV. Over four decades, on and off, she appeared in shows from “My Little Margie,” “Perry Mason” and “The Life of Riley” to “Dallas,” “Newhart” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.”Her final television appearance was on a 2012 episode of the sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” Ms. Henry’s first marriage, in 1943 to Robert D. Lamb, ended in divorce in 1948. She married Craig Ellwood, the California Modernist architect, in 1949. They divorced in 1977. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by two sons, Jeffrey and Adam, and a granddaughter.Ms. Henry, who kept in touch with Mr. North over the years, often commented on her “Dennis the Menace” character’s amazing restraint with her son. “I wasn’t allowed to yell at Jay North,” she told The Los Angeles Times at a 1989 gathering of actresses who had played famous mothers on television. “It was difficult. Being a normal, in-reality mother, I yelled at my children a lot.” More

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      Arthur Kopit, Whose ‘Oh Dad’ Shook Up the Theater, Dies at 83

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      A three-time Tony nominee, he first became known for avant-garde works, many of them christened with rambling titles, that sparked spirited reactions.Arthur Kopit, the avant-garde playwright who thrust Off Broadway into a new era with the absurdist satirical farce “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad” and earned Tony Award nominations for two wildly different plays, “Indians” and “Wings,” and the musical “Nine,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 83.His death was announced by a spokesman, Rick Miramontez, who did not specify the cause.In 1962, when “Oh Dad, Poor Dad” opened at the 300-seat Phoenix Theater on East 74th Street, American popular culture was shifting. Julie Andrews was between the idealistic “Camelot” and the wholesome “Mary Poppins”; Lenny Bruce, the hot comic of the moment, was known for what came to be called “sick humor.” Broadway was dominated by “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “A Man for All Seasons.”Along came a 24-year-old playwright with a script about an older woman who liked traveling with her virginal adult son and her husband’s preserved corpse. The New York Times critic, Howard Taubman, had reservations — he called it “funny” and “stageworthy” but “nonsensical” — but it won the Drama Desk Award (then the Vernon Rice Award) and even transferred to Broadway for a few months in 1963.There was often vehement disagreement about Mr. Kopit’s work. Before “Indians” (1969) — a dreamlike production that positioned Buffalo Bill Cody as the first guilty white American liberal and prominently featured his 19th-century Wild West show — arrived on Broadway, there was a production in London, where critical reaction was decidedly mixed. The script included the rape of one Native American and the casual murder (for sport) of another.Clive Barnes, writing in The Times, called the Broadway production, starring Stacy Keach, “a gentle triumph” and praised Mr. Kopit for “trying to do something virtually no one has done before: the multilinear epic.” But Walter Kerr, his Times colleague, compared it to “bad burlesque.”John Lahr, writing in The Village Voice, summarized “Indians” as “never less than scintillating” and called it the “most probing and the most totally theatrical Broadway play of this decade.” “Indians” received three Tony nominations, including for best play.Mr. Kopit professed a very specific social conscience. “I’m not concerned in the play with the terrible plight of the Indians now — they were finished from the moment the first white man arrived,” he told a London newspaper in 1968. “What I want to show is a series of confrontations between two alien systems.” Many saw parallels to the Vietnam War, then at its peak.When Mr. Kopit returned to Broadway a decade later, his subject could not have been more different. “Wings,” which opened at the Public Theater in 1978 and moved to Broadway the next year, followed the journey of a 70-year-old woman (played by Constance Cummings) having a stroke and reacting to it with fear, determination and kaleidoscopic verbal confusion. As The Washington Post reported, when the main character is asked to repeat the sentence “We live across the street from the school,” she replies, “Malacats on the forturay are the kesterfacts of the romancers.”Mr. Kopit in 1999. “When I wrote a play,” he once said, “I found that I lost myself as Arthur Kopit and I just wrote down what the characters said.”Jack Mitchell/Getty ImagesRichard Eder of The Times called “Wings,” which had been inspired by the post-stroke rehabilitation experiences of Mr. Kopit’s stepfather, “a brilliant work” — “complex at first glance,” he wrote, “yet utterly lucid, written with great sensitivity and with the excitement of a voyage of discovery.”The play was nominated for three Tonys. Ms. Cummings won the Tony and Drama Desk awards for best actress and an Obie for her performance.Mr. Kopit discovered his gift for writing plays almost by accident. In a 2007 interview with The Harvard Gazette, the official news outlet of his alma mater, he looked back at his initial reaction when he switched from short stories to scripts. “I was having a lot of trouble with the narrative point of view,” he recalled. “When I wrote a play, I found that I lost myself as Arthur Kopit and I just wrote down what the characters said. I wasn’t anywhere in the play, and I liked that.”Arthur Lee Koenig was born on May 10, 1937, in Manhattan, the son of Henry Koenig, an advertising salesman, and Maxine (Dubin) Koenig. His parents divorced when he was 2, and his mother’s occupation was listed in the 1940 census as millinery model. He took on his stepfather’s name after his mother married George Kopit, a jewelry sales executive.Arthur grew up and attended high school in Lawrence, an affluent Long Island community. He was already writing by the time he left Harvard in 1959 with an engineering degree. As he began a graduate fellowship in Europe, he heard about a Harvard playwriting contest. He wrote, entered and won the $250 prize with “Oh Dad,” which he said he never believed had any commercial potential.Mr. Kopit was at first fond of wordy, rambling titles. “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad” even had a subtitle: “A Pseudo-Classical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition.” He followed that success with a collection of one-acts, including “The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis,” set at a suburban country club. “On the Runway of Life, You Never Know What’s Coming Off Next” was another early work.His last Tony nomination was for the book of the musical “Nine” (1982), based on Federico Fellini’s film “8½.” That same year, he adapted the book of Ibsen’s “Ghosts” for a Broadway revival. More

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      Malcolm Cecil, Synthesizer Pioneer, Is Dead at 84

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      His massive machine, known as TONTO, helped transform the music in Stevie Wonder’s mind into classic albums like “Innervisions.”Malcolm Cecil, a British-born bassist with the soul of an engineer who revolutionized electronic music by helping to create a huge analog synthesizer that gave Stevie Wonder’s albums a new sound, died on Sunday at a hospital in Valhalla, N.Y. He was 84.His son, Milton, said the cause had not yet been determined.Mr. Cecil, a loquacious man with a head full of curls, had played the upright bass in jazz bands in England and was the night maintenance engineer at Mediasound Studios in Manhattan in 1968 when he met Robert Margouleff, a film and record producer who owned and operated a Moog synthesizer there.“He said, ‘Robert, if you show me how to play the synthesizer, I will teach you how to become a first-class recording engineer,’” Mr. Margouleff said in a phone interview. “We had a deal.”They began designing and building what would become The Original New Timbral Orchestra, or TONTO. Starting with the Moog and adding other synthesizers and a collection of modules, some of them designed by Mr. Cecil, they created a massive semicircular piece of equipment that took up a small room and weighed a ton. It could be programmed to create a vast array of original sounds and to modify and process the sounds of conventional musical instruments.As they continued to develop it, Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff recorded an album, “Zero Time” (1971), under the name TONTO’s Expanding Head Band.Reviewing “Zero Time” in Rolling Stone, Timothy Crouse wrote: “Like taking acid and discovering that your mind has the power to stop your heart, the realization that this instrument can do all sorts of things to you, now that it has you, is unsettling.”The album attracted the attention of Mr. Wonder, who had just turned 21 when he showed up at Mediasound on Memorial Day weekend in 1971. Mr. Cecil lived in an apartment above the studio so that he would be available to fix anything that might go wrong, day or night.“I get a ring on the bell,” Mr. Cecil told Red Bull Music Academy in 2014. “I look out; there’s my friend Ronnie and a guy who turns out to be Stevie Wonder in a green pistachio jumpsuit and what looks like my album under his arm. Ronnie says, ‘Hey, Malcolm, got somebody here who wants to see TONTO.’”What started as a demonstration of TONTO for Mr. Wonder turned out to be a weekend-long recording experiment. Seventeen songs were recorded, and a collaboration was born.Over the next three years, TONTO became a significant sonic element of Mr. Wonder’s music on the albums “Music of My Mind” and “Talking Book,” both released in 1972, and their follow-ups, “Innervisions” (1973) and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974).In an interview in 2019 with the music website Okayplayer, Mr. Cecil described part of the creative process behind the recording of “Evil,” the last track on “Music of My Mind.”“If you listen to ‘Evil,’ it has a fantastic opening, which is all TONTO, and the sound of it was classical,” he said. “There was an oboe sound. There was a horn sound and a foreboding bass.” He added, “When Stevie wanted something, he would explain what he heard in his head, and we would attempt to create it as closely as possible.”The experience of working with Mr. Wonder was, Mr. Margouleff said, “very much in the moment; nothing was preplanned. It was all intuitive and wonderful.”From left, Mr. Cecil, Stevie Wonder and Mr. Margouleff in the studio. The three collaborated on the albums “Music of My Mind,” “Talking Book,” “Innervisions” and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale.”via Robert MargouleffMr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff at the 1974 Grammy Awards. They won for their engineering of “Innervisions.”via Robert MargouleffMr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff won the Grammy Award for their engineering of “Innervisions,” which included the hit songs “Living in the City” and “Higher Ground.” Mr. Wonder won Grammys that year for album of the year and for best rhythm and blues song, for “Superstition,” which blended Mr. Wonder’s playing on drums and clavinet with a funky bass sound provided by TONTO.Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff’s partnership with Mr. Wonder ended after four albums.“We never got the business part of our relationship with Stevie together,” Mr. Margouleff said. “Business issues made our relationship untenable.”A year later — following technical difficulties during Billy Preston’s live TONTO performance on the NBC music show “Midnight Special” — Mr. Margouleff and Mr. Cecil broke up.Malcolm Ian Cecil was born on Jan 9, 1937, in London. His mother, Edna (Aarons) Cecil, was an accordionist who played in bands, including one, composed entirely of women, that entertained troops during World War II. His father, David, was a concert promoter who also worked as a professional clown under the name Windy Blow. They divorced when Malcolm was very young.Malcolm started playing piano when he was 3 and took up drums a little later. He began to play the upright bass as a teenager and was soon playing in jazz clubs. He studied physics for a year at London Polytechnic before entering the Royal Air Force in 1958. His three years as a radar operator prepared him for future studio work.After his discharge, he was the house bassist at the saxophonist Ronnie Scott’s nightclub in London, where he played with visiting American musicians like Stan Getz and J.J. Johnson; a member of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, a band whose evolving cast at various times included Charlie Watts and Jack Bruce; and the principal bassist of the BBC Radio Orchestra. He also had a business building public address systems and other equipment for musicians.Suffering from collapsed lungs, Mr. Cecil decided he needed a warmer climate and moved to South Africa, where he continued playing bass. But he disliked living amid apartheid.He sailed to San Francisco in 1967 and then headed to Los Angeles, where he spent a year as the chief engineer at Pat Boone’s recording studio. He later moved to New York City, where he worked at the Record Plant for six weeks before being hired as the maintenance engineer at Mediasound.He admired the Moog synthesizer IIIc at Mediasound but did not meet Mr. Margouleff until his fifth night there. They quickly began recording experimental psychedelic music together, and six months later the jazz flutist Herbie Mann signed them to his Embryo label.The first track they recorded for what would be their album “Zero Time” was “Aurora,” which was originally 23 minutes long. “I said, ‘Malcolm, I’m not even sure it’s music,’” Mr. Margouleff recalled. They cut its length by two-thirds.Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff turned TONTO into the most advanced synthesizer in music. It was used, largely in its 1970s heyday, on recordings by Richie Havens, the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Quincy Jones, Joan Baez, Little Feat and others.Mr. Cecil in 2018 at the National Music Center, in Calgary, Alberta, where TONTO currently resides, and where its impact was celebrated at a five-day event.Sebastian BuzzalinoIn the 1980s and ’90s, Mr. Cecil produced several of Gil Scott-Heron’s albums and produced or engineered albums by the Isley Brothers, Ginger Baker, Dave Mason and other artists. He also played bass on Mr. Scott-Heron’s 1994 album, “Spirits.” Mr. Margouleff went on to produce the rock band Devo.TONTO’s Expanding Head Band released one more album, “It’s About Time,” in 1974. “Tonto Rides Again,” a digitally remastered compilation of the two earlier albums, was released in 1996.“Margouleff and Cecil were about 30 years ahead of their time when they started this project,” Jim Brenholts wrote in a review of “Tonto Rides Again” on AllMusic.In addition to his son, Milton, Mr. Cecil is survived by his wife, Poli (Franks) Cecil.TONTO had several homes in New York City, including Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios; it also spent time in Los Angeles and in a converted barn owned by Mr. Cecil in the Hudson River town of Saugerties, N.Y.In 2013, TONTO was acquired by the National Music Center in Calgary, Alberta, where it was restored and its impact celebrated in a five-day event in 2018. A Tribe Called Red, a Canadian electronic-music duo that admires TONTO and considers it an influence, performed there, and Mr. Cecil gave a demonstration.A member of the band, Ehren Thomas, compared TONTO to the combination spaceship and time machine on a long-running British TV series.“It’s like the Tardis in ‘Doctor Who,’” he told the CBC, “because you can’t program it to do something specifically. You can set up the parameters and ask TONTO to do what you want, but what comes out is beyond your control.” More