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      MF Doom, Masked Rapper With Intricate Rhymes, Is Dead at 49

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMF Doom, Masked Rapper With Intricate Rhymes, Is Dead at 49Born Daniel Dumile, MF Doom built a cult following with his wordplay and comic-book style. He died in October, a statement shared by his record label said.MF Doom performing in 2004. The album he released that year, “Madvillainy,” a collaboration with the producer Madlib, was a career breakthrough.Credit…Keith Bedford for The New York TimesDec. 31, 2020Daniel Dumile, the masked rapper who performed as MF Doom and built a lasting underground fan base with his offbeat wordplay and comic-book persona, died on Oct. 31, a statement from his family said on Thursday. He was 49.The rapper’s record label, Rhymesayers, provided the statement, signed by Mr. Dumile’s wife, Jasmine. The label did not give the cause of death or say why it was being announced two months later.Over six solo albums released between 1999 and 2009 and five collaborative LPs (with Madlib and Danger Mouse, among others) between 2004 and 2018, Mr. Dumile honed a style that was intricate and imaginative, calling on both esoteric and lowbrow references as well as cartoonish imagery in lyrics that could be poignantly emotional.Born in London and raised on Long Island, he grew up steeped in early hip-hop. He debuted in 1989 on the 3rd Bass track “The Gas Face” with a standout cameo that helped him get a record deal for his own group, KMD, in which he rapped as Zev Love X.The act included his brother, Dingilizwe, who performed under the name DJ Subroc. Its first album, “Mr. Hood,” arrived in 1991 on the major label Elektra. During the recording of KMD’s second album, “Black Bastards,” Subroc was killed in a car accident, and the label later declined to release the record. Mr. Dumile vanished from the entertainment business but continued to work on music privately while he raised his son.He resurfaced in 1997 with the single “Dead Bent,” his first song under the name Metal Face Doom. (The persona was a nod to the Marvel villain Doctor Doom.) Around the time of the release of the album “Operation: Doomsday” in 1999, which featured a masked character on its cover, Mr. Dumile began hiding his face in public, at first with a stocking mask and later a metal one, which became his signature.In a 2009 interview with The New Yorker, he said the mask had become necessary when he made the leap from the studio to the stage. “I wanted to get onstage and orate, without people thinking about the normal things people think about,” he said. “A visual always brings a first impression. But if there’s going to be a first impression, I might as well use it to control the story. So why not do something like throw a mask on?”Once an underground cult figure, Mr. Dumile found greater fame with albums in the mid-aughts. “Madvillainy,” which arrived in 2004 with the producer Madlib, was a breakthrough.“He delivers long, free-associative verses full of sideways leaps and unexpected twists,” the critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote in reviewing a 2004 concert in The New York Times. “You think you know where he’s heading and what each sentence will mean when it ends. Then it bends.”On “Raid,” a track from “Madvillainy,” he rhymes:Trippin’, to date the Metal Fellow been rippin’ flowsSince New York plates was ghetto yellowWith broke blue writing, this is too excitingFolks leave out the show feelin’ truly enlightenedReleased in the same year, his album “MM .. FOOD” (an anagram of his stage name) included tracks like “Gumbo,” “Kon Queso” and “Kon Karne.” In rapping about the seemingly mundane topic of food with goofiness and wit, he was “showing respect for human life,” he told Spin in 2004.“I’m more like a writer dude rather than a freestyler,” Mr. Dumile told The Chicago Tribune that same year. “I like to design my stuff, and I consider myself an author.”Mr. Dumile rapped under different personas and later became known for sending impostors out onstage to perform for fans; in his trademark metal mask, it was difficult to know the difference. The body doubles often disappointed fans but sparked viral moments online, like when an apparent MF Doom drop-in at a concert turned out to be the comedian Hannibal Buress.In 2017, Mr. Dumile announced on social media that his son, King Malachi Ezekiel Dumile, had died at 14. Information on survivors was not immediately available.Though he never reached mainstream superstardom, Mr. Dumile was widely admired by fellow rappers and producers. He was “your favorite MC’s MC,” wrote Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest on Twitter. In a post on Instagram, El-P wrote: “thank you for keeping it weird and raw always. you inspired us all and always will.”Caryn Ganz contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Joan Micklin Silver, Director of ‘Crossing Delancey,’ Dies at 85

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJoan Micklin Silver, Director of ‘Crossing Delancey,’ Dies at 85She broke barriers for women, directing seven feature films, including “Hester Street” and “Between the Lines,” as well as TV movies.Joan Micklin Silver in the late 1970s while filming an adaptation of the Ann Beattie novel “Chilly Scenes of Winter.” She had a love-hate relationship with movie studios.Credit…United Artists, via PhotofestJan. 1, 2021, 4:36 p.m. ETJoan Micklin Silver, the filmmaker whose first feature, “Hester Street,” expanded the marketplace for American independent film and broke barriers for women in directing, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.Her daughter Claudia Silver said the cause was vascular dementia.Ms. Silver wrote and directed “Hester Street” (1975), the story of a young Jewish immigrant couple from Russia on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1890s. It was a personal effort, a low-budget 34-day location shoot, that became a family project.Studios said the story was too narrowly and historically ethnic. For one thing, much of the film, in black and white, was in Yiddish with English subtitles.“Nobody wanted to release it,” Ms. Silver recalled in a visual history interview for the Directors Guild of America in 2005. “The only offer was to release it on 16 to the synagogue market,” she added, referring to 16-millimeter film.Ms. Silver’s husband, Raphael D. Silver, a commercial real estate developer, stepped in to finance, produce and even distribute the film after selling it to some international markets while attending the Cannes Film Festival. “Hester Street” opened at the Plaza Theater in Manhattan in October 1975, then in theaters nationwide, and soon earned $5 million (about $25 million today), almost 14 times its $370,000 budget. (Ms. Silver sometimes cited an even lower budget figure: $320,000.)Richard Eder of The New York Times praised the film’s “fine balance between realism and fable” and declared it “an unconditionally happy achievement.” Carol Kane, who was 21 during the filming, in 1973, was nominated for the best actress Oscar for her role as Gitl, the newly arrived wife who is, in the opinion of her husband (Steven Keats), humiliatingly slow to assimilate.Carol Kane starred in “Hester Street” (1975), Ms. Silver’s first feature film. She had a hard time finding a distributor, told that a movie about a young 19th-century Jewish immigrant couple on Manhattan’s Lower East Side wouldn’t sell.Credit…Midwest Film Productions“Hester Street” made Ms. Silver’s reputation, but the next time she wanted to depict Jewish characters and culture, the same objections arose.“Crossing Delancey” (1988) was a romantic comedy about a sophisticated, single New York bookstore employee (Amy Irving) who is constantly looking over her shoulder to be sure that she’s made a clean getaway from her Lower East Side roots.With the help of her grandmother (played by the Yiddish theater star Reizl Bozyk) and a traditional matchmaker (Sylvia Miles), she meets a neighborhood pickle dealer (Peter Riegert) who has enough great qualities to make up for his being just another nice guy (her tastes ran more in the bad-boy direction).The studios found this film “too ethnic” too — “a euphemism,” Ms. Silver told The Times, “for Jewish material that Hollywood executives distrust.”Luckily, Ms. Irving’s husband at the time, the director Steven Spielberg, was fond of Jewish history himself. He suggested that she send the script to a neighbor of his in East Hampton, N.Y. — a top Warner Entertainment executive. The film grossed more than $116 million worldwide (about $255 million today).It is difficult to say which was Ms. Silver’s most vicious antagonist, anti-Semitism or misogyny.“I had such blatantly sexist things said to me by studio executives when I started,” she recalled in an American Film Institute interview in 1979. She quoted one man’s memorable comment: “Feature films are very expensive to mount and distribute, and women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”Amy Irving and Peter Riegert starred in Ms. Silver’s movie “Crossing Delancey” (1988), another story of Jewish assimilation in New York.Credit…Warner BrothersJoan Micklin was born on May 24, 1935, in Omaha. She was the second of three daughters of Maurice David Micklin, who operated a lumber company that he and his father had founded, and Doris (Shoshone) Micklin. Both her parents were born in Russia — like the protagonists in “Hester Street” — and came to the United States as children.Joan grew up in Omaha, then went East, to Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, N.Y. She married Mr. Silver, known as Ray, in 1956, three weeks after graduation. He was the son of the celebrated Zionist rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.For 11 years, the Silvers lived in Cleveland, his hometown, where she taught music and wrote for local theater. They moved to New York in 1967, putting her closer to film and theater contacts.A chance meeting with Joan Ganz Cooney, the co-creator of Sesame Street, at a political fund-raiser led to her work with Linda Gottlieb at the Learning Corporation of America. Together they wrote and produced educational and documentary short films, including “The Immigrant Experience” (1972).Ms. Silver had a love-hate relationship with movie studios. She was one of several writers hired and fired by Paramount to adapt Lois Gould’s novel “Such Good Friends” (1971). Her first mainstream screenplay was “Limbo,” written with Ms. Gottlieb, about the wives of prisoners of war in Vietnam. Universal Studios bought the property but rewrote it and hired a director whose vision was the polar opposite of Ms. Silver’s.She was not going to let that happen with “Hester Street.” And she didn’t.Ms. Silver’s second film, “Between the Lines” (1977), was an assimilation story of sorts as well. The young, politically progressive staff of an alternative newspaper is being taken over by a corporation, which has radically different priorities and values. That film, whose ensemble cast included Jeff Goldblum, John Heard and Lindsay Crouse, was also produced by the Silvers.A poster for Ms. Silver’s 1977 movie about a progressive alternative newspaper being taken over by a corporation.For her third film, an adaptation of Ann Beattie’s moody best seller “Chilly Scenes of Winter,” Ms. Silver worked with United Artists. The studio promptly changed the title to “Head Over Heels” (1979) and promoted the movie as a lighthearted romp. It starred Mr. Heard and Mary Beth Hurt as a lovesick civil servant and the married co-worker he worships a little too much.After it bombed, the film’s young producers insisted on restoring the original title, giving it a new, less perky ending and having it re-released. This time it was received much more favorably.Ms. Silver ventured into Off Broadway theater with mixed results. Mel Gussow of The Times did not care for “Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong” (1982), her revue with Randy Newman’s music. But when Ms. Silver and Julianne Boyd conceived and staged the musical revue “A … My Name Is Alice,” it had three runs in 1983 and 1984 and was pronounced “delightful” by Frank Rich of The Times. There were two sequels in the 1990s.In the end, Ms. Silver directed seven feature films. The others, all comedies with relatively frothy subjects, were “Loverboy” (1989), about a handsome young pizza deliverer who offers extras to attractive older women; “Big Girls Don’t Cry … They Get Even” (1992), about divorced-and-remarried people thrown together again by a runaway teenage daughter; and “A Fish in the Bathtub” (1999), starring Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara as a couple with a pet carp.Ms. Silver during the filming of the comedy “Loverboy” in 1989. In all, she directed seven feature films and more than a half-dozen television movies.Credit…AlamyMs. Silver also directed more than a half-dozen television movies, beginning with “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1976), based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. Her last was “Hunger Point” (2003), about a young woman’s eating disorder.In addition to her daughter Claudia, Ms. Silver’s survivors include two other daughters, Dina and Marisa Silver; a sister, Renee; and five grandchildren. Mr. Silver died at 83 in 2013 after a skiing accident in Park City, Utah.Looking back in the Directors Guild interview, Ms. Silver professed definite work preferences.“The more I’m left alone, the better I do,” she said. “It isn’t that I think I’m smarter than anyone or anything like that. It’s just what whatever my instincts are, it’s better for me to be able to put those into play in my own work.”In the same interview, she was asked about “Crossing Delancey” and confessed her favorite aspect of the experience: “I had final cut.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Armando Manzanero, Mexican composer of hits by Luis Miguel, Elvis Presley, dead at 86

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus PlanVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyArmando Manzanero, Influential Mexican Balladeer, Is DeadHe was known as one of the great romantic composers. His songs were performed by Elvis Presley, Andrea Bocelli, Christina Aguilera and many others.The singer-songwriter Armando Manzanero performing in 2017 in Alamos, Mexico. He was hospitalized with Covid-19 in the days before his death.Credit…Luis Gutierrez/Norte Photo, via Getty ImagesJan. 1, 2021, 1:28 p.m. ETArmando Manzanero, one of Mexico’s greatest romantic composers, whose ballads were performed by the likes of Elvis Presley and Christina Aguilera, died on Monday in Mexico City.Mr. Manzanero’s family gave his age as 86, though some sources have said that he was 85.His death was announced on national television by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and by the Society of Authors and Composers of Mexico, of which Mr. Manzanero was president.“A great composer, among the best of the country,” and “a socially sensitive man,” Mr. López Obrador said.Mr. Manzanero had been hospitalized with Covid-19 and placed on a ventilator a week before his death, but his son, Diego Manzanero, said the cause was cardiac arrest following complications of kidney problems.In a seven-decade career, Mr. Manzanero wrote more than 400 songs, including hits like “It’s Impossible” and “Adoro” (“I Adore You”). He received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2014. He was also a lauded singer and producer.After touring with several well-known Mexican musical artists early in his career, he recorded his first songs in 1959 and released his first solo album, “A Mi Amor … Con Mi Amor” (“To My Love … With My Love”), in 1967. He went on to release dozens of albums, some of them consisting of duets.In 1971, Mr. Manzanero received a Grammy nomination for song of the year for “It’s Impossible,” a translation of his 1968 song “Somos Novios,” sung by Perry Como. The song, with a lush melody and syrupy lyrics, has remained popular. Elvis Presley recorded, as did Andrea Bocelli, in a duet with Ms. Aguilera.Luis Miguel sang several of Mr. Manzanero’s songs for his album “Romances,” released in 1997. A worldwide success, the album was credited with giving new popularity to Latin romance music, which had lost favor to some degree with the rise of Latin pop in the 1980s and ’90s.Often deceptively simple but imbued with tenderness and passion, Mr. Manzanero’s love songs have resonated for decades across cultures and languages.“A song has to be written with sincerity,” he told Billboard magazine in 2003. “It can’t be written with the desire to have instant success or passing success.” Rather, he said, it should be written to last.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Phyllis McGuire, Last of a Singing Sisters Act, Dies at 89

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPhyllis McGuire, Last of a Singing Sisters Act, Dies at 89Starting in the ’50s, the McGuire Sisters were one of America’s most popular vocal groups, their three-part harmonies a balm to audiences rattled by rock ’n’ roll.The McGuire Sisters in 1953 — from left, Christine, Phyllis and Dorothy. They became staples of television variety shows. Credit…Associated PressDec. 31, 2020Updated 4:58 p.m. ETPhyllis McGuire, the lead singer and last surviving member of the McGuire Sisters, who bewitched teenage America in the 1950s with chart-topping renditions of “Sincerely” and “Sugartime” in a sweet, innocent harmony that went with car fins, charm bracelets and duck-tail haircuts, died on Tuesday at her home in Las Vegas. She was 89.The Palm Eastern Mortuary in Las Vegas confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. Ms. McGuire, with her older sisters Christine and Dorothy, shot to success overnight after winning the televised “Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts” contest in 1952. Over the next 15 years, they were one of the nation’s most popular vocal groups, singing on the television variety shows of Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Andy Williams and Red Skelton, on nightclub circuits across the country and on records that sold millions.The sisters epitomized a 1950s sensibility that held up a standard of unreal perfection, wearing identical coifs, dresses and smiles, moving with synchronized precision and blending voices in wholesome songs for simpler times. Their music, like that of Perry Como, Patti Page and other stars who appealed to white, middle-class audiences, contrasted starkly with the rock ’n’ roll craze that was taking the world by storm in the mid-to-late ’50s.In 1965, as the trio’s popularity began to fade, Phyllis McGuire’s image as the honey-blonde girl next door was shattered by published reports linking her romantically with Sam Giancana, a Chicago mobster with reputed ties to the Kennedy administration and a Central Intelligence Agency plot to enlist the Mafia in what proved to be unsuccessful attempts to assassinate the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.Ms. McGuire with the Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana at a nightclub in 1962. Their relationship shattered her girl-next-door image. Credit…Associated PressMr. Giancana and Ms. McGuire, who had been followed by federal agents for several years, appeared before a grand jury in Chicago. He refused to answer questions and was jailed for contempt. She testified that she had met him in Las Vegas in 1961, traveled with him to Europe, the Caribbean and elsewhere and accepted his gifts in a continuing relationship. She was aware that he was a reputed gangster, she said, but insisted that she knew nothing of his underworld activities.“It makes me look terrible,” she told reporters afterward. “It would be different if I were on my own, but I’m not a single — I’m part of a trio. My sisters and my parents — they’re brokenhearted about this.”The McGuire Sisters retired from public appearances in 1968, Christine and Dorothy to raise families, Phyllis to continue as a soloist. She appeared regularly in Las Vegas, where she lived for the rest of her life in a mansion with a swan moat and a replica of the Eiffel Tower rising through the roof.After serving a year for contempt, Mr. Giancana was released, and he fled to Mexico, where he lived in exile until arrested by the Mexican authorities in 1974. Deported to the United States, he agreed to testify in a prosecution of organized crime in Chicago but was killed by an unknown assailant at his home in 1975.Ms. McGuire remained unapologetic about her relationship with Mr. Giancana. “Sam was the greatest teacher I ever could have had,” she told Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair in 1989. “He was so wise about so many things. Sam is always depicted as unattractive. He wasn’t. He was a very nice-looking man. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t drive a pink Cadillac, like they used to say.”In 1985, the sisters reunited for a comeback and performed for almost two decades at casinos and clubs in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and elsewhere. They sang their own hits, 1950s pop hits and Broadway show tunes, and Phyllis did impersonations of Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Pearl Bailey and Ethel Merman.“They take me back to the olden times, the beautiful times,” Barbara Pattison, a fan in Toronto, told People magazine as the comeback began. “They are not loud and they are not distant. They bring back the beauty in music.”Ms. McGuire in a celebratory mood in 1995 at her home in Las Vegas. She sang regularly at clubs and casinos in the city. Credit…Lennox McLendon/Associated PressPhyllis McGuire was born in Middletown, Ohio, on Feb. 14, 1931, the youngest of three daughters of Asa and Lillie (Fultz) McGuire. Her mother was a minister of the First Church of God in Miamisburg, Ohio., and her father was a steelworker. The sisters began singing in church when Phyllis was 4. They performed at weddings and other services, then at veterans’ hospitals and military bases.Phyllis’s 1952 marriage to Neal Van Ells, a broadcaster, ended in divorce in 1956. They had no children. Dorothy McGuire died in 2012, and Christine died in 2019. She is survived by nieces and nephews. Her longtime companion, Mike Davis, an oil and gas magnate, died in 2016.While making Las Vegas her home, for years she kept a Park Avenue apartment and then a townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.After winning “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” the sisters were regulars on Mr. Godfrey’s morning radio and television shows for six years. They made the covers of Life and Look magazines and signed with Coral Records, a Decca subsidiary. Their first Top 10 hit was “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight” in 1954. “Sincerely” (1955) and “Sugartime” (1958) were No. 1 hits; they and “Picnic” (1956) each sold over a million copies.The McGuire Sisters were one of the many white groups that covered 1950s R&B hits, many by Black artists, in what critics called blander versions though better-selling ones. They also sang for Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and for Queen Elizabeth II.In 1995, an HBO movie, “Sugartime,” focused on the Giancana-McGuire affair, with John Turturro as the mobster and Mary-Louise Parker as Phyllis. The sisters gave their last big performance on a 2004 PBS special, “Magic Moments: The Best of ’50s Pop.” They were inducted into the National Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1994, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2009.Long past the customary retirement years for a singer, Ms. McGuire remained passionate about her career.“I don’t fear living, and I don’t fear dying,” she told Vanity Fair in 1989. “You only live once, and I’m going to live it to the fullest, until away I go. And I’m going to continue singing as long as somebody wants me.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fou Ts’ong, Famed Chinese Pianist, Dies of Covid-19 at 86

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFou Ts’ong, Pianist Whose Family Letters Inspired a Generation, Dies at 86Driven from China during Mao’s rule, Mr. Fou kept up a correspondence with his father that became a beloved book in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.Fou Ts’ong in 1960. He was one of the first pianists from China to win international renown.Credit…Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesDec. 31, 2020, 4:59 a.m. ETFou Ts’ong, a Chinese pianist known for his sensitive interpretations of Chopin, Debussy and Mozart, and whose letters from his father, a noted translator and writer, influenced a generation of Chinese readers, died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for many years. He was 86.The cause was the coronavirus, said Patsy Toh, a pianist, who had been married to Mr. Fou since 1975.In 1955, Mr. Fou became one of the first Chinese pianists to achieve global prominence when he took third place in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, also winning a special prize for his performance of Chopin’s mazurkas.Almost overnight, he became a national hero at home. To China’s nascent Communist-led government, Mr. Fou’s recognition in a well-known international competition was proof that the country could stand on its own artistically in the West. Chinese reporters flocked to interview Mr. Fou, while many others sought out his father, Fu Lei, a prominent translator of French literature, for advice on child-rearing.But the authorities’ good will did not last long.Two years later, Mao Zedong initiated the Anti-Rightist Campaign, during which hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals, including Mr. Fu, were persecuted. Many were tortured and banished to labor camps. Mr. Fou, then studying at the Warsaw Conservatory in Poland, was made to return to China to undergo “rectification” for several months.Not long after going back to Warsaw, Mr. Fou found himself in a quandary. Having witnessed the increasingly tumultuous political climate back home, he knew that if he returned to China upon graduation — as the government expected him to do — he would be expected to denounce his father, an unimaginable situation.So in December 1958, Mr. Fou fled then-Communist Poland for London, where he claimed political asylum.“About my leaving, I always felt full of regret and anguish,” he later recalled in an interview. So many intellectuals in China had suffered, he said, but he had escaped. “I felt uneasy, as if I owed something to all my friends,” he added.After his defection to London, Mr. Fou maintained a written correspondence with his father in Shanghai — a special privilege that was said to have been personally approved by Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier.Then, in 1966, Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of chaos that upended Chinese society. Militant Red Guards accused Mr. Fu, a prolific translator of writers like Balzac and Voltaire, of having “capitalistic” artistic taste, among other crimes. They humiliated and tortured the scholar and his wife for days until the couple, like many other Chinese, were driven to suicide. Mr. Fou, still in London, did not learn of his parents’ deaths until several months later.In 1981, after China’s post-Mao government posthumously restored the reputations of Mr. Fou’s parents, a volume of letters written by his father, primarily to Mr. Fou, was published in China. Full of advice, encouragement, life teachings and stern paternal love, the book, “Fu Lei’s Family Letters,” became an instant best seller in China.For many, the long disquisitions on music, art and life offered a welcome contrast to the Cultural Revolution years, which saw sons turn against fathers, students against teachers and neighbors against neighbors — all in the name of politics.“If you imagine the environment we grew up with, it was very rigid,” said Xibai Xu, a political analyst who first read the letters in middle school in Beijing. He added, “So when you read ‘Fu Lei’s Family Letters,’ you realized how a decent human life could be — a life that is very delicate and artistic, with real human emotions and not just ideology.”Besides influencing a generation of Chinese, Mr. Fu’s words resonated long after his death with the person for whom they were originally intended.“My father had a saying that ‘First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist,’” Mr. Fou once recalled in an interview. “Even now, I believe in this order — that it should be this way and that I am this way.”Mr. Fou performing in New York City in 2006.Credit…Nan Melville for The New York TimesFou Ts’ong was born on March 10, 1934, in Shanghai. His father, in addition to being a translator, was an art critic and a curator. His mother, Zhu Meifu, was a secretary to her husband.Under the strict supervision of their father, Mr. Fou and his brother, Fu Min, were educated in the classical Chinese tradition, and they grew up surrounded by both Western and Chinese cultural influences. As a child, Mr. Fou studied art, philosophy and music, frequently making use of his father’s phonograph and extensive record collection.A lover of classical music from a young age, Mr. Fou began taking piano lessons when he was 7. He later studied under a number of teachers, including Mario Paci, the Italian conductor of the Shanghai Philharmonic.But the chaos of wartime China prevented the young pianist from receiving a systematic musical education. In 1948, Mr. Fou, then in his teens, moved with his family to the southwestern province of Yunnan, where he went through what he described as a rebellious period. It was only after returning to Shanghai several years later that he began to dedicate himself in earnest to the piano.In 1952, Mr. Fou made his first stage appearance, playing Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The concert caught the attention of officials in Beijing, who selected the young pianist to compete and tour in Eastern Europe, Mr. Fou’s first trip abroad.Soon, Mr. Fou moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory on a scholarship. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, he practiced so diligently that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of competition.After the deaths of his parents in 1966, Mr. Fou stayed abroad, rising to become a renowned concert pianist on the international circuit. Though he was best known for his interpretations of Chopin, he also received acclaim for his performances of works by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Debussy. In a review of a 1987 recital in New York, the critic Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times of Mr. Fou’s “sensitive ear for color” and “elusive gift of melody.”“We should hear Mr. Fou more often,” Mr. Holland wrote. “He is an artist who uses his considerable pianistic gifts in pursuit of musical goals and not for show.”In 1979, after Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Fou was granted permission to return to China for the first time in more than two decades, reuniting with his brother to hold a memorial service for their parents.On subsequent visits, Mr. Fou gave performances and lectures; he became known to many Chinese as the “Piano Poet” for his lyrical musical interpretations. Later versions of “Fu Lei’s Family Letters” were updated to include some of Mr. Fou’s letters to his father.Mr. Fou’s death came at a time of resurgent nationalism in China. On Chinese social media, some ultranationalist commentators called him a traitor to the country for having defected decades ago, echoing similar accusations that Mr. Fou faced in the 1950s not long after settling in London.“What would I tell them? There was nothing to say,” Mr. Fou once said of such critics in an interview. “It’s not that I was longing for the West.”“I was choosing freedom,” he added. “It was not an easy situation. There was no other choice.”Many other Chinese honored his memory, including well-known pianists like Li Yundi as well as Lang Lang, who called Mr. Fou “a clear stream in the world of classical music and a beacon of light in our spirit.”Mr. Fou in Chengdu, China, in 2007. The pianist Lang Lang called him “a clear stream in the world of classical music.”Credit…VCG/VCG, via Getty Images“Fou Ts’ong’s legacy was to show people and musicians the importance of integrity, character and music beyond technique,” said Jindong Cai, a conductor and the director of the U.S.-China Music Institute at Bard College Conservatory of Music.Mr. Fou’s first marriage, to Zamira Menuhin, daughter of the prominent violinist Yehudi Menuhin, ended in divorce, as did a brief marriage to Hijong Hyun. In addition to Ms. Toh, Mr. Fou is survived by a son from his first marriage, Lin Xiao; a son from his marriage to Ms. Toh, Lin Yun; and his brother, Mr. Fu.Mr. Fou remained passionately devoted to music in his later years, playing piano for hours every day even as his fingers grew frail. It was a love that he invoked often in interviews, alongside nuggets of wisdom from his father.“When I was very young, I wrote to my father from Poland that I was sad and lonely,” he once recalled. “He wrote back: ‘You could never be lonely. Don’t you think you are living with the greatest souls of the history of mankind all the time?’”“Now that’s how I feel, always,” Mr. Fou said.Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Dawn Wells, Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ Dies at 82

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTHOSE we’ve lostDawn Wells, Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ Dies at 82Her character on the ’60s sitcom radiated all-American wholesomeness and youthful charm. After her TV career cooled, she focused on theater acting.Dawn Wells as Mary Ann Summers on an episode of “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964. Her character and her look — Gingham blouses, short shorts and double ponytails — personified the girl next door.Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020Updated 6:35 p.m. ETDawn Wells, the actress who radiated all-American wholesomeness, Midwestern practicality and a youthful naïve charm as the character Mary Ann on the hit 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” died on Wednesday at a nursing home in Los Angeles. She was 82.Her publicist, Harlan Boll, said the cause was related to Covid-19.Debuting on CBS in 1964, “Gilligan’s Island” followed an unlikely septet of day trippers (on a “three-hour tour,” as the theme song explained) who ended up stranded on a desert island.There, shipwrecked alongside a movie star (who spent most of her time in evening gowns), a science professor, a pompous, older rich couple, and two wacky crew members was Mary Ann Summers (Ms. Wells), a farm girl from Kansas who had won the trip in a local radio contest.The character had a relatively scant back story — it was said that she worked at the hardware store back home and had a boyfriend — but Mary Ann’s persona alone made her memorable. Gingham blouses, short shorts, double ponytails and perky hair bows were all parts of her signature look.The first version of the show’s theme song mentioned five of the characters “and the rest,” but the lyrics were soon changed to name the professor (Russell Johnson) and Mary Ann as well. The others in the cast were Bob Denver (Gilligan), Alan Hale Jr. (the Skipper), Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer (as the couple Thurston Howell III and Lovey Howell), and Tina Louise (as the actress, Ginger). Ms. Louise is the last surviving member of the original cast.That the premise of “Gilligan’s Island” was pretty much implausible and its humor simplistic made no difference to the show’s millions of fans or its producers, who would discover in the years to come that they had spawned a cultural phenomenon.Though “Gilligan’s Island” lasted only three seasons, canceled in 1967, it hardly slipped from the horizon. Endless reruns ensued, and the cast members had a series of encore performances. Ms. Wells, for one, reprised her role as Mary Ann in three reunion TV movies: “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” (1978), “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” (1979) and “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” (1981).In 1982, she did the voices of both her character and Ms. Louise’s movie star for “Gilligan’s Planet,” an animated spinoff series. And she went on to play Mary Ann in episodes of at least four other (unrelated) shows: “Alf” (1986), “Baywatch” (1989), “Herman’s Head” (1991) and “Meego” (1997). “Gilligan’s”-themed episodes had a certain camp value.The cast of “Gilligan’s Island” from a reunion television movie in 1978: sitting, from left, Bob Denver, Ms. Wells and Russell Johnson; standing, from left, Judith Baldwin (replacing Tina Louise in the movie star role), Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer and Alan Hale Jr.Credit…CBS, via Associated PressEven her career as an author related directly to the series. “Mary Ann’s Gilligan’s Island Cookbook,” which included Skipper’s Coconut Pie, was published in 1993. “What Would Mary Ann Do? A Guide to Life,” a memoir she wrote with Steve Stinson, appeared in 2014.Mary Ann’s advice in the book included this thought: “Failure builds character. What matters is what you do after you fail.” The San Francisco Book Review called the book “a worthwhile mix of classic values and sincerity.”Asked decades later about her favorite “Gilligan’s Island” episodes, Ms. Wells mentioned “And Then There Were None,” which included a dream sequence in which she got to do a Cockney accent. She also cited “Up at Bat,” an episode in which Gilligan imagined that he had turned into Dracula.“I loved being the old hag,” she said.Dawn Elberta Wells was born in Reno, Nev., on Oct. 18, 1938, the only child of Joe Wesley Wells, a real estate developer, and Evelyn (Steinbrenner) Wells. Dawn majored in chemistry at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., then became interested in drama and went to the University of Washington in Seattle. She graduated in 1960 with a degree in theater arts and design, having taken some time off to win a state beauty title and compete in the 1960 Miss America pageant.“Big deal,” she said in a 2016 interview with Forbes, making light of her Miss Nevada win. “There were only 10 women in the whole state at the time.”For the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, her talent performance was a dramatic reading from Sophocles’ “Antigone.”A 1961 episode of the drama “The Roaring Twenties” was her screen debut. When she was cast on “Gilligan’s Island,” she had appeared onscreen only about two dozen times, mostly in prime-time series, including “77 Sunset Strip” (multiple episodes), “Surfside Six,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bonanza” and “Maverick.”Ms. Wells in 2015. After her television career cooled down, she returned to her first love: theater acting.Credit…Jason Merritt/Getty ImagesAfter her television career cooled down, Ms. Wells returned to her first love: theater, doing at least 100 productions nationwide. Her last television role was in 2019, as the voice of a supernatural dentist on the animated Netflix series “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants.”Her last onscreen appearance was in a 2018 episode of “Kaplan’s Korner,” about actors running an employment agency. Her only soap opera appearance was in a 2016 episode of “The Bold and the Beautiful,” in which she played a fashion buyer from a wealthy family.Ms. Wells’s marriage in 1962 to Larry Rosen, a talent agent, ended in divorce in 1967, the same year “Gilligan’s Island” went off the air. She is survived by a stepsister, Weslee Wells. Ms. Wells went on to operate charity-oriented businesses. She was a prominent supporter of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, the nation’s largest natural habitat refuge developed for African and Asian elephants.She also taught acting, creating the nonprofit Idaho Film and Television Institute while living at her ranch in the Teton Valley. But a screen career was never her childhood dream.“I wanted to be a ballerina, then a chemist,” she recalled in the Forbes interview. “If I had to do it all over again, I’d go into genetic medicine.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Rita Houston, WFUV D.J. Who Lifted Music Careers, Dies at 59

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRita Houston, WFUV D.J. Who Lifted Music Careers, Dies at 59From a studio in the Bronx, she introduced listeners to artists from a wide range of genres. She was also a mentor to the stars, and a sometime-confidante.Rita Houston in 1996 at WFUV’s studio at Fordham University in the Bronx. She was one of the station’s best-known personalities. Credit…Linda RosierDec. 30, 2020Updated 6:30 p.m. ETRita Houston, a big-hearted disc jockey with an intoxicating voice who championed artists like Brandi Carlile, Mumford & Sons, Adele, the Indigo Girls and Gomez at the widely followed WFUV-FM in the Bronx, died on Dec. 15 at her home in Valley Cottage, N.Y. She was 59.Laura Fedele, her wife, said the cause was ovarian cancer.Since 2012, Ms. Houston had been program director at WFUV, a listener-supported station licensed to Fordham University. She was also perhaps its best-known personality, hosting a popular Friday night show, “The Whole Wide World,” which was her vehicle for updating the station’s sound, balancing a new mix of indie rock, world music, hip-hop and electronica with the more familiar one of folk, rock and blues.“Rita could pull together all those things and make you feel, ‘Wow what a big world of music there is here,’” Chuck Singleton, WFUV’s general manager, said in a phone interview.“In her music she contained multitudes,” he added.Ms. Houston was also the impresario of in-studio performances — by Tom Jones, Adele and Emmylou Harris, among many others — and musical events in Manhattan at venues like the Bottom Line and the Beacon Theater as well as on the High Line, the elevated park.“I’m a singer girl, I’m a vocal girl, I don’t like when people don’t sing,” she told the musician-artist Joseph Arthur in March on his podcast, “Come to Where I’m From.” “I don’t want everything to sound like Ella Fitzgerald, but I just love a good voice.”One of those was Ms. Carlile’s, the folk and Americana singer-songwriter who credits Ms. Houston with giving her music its first airplay as well as the confidence to talk publicly about being a lesbian.In a remembrance on Facebook, Ms. Carlile wrote, “‘Is that your plus one?’ Rita Houston said to 22-year-old me as a picture of my girlfriend accidentally popped up on my cellphone screen.”Ms. Houston, sensing Ms. Carlile’s uneasiness at confiding to people in the music industry that she was gay, had persuaded her to open up.“I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but this is N.Y.C.,” Ms. Carlile recalled Ms. Houston telling her. “We’re going lesbian karaoke singing right now. Do a shot of tequila and get your coat.”Ms. Carlile cast Ms. Houston in the music video for “The Joke,” which won Grammy Awards in 2019 for best American roots song and best American roots performance.Ms. Houston’s recognition of the Indigo Girls had a significant impact on their career as well.“You knew you were doing something right if she played your songs,” Amy Ray, a member of that folk duo, said in an interview. “And she was one of those people we weren’t afraid to be ourselves and be queer with. We could be who we were. She gave us a lot of bravery.”Since earlier this year, Ms. Houston had guided a station initiative, called EQFM, to put more female artists on the air.“WFUV is on the right side of this issue, but we acknowledge there was more work we can do,” she told AllAccess.com, a radio industry news website. “For example, our music mix is 35 percent female-coded. That is higher than most but needs to be at 50 percent for true parity.”She added: “Good songs come from everywhere, across race, age and gender. Good radio should celebrate that, without bias.”Ms. Houston with Paul Simon in 2003. She balanced the station’s offerings between a mix of indie rock, world music, hip-hop and electronica and the more familiar format of folk, rock and blues.Credit…WFUVRita Ann Houston was born on Sept. 28, 1961, in White Plains, N.Y., and grew up in nearby Mount Vernon. Her father, William, was a home heating oil company executive. Her mother, Rita (Paone) Houston, was a waitress.Ms. Houston majored in urban studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, N.Y., but was expelled for tripping fire alarms and tipping over vending machines. “I went out big,” she told Mr. Arthur on his podcast. “I was in the wrong place.”She worked as a waitress before finding work as a D.J. at Westchester Community College’s radio station, then at another station in Mount Kisco, N.Y., for $7 an hour. She left for a job at ABC Radio as an engineer, and worked with the sports journalist Howard Cosell and the talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael. The pay was far better than her low-wage radio jobs, but she missed being on the air. In 1989 she was back behind a microphone at WZFM in White Plains.“Someone said to me, ‘I want to introduce you to the voice of God,’” said Paul Cavalconte, who, as the WZFM program director, hired Ms. Houston. “She was so engaging and charismatic, which worked on the radio and in personal appearances.” (WZFM is now WXPK.)When WZFM’s format shifted from adult album alternative to modern rock in 1993, Ms. Houston was told that she had to adopt on-air name with an X in it. She became Harley Foxx. But, seeking more diversity in the format, she sought refuge a year later at WFUV, of which she had been a fan for some time.“I just called the station and was, like, ‘Hey, can I work here, please?’” she told Mr. Arthur.She started hosting the midday show in 1994, then stepped away from it after a few years to become the full-time music director. She returned to the air in 2001 to host “The Whole Wide World.”In addition to her wife, she is survived by her sister, Debra Baglio, and her brothers, Richard and Robert. Another brother, William Jr., died in October.Ms. Houston recorded her final show from home on Dec. 5, with Mr. Cavalconte, also a D.J. at WFUV, as the co-host. It was broadcast three days after she died.“She was short of breath and aware that her voice was not strong,” said Ms. Fedele, who is the station’s new media director. “I nagged her for a couple of days, I wanted her to think about the playlist. Finally, she asked me to get a pen, and she just reeled off 30 songs.”Her playlist was a distillation of the genres that she had brought to her show and the station. She opened with James Brown (“Night Train”), moved on to artists like Deee-Lite (“Groove is in the Heart”), Emmylou Harris (“Red Dirt Girl”), Los Amigos Invisibles (“Cuchi Cuchi”), LCD Soundsystem (“New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down”) and David Bowie (“Station to Station”).The finale was the Waterboys’ “In My Time on Earth,” which the group performed last year at a WFUV event at Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan.Given the time she had left, the song resonated with her.“In my time on earth,” it goes, “I will speak the secret / In my time on earth / I will tell what is true.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Joe Clark, Tough Principal at New Jersey High School, Dies at 82

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJoe Clark, Tough Principal at New Jersey High School, Dies at 82Bullhorn in hand, he roamed the hallways as he imposed discipline, expelling “miscreants” and restoring order. Morgan Freeman portrayed him in the film “Lean on Me.”Joe Clark in 1988 in a hallway of Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J., where he gained renown for his tough-love approach as the principal.Credit…Joe McNally/Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020Updated 6:04 p.m. ETJoe Clark, the imperious disciplinarian principal of a troubled New Jersey high school in the 1980s who gained fame for restoring order as he roamed its hallways with a bullhorn and sometimes a baseball bat, died on Tuesday at his home in Gainesville, Fla. He was 82.His family announced his death but did not specify a cause.When Mr. Clark, a former Army drill sergeant, arrived at Eastside High School in Paterson in 1982, he declared it a “caldron of violence.” He expelled 300 students for disciplinary problems in his first week.When he tossed out — “expurgated,” as he put it — about 60 more students five years later, he called them “leeches, miscreants and hoodlums.” (That second round of suspensions led the Paterson school board to draw up insubordination charges, which were later dropped.)Mr. Clark succeeded in restoring order, instilling pride in many students and improving some test scores. He won praise from President Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s education secretary, William J. Bennett. With Morgan Freeman portraying him, he was immortalized in the 1989 film “Lean on Me.” And his tough-love policies put him on the cover of Time magazine in 1988, holding his bat. “Is getting tough the answer?” the headline read. “School principal Joe Clark says yes — and critics are up in arms.”Mr. Clark, who oversaw a poor, largely Black and Hispanic student body, denounced affirmative action and welfare policies and “hocus-pocus liberals.” When “60 Minutes” profiled him in 1988, he told the correspondent Harry Reasoner: “Because we were slaves does not mean that you’ve got to be hoodlums and thugs and knock people in the head and rob people and rape people. No, I cannot accept that. And I make no more alibis for Blacks. I simply say work hard for what you want.”Mr. Clark in 2001 as director of the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center in New Jersey. He was criticized for excessive use of physical restraints in disciplining inmates.Credit…Keith Meyers/The New York TimesTo get control of a crime-ridden school, Mr. Clark instituted automatic suspensions for assault, drug possession, fighting, vandalism and using profanity against teachers. He assigned students to perform school chores for lesser offenses like tardiness and disrupting classes. The names of offenders were announced over the public address system.And, in 1986, to keep thugs from entering the school, he ordered the entrance doors padlocked during school hours. Fire officials responded by having the locks removed, citing the safety of students and teachers. A year later, the city cited him for contempt for continuing to chain the doors.“Instead of receiving applause and purple hearts for the resurgence of a school,” Mr. Clark said after a court hearing, “you find yourself maligned by a few feebleminded creeps.”Though the padlocking episode put him in conflict with the Paterson school board, his no-nonsense style led to an interview for a White House job in early 1988. Before turning it down, he insisted that if he took the job it would not be because of any pressure from the board.“I refuse to let a bunch of obdurate, rebellious board members run me out of this town that I’ve worked in so assiduously for 27 years,” he told The Washington Post in 1988. A Post headline called him “The Wyatt Earp of Eastside High.”Joe Louis Clark was born on May 8, 1938, in Rochelle, Ga., and moved with his family to Newark when he was 6. He earned a bachelor’s degree from what is now William Paterson University, in Wayne, N.J., and earned his master’s at Seton Hall.After serving as a drill instructor in the Army Reserve, he started his education career as an elementary-school teacher and principal in New Jersey and then as director of camps and playgrounds for Essex County, N.J. Then he was appointed to turn Eastside High around.“A school’s going where the principal is going,” William Pascrell, the Paterson school board president, told the North Jersey newspaper The Record. “Eastside is a school ready to take off. Joe Clark is the guy who can do it.”Morgan Freeman played Mr. Clark as a no-nonsense high school principal in the 1989 movie “Lean on Me.” Beverly Todd played a high school teacher.Credit…Warner BrothersIn 1989, his final year at Eastside, Mr. Clark spent time away from the school promoting “Lean on Me” and was on the road when a group of young men stripped down to their G-strings during a school assembly. Mr. Clark was suspended for a week for failing to supervise the gathering.He resigned from Eastside in July 1989 two months after heart surgery.After six years on the lecture circuit, often calling for rigorous academic standards, Mr. Clark resurfaced as the director of the Essex County Youth Detention Center in Newark. Again his tactics drew fire. Both the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission and the state’s Division of Youth and Family Services criticized him at different times for excessive use of physical restraints, including shackling and cuffing some detainees for two days.Mr. Clark stepped down as director in early 2002 after the juvenile justice commission accused him of condoning putting teenagers in isolation for long periods.His survivors include his daughters, Joetta Clark Diggs and Hazel Clark, who were both Olympic middle distance runners; a son, J.J., the director of track and field at Stanford University; and three grandchildren.Mr. Clark’s image got a dramatic reimagining in the climax of “Lean on Me.” As Mr. Clark, Mr. Freeman is sent to jail for violating fire safety codes, only to persuade students rallying for his release to disperse. (He’s released by the mayor in the movie.)Mr. Clark never went to jail, and the film’s director, John Avildsen, admitted that the scene was fictional.“Now, if he hadn’t taken the chains off the doors in reality,” Mr. Avildsen told The Times in 1989, speaking of Mr. Clark, “and if he had gone to jail, then what happened in the movie could very well have happened.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More