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      Roger Mudd, Anchorman Who Stumped a Kennedy, Is Dead at 93

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRoger Mudd, Anchorman Who Stumped a Kennedy, Is Dead at 93A staple of CBS, NBC and PBS, he was best known for his interview with Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1979, when he asked a simple question: “Why do you want to be president?”Roger Mudd and Tom Brokaw, in the background, after they were named co-anchors of NBC’s “Nightly News.” The pairing, in 1982, was an attempt to reincarnate the Chet Huntley-David Brinkley chemistry of the 1960s. It failed after 17 months.Credit…Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesMarch 9, 2021, 5:09 p.m. ETRoger Mudd, the anchorman who delivered the news and narrated documentaries with an urbane edge for three decades on CBS, NBC and PBS and conducted a 1979 interview that undermined the presidential hopes of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, died on Tuesday at his home in McLean, Va. He was 93. The cause was kidney failure, his son Matthew said.To anyone who regarded anchors as mere celebrities who read the news, Mr. Mudd was an exception: an experienced reporter who covered Congress and politics and delivered award-winning reports in a smooth mid-Atlantic baritone with erudition, authority and touches of sardonic humor.He worked for CBS from 1961 to 1980 as a Washington correspondent and weekend anchor and was being groomed to succeed Walter Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News.” When the network named Dan Rather instead, a surprised and disappointed Mr. Mudd resigned.The CBS News Election Night team in 1974: from left, Mr. Mudd, Lesley Stahl, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Mike Wallace. Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesHe then joined NBC as chief Washington correspondent and in 1982 became co-anchor with Tom Brokaw on the “Nightly News,” an attempt to reincarnate the Chet Huntley-David Brinkley chemistry of the 1960s. It failed after 17 months, and NBC made Mr. Brokaw the sole anchor. Mr. Mudd resumed political reporting and documentary work for several years before switching networks again, moving to PBS.At PBS he reported for “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” from 1987 to 1992. He then taught at Princeton and at his alma mater, Washington and Lee University in Virginia, and hosted documentaries on the History Channel from 1995 until his retirement in 2005.Mr. Mudd is perhaps best remembered for the CBS interview with Senator Kennedy on Nov. 4, 1979, days before the senator began his campaign to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from the incumbent, Jimmy Carter. Mr. Kennedy, heir to the political legacies of his assassinated brothers, had a 2-to-1 lead in the polls when he faced Mr. Mudd and a prime-time national audience.“Why do you want to be president?” Mr. Mudd began.Mr. Kennedy hesitated, apparently caught off guard.“Well, I’m — were I to — to make the, the announcement and to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country,” he stammered.Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts as he was being interviewed by Mr. Mudd on CBS in February 1980. Mr. Kennedy’s halting performance severely damaged his campaign to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from Jimmy Carter.Credit…CBS NewsIt got worse. He twitched and squirmed, conveying self-doubt and flawed preparation, and stumbled through questions for an hour. His campaign, burdened by many problems, including his conduct in the drowning death of a former campaign aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts in 1969, was wounded before it began and never recovered.Mr. Mudd, who won a Peabody Award for the interview, also narrated “The Selling of the Pentagon,” a 1971 documentary that exposed a $190 million public relations campaign by the Defense Department that included junkets for industrialists and television propaganda. Roger Harrison Mudd was born in Washington on Feb. 9, 1928, to John and Irma (Harrison) Mudd. His father was a mapmaker for the U.S. Geological Survey, his mother a nurse. An ancestor was Samuel A. Mudd, a doctor who went to prison for treating John Wilkes Booth for the broken leg he suffered jumping to the stage of Ford’s Theater after shooting Abraham Lincoln in 1865.After graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, Mr. Mudd joined the Army in 1945. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Washington and Lee in 1950 and a master’s degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1953. He began in journalism in 1953 as a reporter for The News Leader of Richmond, Va., and soon became news director of the newspaper’s radio station, WRNL.Mr. Mudd, left, and the NBC correspondent Marvin Kalb in October 1984 interviewing Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York, the Democratic candidate for vice president at the time. Credit…Joel Landau/Associated PressMr. Mudd married Emma Jeanne Spears in 1957; she died in 2011. In addition to his son Matthew, he is survived by two other sons, Daniel and Jonathan; a daughter, Maria Ruth; 14 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.In 1956, Mr. Mudd became a reporter for the Washington radio and television station WTOP, and in 1961 he was hired by CBS to cover Congress. He went on to impress audiences and critics in 1964 with marathon coverage of a 60-day Senate filibuster that delayed civil rights legislation. That led to an assignment to co-anchor, with the veteran journalist Robert Trout, the network’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.Mr. Mudd was a natural on camera: tall and tanned, energetic but relaxed, with a long face that conveyed a rugged imperturbability. As his stature rose at CBS, he became the anchor on weekends and as a fill-in when Mr. Cronkite was on vacation or special assignment. He also covered Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign, and was on the scene when the senator was assassinated in Los Angeles.Mr. Mudd won Emmys for covering the shooting of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama in 1972 and the resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew in 1973, and two more for CBS specials on the Watergate scandal. He was named CBS national affairs correspondent in 1977, and became the heir apparent as Mr. Cronkite’s 1981 retirement approached.Mr. Mudd in 2001 taping a segment for the History Channel, where he produced documentaries about America’s founders, biblical disasters and other subjects.Credit…Marty Lederhandler/Associated PressBut Mr. Rather, the White House and “60 Minutes” correspondent, had sought Mr. Cronkite’s job and threatened to jump to ABC if he did not get it. After CBS chose Mr. Rather, Mr. Mudd went to NBC, where he was expected to succeed John Chancellor as anchor. Instead, the network named Mr. Mudd and Mr. Brokaw co-anchors, one based in Washington and the other in New York, but that arrangement did not last.Mr. Mudd went on to be an anchor on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 1984 and ’85 before his move to PBS as a political correspondent and essayist for “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” His documentaries on the History Channel included accounts of America’s founders, biblical disasters and the sinking of the Andrea Doria.Mr. Mudd’s well-received 2008 memoir, “The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News,” recalled an era of war, assassinations and scandals and news coverage by Eric Sevareid, Harry Reasoner, Marvin Kalb, Daniel Schorr, Ed Bradley and others who shared his spotlight.In 2010, Mr. Mudd donated $4 million to Washington and Lee University to establish the Roger Mudd Center for the Study of Professional Ethics and to endow a Roger Mudd professorship in ethics.Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Ralph Peterson Jr., Jazz Drummer and Bandleader, Dies at 58

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRalph Peterson Jr., Jazz Drummer and Bandleader, Dies at 58Probably the most prominent drummer of his generation to consistently front his own groups, he was also an insightful educator and mentor.The drummer Ralph Peterson Jr. at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2019. In his more than 30 years as a bandleader, he released roughly two dozen albums with an array of ensembles.Credit…Alan NahigianMarch 7, 2021, 5:34 p.m. ETRalph Peterson, a thunderously swinging drummer who began his career as Art Blakey’s last protégé and finished it as a mentor to a new generation of jazz talent, died on March 1 at his home in North Dartmouth, Mass. He was 58.His publicist, Lydia Liebman, said the cause was complications of cancer, which he had been fighting for six years.Mr. Peterson came to the fore in the 1980s as a member of the so-called Young Lions, a coterie of young improvisers devoted to the core ideals of bebop: swing rhythm, acoustic instrumentation and rigorous improvisational exchange within the constraints of a standard song form. Within that context, he brought a take-no-prisoners style and a bountiful, collaborative spirit.Mr. Peterson was probably the most prominent drummer among the Young Lions to consistently front his own groups, and over the course of more than 30 years as a bandleader he released roughly two dozen albums with an array of ensembles.One particularly successful vehicle was the Fo’tet, an unorthodox group consisting of clarinet, vibraphone, bass and drums. It seemed to prove the joyful flexibility of the straight-ahead jazz format, so long as you defined your own way of playing within it.In a 2011 interview with the pianist George Colligan, Mr. Peterson described his approach to tradition simply: “Take what you need and leave the rest.” When teaching, he said, he told students: “Don’t buy in lock, stock and barrel to any philosophy that is not based in your own experience. Because then you are not living your life.”Mr. Peterson joined the Art Blakey Big Band in his early 20s as the ensemble’s second drummer. He then became only the second person besides Blakey — and the longest-serving — to play in his main band, the Jazz Messengers, on Blakey’s own instrument. As Blakey grew ill, Mr. Peterson increasingly took over drum duties.Mr. Peterson led the band Messenger Legacy, composed of former members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, at Le Poisson Rouge in New York in 2005. Credit…Lev Radin/Pacific Press, via LightRocket, via Getty ImagesFor decades the Messengers had been the premier finishing school for straight-ahead jazz talent, as Blakey brought in an endless stream of young musicians to fill its ranks. From the drum chair, Mr. Peterson came into contact with a Who’s Who of youthful improvisers, many of whom would hire him for their ensembles or play in his own.After Blakey died in 1990, Mr. Peterson became a guardian of his legacy. The Ralph Peterson Quintet’s 1994 album, “Art,” was devoted to the Jazz Messengers repertoire. He later founded the band Messenger Legacy, composed of former Blakey band members, and in later years he and a group of his students recorded “I Remember Bu,” a big-band tribute to Blakey (who had taken the name Buhaina when he converted to Islam in the 1940s).In the mid-’80s, as he began to move beyond Blakey’s shadow, Mr. Peterson played drums in Out of the Blue, a sextet of young musicians assembled by Blue Note Records. In 1988 he released his own debut album for the label, “V,” featuring his quintet.Praising that album in a feature for The New York Times, the critic Jon Pareles called it an “exception” to the trend of albums by Young Lions who seemed partly suffocated by their fealty to tradition. Mr. Peterson’s record, he wrote, “makes hard bop sound daring again.”Ralph Peterson Jr. was born on May 20, 1962, in Pleasantville, N.J. His father was Pleasantville’s first Black police chief, and then its first Black mayor. His mother, Shirley (Jones) Peterson, was a manager at an aviation research center.Ralph grew up surrounded by drummers: His grandfather had been one, as had four of his uncles. Ralph started drumming at 3, and never stopped.He is survived by his wife, Linea; two sisters, Michelle Armstead and Jennifer Armstead; a daughter, Sonora Slocum; and two stepdaughters, Saydee and Haylee McQuay. He is also survived by Jazz Robertson, a mentee he considered his “spiritual daughter.”Alongside drums, Ralph studied the trumpet, and he entered Rutgers University’s jazz studies program as a trumpet major. But he soon departed to join Blakey’s band, and he didn’t return to school for two decades. In the early 2000s, having overcome an addiction to drugs, he returned to Rutgers to complete his bachelor’s degree.By then he was already teaching at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he later became a full professor, gaining a reputation as an insightful and positive-minded educator. Toward the end of his career, fed by the energy of his pupils, Mr. Peterson assembled the GenNext Big Band, a group of Berklee students modeled after the original Art Blakey Big Band. The ensemble released two albums on Mr. Peterson’s Onyx Music label, “I Remember Bu” (2018) and “Listen Up!” (2019).In the classroom, he shared his deep knowledge of jazz history, the lessons that had come to him by way of elders like Blakey, and his own life struggles.“Congratulations! You guys have accomplished a lot by arriving here. You are the best in your communities, the best where you come from,” he was quoted as saying to a roomful of Black students, all newly arrived on campus, in a 2018 article for DownBeat. “My job is to fuel your hunger, create more questions in your mind. And my goal is for you to leave with a sense of empowerment.”By then Mr. Peterson was battling Stage 4 cancer, but he framed his own resilience as a resource his students could access.“What I serve is the music, not my ego,” he told the class. “I’ve had enough chances to be dead, but I’m grateful to be alive. And the focus and intensity and pace at which I’m now working and living is directly related to the spiritual wake-up call that tomorrow isn’t promised.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Richie Tienken, Whose Comedy Club Propelled Careers, Dies at 75

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRichie Tienken, Whose Comedy Club Propelled Careers, Dies at 75At the Comic Strip, which Mr. Tienken and two partners opened in 1976, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld and many others made a lot of people laugh.Richie Tienken onstage at the Comic Strip in Manhattan in an undated photo. He and two partners opened the club in 1976, and a long list of careers began or were advanced there.Credit…via Tienken familyMarch 6, 2021, 3:25 p.m. ETRichie Tienken, a founder of the influential Manhattan comedy club the Comic Strip, where Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and countless other leading comics did some of their earliest work, died on Feb. 27 in Ridgewood, N.J. He was 75.His wife, Jeannie Tienken, confirmed his death and said the cause had not been determined. In recent years, he had struggled with throat cancer.In the mid-1970s, Mr. Tienken, who owned several bars in the Bronx, went to see one of his bartenders, an aspiring comic, perform at the comedy club Catch a Rising Star, which was in Manhattan at the time. It was a Monday night — normally a slow one in the bar business — and Mr. Tienken was impressed by how packed Catch a Rising Star was, as told in his 2012 book, written with Jeffrey Gurian, “Make ‘Em Laugh: 35 Years of the Comic Strip, the Greatest Comedy Club of All Time!”In a telephone interview, Mr. Tienken’s son Richie said another business fact was not lost on Mr. Tienken: At the time, comics weren’t generally paid (though the Comic Strip did eventually start paying modest amounts).“He was paying bands $400 a night” at his bars, the younger Mr. Tienken said. He did the math, and he decided that opening a comedy club to compete with Catch a Rising Star and the Improv, the only other prominent comedy club in Manhattan at the time, could be profitable.He and his partners settled on a run-down bar on Second Avenue between 80th and 81st Streets.“The place was old — really old,” Mr. Tienken wrote in the book. “But the bathrooms were in place, which meant that the plumbing was all in.”The Comic Strip (now known as Comic Strip Live) opened in 1976, and a long list of careers began or were propelled along there.“Richie Tienken’s club gave me my start in comedy,” Mr. Seinfeld, who first performed there in 1976, said through a spokesman. “And he had a wonderful, fatherly way about him that gave us all a feeling of encouragement as we stumbled around his stage trying to figure out how to do it. We all loved seeing him every night, and he took good care of us.”Mr. Tienken, second from left, with, from left, the comedians Jimmy Brogan, Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Schiff. “Richie Tienken’s club gave me my start in comedy,” Mr. Seinfeld said.Credit…via Tienken familyMr. Seinfeld returned to the club to perform a 2017 Netflix special, “Jerry Before Seinfeld,” in which he included the first jokes he told from the Comic Strip stage.Mr. Murphy, soon to achieve stardom on “Saturday Night Live,” was another comic who honed his stand-up at the club in its early days. Mr. Tienken and one of his co-founders, Robert Wachs, managed him for a time, and they both had producer credits on some of Mr. Murphy’s movies.A somewhat later group included Adam Sandler, Ray Romano and Mr. Rock, who wrote the introduction for “Make ‘Em Laugh” and compared comedy clubs like Catch a Rising Star and the Comic Strip to colleges for young stand-ups.“Catch was Yale, and the Strip was Illinois State University, Urbana,” he wrote. “Catch was stressful, like you were always on the verge of being expelled if you didn’t keep up your grades. The Strip was laid back. If you put in the work and studied, you would do well. But if you blew off a term smoking pot, it didn’t go on your permanent record.”And Mr. Tienken?“He had powerful shoulders and was genial,” Mr. Rock wrote, “like a bouncer who babysat on the side.”Richard John Tienken was born on June 11, 1945, in Manhattan. His father, John, was an electrician, and his mother, Helen, was a homemaker and also worked in a department store.He left home at 13, he said — he had stolen a car, and when reform school loomed, he hit the road to avoid it. His father was surprisingly supportive when he announced his plans.“He said, ‘After looking into them’” — that is, reform schools — “‘I understand; here’s 50 bucks,’” Mr. Tienken recalled last year in an episode of Mr. Gurian’s video series, “Comedy Matters.”He sold magazines and delivered groceries, and he eventually got into bar and bingo hall ownership. Then he moved into comedy.Mr. Gurian, a writer, comic and comedy historian who worked with Mr. Tienken again on a 2016 update of the 2012 book that they called “Laughing Legends: How the Comic Strip Club Changed the Face of Comedy,” said that among Mr. Tienken’s innovations was instituting a schedule so comics would know when they were going onstage; in other clubs, they might sit around for hours not knowing when or even whether they would get stage time on a given night.Some of the comics who came through his club were known for edgy material, but Mr. Tienken’s son Richie said his father was a fan of restraint.“He encouraged comics to tell stories about their own life over shock value and vulgarity,” he said.Mr. Tienken married Jeannie Nardi in 1991. In addition to her and his son Richie, Mr. Tienken, who lived in Hawthorne, N.J., is survived by another son, Jonathan; three daughters, Jacqueline, Dawn and Christina; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Mr. Tienken’s club had financial troubles at times (its post-pandemic future is unclear), and in recent years he had been embroiled in legal battles with the widow of Mr. Wachs, who died in 2013. But in the video interview last year, he said Mr. Seinfeld’s recent special had given the club a financial lift.So did a gesture by another alumnus, Mr. Sandler, who shot part of his 2018 Netflix special called “100% Fresh” there. But unlike the Seinfeld taping, that one was a surprise to Mr. Tienken; his wife kept it a secret from him.“She said to me, ‘When you come in tonight, dress nice,’” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bill C. Davis, Who Had a Hit Play With ‘Mass Appeal,’ Dies at 69

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostBill C. Davis, Who Had a Hit Play With ‘Mass Appeal,’ Dies at 69He was an unknown playwright in his 20s when his comic drama about a priest and a seminarian drew raves off and on Broadway. It was turned into a movie.Bill C. Davis in an undated photo. His play “Mass Appeal” was a “moving and very funny comedy about the nature of friendship, courage and all kinds of love,” Frank Rich wrote.Credit…via Davis familyMarch 5, 2021Updated 6:07 p.m. ETBill C. Davis, whose play “Mass Appeal” was a hit both off and on Broadway in the early 1980s and has been performed countless times since, died on Feb. 26 in Torrington, Conn. He was 69.His sister, Patricia Marks, said the cause was complications of Covid-19.Mr. Davis was virtually unknown in theater circles and still in his 20s when he wrote “Mass Appeal,” a two-character comic drama in which a middle-aged Roman Catholic priest finds his complacency challenged by an outspoken young seminarian. A friend — a priest, in fact — sent the play to the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, who in turn brought it to Lynne Meadow, the artistic director of the Manhattan Theater Club.Ms. Meadow, in a telephone interview, recalled first reading the play.“I put it down and I had this feeling of lucidity,” she said. “It was crystal clear what he was trying to talk about.”The play, directed by Ms. Fitzgerald, opened at Manhattan Theater Club in spring 1980 to rave reviews. “There are few more invigorating theatrical experiences than hearing the voice of a gifted writer for the first time,” Frank Rich’s review in The New York Times began.“Though ‘Mass Appeal’ starts out as a debate between two men on the opposite sides of a generational-theological gap,” Mr. Rich wrote, “it quickly deepens into a wise, moving and very funny comedy about the nature of friendship, courage and all kinds of love.”The play, starring Milo O’Shea as the older man and Eric Roberts as the younger one, enjoyed an extended run at Ms. Meadow’s theater before moving to Broadway, where Michael O’Keefe replaced Mr. Roberts. It ran for 212 performances at the Booth Theater, earning Tony Award nominations for Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. O’Shea.Mr. Davis adapted the play for a 1984 film version that starred Jack Lemmon as the priest and Zeljko Ivanek as the younger man.Mr. Davis’s subsequent plays were performed Off Broadway and in regional theaters (one, “Dancing in the End Zone,” about the tribulations of a college football star, had a brief Broadway run in 1985), but none approached the success of “Mass Appeal,” which was beloved by both audiences and actors. A 1982 production in Colorado starred Charles Durning and John Travolta.For Ms. Meadow, “Mass Appeal” led to an enduring friendship with Mr. Davis.“He was a person who loved the theater and loved ideas,” she said. “He was innocent and wise at the same time.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Tony Hendra, a Multiplatform Humorist, Is Dead at 79

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Hendra, a Multiplatform Humorist, Is Dead at 79He took his British brand of satire to nightclubs, TV, film (“This Is Spinal Tap”) and National Lampoon. But a memoir led to a sex-abuse accusation.Tony Hendra at his home in New York in 2004. He had a peripatetic career as a stand-up comedian, actor and writer.Credit…Tina Fineberg/Associated PressMarch 5, 2021Updated 2:48 p.m. ETTony Hendra, a humorist whose wide-ranging résumé included top editing jobs at National Lampoon and Spy magazines and a zesty role in the mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” died on Thursday in Yonkers, N.Y. He was 79.His wife, Carla Hendra, said the cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which was first diagnosed in 2019.Mr. Hendra, who was British but had long lived in the United States, began writing and performing comedy while a student at Cambridge University, traveling in the same circles as future members of the Monty Python troupe. In 1964 he and his performing partner, Nick Ullett, took their stage act to the United States, and from there he fashioned a steady if peripatetic career doing stand-up comedy, writing and editing for various publications, acting and publishing books.One of those, “Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul” (2004), was his account of his long relationship with a Benedictine monk named Joseph Warrilow, who, he wrote, had helped ground him through personal setbacks and instances of moral turpitude and led him back to an appreciation of the Roman Catholic faith of his childhood; as he put it late in the book, “The spiritual muscles I hadn’t used for decades began to acquire some tone.”“Father Joe” received glowing reviews. Andrew Sullivan wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it “belongs in the first tier of spiritual memoirs ever written.”But it had at least one detractor: Jessica Hendra, Mr. Hendra’s daughter from his first marriage. She submitted an unsolicited Op-Ed essay to The Times stating that Mr. Hendra had sexually abused her on several occasions when she was a girl, something not mentioned in his book. The Times didn’t publish the essay, but instead assigned an investigative reporter to look into the accusation.Mr. Hendra’s memoir received glowing reviews but was denounced by his daughter, who said it failed to mention that he had sexually abused her. He denied the accusation.Credit…Penguin Random HouseA month after Mr. Sullivan’s review, the newspaper published an account of her allegations under the headline “Daughter Says Father’s Confessional Book Didn’t Confess His Molestation of Her.”“It’s being seen as completely confessional, totally honest, the whole story,” Ms. Hendra, who was then 39, told the paper. “It’s not the whole story. By not saying anything, I felt I was being complicit in it. This book is an erasing of what happened to me.”In 2005 Ms. Hendra published a memoir of her own, “How to Cook Your Daughter,” in which she recounted what she said had been done to her. Mr. Hendra denied her accusations.Anthony Christopher Hendra was born on July 10, 1941, in Willesden, England, northwest of London. His mother, he wrote in “Father Joe,” was a “good Catholic” but “didn’t allow the precepts of the Gospels and their chief spokesman to interfere much with her daily round of gossip, bitching, kid-slapping, neighbor-bashing, petty vengeance, and other middle-class peccadilloes.” His father was not Catholic but because of his job — he was a stained-glass artist — “spent far more time inside churches and knew far more about Catholic iconography than his nominally Catholic brood.”Mr. Hendra attended St. Albans School, in southeast England, and was intent on becoming a monk when, he wrote in his memoir, Father Joe advised him instead to accept the scholarship he had been offered at Cambridge. There he became less preoccupied with religion and more interested in satire. By 1961 he was performing with the Cambridge Footlights theatrical group, doing comic routines in its annual revue as part of a cast that included John Cleese and Graham Chapman, who later in the decade would be among the founders of the groundbreaking Monty Python.Mr. Hendra formed a comedic partnership with Mr. Ullett, the two “purveying a nightclub-accessible form of the then fashionable political satire launched by ‘Beyond the Fringe’ and ‘That Was the Week That Was,’” as Mr. Hendra put it in a 1998 article in Harper’s Magazine, name-checking two pillars of late-’50s and early-’60s British comedy. In London they shared a bill with the American comic Jackie Mason, who offered to help them give New York a try.In 1964 they did. One of their first appearances was at the Greenwich Village club Café Au Go Go, opening for Lenny Bruce.“And a delightful introduction to America it was,” Mr. Hendra wrote in the introduction to “Last Words” (2009), his friend George Carlin’s memoir, which he finished after Mr. Carlin died in 2008. “The third night of the gig, undercover N.Y.P.D. cops arrested Lenny as he came off stage — allegedly for obscenity but as likely for being too funny about Catholics.”Mr. Hendra, right, performing on television with Nick Ullett. The two maintained a comedy partnership throughout the 1960s.Credit…Donaldson Collection/Getty ImagesMr. Hendra and Mr. Ullett worked the comedy circuit for the rest of the 1960s, often bombing in clubs outside New York, their droll British sense of humor not meshing with sensibilities in places like Dallas and the Catskills. They also turned up on television, including on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”“It’s a legendary show, but for comedians it was like playing a mausoleum,” Mr. Hendra said in a 2009 interview on Don Imus’s radio program. The audience was full of “Long Island car dealers and their wives” who were too uptight to laugh, he said, as was the host.“We used to call it the night of the living Ed,” he said.Hendra & Ullett never made it into comedy’s top tier, but the two worked regularly. They even appeared in a musical version of “Twelfth Night” at the Sheridan Square Playhouse in Manhattan in 1968, Mr. Hendra as Sir Toby Belch and Mr. Ullett as Sir Andrew Aguecheek. “Mr. Hendra’s bluffness and the wraithlike woebegone simpering of Mr. Ullett had quality,” Clive Barnes wrote in The Times.Seeking a steadier income, Mr. Hendra abandoned the comedy act in 1969 to try his hand at television writing on the West Coast. He had two moderately successful years, writing for “Playboy After Dark” and “Music Scene,” but when his manager got him a high-profile job writing for a coming special sponsored by Chevrolet, he torpedoed his own career. He was “deeply into the burgeoning environmental movement,” Mr. Hendra wrote in Harper’s in 2002, and decided to take out advertisements in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter in the form of an open letter to James Roche, chairman of General Motors, scolding him for the company’s record on pollution.“I was flooded with supportive calls from Hollywood’s nascent left,” he wrote, “and I was finished in network television.”He headed back East and into his stint at National Lampoon.The magazine was founded in 1970 by alumni of The Harvard Lampoon, and Mr. Hendra wrote for it from the beginning. In 1971, he was made managing editor, and he remained at the magazine for much of the decade. It was the Lampoon’s most fruitful period, and Mr. Hendra helped turn it into a franchise, with books, record albums and more.John Belushi, left, and Alice Playten performing in “National Lampoon’s Lemmings” at the Village Gate in Manhattan in 1971. Mr. Hendra produced, directed and helped write the show, a revue full of rock parodies.Credit…National LampoonIn 1972 he produced, directed and helped write “National Lampoon’s Lemmings,” a revue full of rock parodies that ran at the Village Gate in Manhattan. The idea, Mr. Hendra wrote in Harper’s, was to stage the show just long enough to record a live album, since the first National Lampoon album, “Radio Dinner,” had met with some success earlier that year.Instead, “Lemmings” became an Off Broadway hit. Among the cast were Chevy Chase and John Belushi, still three years away from becoming household names as part of the original “Saturday Night Live” troupe. Another cast member was Christopher Guest, who 12 years later would take rock parody to new heights as a writer and star of “This Is Spinal Tap,” Rob Reiner’s deadpan fake rock documentary.In that film, Mr. Hendra played Ian Faith, the not-terribly-competent manager of a heavy metal band that was struggling to draw crowds on a tour. (He tells the band the cancellation of a Boston concert isn’t a big deal because “it’s not a big college town.”)Mr. Hendra was the last editor in chief of the initial incarnation of the satirical magazine Spy, holding the position for about a year before the publication folded in early 1994. He was not involved in the magazine’s revival later that year.Mr. Hendra at the New York premiere of a film about National Lampoon in 2015. He wrote for the magazine from its inception in 1970 and was its managing editor for many years. Credit…Laura Cavanaugh/Getty ImagesMr. Hendra and Ron Shelton wrote the screenplay for a 1996 boxing comedy, “The Great White Hype,” which starred Samuel L. Jackson, Damon Wayans and Jeff Goldblum.“With a gleeful script by Tony Hendra and Ron Shelton,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review in The Times, “not to mention a gamely funny cast, this raucous film comes close to what it’s after: delivering a race-conscious ‘Spinal Tap’ for the world of sports.”After the fallout over “Father Joe,” Mr. Hendra kept a low profile, although in 2006 he did publish his first novel, “The Messiah of Morris Avenue,” about a not-too-distant future in which the religious right is running America.He married Judith Hilary Christmas in 1964; they divorced in the 1980s. In 1986 he married Carla Meisner. In addition to her, he is survived by his daughter Jessica and another daughter from his first marriage, Katherine; three children from his second marriage, Lucy, Sebastian and Nicholas; a brother, Martin; two sisters, Angela Hendra and Celia Radice; and four grandchildren.Mr. Hendra lived in Manhattan. Carla Hendra said he loved his adopted country and even during his illness, which causes loss of muscle control, remained engaged in politics. One of his last smiles, she said, came when he learned the results of the presidential election in November.“He was an immigrant who sailed from London into N.Y. Harbor on the SS United States after being given free passage in exchange for performing stand-up,” she said by email. “What was to be a two-week visit became 57 years, because he believed in the promise of America.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Henry Goldrich, Gear Guru to Rock Stars, Is Dead at 88

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHenry Goldrich, Gear Guru to Rock Stars, Is Dead at 88The owner of Manny’s Music in Manhattan, he brought wah-wah to Hendrix and Clapton and connected musicians with equipment that helped define their styles.Henry Goldrich in an undated photo in front of his store, Manny’s Music, which until it closed in 2009 was the largest and best-known of the cluster of music shops on West 48th Street in Manhattan.Credit…via Ian GoldrichMarch 4, 2021, 6:29 p.m. ETWhen asked about his musical ability, Henry Goldrich would often demur, “I play cash register.”His stage was Manny’s Music in Manhattan, where Mr. Goldrich, the longtime owner, supplied equipment to a generation of rock stars. But even though he sold instead of strummed, Mr. Goldrich secured an important role in rock by connecting famous musicians with cutting-edge equipment.“To these guys, Henry was the superstar,” his son Judd said. “He was the first guy to get gear they had never seen before.”Mr. Goldrich died on Feb. 16 at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 88.His death was confirmed by his other son, Ian, who said he had been in frail but stable health.Manny’s, which closed in 2009 after 74 years in business, was long the largest and best-known of the cluster of music shops on the West 48th Street block known as Music Row.It was opened in 1935 by Mr. Goldrich’s father, Manny, and it was a second home for Henry since his infancy, when the shop’s clientele of swing stars doted on him. Ella Fitzgerald would babysit for him in the shop when his parents went out for lunch, Ian Goldrich said.By 1968, when his father died at 62, Henry Goldrich had largely taken over operations and had turned the shop into an equipment mecca and hangout for world-renowned artists.He did this by expanding its inventory of the latest gear and by solidifying connections with suppliers that helped him consistently stock high-level instruments and new products.Mr. Goldrich sold guitars to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and many others. He was not happy about Mr. Townshend’s penchant for smashing them.Credit…Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesAt a time before rock stars were lavished with the latest equipment straight from the manufacturers, Manny’s was favored by top musicians searching for new gear and testing out new equipment.These included two guitar gods of the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton — to whom, Ian Goldrich said, his father recommended the wah-wah pedal, an electronic device that immediately became a staple of both musicians’ approaches. He added that Hendrix would buy scores of guitars on credit and have Mr. Goldrich fine-tune them to the guitarist’s demanding preferences.Many rock and pop classics were either played or written on instruments sold by Mr. Goldrich.John Sebastian, founder of the Lovin’ Spoonful, recalled in an interview how Mr. Goldrich in the mid-1960s helped him select the Gibson J-45 he used on early Spoonful recordings like “Do You Believe in Magic?”Mr. Goldrich similarly matched James Taylor with a quality Martin acoustic guitar early in his career, his son Ian said. And Sting used the Fender Stratocaster Mr. Goldrich sold him to compose “Message in a Bottle” and many other hits for the Police before donating it to the Smithsonian Institution.The photos on the Manny’s Wall of Fame constituted a Who’s Who of popular music. Credit…Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesIn 1970, he sold the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour the 1969 black Stratocaster he played on many of the band’s seminal recordings. It sold at auction in 2019 for a record $3,975,000.Pete Townshend of the Who would order expensive electric guitars by the dozens from Mr. Goldrich, who was not happy when he heard about the guitarist’s penchant for destroying his instrument onstage for theatrical effect.“It was good business,” Ian Goldrich said, “but my father was annoyed that Pete was breaking all the guitars he was selling him.”Unlike many of his flamboyant rock-star customers, Mr. Goodrich always dressed conventionally in a sport coat and kept a blunt demeanor that put his customers at ease.“He had a gruff personality; he treated them all the same,” Ian Goldrich said. “He’d tell Bob Dylan, ‘Sit in the back and I’ll be with you in a minute.’”There was the day in 1985 — it was Black Friday, and the store was packed — that Mick Jagger and David Bowie stopped by together, creating a commotion that halted sales. An annoyed Mr. Goldrich quickly sold them their items and rushed them out.“My father was like, ‘What are you guys doing here today?’” Ian recalled. “He didn’t throw them out, but he was not happy.”When the band Guns N’ Roses asked to shoot part of the video for their 1989 hit “Paradise City” in the store, Ian Goldrich recalled, his father agreed only reluctantly, saying, “OK, but we’re not shutting down for them.”Ever opinionated, Mr. Goldrich told Harry Chapin in 1972 that his new song “Taxi,” at nearly seven minutes, was too lengthy to be a hit. (It reached the Top 40 and is now considered a classic.) And he told Paul Simon, who as a boy had bought his first guitar at Manny’s, that he thought Simon and Garfunkel was a “lousy name” for a group.But he also advised new stars in a fatherly way not to squander their newfound wealth.“He’d take them aside and say, ‘You’re making money now — how are you going to take care of it?’” Ian Goldrich said.From left, the singer Richie Havens, the singer and radio host Oscar Brand and Mr. Goldrich at a celebration of Manny’s Music’s 50th anniversary at the Rainbow Grill in 1985.Credit…Marilyn K. Yee/The New York TimesHenry Jerome Goldrich was born on May 15, 1932, to Manny and Julia Goldrich, and grew up in Brooklyn and in Hewlett on Long Island. After graduating from Adelphi College, he served in the Army in Korea in the mid-1950s and then went to work full time at Manny’s.His father opened the store on West 48th Street, a location he chose because it was close to the Broadway theaters and the 52nd Street jazz clubs, as well as numerous recording studios and the Brill Building, a hub for music publishers. In 1999, Mr. Goldrich sold Manny’s to Sam Ash Music, a rival store, which largely retained the staff until Manny’s closed in 2009.In addition to his sons, Mr. Goldrich is survived by his wife, Judi; his daughter, Holly Goldrich; seven grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.Mr. Goldrich often used his celebrity clientele to market the store. “He recognized value of these people being in the store and it made the business, certainly,” his son Judd said.When a young Eric Clapton, then with the group Cream, was stuck in New York without the money to fly home to England, he offered his amplifiers to Mr. Goldrich to raise funds.“He said, ‘I’ll buy them from you as long as you stencil them with the Cream logo,” Ian said.Then there was the store’s Wall of Fame, thousands of autographed publicity photos of famous customers that constituted a Who’s Who of popular music. Mr. Goldrich helped cultivate the photos, many of which were inscribed to him, and often kept his staff from stacking merchandise in front of them.Mr. Taylor, in a video interview, described being mesmerized by the photos as a teenager and being proud when his own was added. “It was sort of an inside thing, not as celebrated as a Grammy or a gold record or a position on the charts,” he said. “But definitely you had arrived if you were included on that wall.”Mr. Goldrich became close friends with many musicians, including the Who’s bassist, John Entwistle, who attended Judd’s bar mitzvah in New Jersey and hosted the Goldrich family at his Gothic mansion in England. Ian remembered the band’s drummer, Keith Moon, sitting on his father’s lap while drinking cognac at a screening of the film “Tommy.”In a video interview, Mr. Goldrich described selling the violinist Itzhak Perlman an electric violin. When Mr. Perlman tried bargaining, Mr. Goldrich parried by asking if he ever reduced his performance fee.“He said, ‘It’s different, I’m a talent,’” Mr. Goldrich recalled. “I said, ‘I’m a talent in my own way, too.’”That talent was palpable to Mr. Sebastian when he asked Mr. Goldrich to allow him to test out his stock of Gibson acoustic guitars in a merchandise room.“Henry’s famously prickly demeanor receded slightly,” Mr. Sebastian recalled, and he agreed to open early the next morning to allow him in.“He knew exactly what I wanted,” he said. “And I’ll be damned if I didn’t catch Henry smiling as he made out the bill.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Erica Faye Watson, Comedic ‘Hidden Gem of Chicago,’ Dies at 48

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostErica Faye Watson, Comedic ‘Hidden Gem of Chicago,’ Dies at 48Best known as a regular on a local morning talk show, she also wrote plays and acted in movies. She died of complications of Covid-19.Erica Watson  was a regular on “Windy City Live,” a morning TV talk show in Chicago. She also did stand-up comedy and acted in movies.Credit…Patti K. GillMarch 4, 2021, 6:23 p.m. ETThis obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.When a candidate for state’s attorney in Cook County, Ill., held a lunchtime fund-raiser in downtown Chicago in 2016, the campaign hired a local comedian and television personality named Erica Faye Watson to warm up the crowd.Ms. Watson had never met the candidate, Kim Foxx, but that didn’t keep her from diving into an extended riff about Ms. Foxx’s hair. “I had never been publicly roasted before,” Ms. Foxx said in an interview. “I was like, who is this woman?”But the jokes were just a setup for Ms. Watson’s real point: what it would mean to have a Black woman as the county’s chief prosecutor, and how proud she would be to see Ms. Foxx in that role. The two became fast friends.“She was very much about empowering Black women,” said Ms. Foxx, who is now in her second term. “She was fighting not just for herself but for people like her.”Ms. Watson was a Chicagoland celebrity, best known as a regular on “Windy City Live,” a morning talk show on WLS-TV, Chicago’s ABC affiliate. She also performed stand-up comedy, wrote and directed plays and acted in movies.Ms. Watson died on Saturday in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She was 48. The cause was Covid-19, Patti Gill, her former agent, said.“Erica was a hidden gem of Chicago and a voice for overlooked businesses and causes,” said Ms. Gill, who cast her in “BlacKorea,” a short film she wrote, in 2017.Erica Faye Watson was born on Feb. 26, 1973, in Chicago, to Henry Watson, a postal worker, and Willie Mae Watson, a homemaker.Her survivors include her parents and her brother, Eric.Ms. Watson attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was a fixture on the school’s Black arts scene.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Roger Englander, Producer of ‘Young People’s Concerts,’ Dies at 94

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRoger Englander, Producer of ‘Young People’s Concerts,’ Dies at 94He collaborated with the charismatic conductor Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic for 14 years of programs aimed at educating children about the joys of music.Roger Englander, foreground, in 1955. He was the production force behind Leonard Bernstein’s televised Young People’s Concerts beginning in 1958. Credit…University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research CenterMarch 4, 2021, 5:56 p.m. ETRoger Englander, the Emmy Award-winning producer and director of the acclaimed Young People’s Concerts, which featured the magnetic Leonard Bernstein leading the New York Philharmonic, died on Feb. 8 at a hospital in Newport, R.I. He was 94.The cause appeared to be pneumonia, said Michael Dupré, his companion and only survivor.Mr. Englander was a staff director at CBS in 1958 when he and Mr. Bernstein began collaborating on the Young People’s Concerts, embracing the mission to educate children about the joys of music. Mr. Englander had years earlier helped stage operas by Gian Carlo Menotti.“Lenny totally trusted Roger,” said the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Corigliano, who was an assistant to Mr. Englander for the Young People’s Concerts. “If he weren’t comfortable with the director, it would have been impossible. But he didn’t have to worry.”He added, “Lenny adored him.”The concerts, initially mounted at Carnegie Hall and later at Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, have become a classic of educational programming and a powerful presence in the lives of many musicians, and musically minded people, even today.Mr. Bernstein was their undisputed star. He wrote his own scripts; talked to guest musicians like the pianist Andre Watts; played the piano to illustrate his commentary; and led the Philharmonic in classical, folk, jazz and pop music.But he left the TV production to Mr. Englander, who regarded the scores selected by Mr. Bernstein as his directing guide.“The choice of pictures — wide views, close-ups, tracking shots, rapid-fire montages or slow, languorous dissolves from one shot to another — is determined by the music itself,” he wrote in an essay for “Leonard Bernstein: The Television Years,” a 1985 exhibition at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York (now the Paley Center for Media). “The orchestra score becomes the shooting script, and the music holds all the answers for the director’s task of translating sound into picture.”Using shots from as many as eight cameras — two of them on the stage and one trained, from behind the orchestra, on the emotive Mr. Bernstein — Mr. Englander directed all 53 hourlong episodes of the concerts, which were staged and broadcast intermittently over the years through 1972.A reviewer for The New York Times wrote in 1964 that Mr. Englander had “again demonstrated that although confined to the limits of the concert stage, he is extremely adept at mobile camerawork, which always keeps the viewer interested.”His work on the concerts brought him an Emmy in 1965.Mr. Englander, left, with the conductor Andre Kostelanetz at Avery Fisher Hall, which was formerly Philharmonic Hall and is now David Geffen Hall, at Lincoln Center. Credit…Dan J. Coy/New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital ArchivesRoger Leslie Englander was born on Nov. 23, 1926, in Cleveland. His father, William, owned a men’s clothing store, where his mother, Frieda (Osteryoung) Englander, also worked.At Cleveland Heights High School, Roger studied piano, French horn and trumpet and achieved an early ambition — to be a conductor — by leading the school’s band and orchestra. He studied drama, composition and theory at the University of Chicago and graduated in 1945.He quickly became associated with opera. In 1946, he was the stage manager for the debut of Mr. Bernstein’s production of Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes” at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Mass. He also worked briefly at the Chicago Opera Company for its conductor, Fausto Cleva.Over the next few years, he staged several of Mr. Menotti’s operas, including two, “The Telephone” and “The Medium,” in 1948, on WPTZ-TV in Philadelphia, an NBC affiliate. He distilled his knowledge of opera into a book, “Opera: What’s All the Screaming About?” (1983).Mr. Englander started at CBS in the early 1950s, working on news, sports and public affairs programs. He also directed episodes of the cultural program “Omnibus” about the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, the Vienna Boys Choir and the French horn.In 1957, he had an idea for a musical series for children and pitched it to a CBS executive, but the interview did not seem to go well. A few days later, he learned that the executive “had actually been interviewing me for a totally different music series that his boss, William S. Paley, had cooked up with Leonard Bernstein,” Mr. Englander wrote in his essay for the 1985 Bernstein exhibition, referring to the chairman of CBS.Leonard Bernstein conducting a Young People’s Concert in 1958 with the New York Philharmonic. One of the eight cameras involved in the productions was always trained on him.Credit…CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesThe Young People’s Concerts debuted in January 1958 with a program called “What Does Music Mean?,” and the reviews were favorable. Without a commercial sponsor, though, Mr. Englander worried that the series would not last long.But when Newton N. Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, famously excoriated television as a “vast wasteland,” CBS saw an opening to demonstrate that not all its programming was drivel. It moved the concerts from Saturday afternoons to Sundays at 7:30 p.m. More people tuned in, and Shell Oil signed on as the first sponsor.During and after his tenure on the Young People’s Concerts, Mr. Englander worked on musical segments for NBC’s “Bell Telephone Hour” — which earned him a Peabody Award in 1959 — and the Emmy-nominated “Vladimir Horowitz: A Television Concert at Carnegie Hall” (1968), which CBS carried. He recalled how that virtuoso pianist had to be persuaded to give his first recital on television.“I think what finally broke down Horowitz’s resistance,” he told The Evening Sentinel of Carlisle, Pa., “was the question: ‘Don’t you wish there had been film in Franz Liszt’s time so you could see him play the piano?’”After his CBS years, Mr. Englander staged Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” (“The Soldier’s Tale”), a theater piece conducted by Leon Fleisher, narrated by John Houseman and mimed by Bil Baird’s marionettes at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan; wrote an interactive CD-ROM musical guide to Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”; and produced a series of videotapes for Music Theatre International in which writers and composers of Broadway musicals described their production techniques.But Mr. Englander understood that the concert series with Mr. Bernstein was the acme of his career. He called them “53 of the best hours that music on television had ever seen — to this day.”Mr. Englander in 1990. He directed all 53 of the Young People’s Concerts and remained active in music productions in later years.Credit…Michael DupreOne of the young people who paid rapt attention to him was Jamie Bernstein, one of Mr. Bernstein’s three children. When she was 12, she recalled in a phone interview, she would observe Mr. Englander in the production truck outside Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall).“He was like a wizard, with the score marked up in front of him, calling the shots,” she said. “He’d say, ‘Ready, Camera 3’— the one on the French horn — and he’d snap his fingers and Camera 3 came up on the central monitor. It was exciting to watch.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More