Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Television

      Mark Snow, Who Conjured the ‘X-Files’ Theme, Is Dead at 78

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      It took a misplaced elbow, a quirk of Los Angeles geography and some whistling from his wife to produce one of television’s most memorable melodies.Mark Snow, a Juilliard-trained soundtrack composer who earned 15 Emmy Award nominations, including one for his eerily astral opening theme to “The X-Files,” a 1990s answer to the timeless “Twilight Zone” theme and the basis of a surprising dance hit in Europe, died on July 4 at his home in Washington, Conn. He was 78.The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare form of blood cancer, his son-in-law Peter Ferland said.Over an extraordinarily prolific five-decade career, during which he tallied more than 250 film and television credits, Mr. Snow excelled in a field that comes with built-in creative challenges.“Some producers describe their musical idea as ‘fast but slow,’” he said in a 2000 interview with Film & Video magazine. “The director might say he wants to hear music that’s ‘blue with a hint of green.’ Now, no one really knows what those terms mean. That’s a big part of my job, interpreting the search for a project’s musical voice.”Mr. Snow provided music for 90 episodes of “Hart to Hart,” which starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a jet-setting couple who double as amateur sleuths, and 40 episodes of “Falcon Crest,” the 1980s prime-time soap opera.Mr. Snow provided music for 90 episodes of the Robert Wagner series “Hart to Hart.”Columbia Pictures , via Everett CollectionHis many other credits included “Starsky & Hutch,” with David Soul (left) and Paul Michael Glaser.via Everett CollectionWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Rebekah Del Rio, Mournful Singer of ‘Mulholland Drive’ Fame, Dies at 57

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      Rebekah Del Rio, the virtuosic singer best known for her forlorn Spanish-language rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” in David Lynch’s 2001 film “Mulholland Drive,” died on June 23 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 57.Her death was confirmed by the Los Angeles County medical examiner, who said the cause was under investigation. Ms. Del Rio disclosed in 2018 that a malignant tumor in her brain had been surgically removed. In her final months, she told friends that the cancer had returned.In a career marked by misfortune and tragedy, Ms. Del Rio, a self-taught vocalist, never made it beyond the music industry’s revolving door. But her transcendent vibrato found a home in a surreal corner of Hollywood occupied by Mr. Lynch.One day in the mid-1990s, Ms. Del Rio, a young country singer, arrived at Mr. Lynch’s Los Angeles home for an introductory meeting arranged by their mutual agent, Brian Loucks. The instructions Mr. Loucks gave her were simple: Show up on time, look cute and be ready to perform “Llorando,” her a cappella version of Mr. Orbison’s “Crying.”Dressed head to toe in light blue, she sang until Mr. Lynch cut her off halfway through. He ushered her into his home recording studio, where she recorded the song in a single take.“Ding dang, Rebekah Del Rio, that was aces!” she recalled him saying.That recording would be heard in a pivotal scene in “Mulholland Drive,” at a fictional nightclub called Club Silencio. Ms. Del Rio, who is introduced as “La Llorona de Los Angeles,” emerges onstage from behind a velvet curtain wearing a dark red minidress, with smudged mascara and a crystalline teardrop under her right eye.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      James Carter Cathcart, Voice Behind Memorable ‘Pokémon’ Characters, Dies at 71

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      Mr. Cathcart was known for playing the characters Professor Oak and Meowth in the long-running franchise. He also made appearances in other popular animated series such as “Yu-Gi-Oh!” and “One Piece.”James Carter Cathcart, a voice actor who portrayed some of the most indelible characters in the “Pokémon” franchise and became a familiar presence in several other popular animated series, died on Tuesday. He was 71.His wife, Martha Jacobi, confirmed in a social media post that he died at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. His ex-wife, Jeanne Gari, said in an interview that the cause of his death was throat cancer.For more than two decades, Mr. Cathcart was the voice of several popular characters in the “Pokémon” series and movies, including the genial Professor Oak, his grandson Gary, the antagonizing James and the wisecracking feline creature Meowth, one of the few Pokémon who could speak.Mr. Cathcart joined the cast of “Pokémon” in 1998, just as the franchise exploded into a global craze. While many of the characters cycled in and out through the series’s more than 1,000 episodes, his voice remained a steady presence.Mr. Cathcart also had roles in an array of other anime series, video games and animated shows, including “Yu-Gi-Oh!,” “One Piece” and “Shadow the Hedgehog.” He retired from voice acting in 2023 after he was diagnosed with cancer. Mr. Cathcart appeared in more than 100 roles, according to the entertainment database IMDb, but his work in “Pokémon” is his best known.The voice actors who also had roles in the “Pokémon” universe acknowledged his death on social media. Erica Schroeder, who played Nurse Joy and the creature Wobbuffet, said: “The community will miss you. The world will miss you.”James Carter Cathcart was born on Jan. 4, 1954, in West Long Branch, N.J., and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.He is survived by Ms. Jacobi; his daughters Nicole Zoppi, 41, and Mackenzie, 30; and his son, Carter, 31.Mr. Cathcart said in an interview in 2017 that he was grateful the “Pokémon” franchise had continued to thrive and that he wanted to keep voicing the characters for as long as he could.“Who could imagine 20 years ago that we would still be doing the show and it would be doing so well, but there’s a new generation of kids that loves the Pokémon?” Mr. Cathcart said.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      in Music

      Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez, Hitmaker Who Seemed to Vanish, Is Dead at 83

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      His “The Happy Organ” reached No. 1 in 1959, but his pop stardom was short-lived, and his death in 2022, with an anonymous burial, remains a source of mystery.It’s not that Dave “Baby” Cortez was forgotten. A keyboardist, singer and songwriter, he emerged from the thriving Detroit doo-wop scene of the 1950s to score two Top 10 hits, one of which, “The Happy Organ,” an aural Tilt-a-Whirl of an instrumental, soared to No. 1 in March 1959 and sold more than a million copies.But he rarely granted interviews, particularly after largely abandoning the business, with a trace of bitterness, in the early 1970s. The few available online biographies provide almost no details of his life beyond his recording history and chart success.Taryn Sheffield, his daughter, said in an interview that she had not heard from him since 2009. “He’s been a recluse for many, many years,” she said.At times, he appeared to serve as a church organist in Cincinnati, said Miriam Linna, a founder of Norton Records, an independent New York label that in 2011 persuaded Mr. Cortez to record his first album since 1972. At other times, he appeared to be living in the Bronx, doing who knows what.It was only in recent weeks that Ms. Linna learned that he had been dead for three years.According to city records, Mr. Cortez — whose real name was David Cortez Clowney — died on May 31, 2022, at his home on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. He was 83. His body lies in Plot 434 on Hart Island, the potter’s field off the coast of the Bronx, where some one million bodies are buried in unmarked graves.It was an ignominious end for an artist whose career was curious enough to begin with.Mr. Cortez was born on Aug. 13, 1938, in Detroit, one of two sons of David and Lillian Mae Clowney. His father played piano and encouraged David to follow suit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Henry Mount Charles, Whose Castle Was a Mecca for Rock, Dies at 74

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      To preserve his Irish manor, he staged concerts on its grounds, drawing the likes of U2, Bob Dylan, Madonna and the Rolling Stones as well as tens of thousands of fans.In 1976, Henry Mount Charles was 25 and living happily in London when his father summoned him home to Ireland to save the family castle from bankruptcy.Taking over the property, Slane Castle, with its vast expenses and minimal income, Lord Mount Charles first opened a restaurant there, the ancestral home of his aristocratic family. Then he contemplated the possibilities of the front lawn: a natural amphitheater sloping down to the Boyne River.He hit on the idea of open-air rock concerts. The first, in 1981, featured a young Irish band named U2. The next year, the Rolling Stones played for 70,000 ecstatic fans, and Mick Jagger stayed for dinner.Slane Castle in County Meath, north of Dublin.Julien Behal/PA Images, via Getty ImagesSlane Castle went through a decade-long restoration after a devastating fire in 1991.Nomos Productions, via Failte IrelandSlane Castle, some 35 miles north of Dublin, in County Meath, became internationally known as a rock destination. Bruce Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Queen, Madonna, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bryan Adams, Eminem, 50 Cent, R.E.M. and Oasis all performed there, while V.I.P. concertgoers wandered in an out of the owner’s 18th-century hilltop Georgian pile, resembling Downton Abbey.Lord Mount Charles, an Anglo-Irish peer turned rock ’n’ roll promoter, died on June 18 in a hospital in Dublin at 74. His family said the cause was cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Richard Greenberg, Playwright Whose ‘Take Me Out’ Won a Tony, Dies at 67

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      More than 30 of his plays were produced on Broadway and off. Many of them dealt with the manners and mores of New York’s upper middle class.Richard Greenberg, who won frequent praise as the American Noël Coward for his sharp-witted plays about the manners and mores of urbane, sometimes smug New Yorkers, and who received a Tony Award in 2003 for “Take Me Out,” his play about a gay baseball player, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 67.His sister-in-law, Janet Kain Greenberg, said the cause of his death, in a hospice, was cancer.A child of the middle-class Long Island suburbs, Mr. Greenberg rose to theater fame in the 1980s with a string of scripts that delved into the interior lives of the people he knew best: young, upwardly mobile urban professionals — yuppies, in the parlance of the time.Works like “Eastern Standard” (1987) and “The American Plan” (1990), two of his first major plays, were incisive and biting, but never cruel. His goal was to examine the bourgeoisie, but never to épater them.From left, Kieran Campion, Lily Rabe, Brenda Pressley, Mercedes Ruehl and Austin Lysy in the Broadway revival of Mr. Greenberg’s “The American Plan” in 2009.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHaving once aspired to be an architect himself, he used that profession as both an identity for many of his characters and an unspoken metaphor in his plays: How do the relationships we build on love and family and friendship bear up over time and under the stress of imperfect, if caustically funny, partners?“We’re always trying to make a cogent story out of our existence,” Mr. Greenberg told Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2016, “and people in my plays often feel they have the story, but almost invariably they’re wrong.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Julian McMahon, ‘Nip/Tuck’ and ‘Fantastic Four’ Star, Dies at 56

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      He played the half-human, half-demon Cole Turner in the WB supernatural series “Charmed” and a self-destructive playboy in the FX series “Nip/Tuck.”Julian McMahon, an actor known for playing the promiscuous plastic surgeon Dr. Christian Troy in the television show “Nip/Tuck,” as well as the egoistical evil scientist Dr. Victor Von Doom in two “Fantastic Four” movies, died on Wednesday in Florida. He was 56.His death was confirmed by his wife, Kelly McMahon, who said in a statement that the cause was cancer.Mr. McMahon began acting in Australian soap operas in the early 1990s and first found success in the United States on the NBC soap opera “Another World” in 1993.After switching to prime-time television, his breakout role came when he played the half-human, half-demon Cole Turner on three seasons of the WB supernatural series “Charmed.”Mr. McMahon achieved leading-man status when he began starring in the FX series “Nip/Tuck” in 2003.His performance as Dr. Christian Troy, a self-destructive playboy, contrasted with Dr. Troy’s strait-laced best friend, Dr. Sean McNamara, played by Dylan Walsh.On the show, which ran from 2003-10, the pair ran a plastic surgery practice, first in Miami and later in Los Angeles, and frequently sparred over the morality of their profession.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Stuart Burrows, Welsh Lyric Tenor Who Straddled the Atlantic, Dies at 92

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      He was a mainstay at both the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House, winning acclaim for his full tenor range and a rich, unforced tone, notably singing Mozart. Stuart Burrows, a Welsh lyric tenor prized by conductors on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1970s and ’80s for his agile singing in Mozart, becoming a mainstay at the Metropolitan Opera and at Covent Garden in London, died on Sunday in Cardiff, Wales. He was 92.His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his son, Mark.Mr. Burrows was a coal miner’s son who was schooled in the chapels of Cilfynydd, the village where he was born. His clear voice and attention to detail would make him an ideal Ottavio in “Don Giovanni” and Tamino in “The Magic Flute.”His control was effortless throughout the full tenor range, his tone rich and unforced, as in his role as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” In Georg Solti’s 1974 recording of that opera, Mr. Burrows’s voice was “most beautiful and sensitive,” the critic John Warrack wrote in a review in the magazine Gramophone.Mr. Burrows nearly opted for a professional rugby career as a young man in the early 1950s — he turned down a contract with the club in Leeds at the last minute — but he knew he had a gift that he could not ignore, though his career wouldn’t blossom for another decade.“I knew I could sing,” he told the BBC in 1972. Yet, he added, “I never had ambition to be a singer.” Singing was merely part of the landscape in bardic Wales; the renowned baritone Geraint Evans was born in the same village — and even on the same street — as Mr. Burrows.He had settled happily into a role as a schoolteacher in nearby Bargoed, teaching woodworking and music, “a job which he enjoyed immensely,” Roger Wimbush wrote in a biographical sketch in Gramophone in 1971. But then Mr. Burrows sang “Il Mio Tesoro” from “Don Giovanni,” in Welsh, in a singing competition in 1959 at the age-old national Eisteddfod festival, and won. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More