Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Music

      Lou Christie, ‘Lightnin’ Strikes’ Pop Crooner, Is Dead at 82

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      A late-1960s throwback to the days of clean-cut teen idols — he called himself “the missing link” — he rode his gymnastic vocal range to a string of hits.Lou Christie, who with his heartthrob persona and piercing falsetto rode high on the mid-1960s pop charts with hits like “Lightnin’ Strikes” and “Two Faces Have I,” while transcending teen-idol status by helping to write his own material, died on Wednesday at his home in Pittsburgh. He was 82.His family announced the death on social media, saying only that he died “after a brief illness.”With his perky doo-wop-inflected melodies and his gymnastic vocal range, Mr. Christie was at times compared to Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons. Like Mr. Valli, Mr. Christie hit his stride as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the other guitar groups of the British Invasion were starting to shatter the handsome-teen-crooner archetype personified by the likes of Fabian and Frankie Avalon.“They started disappearing,” Mr. Christie once said of such singers in an interview with the site Classic Bands. “It was so interesting that I kept going. I hit the end of that whole era.“I’ve always been between the cracks of rock ‘n’ roll, I felt. The missing link.”Mr. Christie in performance in 2013 in Collingswood, N.J. He continued to tour as an oldies act and release music on small labels long after his hitmaking days were over.via Getty ImagesEven in changing times, he held his own, thanks in part to the songs he wrote with his songwriting partner, Twyla Herbert, who was two decades his senior. The songs they created together had more emotional complexity than the standard odes to puppy love.While his debut album, released in 1963, failed to make a splash, two of the singles featured on that album climbed the charts. “The Gypsy Cried” reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963. “Two Faces Have I,” a showcase for Mr. Christie’s signature falsetto, climbed to No. 6 a few months later.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

      Gunilla Knutson, Star of ‘Take It Off’ Shaving Cream Ads, Dies at 84

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      A model who was crowned Miss Sweden in 1961, she became best known for commercials that one observer said “replaced the ‘hard sell’ with the ‘sex sell.’”A blond Swedish model named Gunilla Knutson holds a can of shaving cream to her cheek and gazes deeply into the camera. “Nothing takes it off like Noxzema medicated shave,” she says.In a 60-second commercial from 1966 that rings with double entendre, the jazzy instrumental “The Stripper” plays as a man shaves his face in rhythmic strokes timed to the bump-and-grind of the music. When the camera returns to a tight close-up of Ms. Knutson (pronounced KUH-noots-son), she utters seven of the most famous words from that era of advertising.“Take it off,” she says, before pausing slightly. “Take it all off.”In another ad from the campaign, Ms. Knutson strips the rind from a lime, licks her thumb slowly and hums “The Stripper.”“Men,” she says. “Noxzema shave cream now comes in lime, too. So take it off.”Ms. Knutson, for whom the Noxzema campaign represented the peak of her fame, died on Feb. 3 in Ystad, Sweden, where she was born and where she had lived since leaving Manhattan a few years ago. She was 84. Her death was not widely reported at the time.Her son, Andreas von Scheele, said she died in a hospital after dealing with multiple medical issues. He and her husband, Per von Scheele, are her only immediate survivors.Gunilla Karin Maria Knutson was born on Nov. 14, 1940, to Einar and Sonja Knutson, who divorced when she was young.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

      Terry Louise Fisher, a Creator of ‘L.A. Law,’ Dies at 79

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      She channeled her experiences — and frustrations — as a Los Angeles prosecutor into an award-winning career as a television writer and producer.Terry Louise Fisher, who channeled her experience as a Los Angeles prosecutor into an Emmy Award-winning television career as a writer and producer for “Cagney & Lacey,” the groundbreaking female-oriented police procedural, and a creator, with Steven Bochco, of the sleek drama “L.A. Law,” died on June 10 in Laguna Hills, Calif. She was 79.Her death was confirmed in a social media post by Mark Zev Hochberg, a family member. He did not cite a cause.Ms. Fisher was best known for her work on shows about cops and lawyers, and she certainly knew the terrain. Before turning her attention to the small screen, she worked as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles for two and a half years.She quickly grew disillusioned with a revolving-door criminal justice system that seemed to her to boil down to a jousting match between opposing lawyers, with little regard for guilt or innocence.In a 1986 interview with The San Francisco Examiner, she recalled being handed an almost certain victory in an otherwise weak case involving a knife killing because of an oversight by the defense: “I felt really challenged, and my adrenaline was pumping. I realized I could win this case. And I slept on it. I went, ‘My God, has winning become more important than justice?’”Her unflinching view of the system informed her tenure in television. In 1983, she began writing for “Cagney & Lacey,” bringing depth and realism to a CBS series that shook up the traditional knuckles-and-nightsticks cop-show genre by focusing on two female New York City police detectives, Christine Cagney (Sharon Gless) and Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly).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

      Kim Woodburn, British TV’s No-Nonsense ‘Queen of Clean,’ Dies at 83

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      She was a blunt and bossy domestic dominatrix on the series “How Clean Is Your House?” honing a persona as the rudest woman on reality television.Kim Woodburn, the platinum-haired, trash-talking darling of British reality television who found fame as a domestic dominatrix in the long-running series “How Clean Is Your House” and in other shows of the mean TV genre, died on Monday. She was 83.Her death, after a short illness, was announced in a statement by her manager. It did not specify a cause or say where she died.Ms. Woodburn had been working in Kent, England, as a live-in housekeeper for a Saudi sheikh when her employment agency asked her to audition for a new Channel 4 reality show. The idea was that she and Aggie MacKenzie, a brisk Scottish editor at the British version of Good Housekeeping magazine, would invade the houses of slobs, hoarders and other housekeeping failures and teach them how to mend their messy ways.She was 60 years old at the time, and she nailed the audition, which involved scrutinizing a young woman’s grimy flat in West London.“Well, this is a flaming comic opera, isn’t it,” Ms. Woodburn declared in the woman’s terrifyingly filthy kitchen, as she recalled in her 2006 memoir, “Unbeaten: The Story of My Brutal Childhood.” “You look so clean yourself, and yet you live like this. Talk about fur coat, no knickers!”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 Movies

      William Cran, ‘Frontline’ Documentarian, Is Dead at 79

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      Producing or directing, he made more than 50 films over 50 years, including a series on the English language and an exploration of J. Edgar Hoover’s secret life.William Cran, an Emmy-winning master of the television documentary whose expansive body of work, primarily for the BBC and the PBS program “Frontline,” delved into complex subjects like the history of the English language and the private life of the F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover, died on June 4 in London. He was 79.His wife, Vicki Barker-Cran, said cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease. He died in a hospital.Mr. Cran produced more than 50 documentaries over 50 years and directed many of them.He began his career with the BBC, but he mostly worked as an independent producer, toggling between jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.He was most closely associated with “Frontline,” for which he produced 20 documentaries on a wide range of subjects — some historical, like the four-part series “From Jesus to Christ” (1998) and “The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover” (1993), and some focused on current events, like “Who’s Afraid of Rupert Murdoch” (1995).Some of Mr. Cran’s documentaries were historical, like the four-part series “From Jesus to Christ” (1998).PBSHe won a slew of honors, including four Emmys, four duPont-Columbia University awards, two Peabodys and an Overseas Press Club Award.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

      Dan Storper, Founder of Putumayo World Music Label, Dies at 74

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      His record label, Putumayo, gathered sounds from around the globe and pushed them into the mainstream, selling 35 million compilation CDs worldwide.Dan Storper, a retailer who founded the Putumayo World Music record label, which gathered sounds from every corner of the globe, helping to propel the world music boom of the 1990s and beyond with compilation CDs that sold in the millions, died on May 22 at his home in New Orleans. He was 74.The cause was pancreatic cancer, his son, William, said.Mr. Storper’s label began as an offshoot of Putumayo, a now-closed retail chain that he started in New York in 1975, selling handicrafts and clothing from around the world. He founded the label with a friend, Michael Kraus, in 1993, and it became a showcase for genres that had received little mainstream recognition, especially in the United States, such as zouk, from Guadeloupe in the Caribbean; soukous, from Congo; and son cubano, from Cuba.With distinctive folk-art album covers by the British artist Nicola Heindl, the label developed a strong brand identity, luring neophyte buyers who broadly understood what they were getting with a Putumayo release, even if they knew nothing about the music itself.“The whole concept was to bring the music to a community of people that weren’t specifically world music freaks, but were interested in music and culture and travel,” Jacob Edgar, Putumayo’s longtime ethnomusicologist, said in an interview. “It was really almost more of a lifestyle brand at its height, and that was really revolutionary at the time.”Unlike traditional labels, Putumayo largely focused not on individual artists or acts, but on collections of multiple artists, often organized around a single region, country or theme.Putumaya World MusicOthers came to agree. “Before Putumayo came along, world music was dry field recordings,” Chris Fleming, of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, said in an interview with The New York Times in 2003. “Putumayo single-handedly revolutionized the whole genre.”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 Movies

      David Hekili Kenui Bell, an Actor in ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ Dies at 46

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      Mr. Bell’s first role in a feature film was providing comic relief in the Disney hit.In Disney’s latest live-action remake, “Lilo & Stitch,” David Hekili Kenui Bell has a short but memorable role in which he is so bewildered to see aliens that he lets his shaved ice plop to the ground. The appearance was his first in a feature film.Mr. Bell, who had played minor roles in a few productions, died on Thursday. He was 46.His sister, Jalene Bell, confirmed his death on social media on Sunday and in a family statement that did not provide a cause of death.He was credited simply as Big Hawaiian Dude on his IMDb page, but on TikTok he referred to himself as the Shave Ice Guy.“Lilo & Stitch,” which is based on the 2002 film and the animated franchise, was released on May 23 and became one of the most profitable recent films as it raked in more than $800 million in sales.His role was part of a running gag in the franchise. In those moments, a sunburned character who is relaxing somewhere drops his ice cream when the aliens arrive.In one of two movie scenes where he appeared, the aliens startle him while he sits at the beach in a sleeveless shirt, with a towel on one shoulder and sunglasses atop his head. Predictably, he drops his shaved ice.“These damn aliens owe me a shave ice,” he captioned the scene on TikTok.In the original “Lilo & Stitch,” the man dropping the ice cream is bald and is often not wearing a shirt.Mr. Bell had also appeared in two episodes of a “Magnum P.I.” remake in 2018 and 2019, as well as in one episode of a “Hawaii Five-0” remake in 2014, according to IMDb. He was involved in the upcoming film “The Wrecking Crew,” about two half brothers solving their father’s murder in Hawaii, his page on the site said.He appeared in the “One Life, Right?” commercials for the Kona Brewing Company. The ads won a 2025 Pele Award, according to his sister and the organization’s website. The Pele Awards honor excellence in advertising and design in Hawaii.Outside of acting, Mr. Bell worked at the Kona International Airport near Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, according to the social media statement from his sister.Complete information on survivors was not available.To celebrate her brother’s life and express their grief, Ms. Bell said that she and her grandson went to get shaved ice.“David loved being an actor,” doing voice-overs and traveling as part of his work, his sister said. “The film industry and entertainment was so exciting to him.” More

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      in Music

      Alfred Brendel, Bravura Pianist Who Forged a Singular Path, Dies at 94

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      With little formal training but full of ideas, he focused on the core classical composers, winning over audiences (though not every critic) around the world.Alfred Brendel, a classical pianist who followed his own lights on a long path from obscurity to international stardom, gaining a devoted following in spite of influential critics who faulted his interpretations of the masters, died on Tuesday at his home in London. He was 94. His death was announced by his family in a news release.Mr. Brendel was unusual among modern concert artists. He had not been a child prodigy, he lacked the phenomenal memory needed to maintain a large repertoire with ease, and he had relatively little formal training. But he was a hard and cheerfully patient worker. For the most part he taught himself, listening to recordings and proceeding at a deliberate pace as he concentrated on a handful of composers, including Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Liszt and Schoenberg.“I never had a regular piano teacher after the age of 16,” he told the critic Bernard Holland of The New York Times for a profile in 1981, although he did attend master classes in his native Austria with the Swiss pianist and conductor Edwin Fischer and the Austrian-born American pianist Eduard Steurmann. “Self-discovery is a slower process but a more natural one.”Mr. Brendel in England in 2007. “I have never belonged to any club,” he said. “I do not believe in schools of piano playing.”Jonathan Player for The New York TimesOver the years, Mr. Brendel developed and continually revised his own ideas on using the modern piano to make well-worn music sound fresh without violating the composers’ intentions. How well he succeeded was very much a matter of taste. His analytical approach appealed especially to intellectuals and writers, and it didn’t hurt, either, that he was himself an erudite writer on music history, theory and practice.His fans filled the house to overflowing for recitals in New York, London and other major cities — including for his memorable cycle of the complete Beethoven sonatas at Carnegie Hall in 1983. Among his champions was Susan Sontag, who contributed a blurb to one of his several books of collected essays, “Alfred Brendel on Music” (2000), saying he had “changed the way we want to hear the major works of the piano repertory.”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