Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Television

      Wayne Northrop, ‘Days of Our Lives’ Actor, Dies at 77

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      He was best known for playing two characters, Roman Brady and Dr. Alex North, in more than 1,000 episodes on the daytime soap opera.Wayne Northrop, an actor who played two roles on the long-running daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives,” as a good-hearted detective and then as a shadowy doctor, died on Friday. He was 77.Mr. Northrop, who learned six years ago that he had early onset Alzheimer’s disease, died at the Motion Picture and Television Woodland Hills Home in Woodland Hills, Calif., according to a family statement from his publicist, Cynthia Synder.He appeared in several television shows throughout his career, including the prime-time legal drama “L.A. Law” in the 1980s. He gained notoriety on ABC’s “Dynasty” as the handsome and mysterious chauffeur Michael Culhane who drove around the Denver business titan Blake Carrington, who was portrayed by the actor John Forsythe. Mr. Northrop appeared in 35 episodes.Mr. Northrop was probably best known for his roles on “Days of Our Lives.” The show, which premiered in 1965 on NBC, follows various characters in the fictional Midwestern town of Salem.Mr. Northrop portrayed two characters on the show. He was the tough but loyal detective Roman Brady from 1981-84 and again from 1991-94, according to his publicist.Beginning in 2005, he played Dr. Alex North, a one-time medical school classmate of Dr. Marlena Evans, a psychiatrist and the town’s matriarch, played by Deidre Hall. The Dr. North character was an amnesia specialist and a shadowy figure who manipulated, blackmailed and even committed murder on the show, according to soaps.com.Mr. Northrop appeared in more than 1,000 episodes from 1981-2006. The show moved to the network’s Peacock streaming service in 2022.Wayne Northrop was born on April 12, 1947, in Sumner, Wash. He earned his bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Washington before pursuing acting.Mr. Northrop’s career began in theater, with his first big break in 1975 when he joined the Los Angeles Actors’ Theater.He made his television debut with a small part in “Police Story,” an anthology crime drama about the lives of police officers. His other television credits include appearances in “Eight Is Enough,” a show about a newspaper columnist and his eight children; “Baretta,” about a New York City detective; and “The Waltons,” about a Virginia family in the 1930s and ’40s; and “You Are the Jury,” about actual courtroom trials.He also landed roles in the made-for-television films “Beggarman, Thief,” (1979) about the Jordache family, adapted from the novel by Irwin Shaw; and “Going for Gold: The Bill Johnson Story” (1985) about the first U.S. men’s skiing gold medal winner.Mr. Northrop also appeared as Rex Stanton in 121 episodes of the “General Hospital” soap opera spinoff, “Port Charles” from 1997-98. That show also starred his wife, Lynn Herring Northrop, who has been an actress on “General Hospital” since 1986.He is survived by his wife, their sons, Hank Northrop and Grady Northrop, and stepmother, Janet Northrop, according to the family statement. More

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      in Theater

      Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen’s Co-Writer on Hit Films, Dies at 85

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      The duo won an Oscar for “Annie Hall.” Mr. Brickman went on to write Broadway shows, including “Jersey Boys,” and make movies of his own.Marshall Brickman, a low-key writer whose show business career ranged across movies, late-night television comedy and Broadway, with the hit musical “Jersey Boys,” but who may be best remembered for collaborating on three of Woody Allen’s most enthusiastically praised films, including the Oscar-winning “Annie Hall,” died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 85.His daughter Sophie Brickman confirmed the death. She did not cite a cause.Mr. Brickman and Mr. Allen first teamed up on the script for “Sleeper” (1973), a science fiction comedy set in a totalitarian 22nd-century America whose protagonist, a cryogenically unfrozen 20th-century man, poses as a robot servant to save his life and then sets out to overthrow the government.“Annie Hall” (1977), the Oscar-winning romance about urban neurotics, was their second project. Two smart, insecure, witty singles meet at a Manhattan tennis club, consciously couple, measure their lives in psychotherapy sessions, find lobster humor in the Hamptons and disagree about whether Los Angeles is beyond redemption. It won four Academy Awards: for best picture, best actress (Diane Keaton), best director (Mr. Allen) and best screenplay.The two men then wrote the screenplay of “Manhattan” (1979), a contemporary black-and-white romantic comedy hailed at the time as a love letter to New York. It is now most often remembered because of its central relationship: a middle-aged man’s affair with a high school girl (Mariel Hemingway), mirroring Mr. Allen’s own scandal-tarnished later years.“Manhattan” won BAFTAs, the British film and television awards, for best film and best screenplay. At the Césars, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, it was named best foreign film.In a Writers Guild Foundation interview in 2011, Mr. Brickman described his collaboration with Mr. Allen as “a pleasure and a life changer.” And if Mr. Allen, who directed and starred in all three films, dominated the process, he said, that was for the best.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

      Earl Holliman, Rugged, and Familiar, Screen Presence, Dies at 96

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      Earl Holliman, an iron-jawed actor who earned a star on Hollywood Boulevard for a prolific career that included a corral full of Westerns, an appearance on the first episode of “The Twilight Zone” and a turn as Angie Dickinson’s boss on the 1970s television drama “Police Woman,” died on Monday at his home in Studio City, Calif. He was 96.His death was confirmed by his husband, Craig Curtis, who is his only survivor.While never a household name, Mr. Holliman was a seemingly ubiquitous presence on both the big and small screen, collecting nearly 100 credits over a career that spanned almost five decades.Ruggedly handsome, he was a natural choice for Westerns, war movies and police procedurals. Among his many notable films were “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” (1954), starring William Holden and Grace Kelly; “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957), starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas; “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965), with John Wayne and Dean Martin; and “Sharky’s Machine,” the 1981 Burt Reynolds detective thriller.Over the years, he also popped up in many television series, including “Gunsmoke,” “CHiPs” and “Murder, She Wrote.”Mr. Holliman’s career started with promise. He broke through in the Depression-era romance “The Rainmaker” (1956), winning a Golden Globe for best supporting actor for playing the impulsive teenage brother of a lovelorn woman (Katharine Hepburn) who encounters a grifter (Mr. Lancaster) promising rain in drought-ravaged Kansas.A relative unknown, Mr. Holliman managed to win the role over Elvis Presley, who was then rocketing to fame as a rock ’n’ roll trailblazer, but who took time out to read for the role. (Mr. Holliman apparently had little to worry about: “Elvis played the rebellious younger brother with amateurish conviction — like the lead in a high school play,” Allan Weiss, a screenwriter who saw the audition, recalled.)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

      Peggy Caserta, Who Wrote a Tell-All About Janis Joplin, Dies at 84

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      Her Haight-Ashbury clothing store was ground zero for the counterculture. But she was best known for a tawdry book — which she later disavowed — published after Ms. Joplin’s death.Peggy Caserta, whose funky Haight-Ashbury clothing boutique was a magnet for young bohemians and musicians, and who exploited her relationship with Janis Joplin in a much-panned 1973 memoir that she later disavowed, died on Nov. 21 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 84.Her partner and only immediate survivor, Jackie Mendelson, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.The Louisiana-born Ms. Caserta was 23 and working at a Delta Air Lines office in San Francisco when she decided to open a clothing store for her cohort, the lesbians in her neighborhood. She found an empty storefront on Haight Street, near the corner of Ashbury, which she rented for $87.50 a month.At first Ms. Caserta sold jeans, sweatshirts and double-breasted denim blazers that her mother made. Then she added Levi’s pants, which a friend turned into flares by inserting a triangle of denim into the side seams. When the friend couldn’t keep up with the orders, Ms. Caserta persuaded Levi Strauss & Company to make them.She named the place Mnasidika (pronounced na-SID-ek-ah), after a character in a poem by Sappho. “It’s a Greek girls’ name,” Ms. Caserta told The San Francisco Examiner in 1965, for an article about the “new bohemians” colonizing the Haight-Ashbury district.Ms. Caserta was 23 when she opened a clothing store, Mnasidika, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.via Wyatt MackenzieWe 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

      Jim Abrahams, 80, Dies; One of Trio Behind ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Naked Gun’

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      Along with David and Jerry Zucker, he revolutionized film comedy with a style of straight-faced, fast-paced parody.Jim Abrahams, who with the brothers David and Jerry Zucker surely comprised one of the funniest trios of comedy writers in film history, layering on the yucks in classics like “Airplane!” and “Naked Gun,” died on Tuesday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 80.His son Joseph said the death was from complications of leukemia.Mr. Abrahams and the Zucker brothers — often known around Hollywood as the “men from ZAZ” — revolutionized film comedy with their brand of straight-faced, fast-paced parodies of self-serious dramas like 1970s disaster films and police procedurals.Along the way they littered pop culture with a trail of one liners seemingly custom-cut to drop into daily conversation: “Have you ever seen a grown man naked?” “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.” And “Nice beaver!”Their films spawned an entire genre of spoof comedy, many of them pale, scruffy comparisons to the tight scripts and cleverly paced plots that gave the ZAZ films their punch.The trio shared writing credits on five films, starting with “Kentucky Fried Movie” (1977), a compilation of parody sketches that grew out of a comedy show they developed after college in Madison, Wis., and took to Los Angeles in 1972.The idea for their second film, “Airplane!” (1980), came after watching a 1957 thriller called “Zero Hour!” about an ill-fated passenger plane on which the crew are stricken with food poisoning, forcing one of the passengers, a psychologically scarred ex-pilot, to take control.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

      Helen Gallagher, Winner of Two Tonys and Three Emmys, Dies at 98

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      She was honored on Broadway for roles in “Pal Joey” and “No, No, Nanette” and then turned to TV, where she won three Daytime Emmys for her work on “Ryan’s Hope.”Helen Gallagher, who parlayed her song-and-dance skills into Tony Award-winning performances in revivals of the musicals “Pal Joey” and “No, No, Nanette,” and who turned to television to play the matriarch on the long-running soap opera “Ryan’s Hope” when theater no longer provided her a living, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 98.Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Patti Specht, a friend and the executor of her will.Ms. Gallagher was 18 when she made her Broadway debut in 1944, in the chorus of a Cole Porter revue, “Seven Lively Arts.” Over the next several decades, she worked with an A-list group of choreographers, including Jerome Robbins (“High Button Shoes”), Agnes de Mille (“Brigadoon”), Bob Fosse (“Sweet Charity”) and Donald Saddler (“No, No, Nanette”).Ms. de Mille nearly fired her from “Brigadoon” in 1947. “Agnes wanted very lyrical work, and I’d just done ‘Billion Dollar Baby’ and everything came out bumps and grinds,” Ms. Gallagher told The New York Times in 1971.But in 1958, when she played Ado Annie, her favorite role, in a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” at New York City Center, she unexpectedly earned Ms. de Mille’s praise.“She came in and restaged ‘All Er Nuthin’ for me, and she made it a little dance beside the song,” Ms. Gallagher said on the Behind the Curtain theater podcast in 2017.“She sent me an orchid on opening night,” she added, with a note saying, “‘You are truly a star.’”By then, Ms. Gallagher had been a Tony Award winner for six years. In 1952, she had portrayed the bitter chorus girl Gladys Bumps in a revival of “Pal Joey,” the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical about a notorious, womanizing nightclub owner, Joey Evans (Harold Lang), who is targeted by Ms. Gallagher’s character and a mobster in a revenge scheme.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

      Andy Paley, Whose Imprint Was All Over Pop Music, Dies at 73

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      Musician, singer, songwriter, producer and more, he collaborated with Madonna and a raft of other artists and helped resuscitate the career of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.Andy Paley, a music producer, composer and rock ’n’ roll chameleon who worked with artists as varied as Madonna, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jonathan Richman, and who helped resuscitate the career of the Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson after his much-chronicled emotional flameout, died on Nov. 20 in Colchester, Vt. He was 73.The death, at a hospice facility, was caused by cancer, his wife, Heather Crist Paley, said.A curator of the spirit of classic 1960s pop, Mr. Paley played many roles over an ever-evolving career. He got his start in the late 1960s as the frontman for a Boston-area power pop outfit called the Sidewinders, which briefly included the future FM radio staple Billy Squier on guitar and opened for groups like Aerosmith.Later that decade, he banded with his younger brother, Jonathan, to form a highly regarded, if short-lived, pop duo, the Paley Brothers. With their winsome looks and mops of blond hair, they appeared in the pages of teen bibles like 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat and toured with the pop confection Shaun Cassidy.A skilled multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Paley often went on the road with his close friend Mr. Richman and filled in on keyboards on Patti Smith’s 1976 tour of Europe.During the 1980s, he began to produce for Seymour Stein, the visionary label chief of Sire Records. Influenced by studio wizards like Phil Spector, Mr. Paley produced songs for numerous performers, including Debbie Harry, K.D. Lang, NRBQ, Little Richard and Brenda Lee.From left, Darlene Love, Phil Spector, Joey Ramone, Mr. Paley and Jonathan Paley in 1978. Even as an intimate of musical luminaries, Mr. Paley maintained the wide-eyed wonder of a fan throughout his career.Bob MerlisWe 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

      Charles Dumont, Who Wrote Enduring Melodies for Édith Piaf, Dies at 95

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      His dozens of songs included “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” a powerful anthem of redemptive love that became one of Piaf’s signature songs.Charles Dumont, who wrote the music for “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” the soaring song about sweeping away the past to find love anew that the hallowed but troubled singer Édith Piaf turned into an anthem of French culture, died on Nov. 18 at his home in Paris. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his daughter Sherkane Dumont.Mr. Dumont had a prolific career, writing melodies for the likes of Jacques Brel, Juliette Gréco and Barbra Streisand and music for French television and film. In the 1970s, he embarked on an award-winning career as romantic crooner.Still, it was the roughly 30 songs that he, with the lyricist Michel Vaucaire, wrote for Piaf — the diminutive and radiant chanteuse known as the Little Sparrow — that, by his own admission, defined his career. “My mother gave birth to me, but Édith Piaf brought me into the world,” Mr. Dumont said in a 2015 interview with Agence France-Presse.“Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (“No, I Regret Nothing”), introduced in 1960, became a definitive song for a definitive French singer, a woman who became not just a global star but also a cultural ambassador for her country.With its martial solemnity, the song had the feel of a patriotic anthem, which gave power and drama to lyrics that express, in blunt and defiant terms, a rejection of past memories, both good and bad, while moving toward a new future.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