Deaths (Obituaries)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares118 Views

      in Television

      Michelle Trachtenberg, ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Buffy’ Actress, Dies at 39

      by

      Michelle Trachtenberg, who rose to fame as Buffy’s younger sister, Dawn, in the dark, comedic series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and as a conniving socialite on the show “Gossip Girl,” has died, according to the New York Police Department. She was 39.The department said in a statement that officers, responding to a 911 call just after 8 a.m. Wednesday, found Ms. Trachtenberg unconscious and unresponsive in a Manhattan apartment. She was pronounced dead by emergency medical workers, who had also responded.The medical examiner will determine the cause of death, the department said, adding that criminality was not suspected.Michelle Trachtenberg in an undated photo. Beginning as a child, she had a long list of film and television credits that endeared her to a generation of fans.Online USA, via Getty ImagesBeginning as a child, Ms. Trachtenberg had a long list of credits in movies and television that endeared her to a generation of fans.In 1996, she portrayed Harriet Welsch, a precocious 11-year-old who meticulously records her observations of neighbors and classmates in “Harriet the Spy,” a movie based on Louise Fitzhugh’s beloved 1964 children’s book of the same title. The movie also starred Rosie O’Donnell as Harriet’s nanny, Ole Golly.Ms. Trachtenberg also portrayed Casey Carlyle, the heroine in the 2005 figure-skating movie “Ice Princess.” Other credits included the 2004 raunchy teen comedy “Eurotrip” and the 2009 comedy “17 Again,” which also starred Zac Efron and Matthew Perry.A full obituary will follow.Chelsia Rose Marcius More

    • 150 Shares91 Views

      in Television

      Alvin F. Poussaint, Pioneering Expert on Black Mental Health, Dies at 90

      by

      A psychiatrist at Harvard and an adviser to Jesse Jackson and Bill Cosby, he challenged Black Americans to stand up to systemic racism.Alvin F. Poussaint, a psychiatrist who, after providing medical care to the civil rights movement in 1960s Mississippi, went on to play a leading role in debates about Black culture and politics in the 1980s and ’90s through his research on the effects of racism on Black mental health, died on Monday at his home in Chestnut Hill, Mass. He was 90.His wife, Tina Young Poussaint, confirmed the death.Dr. Poussaint, who spent most of his career as a professor and associate dean at Harvard Medical School, first came to public prominence in the late 1970s, as the energy and optimism of the civil rights movement were giving way to white backlash and a skepticism about the possibility of Black progress in a white-dominated society.In books like “Why Blacks Kill Blacks” (1972) and “Black Child Care” (1975), he walked a line between those on the left who blamed persistent racism for the ills confronting Black America and those on the right who said that, after the civil rights era, it was up to Black people to take responsibility for their own lives.In books like “Why Blacks Kill Blacks” (1972) Dr. Poussaint balanced the views of those on the left who blamed persistent racism for the ills confronting Black America and those on the right who believed Black people should take responsibility for their own lives.Emerson Hall PublishersThrough extensive research and jargon-free prose, Dr. Poussaint (pronounced pooh-SAHNT) recognized the continued impact of systemic racism while also calling for Black Americans to embrace personal responsibility and traditional family structures.That position, as well as his polished charisma, made him a force in Black politics and culture. He served as Massachusetts co-chairman for Reverend Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign and was reportedly the model for Dr. Cliff Huxtable on Mr. Cosby’s sitcom “The Cosby Show.”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

    • 138 Shares130 Views

      in Television

      Lynne Marie Stewart, Miss Yvonne on ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse,’ Dies at 78

      by

      She was the “most beautiful woman in Puppetland” in the 1980s children’s show starring Paul Reubens, and more recently had a recurring role in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”Lynne Marie Stewart, who played Pee-wee Herman’s perky, bouffant-wigged neighbor, Miss Yvonne, in the 1980s children’s television series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and the sweet, timorous mother of one of the main characters in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 78.The cause of her death, at her sister’s home, was cancer, said her manager, Bette Smith. Her doctors found a tumor shortly after Ms. Stewart finished filming a movie called “The Dink,” a comedy starring Jake Johnson and Ben Stiller, in December, Ms. Smith said.Ms. Stewart played a variety of characters in a career that spanned six decades, and had nearly 150 credits as a screen, stage and voice actress starting in 1971, according to IMDb, the entertainment database.But she was perhaps best known for her role as Miss Yvonne, or “the most beautiful woman in Puppetland,” in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” which ran for five seasons on Saturday mornings on CBS.She was a fixture on the show as Pee-wee Herman’s extravagant neighbor with creative hairdos and a chipper personality.With its whimsical and slyly subversive sense of humor, the show swiftly attracted an audience beyond its core demographic of preadolescent children, and Ms. Stewart and other members of its cast embraced its anarchic and surreal spirit of make-believe.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

    • 125 Shares107 Views

      in Movies

      Carlos Diegues, Filmmaker Who Celebrated Brazil’s Diversity, Dies at 84

      by

      Seeking to shed the gauzy influence of Hollywood and focus on Brazil’s ethnic richness and troubled history, he helped forge a new path for his country’s cinema.Carlos Diegues, a film director who celebrated Brazil’s ethnic richness and its social turbulence, helping to forge a new path for cinema in his country, died on Feb. 14 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 84.His death, in a hospital, was announced by the Brazilian Academy of Letters, of which he was a member. The academy said the cause was complications of surgery. The Rio newspaper O Globo, for which Mr. Diegues wrote a column, reported that he had suffered “cardiocirculatory complications” before the surgery.Mr. Diegues, who was known as Cacá, was a founder of Cinema Novo, the modern school of Brazilian cinema that combined Italian Neo-Realism, documentary style and uniquely Latin American fantasy. He focused on hitherto marginal groups — Afro-Brazilians, the poor, disoriented provincials in an urbanizing Brazil — and was the first Brazilian director to employ Black actors as protagonists, in “Ganga Zumba,” (1963), a narrative of enslavement and revolt that was an early cinematic foray into Brazil’s history of racial violence.The often lyrical results, expressed over the course of 60 years in dozens of features and documentaries, charmed audiences in his own country and abroad, though critics sometimes reproached him for loose screenplays and rough-edged camera work.José Wilker, left, and Principe Nabor in “Bye Bye Brazil” (1979). Mr. Diegues’s international breakthrough, it was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes.Ademir Silva/LC Barreto Productions, via New Yorker FilmsMr. Diegues’s international breakthrough film, “Bye Bye Brazil” (1979), nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes, is considered the apotheosis of his dramatic visual style and of his preoccupation with those on the margins of Brazilian society. It follows a feckless group of rascally street performers through the outback, documenting a vanishing Brazil where citizens in remote towns are beguiled by fake falling snowflakes — actually shredded coconut — and hypnotized, literally, by a rare communal television set.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

    • 113 Shares153 Views

      in Music

      Voletta Wallace, the Notorious B.I.G.’s Mother, Dies at 78

      by

      She played the rapper music as a child, stood by his side during his meteoric career and navigated the legal and artistic questions that arose after his killing.Voletta Wallace, the mother of the Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G., whose stewardship of her son’s career and legacy after he was killed in 1997 helped cement him as a hip-hop legend, died on Friday. She was 78.Ms. Wallace died in hospice care at her residence in Stroudsburg, Pa., according to a news release from the Monroe County coroner, Thomas Yanac. A cause was not specified.A middle-class immigrant and single mother from Jamaica, Ms. Wallace was forced into the hip-hop spotlight after the Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace and also known as Biggie Smalls, was killed at 24 in a Los Angeles drive-by shooting.Biggie’s death came just six months after the Las Vegas slaying of the rapper Tupac Shakur, a onetime friend turned bitter rival, with the killings abruptly ending a formative and fruitful moment in mainstream gangster rap amid a tangled East Coast-West Coast beef that went far beyond music.For decades, both cases remained unsolved, fueling an ongoing ecosystem of true-crime books, documentaries, articles and more that have attempted to explain the possible links between the two killings, including the involvement of national gangs and crooked cops. (In 2023, prosecutors in Las Vegas charged Duane Keith Davis, a former gang leader known as Keffe D, with murder in the Shakur case; he is set to stand trial later this year.)Ms. Wallace, a preschool teacher, took on the mantle of her son’s career almost immediately. Biggie’s second album, “Life After Death,” came out two weeks after he died; six months later, Ms. Wallace accepted the MTV Video Music Award for best rap video (“Hypnotize”), telling the New York crowd, “I know if my son was here tonight, the first thing he would’ve done is say big up to Brooklyn.”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

    • 125 Shares110 Views

      in Music

      Jerry Butler, Singer Known as the Iceman, Dies at 85

      by

      Jerry Butler, the graceful singer and songwriter who served as the first leader of the Impressions before launching a long, hit-heavy solo career, died on Thursday at his home in Chicago. He was 85.His death was confirmed by his assistant, who said that Mr. Butler had Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Butler’s resounding baritone voice, though gritty in timbre, was animated by gentility and charm; he approached a lyric with an almost courtly level of sensitivity. His poise explained, in part, how he came to be known as the Iceman.Mr. Butler scored his first hit in 1958 with “For Your Precious Love,” a song he recorded with the Impressions and wrote with two other members of the group. It reached No. 11 on Billboard’s pop chart. Its lyrics stressed perseverance and loyalty, themes Mr. Butler would revisit throughout his career.Immediately after leaving the group in 1960, he reached the Billboard Top 10 with “He Will Break Your Heart,” which he wrote with his bandmate Curtis Mayfield and Calvin Carter. The song proved durable: A reworked version by Tony Orlando and Dawn, “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You),” would become a No. 1 hit more than a decade later.Mr. Butler’s version of “Moon River,” the Henry Mancini-Johnny Mercer song from the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” climbed to No. 11 on the pop chart in 1961. The next year, his interpretation of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Make It Easy on Yourself” reached No. 20.Two years later, he reached the Top 10 again with “Let It Be Me,” a duet with Betty Everett. It performed even better than the Everly Brothers’ version, widely considered a classic: The Butler-Everett version reached No. 5, two points higher than the Everlys had reached in 1960.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