Deaths (Obituaries)

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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

    • 138 Shares151 Views

      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

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      in Music

      Foday Musa Suso, 75, Dies; Ambitious Ambassador for West African Music

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      A master of the kora who worked with Herbie Hancock and Philip Glass, his career was powered as much by experimentation as by reverence for tradition.Foday Musa Suso, a griot, kora virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist and composer whose work with artists like Herbie Hancock and Philip Glass helped thrust West African musical traditions into conversation with the world, died on May 25 in his native Gambia. He was 75.The percussionist Stefan Monssen, a mentee of Mr. Suso’s, confirmed the death, in a hospital. He did not specify a cause, but said Mr. Suso had been in ill health in recent years after suffering a stroke.Mr. Suso was born into a long line of griots, the caste of musician-storytellers who are traditionally responsible for retaining oral histories in the areas of West Africa where the Mande languages are spoken. He traced his lineage back to Jeli Madi Wlen Suso, who is said to have invented the kora centuries ago by attaching 21 strings and a cowhide to a large calabash gourd.Mr. Suso was the rare musician who learned to play in the various regional styles of griots from around West Africa. In a tribute published in Gambia’s major newspaper, The Standard, Justice Ebrima Jaiteh of the country’s high court wrote, “Jali Foday was more than a musician, he was a living archive, a teacher, and a symbol of continuity in a rapidly changing world.” (The honorific “Jali” refers to Mr. Suso’s status as a griot.)And yet Mr. Suso’s career was powered as much by his will to expand as by reverence for tradition.He added three bass strings to his kora’s traditional 21, allowing him to hold a steady beat and make its sound more danceable — and therefore more appealing to young listeners in the 1970s.He wrote many of his own compositions. He also learned to play more than a dozen other instruments, including the balafon (an African predecessor of the xylophone), kalimba (also known as the thumb piano), nyanyer (a one-stringed violin-like instrument), ngoni (an early West African banjo) and talking drum. After moving to the United States, he began experimenting with electronic instruments as well.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

      Harris Yulin, Actor Who Perpetually Played the Bad Guy, Dies at 87

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      As an award-winning actor and director, he appeared in scores of stage plays, movies and TV shows over six decades, most often as unsavory characters.Harris Yulin, a chameleonic character actor who for more than six decades portrayed guys whom critics described as unsympathetic, soulful, menacing, corrupt and glowering, both onstage and onscreen, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 87.His wife, Kristen Lowman, said the cause of death, in a hospital, was cardiac arrest.Inspired to pursue an acting career when he first took center stage at his bar mitzvah, Mr. Yulin never became a marquee name. But to many audiences he was instantly recognizable, even as a man of a hundred faces. He played at least as many parts, including J. Edgar Hoover, Hamlet and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Other roles ranged from crooked cops and politicians to a lecherous TV anchorman.“I’m not always the bad guy,” he told The New York Times in 2000. “It just seems to be what I’m known for.”Mr. Yulin, left, earned an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of a mobster in a 1996 episode of the sitcom “Frasier,” with David Hyde Pierce, center, and Kelsey Grammer. Gale M. Adler/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesHe wasn’t just any bad guy. One reviewer characterized him as “an eloquent growler.” Another wrote that “his whiskeyed voice sounds just like that of John Huston.”Honors followed. Mr. Yulin was nominated in 1996 for a prime time Emmy Award for playing a crime boss in the TV comedy series “Frasier.” For his work in theater, he won the Lucille Lortel Award from the League of Off Broadway Theaters for his direction of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” in 2006. In the late 1990s he won Drama Desk nominations for acting on Broadway in “The Diary of Anne Frank” and Arthur Miller’s “The Price.”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