Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Music

      John Sinclair, 82, Dies; Counterculture Activist Who Led a ‘Guitar Army’

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      His imprisonment for a minor marijuana offense became a cause célèbre. He was released after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about him at a protest rally.John Sinclair, a counterculture activist whose nearly 10-year prison sentence for sharing joints with an undercover police officer was cut short after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about his plight at a protest rally, died on Tuesday in Detroit. He was 82.His publicist, Matt Lee, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure.As the leader of the White Panther Party in the late 1960s, Mr. Sinclair spoke of assembling a “guitar army” to wage “total assault” on racists, capitalism and the criminalization of marijuana. “We are a whole new people with a whole new vision of the world,” he wrote in his book “Guitar Army” (1972), “a vision which is diametrically opposed to the blind greed and control which have driven our immediate predecessors in Euro-Amerika to try to gobble up the whole planet and turn it into one big supermarket.”He also managed the incendiary Detroit rock band the MC5. Their lyrics — “I’m sick and tired of paying these dues/And I’m finally getting hip to the American ruse” — were a kind of ballad for the cause.Mr. Sinclair, right, with members of the MC5, the rock group he managed, and friends in 1967.Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs, Archive, via Getty ImagesMr. Sinclair’s command of this “raggedy horde of holy barbarians,” as he described them in his book, was upended in 1969 when Judge Robert J. Colombo of Detroit Recorder’s Court sentenced him to nine and a half to 10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover police officer.During the hearing, Mr. Sinclair argued that he had been framed.“Everyone who is taking part in this is guilty of violating the United States Constitution and violating my rights and everyone else that’s concerned,” he said. He added, “There is nothing just about this, there is nothing just about these courts, nothing just about these vultures over here.”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

      Christopher Durang, Playwright Who Mixed High Art and Low Humor, Dies at 75

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      In a career spanning more than 40 years, he established himself as a hyperliterate jester and an anarchic clown.Christopher Durang, a Tony Award-winning playwright and a master satirist, died on Tuesday night at his home in Pipersville, Pa., in Bucks County. He was 75.His agent, Patrick Herold, said the cause was complications of aphasia. In 2016, Mr. Durang was found to have a rare form of dementia, logopenic primary progressive aphasia. The diagnosis was made public in 2022.An acid, impish writer, Mr. Durang never met a classic (“The Brothers Karamazov,” “The Glass Menagerie,” “Snow White”) that he couldn’t skewer. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he established himself as a hyperliterate jester and an anarchic clown. Regarding subject and theme, he pogoed from sex to metaphysics to serial killers to psychology, and he had a way of collapsing high art and jokes that aimed much lower.“He’s so scaldingly funny,” the actress Sigourney Weaver, a friend and collaborator since she met Mr. Durang at the Yale School of Drama, said in an interview. “You laugh with horror at what’s going on and your sheer inability to do anything about it.”But even in his most uproarious work — like his early play, the sex and psychoanalysis farce “Beyond Therapy,” or his late hit “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” a delirious homage to Chekhov — there was often a strong undertow of melancholy.Mark Alhadeff and Cynthia Darlow in a 2014 production of Mr. Durang’s “Beyond Therapy” at the Actors Company Theater in New York.Marielle SolanWe 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

      Eli Noyes, Animator Who Turned Clay and Sand Into Art, Dies at 81

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      His innovative stop-motion animation influenced a generation of filmmakers, including the creators of Wallace and Gromit.Eli Noyes, a filmmaker whose use of clay and sand in stop-motion animation garnered an Oscar nomination and shaped the aesthetic of Nickelodeon and MTV during the early days of cable television, died on March 23 at his home in San Francisco. He was 81.His wife, the artist Augusta Talbot, said the cause was prostate cancer.Mr. Noyes made his first film, “Clay or the Origin of Species,” in 1965 as an undergraduate student at Harvard. To the accompaniment of a jazz quartet, clay model animals whimsically portray evolution in the movie, which lasts just under nine minutes.Though stop-motion filmmaking had existed for decades and clay was used in the 1950s to create animated characters like Gumby, directors and cinephiles credited Mr. Noyes’s rookie effort with reviving interest in the technique at a time when hand-drawn characters were more popular.“Clay or the Origin of the Species” (1965), Mr. Noyes’s first film, was nominated for an Academy Award.via Noyes familyThe film was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated short subject.“This recognition served as a tremendous boost to the credibility of clay as an animation medium, bulldozing a path for even greater works,” Rick Cooper, a former production manager for Will Vinton Productions, a Claymation film company, wrote in the journal Design for Arts in Education.Peter Lord, a founder of Aardman Animations, the English studio that used clay in the production of the “Wallace and Gromit” films, “Chicken Run” and other popular animated features, recalled seeing “Clay or the Origin of Species” on British television when he was getting started as a filmmaker.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 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Joe Flaherty, ‘SCTV’ and ‘Freaks and Geeks’ Actor, Dies at 82

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      Mr. Flaherty was known for playing a series of oddball characters on the sketch series “SCTV” and for his role as the father of two teenagers on “Freaks and Geeks.”Joe Flaherty, the comedic actor best known for his performances in the influential sketch comedy series “SCTV” and as a father on the short-lived NBC ensemble series “Freaks and Geeks,” died on Monday. He was 82.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Gudrun Flaherty, who said that Mr. Flaherty died after a “brief illness.” She did not specify a cause, or say where he died.Mr. Flaherty played a variety of characters on “SCTV” as part of an ensemble that included John Candy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. The concept of the series, which aired in the 1970s and ’80s, was that its sketches were “shows” for a low-rent TV station in a fictional town called Melonville.Former “SCTV” cast members at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., in 1999. From left, Dave Thomas, Mr. Flaherty, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy and Martin Short.E Pablo Kosmicki/Associated PressAmong Mr. Flaherty’s characters were Guy Caballero, the sleazy president of the station, and Sammy Maudlin, an unctuous late-night talk show host. His character Count Floyd wore a cheap vampire costume while hosting a horror movie show, “Monster Chiller Horror Theater.” The joke was that the movies the program showed — such as “Dr. Tongue’s Evil House of Pancakes” — were seldom very scary, leaving Floyd holding the bag and often having to apologize to viewers.Gudrun Flaherty said in a statement that her father had an “unwavering passion for movies from the ’40s and ’50s,” which influenced his comedy, including his time on “SCTV.”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 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Betty Cole Dukert, Top ‘Meet the Press’ Producer, Dies at 96

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      She worked as a secretary before being hired as an associate producer at the NBC News public affairs show in 1956. She went on to spend 41 years there.Betty Cole Dukert, who began her career in Washington as a secretary in the 1950s and later became the top producer of the weekly NBC News public affairs program “Meet the Press,” died on March 16 at her home in Bethesda, Md. She was 96.Her late husband’s niece Barbara Dukert Smith said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.In her 41 years at “Meet the Press,” a Sunday-morning fixture on the NBC schedule, Mrs. Dukert booked politicians, diplomats, foreign dignitaries, cultural figures and heart surgeons to be interviewed by a moderator and a panel of journalists; sought out the most capable reporters for the panel; and researched the subjects to be discussed.“She was the main point of contact on Capitol Hill for the show,” said Betsy Fischer Martin, who started on “Meet the Press” as an intern and became the program’s executive producer in 2002. “She worked the phones constantly. It wasn’t an era when you could send off an email to book someone.”As she rose in the “Meet the Press” hierarchy, Mrs. Dukert collaborated with a long list of moderators: Ned Brooks, Lawrence Spivak, Bill Monroe, Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Chris Wallace, Garrick Utley and Tim Russert.“I have never found anyone who is nicer to work with, more intelligent, and whose judgment and tact are so superb,” Mr. Spivak told the Missouri newspaper The Springfield Leader and Press in 1970.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

      Barbara Rush, Award-Winning TV and Film Actress, Dies at 97

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      She received a Golden Globe in 1954 as that year’s rising star and appeared in movies alongside Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman.Barbara Rush, the supremely poised actress who rose to fame with supporting roles in 1950s films like “Magnificent Obsession” and “The Young Lions,” died on Sunday at her home in Westlake Village, Calif., in Los Angeles County. She was 97.The death, in a senior care facility, was confirmed by her daughter, Claudia Cowan.If Ms. Rush’s portrayals had one thing in common, it was a gentle, ladylike quality, which she put to use in films of many genres. She was Jane Wyman’s concerned stepdaughter in the 1954 romantic drama “Magnificent Obsession” and Dean Martin’s loyal wartime girlfriend in “The Young Lions” (1958), set during World War II. In 1950s science fiction pictures like “It Came From Outer Space” and “When Worlds Collide,” she was the small-town heroine, the scientist’s daughter, the Earthling most likely to succeed.Ms. Rush with Frank Sinatra in the 1963 film “Come Blow Your Horn,” about a swinging Manhattan bachelor’s life.Paramount Pictures, via Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesIn both “The Young Philadelphians” (1959), with Paul Newman, and “The World in My Corner,” a 1956 boxing film with Audie Murphy, Ms. Rush was the prized rich girl. In “Bigger Than Life” (also 1956), with James Mason, she played a vapid but supportive wife. And in “Come Blow Your Horn” (1963), with Frank Sinatra, she played the only “nice girl” in a swinging Manhattan bachelor’s life.But she did transcend type occasionally, as an Indian agent’s bigoted wife, for instance, in the western “Hombre” (1967), with Paul Newman. She also played Kit Sargent, the Hollywood screenwriter attracted to and repelled by the ruthless title character in the classic 1959 television production of “What Makes Sammy Run?”Ms. Rush in 1966. Her stage work became a second career. John Downing/Express, via Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesWe 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

      Lorraine Graves, Pioneering Harlem Ballerina, Dies at 66

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      Tall and commanding, she dazzled audiences as a principal dancer for the groundbreaking Dance Theater of Harlem for nearly two decades.Lorraine Graves, a ballerina known for her willowy frame and majestic grace who starred as a principal dancer for the groundbreaking Dance Theater of Harlem for nearly two decades, died on March 21 in Norfolk, Va. She was 66.Her nephew Jason Graves said the cause of her death, in a hospital, was yet to be determined.Ms. Graves broke barriers — not only as a celebrated dancer for a multiracial company that showcased African American excellence in a traditionally European art form, but also, at a towering 5-foot-10 ½, as an exceptionally tall one.For a female dancer, “five foot four, five foot six is considered tall,” Virginia Johnson, a former principal dancer and artistic director for the Dance Theater of Harlem, said in an interview. “Because once you get on pointe, you’re adding another six inches to your height, and so having a partner who’s tall enough to partner you is an issue.”Fortunately, the company had plenty of tall male dancers. That allowed Ms. Graves an opportunity to leverage her unique physicality, which over the course of her career she showed off in performances around the world, including before world leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela.“She was commanding,” Ms. Johnson said. “She had a lot of power as a dancer, and had a magnificent jump.”Dance Theater of Harlem was formed in 1969 by Arthur Mitchell, an international star who was the first African American principal dancer at New York City Ballet, with Karel Shook, a renowned ballet master who had trained Mr. Mitchell.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

      Chance Perdomo, Star of ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,’ Dies at 27

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      Mr. Perdomo, who died in a motorcycle accident on Friday, played the pansexual warlock Ambrose Spellman in the Netflix series.Chance Perdomo, the British actor known for his roles in the series “Gen V” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” died on Friday. He was 27.Mr. Perdomo died in a motorcycle accident, Larissa Saenz, a representative for him, confirmed in a statement on Saturday. The statement said that the “authorities have advised that no other individuals were involved.” It was not immediately clear where the accident happened.Mr. Perdomo played the pansexual warlock Ambrose Spellman in the Netflix series “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” and Andre Anderson, a superhuman with magnetic manipulation abilities, in “The Boys” spinoff series “Gen V.”He was born on Oct. 20, 1996, according to his representative, in Los Angeles and raised in Southampton, England. Details on survivors were not immediately available.Mr. Perdomo had described himself as “a Black child raised by a Latino mother in a white society with two nationalities.”He landed a small part on an episode of “Hetty Feather,” a British children’s drama set in the Victorian era, after graduating from Peter Symonds College in Winchester, where one of his majors was theater.He told The New York Times in 2020 that although the role was “one or two lines,” it was enough “to take that leap of faith” and pursue acting full time.Amazon MGM Studios and Sony Pictures Television said in a statement posted to a “Gen V” social media account that they were “devastated” by the news of Mr. Perdomo’s death.The account also shared a statement from the producers of “Gen V” in which they said they “can’t quite wrap our heads around this.”“Even writing about him in the past tense doesn’t make sense,” the statement added.Variety reported that production on the second season of “Gen V” had been “delayed indefinitely” after the news of Mr. Perdomo’s death.In Britain, Mr. Perdomo was known for starring in “Killed by My Debt,” a television movie based on the true story of a young courier who dies by suicide after two traffic tickets grow into a crushing debt.In an interview posted on social media, he recalled a conversation he had with his mother when he was about 2 years old. He told her he had two things he aspired to.“She said, ‘What do you want to be?’” he said. “I said I want to be the first Black president of the United States, and I want to be on ‘Barney.’”Mr. Perdomo went on to describe the differences between his roles on “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” and “Killed by My Debt.” Of his work, he said: “It’s been quite a year. Quite a couple of years.”“Visual mediums are great tools to be able to get messages and get thoughts across,” he added.He said that connecting with someone emotionally could help lead a person to think differently and “that can change perspectives and hopefully lead to more of a permanent change.” More