Deaths (Obituaries)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Pearl Bowser, Expert in Early Black Filmmakers, Dies at 92

      by

      She aided in the rediscovery of Oscar Micheaux and others who were telling stories for Black audiences early in the last century.Pearl Bowser, a film historian, curator and collector who was instrumental in preserving and bringing to light the works of Black filmmakers from early in the last century, especially those of Oscar Micheaux, whom one writer described as “the Jackie Robinson of American film,” died on Sept. 14 in Brooklyn. She was 92.Her daughter Gillian Bowser confirmed the death.Ms. Bowser developed an interest in the forgotten works of early Black filmmakers in the 1960s when, while working as a researcher on a colleague’s idea for a book about Micheaux, she traveled to California from New York to interview aging actors who had been in movies made by Micheaux decades earlier.She began hunting down and collecting movies by Micheaux and other Black filmmakers from the early decades of the 1900s — works that were, for that period, triumphs of independent filmmaking, since they were generally made on shoestring budgets and sometimes dealt with topics that mainstream movies would not touch. Micheaux’s “The Symbol of the Unconquered” (1920), for instance, was an indictment of the Ku Klux Klan.In addition to being a student of film, Ms. Bowser made a few films herself.Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureThose films also serve as historical documents, depicting Black communities in ways not seen in mainstream movies of the time.“Oscar Micheaux’s early films are full of ordinary settings of community: the church, the house, the apartment,” Ms. Bowser told USA Today in 1998. “You see the way people lived in that period.”By the early 1970s, Ms. Bowser was curating film series, taking the works she had discovered by Micheaux and others into theaters and classrooms. She continued to do that for decades.“They were telling stories that were not being shown on the screen, Black stories,” she told students at Fort Lee High School in New Jersey in 2004 before showing them “The Symbol of the Unconquered” (a film that, like others of Micheaux’s, was shot in Fort Lee). “And by showing the Black experience, we’re telling the American story in its totality.”Donald Bogle, the noted film historian, said Ms. Bowser’s work on Micheaux was pivotal.“Not much was known or acknowledged about Micheaux for too long a time,” he said by email. “But Pearl made it her mission to bring his work and career to light. Over the years, she devotedly dug for information on him, and I can remember those occasions when she excitedly told me about new things she was unearthing.”Among the places her search took her, she said in newspaper interviews, were the national archives of Spain and Belgium, where she found silent classics by Micheaux with the title cards written in the languages of those countries, which she then had to have translated back into English.In 2000, she and Louise Spence published “Writing Himself Into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Audiences.”“Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence’s scholarly examination of Micheaux serves a dual purpose,” Renée Graham wrote in a review in The Boston Globe. “Through six essays, they analyze Micheaux’s work, how it was received by both Blacks and whites, and how his films encouraged fresh discussions about race. But Bowser and Spence’s book also rescues the filmmaker’s accomplishments from decades of obscurity.”Ms. Bowser’s expertise, though, encompassed much more than Micheaux-era films. Her lectures and film series covered a wide range — for instance, she presented “Films of Africa and the Caribbean” at the Brooklyn Museum in 1986. And the collection of hundreds of films, videotapes and audiotapes she donated in 2012 to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution is rich in material related to Black filmmakers in the 1960s and ’70s.“Pearl didn’t just revive Micheaux’s legacy; she helped preserve and shape the narrative of independent Black film,” Ina Archer, media conservation and digitization specialist at the museum, said by email. “Across her five-decade career she wove a continuous thread through a century of Black film that is only just now beginning to come into focus.”Pearl Johnson was born on June 25, 1931, in Harlem, where she grew up. According to a Smithsonian Institution biography, her mother, also named Pearl, was a domestic worker, and young Pearl would often accompany her to work at apartments in Lower Manhattan, helping to fold handkerchiefs in exchange for an allowance.As a child she came to know Ellsworth (Bumpy) Johnson, a Harlem underworld figure who was also well known in the borough for giving out food baskets and encouraging children to borrow books from his vast library.“I remember one time I mentioned to Bumpy that I wanted to grow up to be a philosopher,” Ms. Bowser told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1997, “and he said, ‘I’ve got a book you might be interested in.’”He gave her something by Friedrich Nietzsche. She was about 15 and didn’t understand a word.“It taught me to think before I spoke to Bumpy,” she said. “because even though I was young, he took me and my dreams quite seriously.”Later, according to the Smithsonian biography, she worked in one of his numbers joints. She also studied for a time at Brooklyn College before dropping out and taking a job at CBS, where she worked on a team that analyzed television ratings.In 1955 she married LeRoy Bowser, who would later become a regional vice president of the National Urban League. He died in 1986. Her daughter Gillian survives her. Another daughter, Joralemon Bowser, died in 1978.Ms. Bowser made a few films herself, including “Midnight Ramble,” a documentary she made with Bestor Cram for the PBS series “The American Experience” about “race movies,” as films made by Micheaux and others for Black audiences were called.In the late 1960s Ms. Bowser also wrote a newspaper cooking column. In 1970, with Joan Eckstein, she published her best recipes in a book, “A Pinch of Soul.”“The authors,” one reviewer said, “provide a complete array of soul food cookery to fit the needs of today’s elegant hostess.” More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      David McCallum, Actor in ‘NCIS’ and ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,’ Dies at 90

      by

      An experienced character actor, he found fame in the 1960s as the enigmatic Illya Kuryakin, and again in the 2000s as an eccentric medical examiner on “N.C.I.S.”David McCallum, the Scottish-born actor who became a surprise sensation as the enigmatic Russian spy Illya Kuryakin on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” in the 1960s and found television stardom again almost 40 years later on the hit series “N.C.I.S.,” died on Monday in New York. He was 90.“N.C.I.S.” announced his death in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The announcement did not include any further information.Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Mr. McCallum was an experienced character actor who could use an accent or an odd piece of clothing to give depth to a role. He played a wide range of parts across theater, film and television, from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Central Park in 2000 to the voice of Professor Paradox on the animated television series “Ben 10: Ultimate Alien,” a decade later.He was hired in 1964 to play Illya Kuryakin, the Russian-accented sidekick of Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo, on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” a tongue-in-cheek series about secret agents working for the fictional United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. His part was meant to be small; he had just four lines in the first episode. He suggested that Illya be made more interesting by having him be closemouthed about his personal life (“Nobody knows what Illya Kuryakin does when he goes home at night,” he told one interviewer) and somewhat antagonistic to Solo.The writers began to build up his character, and he became a fixture of the series and a two-time Emmy Award nominee. Somewhat to his annoyance, he also became a sex symbol.With his mysterious air, his Beatle haircut and his trademark black turtleneck, Mr. McCallum was a magnet for teenage fans. Sent on a publicity junket for the show to Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge in 1965, he was mobbed by screaming female students and had to be rescued by police officers.“McCallum’s motorcades are now, by order of the police chiefs of the cities he visits, forbidden to stop anywhere along the line of drive,” The New York Times reported in a 1965 profile. “If the entourage slowed, there would be carnage in the streets.”“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” ended in 1968, and Mr. McCallum retreated happily to lower-profile roles. He continued to work steadily, mostly in B-movies and in supporting parts on television. He also played the title role in the short-lived series “The Invisible Man” (1975-76) and Emperor Joseph II in a revival of “Amadeus” on Broadway in 1999.But everywhere he went, he said, the Russian secret agent stalked him. “It’s been 30 years, but I can’t escape him,” he told The Times in 1998. “Illya Kuryakin is there 24 hours a day.”In 2003, the Russian shadow finally met his match in the bow-tied, bespectacled and eccentric medical examiner Donald Mallard, better known as Ducky, on the hit CBS crime series “N.C.I.S.” He remained with the show, which consistently ranked in the Nielsen Top 10, for two decades. He was still a member of the cast at his death.Mr. McCallum as the eccentric medical examiner Donald Mallard, known as Ducky, on the CBS crime series “N.C.I.S,” a role he played for 20 years.Monty Brinton/CBSIn interviews, Mr. McCallum said that besides Julius Caesar, Dr. Mallard was his favorite role, in part because it taught him so much about forensics. He studied with pathologists in Los Angeles and even sat in on autopsies, learning enough that the show’s writers would ask him for technical advice.David Keith McCallum Jr. was born on Sept. 19, 1933, into a musical family in Glasgow. His father was the first violinist for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; his mother, Dorothy Dorman, was a cellist. He would later tell interviewers that his Scotch Presbyterian upbringing had left him emotionally circumscribed.“We Scots, we tend to be awfully tight inside,” he told TV Guide in 1965. “It has hurt me as an actor to be so — so naturally restricted.”Expected to follow in the family footsteps and pursue a career in music, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Music to study oboe. But he found himself drawn to acting and switched to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. (He never completely lost interest in music, however; at the height of his “U.N.C.L.E.” fame, Capitol Records released several albums under his name, on which he conducted instrumental renditions of pop hits.)Mr. McCallum was drafted into the British military in 1951 and served two years, including 10 months in what is now Ghana as a small-arms expert. Not long after his discharge, he signed with the Rank Organization, a British production company, and began acting both in movies and on television.He met Jill Ireland, already a rising actress in Britain, when they were both cast in the Rank production “Robbery Under Arms” in 1957. He proposed seven days after they met, and they married that spring. In 1961, when he was cast as Judas Iscariot in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (the movie would not be completed and released until 1965), the couple moved to Los Angeles.They appeared to flourish. They had three children. She became a busy TV actress and made several guest appearances on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” playing three different characters.But the strain of Mr. McCallum’s stardom took a toll on their marriage, and she left him for the actor Charles Bronson, whom she had met when Mr. McCallum and Mr. Bronson were both filming “The Great Escape” (1963). Less than a year after their divorce in 1967, Mr. McCallum married Katherine Carpenter, a model.She survives him. Further information about his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. McCallum and his wife lived in Manhattan. The Associated Press said that CBS said he died at a Manhattan hospital but did not explain why he had been hospitalized.When “N.C.I.S.” made Mr. McCallum a television star for the second time, he found fame much less oppressive than he had the first time. “In New York now I leave 15 minutes — because I walk everywhere in New York — between appointments because I am going to be stopped on the street to talk about N.C.I.S. for at least 15 minutes,” he told BBC Radio in a 2009 interview.“I love it,” he said, when asked if he ever grew tired of that kind of attention. “I’ve never got fed up with anything in my whole life.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Stephen Gould, Tenor Best Known for Tackling Wagner, Dies at 61

      by

      He was especially acclaimed for his performances at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. As his voice developed, he once said, so did his view of how and why to deploy it. Stephen Gould, a tenor who after a detour into musical theater established himself as a leading interpreter of the operas of Richard Wagner in performances at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany and elsewhere, died on Tuesday in Chesapeake, Va. He was 61.His death was confirmed by his longtime agent, Stephanie Ammann. Early this month Mr. Gould announced on his website that he had bile duct cancer, that the disease was terminal and that he was retiring from singing.The Bayreuth Festival paid tribute to him on its website after that announcement.“Stephen Gould was, with interruptions, one of the mainstays of the Bayreuth Festival from 2004 to 2022,” the festival’s post said. “Highly esteemed by audiences, the press and within the festival family, he was rightly dubbed the ‘Wagner Marathon Man’ and thrilled audiences with his distinctive voice and condition in countless performances.”Mr. Gould established himself as a reliable heldentenor, a singer who takes on heroic roles, mostly in the German repertory, requiring a particularly powerful voice. Such roles are among the most demanding in opera.Mr. Gould in the title role of “Tannhäuser” at the Bayreuth Festival in 2004, with Roman Trekel as Wolfram. “This was his Bayreuth debut,” one critic wrote, “and by the end of the evening he had become a festival favorite.”Jochen Quast/European Pressphoto AgencyHe first appeared at Bayreuth in 2004, performing the title role in Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” a production that dazzled Olin Chism of The Dallas Morning News.“One of the heroes was American tenor Stephen Gould, who sang the title character,” Mr. Chism wrote. “This was his Bayreuth debut, and by the end of the evening he had become a festival favorite.”He remained so over the next 18 years, performing in 20 Bayreuth productions; he regularly sang the title role in “Siegfried” and Tristan in “Tristan und Isolde.” He also performed in leading opera houses around the world, including with the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in 2010 as Erik, the hunter, in Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman.”Mr. Gould knew that the major roles he undertook required a certain maturity.“Everyone wants their heroes to be young and vibrant and look like Brad Pitt in his early days,” he said in a 2019 interview with the German news outlet Deutsche Welle. “But you have to give the voice time to develop.”As his voice developed, he noted in the same interview, so did his view of how and why he was deploying it.Mr. Gould as Tristan and Nina Stemme as Isolde in a production of “Tristan und Isolde” at the Royal Opera House in London in 2014.Robbie Jack/Corbis, via Getty Images“I don’t try to sing for the public anymore,” he said. “I did when I was younger, of course. You want to be popular, you want the critics to love you, you want your career to go high and all of that. Now when I’m onstage, what I enjoy most is discovering something for myself.”Stephen Grady Gould was born on Jan. 24, 1962, in Roanoke, Va. He studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston before joining Lyric Opera of Chicago’s developmental program for young artists, the Center for American Artists. He originally imagined himself as a baritone before switching to tenor.He was put to the test at age 27 when he had to substitute for Chris Merritt in the demanding role of Argirio in Gioachino Rossini’s “Tancredi” when Mr. Merritt became ill during a run in Los Angeles, where the opera was being staged jointly by Lyric Opera and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.Mr. Gould in the Royal Opera’s production of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt” in 2009.Robbie Jack/Corbis, via Getty Images“He gamely tackled the patriarchal ardors of Argirio with a light, often pinched voice and reasonable dramatic presence within the static staging context,” John Henken wrote in The Los Angeles Times. “The stratospheric climaxes were forced out as high-pressure bleats, and initially much of the passage work was smeared. But he seemed to gain strength and composure, and more than held his own in the big Act II duet with Marilyn Horne in the title role.”Soon after, on what he said was a whim, he auditioned for the national touring company of “The Phantom of the Opera” and was cast. He spent several years with that troupe, performing various roles, though not either of the male leads.“When I finished with musicals, I just was going to quit,” he said in 2019, “but I wanted to give it one more chance and met a teacher from the Metropolitan Opera who told me that I’d been singing incorrectly from the very beginning.”He rededicated himself to opera, working on his technique and growing into the Wagnerian roles for which he became best known.“By then,” he said, “I was at the right age to actually sing Wagner. Too many singers today are pushed into their big Wagnerian roles in their 20s.”Information about Mr. Gould’s survivors was not immediately available. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Robert Klane, Writer of ‘Weekend at Bernie’s,’ Dies at 81

      by

      He also adapted his best-known novel, “Where’s Poppa?,” into the script for a raw Carl Reiner comedy and directed the disco movie “Thank God It’s Friday.”Robert Klane, a comic novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker with a taste for gleeful vulgarity who wrote the screenplay for “Weekend at Bernie’s,” the 1989 cult film about two young insurance company employees who create the illusion that their murdered boss is still alive, died on Aug. 29 at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 81.His son Jon said the cause was kidney failure.Mr. Klane wrote “Weekend at Bernie’s” more than two decades into a career that began with the publication of two humorous novels: “The Horse Is Dead: A Tasteless Novel” (1968) and “Where’s Poppa?” (1970). He adapted “Where’s Poppa?” into the screenplay for a twisted comedy about a single lawyer (played by George Segal) who dreams of scaring to death or institutionalizing his aged, maddening mother (Ruth Gordon).Ted Kotcheff, who directed “Weekend at Bernie’s,” wrote in his 2017 memoir, “Director’s Cut: My Life in Film,” that Mr. Klane had been inspired to write it by his time as an advertising copywriter in the 1960s, when the top executives at one of the agencies where he worked invited employees to their beach houses on Long Island.Mr. Klane with Donna Summer on the set of the 1978 disco film “Thank God It’s Friday,” which he directed. Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images“But he always wondered what would happen if the underlings got a house all to themselves — inmates taking over the asylum,” Mr. Kotcheff wrote.In “Bernie’s,” the young workers (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) discover a $2 million fraud but don’t know that their boss, Bernie (Terry Kiser), is the culprit. Bernie invites them to his beach house, ostensibly as a reward, and asks his mobster partner to kill them. But the mobster tells the hit man to kill Bernie instead for sleeping with his girlfriend.The employees — fearful that they might be next on the hit list — frantically make Bernie seem alive by, among other ruses, putting sunglasses on him, rolling him out to his sun deck and rigging a device that raises his arm so he appears to be waving to people.The film, which grossed a modest $30 million (a little less than $75 million in today’s money), gained fans long after its release through home video and cable-TV viewing. People magazine wrote in 2014 that the movie “has managed to age into something close to respectability.”Mr. Klane believed that the Bernie character was too dead to revive cinematically. But a sequel was made — because Victor Drai, one of the original film’s producers, raised the money from its Italian distributor, Mr. Drai recalled in a phone interview.Mr. Klane was the director as well as the writer of “Weekend at Bernie’s II” (1993), which involves the discovery of Bernie’s offshore bank account, containing the embezzled money, and a voodoo ceremony to try reanimating him.The reviews were roundly negative.“If ever there was a career-ending movie,” the Miami Herald critic Rene Rodriguez wrote, “‘Weekend at Bernie’s II’ is it.”But for Mr. Klane, it wasn’t. He kept working.Robert Klane was born on Oct. 17, 1941, in Port Jefferson, N.Y., on Long Island, and grew up in nearby Patchogue and Bayport. His father, Edward, was a physician. His mother, Adele (Blum) Klane, was a homemaker.After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in English, Mr. Klane returned to New York and found work in advertising.Over the next few years he was a commercial copywriter at two agencies, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (now BBDO) and McCann Erickson (now McCann). In 1967 he went to work at Filmex, a production house, where he directed commercials.In his spare time he wrote “The Horse Is Dead,” about a camp counselor who hates his campers. The book was labeled “filth and smut simply for the sake of smut” by a self-appointed decent literature committee that wanted it removed from a library in Bel Air, Md., in 1968. But commissioners in Harford County, Md., refused to ban it.On the other hand, Jack Benny sent Mr. Klane a fan letter telling him that it was the funniest book he had ever read.Two years later, Mr. Klane published “Where’s Poppa?,” and that same year Carl Reiner directed the film version, with a script by Mr. Klane. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film did not have “much more on its mind than a desperate desire to provoke shock and laughter” — which, he said, it did successfully.Jon Klane recalled going to a theater to see the film with his father, who stayed in the lobby. “I came out to get candy, and he was watching a matronly woman demand a refund,” he said by phone. “I went up to him, and he said, ‘This is exactly the kind of person I want to offend.’”Over the next three decades, Mr. Klane stayed busy in television and film. He wrote six episodes of the sitcom “M*A*S*H”; the 1985 film “National Lampoon’s European Vacation,” with John Hughes; “The Man With One Red Shoe,” a 1985 remake of the French comedy “The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe,” which starred Tom Hanks; and, in 1997, 11 episodes of Tracey Ullman’s sketch comedy series “Tracey Takes On …,” for which he and several others received an Emmy Award for outstanding variety, music or comedy series.His directing work included “Thank God It’s Friday” (1978), set entirely in a disco, which won the Academy Award for best original song, “Last Dance,” sung by the disco diva Donna Summer, one of its stars; and “The Odd Couple: Together Again,” a 1993 TV movie that reunited Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, the stars of that 1970s sitcom.In addition to his son Jon, Mr. Klane is survived by his wife, J.C. Scott; a daughter, Caitlin Klane; another son, David; a brother, Larry; and five grandchildren. Another daughter, Tracy Klane, died in 2011. His marriages to Linda Tesh and the actress Anjanette Comer ended in divorce.About 20 years ago, Mr. Klane worked with his son Jon on a script, set in a ski resort, that would have rebooted the “Bernie’s” franchise. It did not sell.“We wore out the carpet coming up with gags,” Jon Klane said. “It was my best memory of him. He would say, ‘It has to be a laugh a page, Jonny.’” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Roger Whittaker, Balladeer With an International Following, Dies at 87

      by

      A Briton with a rich baritone, he charmed audiences, mostly in Europe and America, with sentimental songs, like his signature hit, “The Last Farewell.”Roger Whittaker, a British singer whose easy-listening ballads and folk songs caught the sentiments of perfect summer days and last farewells, touching the hearts of mainly older fans across Europe and America for four decades, died on Sep. 12 in a hospital near Toulouse, in the south of France. He was 87.His longtime publicist Howard Elson said the cause was “complications following a long illness.” Mr. Whittaker had retired to the region.Born to British parents in Nairobi, Kenya, Mr. Whittaker grew up there with the infectious rhythms of East African music in his bloodstream. His grandfather had been a club singer in England, and his father, a Staffordshire grocer who played the violin, had been disabled in a motorcycle crash and moved his family to Kenya for the warm climate.Roger learned to play the guitar at 7 and developed a rich baritone in school choirs, where he sometimes sang in Swahili. At 18, he was drafted into the British colonial Kenya Regiment, and for two years he fought Mau Mau rebels in the struggle that led to Kenyan independence. He then studied medicine in South Africa and science in Wales, intending to become a teacher.But music intervened. He had played club dates to pay for college, and he also recorded songs on flexible discs distributed with the campus newspaper, The Bangor University Rag. A record company liked them and in 1962 released his first professional singles, including “Steel Men,” his cover of a Jimmy Dean hit about bridge builders.“Steel Men” leaped onto the British charts, the opening wedge in a career of international tours and record albums that celebrated ethnic and working-class pride, the passing seasons and family gatherings at Christmas. Over the years Mr. Whittaker recorded for various labels, including EMI, RCA Victor and his own Tembo (Swahili for elephant) Records.Tours took him repeatedly to Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, a concert grind that often exceeded 100 gigs a year and outlasted the millennium. He learned to fly small planes and sometimes used them on his tours.He wrote much of the music he performed, made a documentary film about Kenya, wrote an autobiography, appeared frequently on television and radio and sold a reported 60 million albums worldwide. One of them, “‘The Last Farewell’ and Other Hits,” recorded in 1971 and forgotten, became a sensation later, reaching No. 1 on the pop charts in 11 countries and eventually selling 11 million copies.“‘The Last Farewell’ is an ersatz show tune about a British man-of-war, love, heartache and heroism,” Henry Edwards wrote in The New York Times in 1975. “Released four years ago, the tune was discovered by an Atlanta disc jockey while idly going through a pile of discarded LPs. He liked the song, played it on the air, and soon Atlanta was liking it too. That affection soon spread to Nashville, then to the entire country-music market, then to the pop audience at large.” It became Mr. Whittaker’s signature song.In 1980, Mr. Whittaker invited children to submit lyrics and poems about peace for a songwriting contest. It drew a million entries from 57 countries. He wrote and recorded music for the winning entry, written by Odina Batnag, 13, of Manila. She was flown to New York and introduced, with her song, “I Am But a Small Voice,” at Radio City Music Hall. Proceeds went to a UNESCO program for disabled children.By the 1980s Mr. Whittaker was performing in 50 to 70 American cities regularly. Boston was a stronghold.In addition to singing, he whistled, yodeled and had audiences sing along. Critics called it schmaltzy, but crowds loved it and joined in, especially on hits like “Durham Town (The Leavin’)” (1969) and covers of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” and Jethro Tull’s “Too Old to Rock ’n’ Roll, Too Young to Die.”Mr. Whittaker performing on television in about 1965 in Germany, where he had a big following.Gunter Zint/K & K Ulf Kruger OHG, via Redferns, via Getty Images“Whittaker’s audience is mostly white and middle-class, probably daytime TV watchers who enjoy the kind of plain, folksy charm he projects,” Thomas Sabulis wrote in The Boston Globe. “He’s no great singer or songwriter; he doesn’t have Neil Diamond’s talent, Tom Jones’s sex appeal or Barry Manilow’s knack for milking the obvious. What he does have is a steady, unspectacular baritone and an avuncular, almost evangelical tone as comforting as it is mediocre.”Tragedy struck in 1989. Mr. Whittaker’s parents, still living in Kenya, were victims of a brutal home invasion by four robbers. His mother was tortured for eight hours and his father murdered. The killers were never caught. His mother moved back to England.“It will affect me for the rest of my life,” Mr. Whittaker told reporters, “but I believe we should all live without hate if we can.”After a period of mourning, Mr. Whittaker resumed recording and touring. In 1995, he sang at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville at a 50th-anniversary party for former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, who were fans. In 1997, despite a surgical knee replacement, he kept some 100 concert dates in Europe and America.He stopped touring in 2013, at 77, and retired to the south of France after years living in England and Ireland.Roger Henry Brough Whittaker was born in Nairobi on March 22, 1936, to Edward and Viola (Showan) Whittaker, who, after his motorcycle accident in 1930, had settled on a farm in Thika, outside Nairobi. His father recovered and became a successful builder and businessman in Kenya. His mother managed theaters.After graduating from the Prince of Wales School in Nairobi in 1954 and finishing military service in 1956, Roger began premedical studies at the University of Cape Town, but he dropped out after 18 months. He became an apprentice teacher but, needing more education, enrolled in 1959 at University College of North Wales (now Bangor University), and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1962.Still uncertain about his future, he consulted a faculty adviser, who, he later recalled, told him, “Have a try in show business and if you haven’t made it in 10 years, come back here and teach.” Mr. Whittaker soon landed a singing job at a resort in Northern Ireland and began his career.In 1964, he married Natalie O’Brien, who became his manager and co-author of his 1986 memoir, “So Far, So Good.” She survives him, as do their five children, Emily Kennedy and Lauren, Jessica, Guy and Alexander Whittaker; 12 grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and an elder sister. A documentary film, “Roger Whittaker in Kenya: A Musical Safari,” which related a history of Kenya and revisited settings of the singer’s early life there, was released in 1982.Mr. Whittaker found his greatest European success in Germany. While he admitted he could not speak German at first, he sang and recorded in German “phonetically,” as he put it, until he became more fluent. He matured into one of Germany’s favorite singers, selling 10 million albums there.He also had a devoted following in the United States, where he was best known for “I Don’t Believe in ‘If’ Anymore” (1970); his version of “Wind Beneath My Wings” (1982); and “New World in the Morning” (1971), the title track of an album that also included “The Last Farewell” and “A Special Kind of Man.”“Women do not throw underclothes or room keys onstage at his concerts,” Diane White said in a sweet-and-sour appreciation in The Boston Globe. “No one gets high. No one gets hysterical with excitement. And yet Roger Whittaker is one of the most popular entertainers in the world.”Alex Marshall More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Irish Grinstead of R&B Group 702 Dies at 43

      by

      The singer, who appeared on the hit track “Where My Girls At?,” took a “medical leave of absence” from the group late last year; a cause of death was not immediately available.Irish Grinstead, a member of the R&B trio 702, known for its 1999 hit “Where My Girls At?,” died on Saturday evening at the age of 43, according to her sister.A cause of death was not immediately available, but the group announced in December that Irish Grinstead was taking a “medical leave of absence due to serious medical issues.”LeMisha Grinstead, Irish Grinstead’s sister and bandmate, said in an Instagram post announcing her death that she had “had a long battle and is finally at peace.”“That girl was as bright as the stars! She was not only beautiful on the outside, but also within,” LeMisha Grinstead wrote. “Sharing the stage with her was a joy I will cherish for the rest of my life!”Members of 702 (from left): Kameelah Williams, LeMisha Grinstead and Irish Grinstead attending the Teen Choice Awards in 1999.Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesThe Grinstead sisters and Kameelah Williams comprised 702, which was named for the telephone area code in Las Vegas, where they were from.“Devastated & heartbroken,” Ms. Williams wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday. “There’s a lot I want to say, but there’s no way to say what your heart hasn’t fully accepted.”The group’s 1996 debut album, “No Doubt,” included a song called “Steelo,” featuring Missy Elliott. A version of the track was the theme song for the Nickelodeon show “Cousin Skeeter.” The song was also sampled in a 2019 dance music hit produced by Diplo.“Irish May your beautiful soul Rest Peacefully in the arms of the Lord,” Ms. Elliot wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday. “Multitude of prayers for the entire Grinstead family.”702’s defining hit was “Where My Girls At?,” which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1999, according to Billboard.As news of Irish Grinstead’s death circulated, fan tributes flooded social media in the form of music video clips featuring Irish Grinstead dancing alongside her sister and Ms. Williams in distinctive ’90s glam and choreography.The group released its last album, “Star,” 20 years ago but continued to perform shows, with several scheduled through the rest of this year.Irish Grinstead’s twin sister, Orish Grinstead, died in 2008, according to IMDb. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Michael McGrath, Tony Winner and ‘Spamalot’ Veteran, Dies at 65

      by

      He clanged coconuts in the Monty Python stage musical in 2005; seven years later, he won a Tony for “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”Michael McGrath, who won a Tony Award in 2012 for his work in the musical “Nice Work if You Can Get It” and was a regular on Broadway, Off Broadway and regional stages, known especially for comedic roles and for his ability to conjure the likes of Groucho Marx, George M. Cohan and Jackie Gleason, died on Thursday at his home in Bloomfield, N.J. He was 65.His family announced the death through the publicist Lisa Goldberg. No cause was provided.Mr. McGrath was one of those stage actors who might rarely be recognized on the street yet worked steadily for decades, drawing good notices throughout. He did much of his early work at Theater by the Sea in Matunuck, R.I., where he appeared regularly from 1977 to 1991, including in the title role of a 1989 production of “George M!,” the musical about Cohan, the famed song-and-dance man.“Exuding confidence and manic energy,” Michael Burlingame wrote in a review in The Day of New London, Conn., “McGrath struts and crows like a bantam rooster.”By the late 1980s he was appearing in New York shows, including “Forbidden Christmas,” a 1991 holiday edition of the long-running parody revue “Forbidden Broadway”; in one sketch he was Luciano Pavarotti, “wearing,” as Mel Gussow wrote in a review in The New York Times, “a white shirt as big as a bedsheet.”A year later he made his Broadway debut in the ensemble of “My Favorite Year,” a backstage musical based on the 1982 movie about the golden age of television. That show closed after a month, but it was the start of regular Broadway work for Mr. McGrath — sometimes as an understudy or standby player, sometimes in featured roles.Mr. McGrath, left, as Patsy and Tim Curry as King Arthur in the 2005 Broadway musical “Spamalot.” Mr. McGrath played three roles and earned a Tony nomination.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHe played three different parts in “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the hit 2005 musical based on “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” including Patsy, the servant who banged coconuts together to imitate the sound of a galloping horse. His performance earned him a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical.His Broadway run continued with “Is He Dead?” (2007), “Memphis” (2009) and “Born Yesterday” (2011). Then, in 2012, came his Tony-winning turn in “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” a musical that showcased the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara got most of the attention in the lead roles, but it was Mr. McGrath (as a bootlegger) and Judy Kaye (as a temperance leader) who earned the show’s two Tonys, for best actor and actress in a featured role in a musical.Mr. McGrath with Judy Kaye in “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” for which they both won Tonys.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMore recently on Broadway, Mr. McGrath was in “She Loves Me” (2016) and “Tootsie” (2019), among other shows. In between Broadway roles, he worked Off Broadway and in regional houses. He also continued to perform in productions of “Forbidden Broadway” and, in 1996, a movie-themed offshoot, “Forbidden Hollywood,” in which he imitated both John Travolta’s character in “Pulp Fiction” and Tom Hanks’s Forrest Gump.That same year, he tapped his inner Groucho in “The Cocoanuts,” a revival of an ancient Marx Brothers show mounted at the American Jewish Theater in Manhattan. Mr. McGrath had always been known for doing a bit of ad-libbing from time to time. (“It’s gotten me in trouble with authors,” he acknowledged in a 1996 interview with The Times. “A lot of them don’t like you going off the script.”) But in “The Cocoanuts,” ad-libs, Groucho style, were expected.“There are a lot of guys who do better Grouchos,” Mr. McGrath told The Times, “but Groucho and I share the same sense of humor, so I find it very easy to ad-lib as him. I wouldn’t say my timing is as great, but we’re in the same ballpark.”He brought another famed figure back to life in 2017, when he played Ralph Kramden, Jackie Gleason’s role, in a musical version of “The Honeymooners” at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.If Mr. McGrath wasn’t an A-list star, he sometimes went on in place of one. On Broadway he understudied Martin Short twice, in “The Goodbye Girl” in 1993 and “Little Me” in 1998. A Times reporter was in the audience of “Little Me” in December 1998 when Mr. McGrath stepped in for Mr. Short, who had a cold. Many might have been disappointed at first not to be seeing Mr. Short, but by the show’s end, The Times reported, the theatergoers “gave Mr. McGrath the special ovation for people who leap into impossible situations full throttle and soar.”Mr. McGrath understudied Martin Short in the 1998 musical “Little Me.” One night when he stepped in for Mr. Short, The New York Times reported, the audience gave him “the special ovation for people who leap into impossible situations full throttle and soar.” Ruby Washington/The New York Times“They rose to their feet, screaming, ‘Bravo! Bravo!’”Michael McGrath was born on Sept. 25, 1957, in Worcester, Mass. After graduating from high school there, he studied briefly at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, but he left after three months to start his acting career.Among his fellow players in the “Forbidden Broadway” series was Toni Di Buono. In a 1988 version of the show, he parodied Joel Grey’s “Cabaret” character; she did the same for Patti LuPone, belting out “I Get a Kick Out of Me.” Ms. Di Buono and Mr. McGrath later married.She survives him, as does their daughter, Katie Claire McGrath.In a 2012 interview with The Cape Codder of Massachusetts, Mr. McGrath talked about Cookie, the character he played in his Tony-winning turn in “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”“There is a little bit of Gleason in everything I do,” he said. “For Cookie, I’ve also incorporated elements of Groucho Marx, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, Skip Mahoney from the Bowery Boys, and even a little Bugs Bunny.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Charles Gayle, Saxophonist of Fire and Brimstone, Dies at 84

      by

      An intense and uncompromising player, he made music that one critic said was more about “motion and spirit” than tonal centers, rhythms and melodies.Charles Gayle, an uncompromising saxophonist who spent years living and performing on the streets of New York before beginning a recording career when he was nearly 50, died on Sept. 5 in Brooklyn. He was 84.His son Ekwambu, who had been caring for him as he dealt with Alzheimer’s disease, announced the death but did not specify a cause.Mr. Gayle said he had chosen to be homeless because it gave him the opportunity to explore music unencumbered by worries about changing tastes or living expenses. He was part of an ecstatic lineage of jazz avant-gardists like late-period John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, purveyors of a style often referred to as “fire music.”Mr. Gayle’s playing was eventually documented on nearly 40 albums under his name on a host of labels; he also recorded with the pianist Cecil Taylor, the bassist William Parker and the punk singer Henry Rollins.Reviewing the 2014 Vision Festival, at which Mr. Gayle was given a lifetime achievement award, the New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff wrote, “He plays tenor saxophone in cries and gabbles and interval jumps and long tones; his music usually describes motion and spirit rather than corresponding to preset tonal centers, rhythms and melodies.”An ardent Christian, Mr. Gayle channeled his intense spirituality not only into his sound; it was also reflected in the titles of many of his albums and in the screeds he delivered extemporaneously during his performances.Mr. Gayle also had an alternate musical persona called Streets: He would dress in a torn suit and clown shoes and wear makeup and a red nose. At first it was an occasional diversion, but he later performed as Streets regularly. In a 2014 interview with The New York City Jazz Record, he explained:“It wasn’t a gimmick or anything like that. I looked at myself one day in the mirror and said to myself, ‘Stop thinking about Charles.’ So I put a rubber nose on and said ‘That’ll work.’Mr. Gayle would sometimes dress in a torn suit and clown shoes, wear makeup and a red nose, and perform as an alternate musical persona called Streets.Northern Spy Records“It was really that simple,” he continued. “I saw a lot of clowns when I was young in the circus, but it was so liberating to go out in an audience while the band is playing and give a lady a rose or get rejected by her and everything — I can’t do that with regular clothes on. It helps a person mentally to escape — there’s a purpose in the escape, and it is the same thing as being in the music and trying to get past certain things. In order for me to do that I had to disappear.”Charles Ennis Gayle Jr. was born on Feb. 28, 1939, in Buffalo to Charles and Frances Gayle. His father was a steelworker. He studied numerous instruments in high school and excelled in basketball and track and field.Mr. Gayle in 1994. His recording career did not begin until he was nearly 50, but he steadily released albums as a leader from 1991 onward.Alan NahigianAfter a period at Fredonia State Teachers College, Mr. Gayle returned to Buffalo to begin his music career. He first played trumpet and piano in local clubs before concentrating more on tenor saxophone in self-produced concerts, while also working at a Westinghouse factory and later at a bank providing loans for Black-owned businesses.From 1970 to 1973, Mr. Gayle was an assistant professor of music at the State University of New York at Buffalo (now the University at Buffalo). But, tiring of institutional responsibilities, he left academia and moved to New York City to pursue music exclusively. He had been there for almost a decade when he decided to live on the streets.In the 2014 interview, he recalled: “I just walked out one day and that was it. That was one of the greatest experiences I had in my life, though I didn’t do it for that reason. You have nothing and you’re not asking anybody for anything. We seek security, and you learn about how people perceive you because of what you look like or what they think you’re about.”He had music ready for release by ESP-Disk, Mr. Ayler’s label from 1964 to 1966, but those plans were scuttled when the company went out of business in 1975. (That session has yet to be heard, but the label was revived in 2005 and released a 1994 performance by Mr. Gayle’s trio in 2012.)Mr. Gayle spent more than 15 years homeless, performing on the streets of New York. Then, in 1987, he began his second act.After the promoter Michael Dorf heard Mr. Gayle play, he was booked regularly at Mr. Dorf’s Lower Manhattan club, the Knitting Factory. Music he recorded at sessions in April 1988 became three albums for the Swedish label Silkheart Records. From 1991 onward, Mr. Gayle would steadily release albums under his own name — some as the leader of a trio or quartet, others as a solo performer — among them “Repent,” “Consecration,” “Testaments,” “Daily Bread” and “Christ Everlasting.”In a 2013 interview with Cadence magazine, he reflected on the perils of being outspoken about his religious beliefs in his concerts, delivered with the fervor of a country preacher:“People have told me to shut up and stuff. I understand that I can turn people off with what I say or do. The problem that people have with me is not me, it’s Christ they have a problem with. I understand that when you start speaking about faith or religion, they want you to keep it in a box, but I’m not going to do that. Not because I’m taking advantage of being a musician; I’m the same everywhere, and people have to understand that.”Mr. Gayle also had a notable collaborative group with Mr. Parker and the drummer Rashied Ali and was a guest on two albums by Mr. Rollins. In addition to tenor saxophone, he played alto and soprano saxophones, piano, viola, upright bass and drums. He is seen and heard in an interview and playing with the German bassist Peter Kowald’s trio in a 1985 documentary, “Rising Tones Cross,” produced and directed by his former wife Ebba Jahn.A biography of Mr. Gayle by Cisco Bradley, with all proceeds going to the Gayle family, is scheduled for publication in late 2024.Mr. Gayle’s three marriages all ended in divorce. In addition to his son Ekwambu, from his second marriage, his survivors include two other sons, Michael, from the first, and Dwayne, from his marriage to Ms. Jahn.The drummer Michael Wimberley, who worked Mr. Gayle from the early 1990s well into the new millennium, called him “a father, mentor and friend whom I had the pleasure of creating some of the most adventurous improvised sounds, shapes and musical dialogues with.”“Charles’s intensity on the horn,” he added, “was so powerful in person. I had never experienced anything like music of that intensity before! He pulled me into the sonic center of his sound and raptured me.” More