Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Inger McCabe Elliott, Who Famously Became Con Man’s Victim, Dies at 90

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      She was a successful designer. But she was probably best known for being duped in a scheme that inspired the play “Six Degrees of Separation.”Inger McCabe Elliott, a photographer and designer who, with her husband, was conned at her home in Manhattan by a slick-talking 19-year-old purporting to be Sidney Poitier’s son — an incident that helped inspire John Guare to write his celebrated play “Six Degrees of Separation” — died on Jan. 29 at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.Her son, Alec McCabe, confirmed the death.It was a bizarre New York tale.In early October 1983, Mrs. Elliott and her husband, Osborn Elliott, a former top editor of Newsweek who at the time was the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, got a call from a young man who introduced himself as David Poitier.He said that he was a friend of Mrs. Elliott’s daughter Kari McCabe, and that muggers had stolen his money and a term paper he had written about the criminal justice system. He needed a place to stay, he said, until his father arrived in Manhattan the next day to direct scenes for the film version of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls.” (Mr. Poitier had six daughters but no sons, and he had no involvement in “Dreamgirls.”)Charmed, the Elliotts invited the young man — his real name was David Hampton, they later learned — to spend the night at their East Side apartment and gave him $50 and some clothes. He asked Mrs. Elliott to wake him early the next morning so that he could go jogging.David Hampton, the man who had masqueraded as Sidney Poitier’s son, in 1990 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center after the opening of the John Guare play based on his impersonation. William E. Sauro/The New York TimesThe Elliotts were unable to reach Kari McCabe that night to confirm Mr. Hampton’s claim that they were friends. (She had no idea who he was, they later found out.)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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      Hinton Battle, Three-Time Tony Winner in Musicals, Dies at 67

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      He won awards for his roles in “Sophisticated Ladies,” “The Tap Dance Kid” and “Miss Saigon” — the most ever in the category of best featured actor in a musical.Hinton Battle, a dazzling dancer who won the first of his three Tony Awards in 1981 for his performance in the Duke Ellington musical revue “Sophisticated Ladies” after learning how to tap dance in the weeks leading up to opening night, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 67.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Leah Bass-Baylis, a family spokeswoman, who danced with him on Broadway. She did not provide a cause.“Some people are born with the spirit of the dance,” said Debbie Allen, the dancer, choreographer and actress, who had known Mr. Battle since he was 16. “Hinton Battle was that kind of person.” She added: “He was just technically superior to anyone who came close to him. He had rhythm and style. You were looking at a supernova.”Mr. Battle auditioned for “Sophisticated Ladies” several years after he originated the role of the Scarecrow in “The Wiz,” the all-Black adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz,” when he was 18. Trained as a ballet dancer, he didn’t know how to tap and felt the pressure of being in a show with virtuoso tappers like Gregory Hines and Gregg Burge.Mr. Battle playing the Scarecrow with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy in the Broadway musical “The Wiz” around 1975. Hulton archive/Getty ImagesAt his audition, Mr. Battle said that he fudged a soft-shoe routine.“I panicked,” he told The New York Times in 1984. “It used to be you didn’t need to know how to tap. Tap was out for so long, and there wasn’t much of it to see.”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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      Michael Watford, a Minister of Gospel House Music, Dies at 64

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      His signature hit, “So Into You,” was omnipresent in 1994 — the rare record “you heard at every club,” one D.J. said. But his time at the top was brief.Michael Watford, a church-trained club singer whose baritone boomed over the world’s dance floors for much of the early 1990s, and in the process helped birth a subgenre of club music known as gospel house, died on Jan. 26 in Newark. He was 64.His cousin Lorie Watford said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was dementia.Mr. Watford’s signature hit was “So Into You,” a jubilant ditty that paired his romantic, yearning vocal, inspired by Luther Vandross, with insistent strings, a lush piano line, and frequent handclaps and drum rolls. It hit No. 1 on the Billboard dance chart in April 1994, only to be replaced a week later by Barbara Tucker’s “Beautiful People” — on which Mr. Watford provided backing vocals.“There were different styles among house D.J.s, and different songs that appealed to their particular crowds,” said Tony Humphries, a D.J. and producer who helped push Mr. Watford to the top of the dance-music heap by playing his early records on his weekly radio show on WRKS (Kiss-FM) and during his marathon sets at Club Zanzibar in Newark (where the video for “So Into You” was shot). “But there was a smaller number of records everyone had to have, songs you heard at every club, and ‘So Into You’ was absolutely one of those.”Little Louie Vega, a producer and D.J. who between 1992 and 1994 had his hand in more than a dozen songs that reached the top of the dance charts, said of Mr. Watford: “He comes from church. You could tell that from the way he sings, and he brought that to the music.” Mr. Vega worked with Mr. Watford on “My Love,” a song from his first and only album, “Michael Watford,” released by EastWest/Atlantic in 1994.Michael Wayne Watford was born in Suffolk, Va., on July 20, 1959, but grew up largely in Newark. His mother, the Rev. Betty Brower of the Clinton Memorial AME Zion Church, was a gospel singer who performed in the 1970s with the Alvin Darling Ensemble. His stepfather, George Brower, was also a gospel singer.He is survived by his mother; two younger brothers, Duncan and Terrance Artis Watford; his children, Michael Watford Jr., Symphony Watford and Taylor Watford; and two stepsiblings, Ruby Washington and Erroll Brower. His marriage to Joanne Collins ended in divorce. 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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      Wayne Kramer, Influential MC5 Guitarist, Dies at 75

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      Mr. Kramer was one half of the twin-guitar attack that drove the Detroit band’s incendiary live performances, helping to set the stage for punk rock.Wayne Kramer, whose explosive guitar playing with the influential Detroit band the MC5 in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped to set the template for punk rock, died on Friday. He was 75.The death was confirmed in a post on his official Instagram account, which said the cause was pancreatic cancer. It did not say where he died.The MC5 (short for Motor City Five) formed in Lincoln Park, Mich., in 1965.Mr. Kramer and Fred (Sonic) Smith teamed to provide the twin-guitar attack that was at the heart of the band’s sound, and the centerpiece of its notoriously loud and frenetic live performances.In ranking Mr. Kramer and Mr. Smith, together, at No. 225 last year on its list of the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, Rolling Stone said the two “worked together like the pistons of a powerful engine” to “kick their band’s legendarily high-energy jams deep into space while simultaneously keeping one foot in the groove.”Mr. Kramer performing with the MC5 in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1969.Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs Archive, via Getty ImagesThe band, which also featured the vocalist Rob Tyner, the bassist Michael Davis and the drummer Dennis Thompson, splintered in the early 1970s after just two studio albums.Its debut, “Kick Out the Jams,” a live set recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit in 1968, is considered one of the most influential albums of its era, and inspired generations of musicians, including the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and Queens of the Stone Age.Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine said on Instagram on Friday that Mr. Kramer and the MC5 “basically invented punk rock music.”Mr. Kramer was arrested on drug charges in 1975 and was sentenced to four years in prison.In 2009, after he returned to performing and recording as a solo artist, he established Jail Guitar Doors U.S.A., a nonprofit that donates musical instruments to inmates and offers songwriting workshops in prisons, in partnership with his wife, Margaret, and the British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg.The name comes from “Jail Guitar Doors,” a song by the Clash that opens with a line about Mr. Kramer’s struggles with substance abuse and the law: “Let me tell you about Wayne and his deals of cocaine.”“The guitar can be the key that unlocks the cell,” Mr. Kramer told High Times in 2015. “It can be the key that unlocks the prison gate, and it could be the key that unlocks the rest of your life to give you an alternative way to deal with things.”A full obituary will follow. More

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      Don Murray, a Star in Films That Took on Social Issues, Dies at 94

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      An Oscar-nominated role opposite Marilyn Monroe in “Bus Stop” led to a long career in film and TV and onstage, in productions that grappled with race, drugs, homosexuality and more.Don Murray, the boy-next-door actor who made his film debut as Marilyn Monroe’s infatuated cowboy in “Bus Stop” in 1956 and played a priest, a drug addict, a gay senator and myriad other roles in movies, on television and onstage over six decades, has died at 94. His son Christopher on Friday confirmed the death but provided no other details.In the postwar 1950s, when being sensitive, responsible and a “nice guy” were important attributes in a young man, Mr. Murray was a churchgoing pacifist who became a conscientious objector during the Korean War. He fulfilled his service obligation by working for two and a half years in German and Italian refugee camps for $10 a month, assisting orphans, the injured and the displaced.Back from Europe in 1954, he settled on an acting career focused on socially responsible themes. He appeared in a television drama about lawyers serving poor clients, and he had a part in the 1955 Broadway production of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Thornton Wilder’s comedic vote of confidence in mankind’s narrow ability to survive, which starred Helen Hayes and Mary Martin.Mr. Murray, far right, in the 1955 Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” with, from left, George Abbott, Mary Martin, Helen Hayes and Heller Halliday.ANTA Playhouse, via Everett CollectionThe director Joshua Logan saw that production and cast Mr. Murray in “Bus Stop,” his adaptation of William Inge’s play about a singer who is pursued by a cowpoke from a Phoenix clip joint to a snowbound Arizona bus stop, where a spark of dignity and character flame into a moving and humbling love. The film established Marilyn Monroe as a legitimate actress and Mr. Murray as an up-and-coming star.“With a wondrous new actor named Don Murray playing the stupid, stubborn poke and with the clutter of broncos, blondes and busters beautifully tangled, Mr. Logan has a booming comedy going before he gets to the romance,” Bosley Crowther wrote in a review for The New York Times. “And the fact that she fitfully but firmly summons the will and strength to humble him — to make him say ‘please,’ which is the point of the whole thing — attests to her new acting skill.”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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      Carl Weathers, Who Played Apollo Creed in ‘Rocky’ Movies, Dies at 76

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      The onetime football player played a host of roles in an acting career that lasted more than four decades.Carl Weathers, the N.F.L. linebacker turned actor known for playing Apollo Creed in the first four “Rocky” movies in an acting career that spanned more than four decades, died on Thursday. He was 76.His family said Mr. Weathers had “died peacefully in his sleep.” No cause was given.As the boxer Apollo Creed, he fought Sylvester Stallone in the “Rocky” movies, the first of which, released in 1976, won the Academy Award for best picture of the year. He also notably played Chubbs Peterson in the golf comedy “Happy Gilmore,” starring Adam Sandler.Mr. Weathers displayed his range in several roles on film and television, including appearing in the 2019 science-fiction series “The Mandalorian” and in the drama series “Chicago Justice” (2017) and the long-running “Chicago P.D.”He was a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders from 1970 to 1971, and he later briefly played in the Canadian Football League. He took up acting in the 1970s after retiring from professional football.A full obituary will follow. More

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      Sandra Milo, Who Had Star Turns in Fellini Films, Dies at 90

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      She was called Fellini’s muse. She claimed she was his lover. In a long career, she was best known for her performances in his movies “8 ½” and “Juliet of the Spirits.”Sandra Milo, who was best known internationally for her roles in Federico Fellini’s movies “8 ½” and “Juliet of the Spirits” — and whose tumultuous love life churned headlines in Italy — died on Monday at her home in Rome. She was 90.Her children announced the death on her official Facebook page. No cause was given.Ms. Milo’s screen debut, alongside the comic actor Alberto Sordi in “Lo Scapolo” (“The Bachelor”) in 1955, coincided with the golden age of Italian cinema. She went on to work alongside some of Italy’s most famous leading men, including Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and Vittorio De Sica, and for some of the country’s most renowned directors, including Roberto Rossellini, Dino Risi and later Pupi Avati and Gabriele Salvatores.But her primary claim to stardom was the two films she made with Fellini, with whom, she claimed in a 1982 book, “Caro Federico,” she had an offscreen romance that lasted nearly two decades. Fellini, who died in 1993, never spoke publicly about that claim. The Italian media called her Fellini’s muse.Ms. Milo and Fellini on the set of “Juliet of the Spirits” in 1965. She played the free-spirited next-door neighbor of the film’s protagonist, played by Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina.Pierluigi Praturlon/Reporters Associati & Archivi, via Mondadori Portfolio, via Getty ImagesFellini, who fondly called Ms. Milo “Sandrocchia,” had also wanted her to play the role of the glamorous Gradisca in his semi-autobiographical 1973 film, “Amarcord,” but, she told interviewers, her husband at the time had objected because he knew she was fond of Fellini.“He knew I loved him,” she said in a 2019 documentary about her life.She also said she knew that the production would take her away from her children. “Am I first a woman, or first a mother?” she mused in the documentary. “Maybe I am first a mother, so I didn’t do it.”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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      Adele Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen’s Mother, Dies at 98

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      Bruce Springsteen has long said that his mother was among his greatest influences and credited her with encouraging his musical ambitions.Adele Springsteen, who nurtured the budding musical talent of her son, the pioneering rock star Bruce Springsteen, died on Wednesday. She was 98.Mr. Springsteen announced his mother’s death in an Instagram post on Thursday. No cause was given, but Ms. Springsteen had struggled for more than a decade with Alzheimer’s disease.Her son has been outspoken about his relationship with his mother and her influence on him.Ms. Springsteen rented him his first guitar when he was 7, he said in 2021 during his Broadway show, “Springsteen on Broadway,” which ran for more than two months that year as the city began to emerge from pandemic-related closures. The show had wide-ranging reflections, including thoughts about his mother.It was also Ms. Springsteen, he told the brimming Broadway audiences, at the St. James Theater, who danced to 1940s swing music and impressed in him the joys of bop-inspiring tunes, according to the NBC program “Today.”He also spoke of his mother’s ability to persist in her vivacious spirit even as aging and a punishing disease took their toll.“She’s 10 years into Alzheimer’s,” he said. “She’s 95. But the need to dance, that need to dance is something that hasn’t left her. She can’t speak. She can’t stand. But when she sees me, there’s a smile.”Ms. Springsteen was born Adele Zerilli on May 4, 1925, in Brooklyn. She married Douglas Springsteen, with whom she had her son in 1949 and later two daughters, Virginia and Pamela.She worked as a legal secretary and raised a young working-class family in Freehold, N.J., while her husband often struggled to find steady work and grappled with mental illness. He died in 1998.“She willed we would be a family and we were,” Mr. Springsteen wrote in “Born To Run,” his memoir. “She willed we would not disintegrate and we did not.”Ms. Springsteen’s high-spirited ethos, ever-present, seemed to be the through line in her life, and one that buoyed the lives of the people around her.“My mother is the great energy — she’s the energy of the show,” Mr. Springsteen told The Miami Herald in 1987. “The consistency, the steadiness, day after day — that’s her.” He added that “it was she who created the sense of stability in the family, so that we never felt threatened through all the hard times.”In the Instagram post on Thursday announcing his mother’s death, Mr. Springsteen shared a video of his mother, in old age, dancing to “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller, captioned with an excerpt from his own 1998 song about her, “The Wish.”“I’m older but you’ll know me in a glance,” it read. “We’ll find us a little rock ’n’ roll bar and we’ll go out and dance.”Aimee Ortiz More