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      Inga Swenson, Who Went From Stage to ‘Benson,’ Dies at 90

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      She had success on Broadway in “110 in the Shade” and other shows, but a later generation knew her from a sitcom.Inga Swenson, whose acting talent, striking looks and versatile singing voice brought her success on the Broadway stage in the 1950s and ’60s, and who years later rode a phony German accent to sitcom stardom as the cook on the long-running sitcom “Benson,” died on July 23 at a care facility in Los Angeles. She was 90.The Television Academy posted news of her death. Ms. Swenson, who studied theater at Northwestern University, started out as a stage actress. In 1953 and 1954 she and her husband, Lowell Harris, whom she had met and married while at Northwestern, appeared in productions at the Playhouse, Eagles Mere, in north central Pennsylvania, including Clifford Odets’s “The Country Girl,” in which they played a husband and wife. In November 1954 Ms. Swenson made her New York debut with an Off Broadway troupe called the Shakespearewrights, playing Olivia in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”“I had these gorgeous gowns because I was fun to costume,” Ms. Swenson told the podcast “Behind the Curtain: Broadway’s Living Legends” in 2019. “They loved a 5-foot-10 skinny woman with narrow shoulders.”That performance landed her an agent, and in 1956 she made her Broadway debut in the musical revue “New Faces of 1956.” Also in the cast was Maggie Smith, who was just beginning her storied career.Ms. Swenson’s biggest Broadway success came in 1963 when she was cast in a leading role in “110 in the Shade,” which had music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones, the duo responsible for the long-running musical “The Fantasticks.” The book was by N. Richard Nash, based on his play “The Rainmaker.” Ms. Swenson was Lizzie Curry, a supposedly average-looking young woman who is beginning to think she will never find love.“The tears seem to fall interminably from the big blue eyes of Inga Swenson,” Howard Taubman wrote in his review in The New York Times, “who has to pretend that she is Lizzie, the plain Curry girl, too honest to use female wiles and too homely to attract a man. It’s quite a job of make-believe for Miss Swenson, who is attractive and talented.”Ms. Swenson in 1967 with Ivor Emmanuel, left, and Stephen Douglass, her castmates in the 1967 London production of “110 in the Shade.” She was nominated for a Tony for her performance in the show on Broadway.Getty ImagesThe show ran for 330 performances, then went on the road. It earned Ms. Swenson a Tony Award nomination for best actress in a musical. It also pitted her against the Broadway hitmaker David Merrick, who produced the show.“110 in the Shade” ended with an onstage rainstorm, and during the curtain call at a performance in April 1964 Ms. Swenson slipped on a puddle and seriously injured an ankle. The injury troubled her for months afterward, and she filed a million-dollar lawsuit against Mr. Merrick, contending that the puddle was a result of faulty set construction.Later that year, when the show traveled to San Francisco, she told The San Francisco Examiner that she and Mr. Merrick remained friends and that the suit was aimed not at him but at his insurance company. How the matter was resolved is lost in the mists of time.In any case, Ms. Swenson returned to Broadway in 1965 in “Baker Street,” a musical Sherlock Holmes yarn, earning another Tony nomination for best actress in a musical. By that point she had also begun working occasionally in the movies, including roles in “Advise & Consent” in 1962 and “The Miracle Worker,” in which she played the mother of Helen Keller, Patty Duke’s character, the same year.In 1978 she landed a recurring role in a season of the television comedy “Soap,” and when the same producing team was casting the sitcom “Benson,” a “Soap” spinoff whose title character (played by Robert Guillaume) ran a governor’s household, she auditioned, using a German accent.“I went in there, read with an accent and they fell off their chairs,” she said on the podcast. She won the role of Gretchen Kraus, a cook and perpetual thorn in Benson’s side. The show ran for eight seasons, and Ms. Swenson was nominated for the supporting-actress Emmy three times.Inga Swenson was born on Dec. 29, 1932, in Omaha to A.C.R. and Geneva Swenson. Her father was a prominent lawyer and an honorary Swedish consul, and her mother was prominent in social circles in Omaha.Her parents attended a Congregational church that had five choirs, and her performing life began when she tried out for one as a child, impressing church officials.“They learned that I had a pretty voice and I could make the parishioners weep,” she said on the podcast.Her father died in a car crash in 1948. Soon after, she landed the role of Maid Marian in her high school’s production of the operetta “Robin Hood,” which helped her through her grief.“Giving me that role saved my life,” she said. “I had something to do. I had something to think about. I had people telling me I was wonderful.”Fifteen years later, her singing was good enough to get her cast in “110 in the Shade,” despite some tough competition.“Everybody wanted to play Lizzie,” she said on “Behind the Curtain.” “When I went to audition, Barbra Streisand was there.”Ms. Swenson’s survivors include her husband and a son, Mark Harris.Ms. Swenson said she didn’t often get considered for comic roles because of her elegant looks.“People take one look and say: ‘You’re not funny,’” she said in a 1983 interview. “‘You don’t even have a funny face.’”She proved such assessments wrong on “Benson,” which was filmed in front of a live audience.“That was not phony laughter,” she said on “Behind the Curtain.” “There wasn’t a sign that went up and said ‘Laugh.’ People laughed because we were funny.” More

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      Jerry Moss, the ‘M’ of A&M Records, Is Dead at 88

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      In partnership with Herb Alpert, he turned a small independent label into a powerhouse with a roster full of superstars.Jerry Moss, who with the trumpeter Herb Alpert founded A&M Records, which at its peak from the 1960s to the ’80s was an independent powerhouse behind hits by the Carpenters, the Police, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton and Mr. Alpert’s group, the Tijuana Brass, among many others, has died at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 88.His family announced the death in a statement on Wednesday.Over their more than 30 years with A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert developed an eclectic roster — Cat Stevens, Carole King, Supertramp and the grunge band Soundgarden all released music there — and established the label’s reputation for being supportive of artists and treating them fairly.Sting, who signed to A&M with the Police in 1978 and has remained associated with the label throughout his career, said in an interview on Thursday that those values radiated directly from Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert.“They were gentlemen,” he said. “I think their extraordinary success was really predicated on those very human qualities — not being ruthless businessmen or kill-or-be-killed people. They were artist friendly.”Built from humble beginnings in Mr. Alpert’s garage, A&M — its name was taken from the initials of its founders’ last names — became a major force in pop music and eventually earned its founders a huge payday. In 1989, they sold A&M’s recorded music business to PolyGram for a reported $500 million (about $1.2 billion in today’s money), though Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert continued to manage the label until 1993. In 2000, they sold Rondor, their music publishing catalog, to Universal Music for an estimated $400 million.Mr. Alpert set the tone for how the label interacted with musicians after what he said in an interview on Thursday were his own unhappy experiences, early in his career, with big labels that had treated him “like a number.” That approach also gave some negotiating leverage to A&M, which in its early days lacked the financial resources of its corporate competitors in pursuing new acts.Mr. Moss, who began his career promoting pop and doo-wop records to radio stations, ran the business side of A&M with its longtime president, Gil Friesen, who died in 2012. But he also insisted on fair dealings with artists.“You can’t force people to do a certain kind of music,” Mr. Moss said in an interview with The New York Times in 2010. “They make their best music when they are doing what they want to do, not what we want them to do.”Early on, A&M signed the country singer Waylon Jennings, who cut a handful of singles but disagreed about his career trajectory with Mr. Alpert, who favored pop material. When Mr. Jennings got an offer from RCA Victor’s Nashville office, A&M agreed to release him from his deal.“I looked at Jerry and said, ‘This guy is going to be a big artist.’ He said, ‘I know,’” Mr. Alpert recalled. “At that point I realized we could be a big success with that attitude. We let Waylon out of the contract. He went on to a great career, and we remained friends with him.”Mr. Moss with one of A&M’s most successful artists, Janet Jackson, with platinum albums for her 1986 album, “Control.” The label’s eclectic roster also included (among many other artists) the Police, Peter Frampton and the Carpenters.Lester Cohen/Getty ImagesJerome Sheldon Moss was born in the Bronx on May 8, 1935, to Irving and Rose Moss. His father was a department store salesman, his mother a homemaker.Mr. Moss graduated from Brooklyn College in 1957. While waiting tables at a resort, he met Marvin Cane, one of the founders of Coed Records, who offered him a job pitching records to radio stations for $75 a week. His first big success was the doo-wop ballad “16 Candles” by the Crests, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop singles chart in late 1958.Mr. Moss moved to Los Angeles intending to enter the television business, but instead he soon set himself up again as a radio promoter. It was there that he met Mr. Alpert, who had worked as a songwriter and was attempting to establish himself as a vocalist under the name Dore Alpert.In 1962, the two young men went into business together, investing $100 apiece. They released “Tell It to the Birds,” a single credited to Dore Alpert, on a label they called Carnival.After learning that another record company was already using that name, they settled on A&M for their next release: “The Lonely Bull,” a trumpet-led instrumental with atmospheric sounds recorded at a bullfighting ring in Mexico. They borrowed $35,000 to press the single, which went to No. 6 and immediately put A&M on the map.By 1966, A&M was as successful as any label in pop music. That year, Mr. Alpert and the Tijuana Brass outsold the Beatles and had four albums in the top 10 at the same time. The group dominated the easy-listening market of the era with hits like “A Taste of Honey” and “Spanish Flea”; Mr. Alpert himself had a No. 1 vocal hit in 1968 with “This Guy’s in Love With You.” A&M also signed the Brazilian pianist and bandleader Sérgio Mendes and his band Brasil ’66, which toured with Mr. Alpert.In 1966 the label moved into Charlie Chaplin’s former film studio lot in Hollywood. A&M later signed another huge soft-pop act, the Carpenters, and, through deals with other labels, put out records by Cat Stevens (who now goes by the name Yusuf Islam) and Carole King, including her blockbuster 1971 LP, “Tapestry.”In 1976, A&M released Mr. Frampton’s double live album “Frampton Comes Alive!,” which became one of the defining rock hits of the decade, eventually going eight times platinum. In the 1980s, A&M signed Ms. Jackson, whose album “Control” (1986) went to No. 1 and established her as a major talent.After selling A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert briefly ran another label, Almo Sounds, whose artists included Gillian Welch and Garbage. The founders were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as nonperformers in 2006.Mr. Moss’s survivors include his wife, Tina Moss; two sons, Ron and Harrison; two daughters, Jennifer and Daniela; and five grandchildren.Mr. Moss at a Songwriters Hall of Fame event in New York in 2012.Theo Wargo/Getty Images North AmericaIn his later years, Mr. Moss had notable success owning racehorses. One, Giacomo — named after one of Sting’s sons — won the Kentucky Derby in 2005, at extraordinary odds. Another racehorse, Zenyatta, was named after one of the Police’s albums, “Zenyatta Mondatta” (1980).Mr. Moss was active in local philanthropy. In 2020, he and his wife donated $25 million to the Music Center, a performing arts complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theater, Walt Disney Concert Hall and other spaces.But Mr. Moss said that he was at his happiest making records with Mr. Alpert.“It is the best feeling in the world,” he told The Times. “I’d turn to Herbie and say, man, what in the world did we do to deserve this?” More

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      Renata Scotto, Opera Diva Who Inhabited Roles, Dies at 89

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      A leading Italian soprano, she sang more than two dozen roles at the Metropolitan Opera and was known as a charismatic stage partner — and a demanding one.Renata Scotto, the firebrand Italian soprano and Metropolitan Opera favorite who was acclaimed for her acting and her insights into opera characters as much as for her voice, died on Wednesday in Savona, Italy. She was 89.Her son, Filippo Anselmi, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause.At her best, in roles like Puccini’s Cio-Cio San in “Madama Butterfly” and Mimì in “La Bohème,” Verdi’s Violetta in “La Traviata” and Bellini’s “Norma,” Ms. Scotto achieved a dramatic intensity that electrified audiences and elicited the highest praise from her fellow opera stars. “Renata is the closest I have ever worked with to a real singing actress,” the tenor Plácido Domingo was quoted as saying in The New York Times Magazine in 1978. “There is an emphasis, a feeling she puts behind every word she interprets.”Vocally, Ms. Scotto could not match the sensuousness of Renata Tebaldi or the astonishing technique and range of Joan Sutherland. And miscues on high notes could mar her exquisitely shaped phrases.But her charisma and stage presence made critics overlook her shortcomings. “Her voice may be a bit hard, and seldom does she get through an aria without some kind of vocal flaw, but the important thing is that when she sings, a sensitive mind is at work and a powerful personality comes through,” The New York Times’s chief music critic, Harold C. Schonberg, wrote in a review of a Scotto recital at Carnegie Hall in 1973.A Self-Confident FighterMs. Scotto long reigned as one of the most popular sopranos at the Metropolitan Opera. From 1965 to 1987, she delivered more than 300 performances in 26 roles at the Met. Her stage appearances tapered off after that, until her retirement in 2002.Armed with self-confidence, the diminutive Ms. Scotto jousted with giants of the opera world, including the general managers of La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as renowned conductors who took issue with her interpretations. “In opera, the singer comes before everything,” she said in a 1972 interview with The Times. “Many times I have had discussions, sometimes fights, and always I win.”She was equally demanding of her colleagues onstage.Ms. Scotto as Musetta in “La Bohème” at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1980s.John Elbers/Getty ImagesIn a 1963 performance of Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” in Bergamo, Italy, the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano left her in the middle of a duet to eat an apple in the wings; when he returned, Ms. Scotto slapped him across the face. (The scene called for only a pinch on the cheek, and the tenor’s shocked reaction alerted the audience that something was amiss.)In another incident, Ms. Scotto unleashed a verbal barrage at Luciano Pavarotti for pushing her and other cast members aside to take unscripted solo calls during and after a performance of Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” at the San Francisco Opera in 1979.Yet Ms. Scotto’s combination of talent and hard work drew admiration from fellow singers. “She’s unique in vocal coloration,” the baritone Sherrill Milnes told The Times Magazine. “Even if you don’t understand the language, you feel it. She will also sacrifice vocal beauty to get the word or the emotional intention across.”Renata Scotto was born in humble circumstances on Feb. 24, 1934, in Savona, then a small Italian fishing town on the Mediterranean coast west of Genoa. Her father, Giuseppe, was a police officer; her mother, Santina, was a seamstress. When Savona came under Allied bombardment during World War II, Renata, along with her mother and her older sister, Luciana, took refuge in a nearby Alpine village, Tovo San Giacomo.An Early StartEven as a child, she showed signs of the diva to come.In Tovo San Giacomo, she would stand by her bedroom window and regale passers-by with the latest songs favored by the leading Italian tenor, Beniamino Gigli. The villagers applauded and often tossed her candy. “You see, I never sang for nothing in my life,” she noted in her 1984 memoir, “Scotto: More Than a Diva,” written with Octavio Roca.Ms. Scotto in front of the Duomo in Milan in 1967.Mario De Biasi/Mondadori, via Getty ImagesWhen she was 12, she was invited by an uncle to her first opera — Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” with Tito Gobbi in the title role — at the Teatro Chiabrera in Savona. “Gobbi the great singer and Gobbi the great actor made me decide that night that I would be an opera singer,” she recalled.As a teenager, Ms. Scotto was sent to Milan for voice and piano lessons. The only lodging her family could afford was at a Canossian convent, which she described as “somewhere between a jail and a very austere kindergarten.” The mother superior lectured her on the banality of secular music, and a nun tried to steal her music scores.But outside the convent, her teachers, especially the soprano Mafalda Favero, recognized her talent and helped bring about her career. Several years later, she studied with the Spanish former soprano Mercedes Llopart — who, Ms. Scotto said, “really taught me how to sing.”Ms. Scotto made her operatic debut in her hometown in 1952 at age 18, singing Verdi’s Violetta. She appeared the next day in the same role at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan. A year later, she made her first appearance at La Scala in Catalani’s “La Wally,” singing the role of Walter. Skeptics on La Scala’s staff considered her too short, at 4 feet 11 inches, to play Walter. They also forced her to wear a plastic nose because her own was supposedly too small. But audiences wildly applauded her performances.Ms. Scotto’s international breakthrough came in 1957 at the Edinburgh Festival, where La Scala staged its production of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.” Maria Callas sang the lead role of Amina in the first four performances covered by her contract, but she bowed out of an unscheduled fifth performance, pleading illness. Ms. Scotto then replaced her to great acclaim.“I became a celebrity, I could choose my roles,” Ms. Scotto recalled. “The applause at the end would not stop, with 10, 12 solo calls.” But the episode ignited a lengthy feud between the two divas, stoked by media gossip and overwrought opera fans.Ms. Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti in “La Traviata” in 1965.Reg Wilson/ShutterstockAt La Scala in 1970, Ms. Scotto sang the role of Elena for the first time in a new production of Verdi’s “I Vespri Siciliani.” Ms. Callas, who had performed the same role almost 20 years before and retired in the mid-1960s, was in the audience. As soon as Ms. Scotto walked onstage, a claque of Callas fanatics began yelling “Maria, Maria!” and “Viva Callas!”Ms. Scotto continued to perform despite the frequent interruptions. But afterward, in an interview in her dressing room, she erupted in fury: “Let them get Callas to come and do ‘Vespri’ if she can sing.”A worse incident occurred at the Metropolitan Opera on opening night in 1981, with Ms. Scotto in the title role of “Norma” and Mr. Domingo as Pollione. Though Ms. Callas had died four years before, a band of her rabid followers began shouting her name as soon as Ms. Scotto walked onstage. At intermission, she broke down in tears and had to be persuaded by Mr. Domingo to return and finish the performance. Four hecklers were later arrested.Scotto vs. the MetEven as a young soprano on the rise, Ms. Scotto demonstrated self-assurance in dealing with management at the great opera houses. In 1964, when La Scala’s general manager, Antonio Ghiringhelli, withdrew his promise to cast her as Violetta in a new production of “La Traviata” directed by Franco Zeffirelli, she vowed never to perform there as long as Mr. Ghiringhelli remained. (She did not stick to that vow.)She similarly challenged the Met’s strong-willed general manager, Rudolf Bing. Ms. Scotto complained that in the three seasons after her 1965 debut, she was always offered the same operas: “Traviata,” “Butterfly,” “L’Elisir” and Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.” When Mr. Bing refused her any new roles, she left the Met two seasons later after meeting her contractual obligations. The New York press cast her as imperious: “If the Met Won’t Sing Her Tune, Goodbye Scotto,” a New York Times headline read.But once Mr. Bing’s tenure ended in 1972, Ms. Scotto was invited back to the Met. Upon her return in the fall of 1974, her first role was Elena in “Vespri,” conducted by James Levine.“Renata is a direct descendant of the great, expressive Italian sopranos,” said Mr. Levine, who became the Met’s music director in 1976. (Mr. Levine, who was fired by the Met in 2018 over claims of sexual misconduct, died in 2021.) The two got along famously, and the ensuing decade proved to be Ms. Scotto’s glory years.Ms. Scotto, left, conducting a master class with the soprano Brenda Rae and the pianist In Sun Suh at Symphony Space in New York in 2007.Jennifer Taylor for The New York TimesHer artistry and popular appeal reached such heights that The Times declared: “From all appearances, the New York opera season of 1976-77 will be the season of Renata Scotto.” The previous summer, she had drawn an estimated 100,000 people to a concert performance of “Madama Butterfly” in Central Park. Early in 1976, she became the first soprano to perform all three leading roles in Puccini’s three one-act operas, “Il Trittico,” at the Met in the same evening.In 1977, Ms. Scotto broke new ground with a live telecast — the first installment of the long-running PBS series “Great Performances at the Met” — performing in “La Bohème” as Mimì, with Mr. Pavarotti in the role of Rodolfo. As she noted, the broadcast reached more people in a single night than had seen Puccini’s opera since its premiere in 1896.But she was so appalled by her heavy appearance that she went on a diet, losing 30 pounds and keeping them off the rest of her career. “Some people worry that losing weight might hurt the voice,” she said. “I say nonsense: That is a myth to protect the fat singers.”‘You Must Be a Complete Performer’With Mr. Levine conducting, Ms. Scotto gave deeply etched performances in “Norma” and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” As she explained in a 1976 interview with The Times: “A singer has to give emotion to the audience, and for that you must be a complete performer, not just a good singer and not just a good actress.”This approach endeared her even to critics who faulted her vocal miscues. In an October 1976 review of Ms. Scotto’s performance as Leonora in “Il Trovatore,” Mr. Schonberg cited her rendering of the aria “D’amor sull’ali rosee” as an example: “Miss Scotto scooped her way through it and had trouble with the tessitura. It was not a distinguished example of vocal technique. But Miss Scotto was able to get away with it because of the style she brought to the aria, the conviction with which she sang it,” Mr. Schonberg wrote. “Personality sometimes can count for more than voice alone.”But as Ms. Scotto’s singing talents eroded in her last years on the opera stage, critics asserted that not even first-rate acting could compensate. In a 1986 review of “Madama Butterfly,” the Times critic Donal Henahan wrote that her performance “followed a pattern we have come to expect from the soprano in the late years of a long career: ardently and sometimes shrewdly acted, though erratically and sometimes painfully sung.”Ms. Scotto, right, with Claudia Catania in “Madama Butterfly” at the Met in 1986.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMs. Scotto married a violinist in the La Scala orchestra, Lorenzo Anselmi, in 1960, and they had two children, Laura and Filippo. They survive her, as do two grandchildren.Mr. Anselmi abandoned his playing career to become his wife’s voice coach, musical sounding board and business manager. “The biggest decision that a man can make is to give up his own career to dedicate himself to his wife’s,” Ms. Scotto said. He died in 2021.After retiring as a diva, Ms. Scotto directed a number of operas to modest praise. She also gained renown as a voice teacher.Her advice was often practical. She used to remind her students of an admonition from her first voice teacher, Ms. Favero, that it was necessary to reserve vocal stamina for emotional scenes.She also urged her students to draw on their own life experiences, especially family relationships. She cited as an example how memories of her mother, Santina, helped her interpret Mimì in “La Bohème”: “I would understand Mimì’s sweet desperation and her happiness by remembering Santina the seamstress as she worked and sang.”Alex Marshall More

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      in Television

      Carol Duvall, a TV Queen of Crafting, Dies at 97

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      On Michigan television and then on national shows, she showed viewers how to make all sorts of decorative and practical items. The responses she got could be moving.Carol Duvall looked at the plastic foam trays that meat or vegetables come packaged in and saw picture frames. To her, “rock, paper, scissors” wasn’t a children’s game; it was a list of what you needed to make a personalized gift for someone to place on the mantel or in the garden.Ms. Duvall encouraged countless television viewers to make their own picture frames, greeting cards, place mats, jewelry, Christmas decorations and more, first in Michigan and then nationally through programs on ABC and HGTV.Newspapers called her the queen, or sometimes the empress, of crafting. Some of her fans called her a savior of sorts, the person who showed them a skill that they turned into a business, or who gave them something constructive to do while going through chemotherapy or recovering from surgery.Ms. Duvall, host of “The Carol Duvall Show,” which ran on HGTV for more than a decade, died on July 31 in Traverse City, Mich. She was 97.Rita Ann Doerr, who had been married to her son Michael and accompanied her to many public appearances, confirmed her death, at an assisted living complex that had been Ms. Duvall’s home for several years.Ms. Duvall was on television from the medium’s earliest days. She told The Detroit Free Press in 1997 that in 1951, living in Grand Rapids, Mich., she turned up at a tryout for WOOD-TV, Michigan’s first television station outside of Detroit, and won a spot on a show for children called “Jiffy Carnival.” She said that her father was surprised when she showed him her first paycheck, for $5 — he had thought that she would have to pay the station to be on television.The company that owned the station also owned a radio station, and Ms. Duvall was soon a frequent presence on both. In 1962 she moved to WWJ-TV of Detroit, where she hosted “Living,” a morning show. Two years later the station asked her to fill a five-minute gap between a travel show and the evening news, but didn’t give her much guidance.“I did anything I could possibly think of” to fill the time, she told the Knight Ridder News Service in 1999. She would talk about books she’d read or movies she’d seen. And occasionally, she would try to demonstrate some crafty thing she remembered from childhood, like making a yarn doll.“Every time I did something like that, I just got tremendous response,” she said. “So I started making stuff. I didn’t know what I was doing.”“I’m not a crafter who got on television,” she added. “I’m a television person who got into crafting.”She did those bits for 14 years, then retired, or so she thought. In 1988, when ABC was starting a daytime show called “Home,” a producer remembered her and persuaded her to do crafting segments on the new show, which aired until 1993.In 1994 she joined the new HGTV network with “The Carol Duvall Show,” which lasted more than 1,000 episodes, winding down in 2005. She was also featured regularly on the Lifetime Network shows “Our Home” and “Handmade by Design.”The crafts she demonstrated were things anyone could do. She began a picture frame project by cutting the bottom from a plastic foam tray and covering it in colorful fabric. A homemade greeting card was livened up with a butterfly design complete with bits of wire for antenna. Her 2007 book, “Paper Crafting With Carol Duvall,” includes a “Rock, Paper, Scissors” chapter: Find a smooth stone, cut up some colorful paper or family pictures with scissors, and glue them on the rock.Her show often featured guest crafters with a particular expertise — in stenciling, for instance, or coffee can creations.“Her interview skills brought out the very best in every guest artist and designer that appeared on the show,” Cherryl Greene, her assistant and producer on many shows, said in a written tribute.In the days before Etsy, Ms. Duvall’s HGTV show helped spread the gospel of crafting.“What she’s done is bring crafting into the realm of the mainstream,” Don Meyer, a spokesman for the Hobby Industry Association, told The Stuart News of Florida in 2003 on the occasion of her HGTV show’s 1,000th episode.In interviews over the years, Ms. Duvall told of fans who said they had built businesses that enabled them to feed their families based on craft-making they had learned from her show. She was especially moved, she said, by fans who told her that her shows had helped them while recovering from illness or surgery, or had simply given them the confidence that they could do something creative.Ms. Duvall’s appeal was that viewers could identify with her, Ms. Doerr said, especially when she bungled something on the air and cracked her and her guest up.“She was so approachable and natural,” Ms. Doerr said in a phone interview. “She would laugh at herself.”Carol-Jean Reihmer was born on Jan. 10, 1926, in Milwaukee to Leo and Alice (Davies) Reihmer. When she was 11, the family moved to Grand Rapids.She studied theater for a time at Michigan State University and remained interested in it; a 1953 article in The Lansing State Journal mentioned that she was appearing in a summer theater production of “The Glass Menagerie” in Grand Rapids.By then she was already on local television. The new medium was something of a mystery back then, even in her own home.“I was on the air a whole year before we even had a television set in our house,” she told The Free Press in the 1997 interview. “Nobody even knew what I did when I left the house.”In 1972 she published her first book, “Wanna Make Something Out of It?”Ms. Duvall’s marriage to Carl Duvall, in 1945, ended in divorce. Her son Michael died in 2011. She is survived by another son, Jack; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Though Ms. Duvall attracted fans whenever she made public appearances, on one occasion, at least, she was surprised by her own celebrity. In the summer of 1997 she was at a TV critics convention in Pasadena, Calif., when the actor Dennis Franz of “NYPD Blue,” then one of ABC’s top shows, came up and shook her hand. She thought he’d mistaken her for someone else and told him who she was.“Oh, Carol, you don’t have to introduce yourself to me,” Mr. Franz said. “You’re in my kitchen every morning.” More

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      in Music

      Clarence Avant, Mighty Engine Behind Black Superstars, Dies at 92

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      Behind the scenes, he furthered the careers of numerous entertainers, as well as some athletes and politicians.Clarence Avant, a record executive who shaped the careers not only of Bill Withers, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and other Black singers, but also of politicians, actors and sports figures — exerting so much influence that a 2019 documentary about him was called simply “The Black Godfather” — died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.His family announced his death in a statement.Mr. Avant (pronounced AY-vant), born in a segregated hospital in North Carolina and educated only through the ninth grade, moved easily in the high-powered world of entertainment, helping to establish the idea that Black culture and consumers were forces to be reckoned with.He started out managing a nightclub in Newark in the late 1950s and moved on to representing some of the artists he met there. Joe Glaser, a high-powered agent who handled Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and many other top acts, took Mr. Avant under his wing; perhaps, the documentary suggested, Mr. Glaser, who was white, thought it would be advantageous to have a Black man representing some of his Black clients.In any case, Mr. Avant was soon handling artists including the jazz organist Jimmy Smith and traveling in rarefied circles. Not all his clients were Black; he said Mr. Glaser sent him to Los Angeles in 1964 with the Argentine pianist Lalo Schifrin, who was then working with Dizzy Gillespie, to try to get Mr. Schifrin started on a career composing for film and television. Though he knew nothing about the movie business, Mr. Avant worked his brand of magic on the West Coast: Mr. Schifrin has to date been nominated for six Oscars.In 1960 Mr. Avant formed Sussex Records — he said the name was his combination of the two things people want more than anything else, success and sex — which lasted only about half a decade but released, among other records, Mr. Withers’s early albums.“Clarence made some great choices musically,” Mr. Withers, who died in 2020, said in the documentary. “‘Lean on Me’” — Mr. Withers’s only Billboard No. 1 hit — “was not my choice for a single.”Later in the 1970s Mr. Avant founded Tabu Records, and for a time in the 1990s he was chairman of Motown. He also helped Jim Brown, the football player, build an acting career and negotiated an endorsement deal for Hank Aaron, the Hall of Fame baseball player, as well as supporting the political careers of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.“One of the things he understands is, there are different kinds of power,” Mr. Obama said in the documentary. “There’s the power that needs the spotlight, but there’s also the power that comes from being behind the scenes.”In 2013, accepting the entrepreneur award at the BET Honors, one of many he received in his career, Mr. Avant summed himself up.“I can’t make speeches,” he told the crowd while clutching his trophy. “That’s not my life. I make deals.”Clarence Alexander Avant was born on Feb. 25, 1931, in Greensboro, N.C., to Gertrude Avant Woods, a domestic worker. In the documentary, he said his mother was not married to his father, Phoenix Jarrell, whom he barely knew.Mr. Avant with Quincy Jones and Whitney Houston.NetflixHe grew up in Climax, N.C., in difficult circumstances and stayed in school only through ninth grade.“We were poor,” he said in the film. “I’m talking about poor, poor, poor. We had chicken-feet soup.”Racism was omnipresent, and the Ku Klux Klan loomed large.“My mother would just tell us, if you hear a car coming, run and hide; lay down flat,” he said.He grew up with a stepfather, Eddie Woods, who was abusive, and he said he left home when he was a teenager after his attempt to kill the man by putting rat poison in his food failed. He went to live with an aunt in Summit, N.J.For a time he held a low-level job at Martindale-Hubbell, publisher of a law directory. In his 20s he started working at a Newark nightclub that featured Black musicians. That was his introduction to the entertainment business, and he proved a natural.“I think Clarence exemplifies a certain cool,” Mr. Obama said in the documentary, “a certain level of street smarts and savvy that allowed him to move into worlds that nobody had prepared him for and say, ‘I can figure this out.’”As his career representing entertainers began to flourish, Mr. Avant met Jacqueline Gray, a model. They married in 1967, and as the couple prospered Ms. Avant became noted for her philanthropic work.In December 2021 a man burglarizing the Avants’ home, Aariel Maynor, shot and killed her. He pleaded guilty to multiple charges the next year and was sentenced to life in prison.In the documentary, friends remarked on their long marriage, somewhat unusual in the entertainment world.“They still look like they’ve got wedding cake on their feet,” the actor Jamie Foxx said, “like they just walked off a soul wedding cake.”Mr. Avant’s daughter, Nicole Avant, said in a phone interview that after the tragedy, her father made a conscious effort to press on.In 2013, Mr. Avant was presented with the entrepreneur award by the producers Jimmy Jam, center, and Terry Lewis at the BET Honors in Washington.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters“Music was, I think, the lifesaving force for him,” she said, especially that of Ellington, Frank Sinatra and other artists from his youth. “His mood changed when the music came on.”At about the time he was getting ready to marry Jacqueline, Mr. Avant was growing more vocal about racial matters. A 1967 article in The Pittsburgh Courier quoted a strongly worded letter he had written to the management of WLIB, a radio station in New York that was aimed at a Black audience but at the time was white-owned.“Is your station managed by Negroes,” he wrote, “and I am not referring to Negro disc jockeys?”“I think radio stations whose programs are supposed to appeal to the so-called Negro market,” he added, “should at least be staffed by Negro personnel.”He was also becoming active politically. He supported the early campaigns of Andrew Young, who made an unsuccessful run for a Georgia congressional seat in 1970 and a successful one two years later. It was Mr. Young who connected Mr. Avant to Hank Aaron when he was about to break Babe Ruth’s career home run record in 1974.“Clarence called me up and said, ‘Andy, do you know Hank Aaron?’” Mr. Young recalled in the documentary, which was directed by Reginald Hudlin. “I said, ‘Yeah, he lives around the corner.’ He said, ‘If he’s about to break Babe Ruth’s record, he’s supposed to make some money.’”Mr. Avant wanted to help Mr. Aaron secure some endorsement deals.“Will you tell him that I’m not crazy and I’m going to call him?” Mr. Avant asked Mr. Young.“I said, ‘Well, I can’t vouch for you not being crazy,’” Mr. Young said, “‘but I’ll tell him that you’ve been very helpful to me.’”It was fraught territory — Mr. Aaron was receiving death threats over the prospect that he would break a hallowed record set by a white player. Mr. Avant, though, according to the documentary, marched into the office of the president of Coca-Cola and told him, in unprintably blunt language, that Black people drink Coke.Mr. Avant’s guidance helped Mr. Aaron secure a substantial deal from Coke and otherwise market himself, which fueled his later charitable endeavors.“Henry Aaron would not be Henry Aaron if it were not for Clarence Avant,” Mr. Aaron, who died in 2021, said in the film.Mr. Avant also helped other athletes, including Jim Brown as he transitioned from football into acting in the 1960s. Interviewed for the documentary, Mr. Brown, one of the biggest Black stars of the 1960s and ’70s, had a hard time pinning down what Mr. Avant did — not an uncommon thing among those who knew and worked with Mr. Avant.“You have this guy called Clarence Avant that everybody’s talking about, but nobody seems to understand just what his official title was,” Mr. Brown, who died in May, said, recalling their early meetings. “I couldn’t tell you now exactly what he — was he an agent, a manager, a lawyer? — what he was.”Mr. Avant had rocky times in the mid-1970s, when the Sussex label went bankrupt and KAGB-FM, a radio station he had bought (making it one of the first Black-owned stations in the Los Angeles area), floundered. But, he said, friends were always his most important asset, and some of them helped him get back on his feet.Tabu Records, which Mr. Avant founded in 1975, released records by the S.O.S. Band, Cherrelle and others.In addition to his daughter, who was a producer of “The Black Godfather,” Mr. Avant is survived by a son, Alexander, and a sister, Anne Woods.The Avant home was always abuzz with A-list visitors. Nicole Avant recalled a day, when she was 12, that she and a friend got into trouble at school. The friend’s mother, driving Nicole home, was fuming — until she saw Harry Belafonte walking out of the Avants’ house.“Is that Harry Belafonte?” the woman asked her.”I said, ‘Yeah, how do you know Harry Belafonte?” — not realizing he was anyone other than a friend who would come around to visit her parents from time to time.Ms. Avant, who served as ambassador to the Bahamas during the Obama administration, said that Mr. Belafonte and others who would gather at the Avant home were serious about breaking down racial barriers, in the entertainment world and in society in general.“They knew that they were on a mission,” she said.The flood of tributes offered to Mr. Avant on Monday included many from younger performers who appreciated his legacy.“He is the ultimate example of what change looks like, what architecting change looks like, and what the success of change looks like,” the rapper and producer Pharrell said in a statement. “He stared adversity in the face in climates and conditions that weren’t welcoming to people that looked like him. But through his talent and relentless spirit in the pursuit to be the best of the best, he garnered the support and friendship of people who otherwise wouldn’t look in our direction.” More

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      Magoo, Rapper and Former Timbaland Collaborator, Dies at 50

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      Melvin Barcliff, who rapped under the name Magoo, was a teenager in Virginia when he joined a hip-hop scene that still influences music today.The rapper Magoo, a foundational member of a groundbreaking hip-hop scene that emerged in Virginia in the 1990s and that included his collaborators Timbaland, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams, has died at 50.Magoo, whose birth name was Melvin Barcliff, died this weekend in Williamsburg, Va., according to his wife, Meco Barcliff, and a statement from his family. Barcliff said that he had no known health problems other than asthma, but that he had not been feeling well in the past week. The coroner’s office was still investigating the cause, she said.Magoo was a child when rap music was first broadcast on the radio, and he credited it with helping save him from a difficult early childhood in Norfolk, Va. At first, he thought hip-hop was something he could dance and listen to, but was made only by people in the Northeast, he said in an April 2013 interview for the hip-hop oral history collection at the College of William & Mary.As rap music began to drift from the coasts and Atlanta to radios and record stores in Virginia, Magoo realized at 14 years old that it was an art form he could practice, too. At Deep Creek High School in Chesapeake, he made friends with other teenagers who also wanted to rap including Timothy Mosley, also known as Timbaland, who became a renowned music producer.Magoo and his associates in the Virginia Beach area, including Pharrell Williams and Missy Elliott, would go on to exert a heavy influence on music in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Magoo and Timbaland formed a duo and between 1997 and 2003 put out three albums. “Welcome to Our World,” their first collaboration, included the track “Up Jumps da’ Boogie,” featuring Elliott and Aaliyah, which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, their highest charting effort. Critics noted the project as a step in Timbaland’s development as a producer, and compared Magoo to Q-Tip, one of the rappers in the Queens group A Tribe Called Quest.On Monday morning, Timbaland posted on Instagram several videos and photos of the two together and said in one caption: “Tim and Magoo forever.”Elliott wrote on Instagram on Monday that she met Magoo when they were teenagers and that he gave her the nickname “Misdemeanor,” telling her it was because “it’s a crime to have that many talents.”Though Magoo faded from the spotlight as his early collaborators’ stars continued to rise, Barcliff said that her husband had always preferred to be behind the scenes.She said that they separated five or six years ago but that they were still family.The couple met on Aug. 10, 1996, at a club, she said. Even though Magoo was a great dancer, she said, she would learn a few months later that he did not like to go out because it was too much like being at work. “That’s when I found out: No more clubbing for me,” she said.Magoo met Tim Mosley, also known as Timbaland, in 10th grade. They were part of a group of friends who started rapping together in the 1990s.Johnny Nunez/WireImage, via Getty ImagesBarcliff said that she had a 2-year-old daughter, Detrice “Pawtt” Bickham, when they met, and that Magoo raised her as his own. As a family, they loved going to theme parks, including Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion.Magoo’s survivors include the aunt and uncle who raised him and whom he considered his mother and father, Magdaline and Hiawatha Brown, and his two sisters, Portia Brown and Lynette Hawks.In the William & Mary interview, Magoo said that his aunt, who went by Mag, inspired his rap name, Mag-an-ooh, which he then shortened.He said in the interview that his aunt took him in when he was 4 years old. He said he most likely would have been taken into state custody without his aunt’s care and he “probably would have ended up away from family and wouldn’t have been in the position to become what I was able to become.”He treasured the memory of the first time he heard a rap song, he said. He could still remember where he was standing, in another aunt’s house, when he heard the track, “Rapper’s Delight,” by the Sugarhill Gang.“It just changed my whole perspective on life because, like I said, I was, 6 or 7 at the time,” Magoo recalled. “I was only three years away from being with my real mother who had abused me, so I hadn’t completely get over that abuse, but rap music became my blanket.”Alain Delaquérière More

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      Nechama Tec, Polish Holocaust Survivor and Scholar, Dies at 92

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      She wrote about heroic Jewish resisters in her book “Defiance,” which was later made into a film starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.Nechama Tec in 2018 at her home in Manhattan. A sociologist, she wrote about Jews as resisters of the Nazis and why certain people became rescuersvia Tec familyNechama Tec, a Polish Jew who pretended to be Roman Catholic to survive the Holocaust and then became a Holocaust scholar, writing about Jews as heroic resisters and why certain people, even antisemites, became rescuers, died on Aug. 3 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.Her death was confirmed by her son, Roland.In “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” (1993), Dr. Tec’s best-known book, she described the courageous actions of Tuvia Bielski, who commanded a resistance group that fought the Germans and, more important, saved some 1,200 Jews. The partisans entered ghettos under siege and brought Jews back to the Belarusian forest, where Mr. Bielski had built a community for them.“Defiance” gave Dr. Tec a platform to show that Jews saved other Jews during the war and were more active in resisting the Nazis than some have commonly believed.When a friend suggested to the filmmaker Edward Zwick that “Defiance” would make a good movie, he was not immediately persuaded.“Not another movie about victims,” he recalled his response when he wrote in The New York Times about directing the film, released in 2008, which starred Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber as his brother Zus.“No, this is a story about Jewish heroes,” he said his friend told him. “Like the Maccabees, only better.”As Mr. Zwick put it, “Rather than victims wearing yellow stars, here were fighters in fur chapkas brandishing submachine guns.”By then Dr. Tec had written “When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland” (1986). Her interviews with rescuers for that book yielded a portrait of Christians who hid Jews, despite the likelihood of being imprisoned or killed for providing such aid. They were, she concluded, outsiders who were marginal in their communities; had a history of performing good deeds; did not view their actions as heroic; and did not agonize over being helpful.The cover of Dr. Tec’s book “Defiance.”“Many were casually antisemitic, but that wasn’t their prime purpose in life,” said Christopher R. Browning, a Holocaust expert who is a professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina and who edited, with Dr. Tec and Richard S. Hollander, a collection of letters written by Mr. Hollander’s Polish Jewish family from 1939 to 1942. “Using her skills as a sociologist, she was able to portray a more complex spectrum of interactions than the simplistic ones that people who didn’t collect empirical data as she had.”Nechama Bawnik was born on May 15, 1931, in Lublin, Poland. Her father, Roman, owned a chemical factory. Her mother, Esther (Finkelstein) Bawnik, was a homemaker.Soon after the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939, Mr. Bawnik transferred title of his factory, rather than have the Nazis confiscate it, to his foreman, who also gave him a job and a place for the Bawniks, including Nechama’s older sister, Giza, to live on the top floor of the building. Nechama hid in the living quarters, her only link to the outside a hole in a wall that let her look onto the courtyard of a convent school.As conditions for Jews worsened and rumors of deportations frightened them, the family considered relocating to Warsaw but found it too perilous. In mid-1942, Nechama’s parents sent her and Giza to live with a family in Otwock, Poland, a half-hour’s train ride from Warsaw. Nechama had false papers that identified her as Krysia Bloch. To help her play the role, she learned Catholic prayers and a family history.The sisters, who both had blond hair and blue eyes, were able to pass as orphaned nieces of the family they were living with and moved around without hiding. In the summer of 1943, they and their parents moved in with a family in Kielce.When the Bawniks needed money in Kielce, Nechama’s mother baked rolls and sent Nechama to sell them in a local black market. Nechama also sold bottles of vodka that had been distilled by a local farmer, Roland Tec said. Once, he said in a phone interview, a retailer denounced her and the Gestapo chased her away; when she returned, her father told her to run into nearby fields, while her parents hid under floorboards, until it was safe.After the war, the family returned briefly to Lublin and then moved to Berlin. In 1949, Nechama immigrated to Israel, where she met Leon Tec, a Polish-born internist who later became a child psychiatrist. They married in 1950 and moved to the United States two years later.Daniel Craig, left, as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber as Zus Bielski in the 2008 film “Defiance,” based on Dr. Tec’s book.Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock PhotoNechama studied sociology at Columbia University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in 1954 and a master’s in 1955.After working at the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, she began teaching sociology in 1957 at Columbia. She then taught at Rutgers University, returned to Columbia and moved to Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., before joining the sociology faculty of the University of Connecticut’s Stamford campus, in 1974. She remained there for 36 years.She earned a Ph.D., also in sociology, from Columbia, in 1965.Dr. Tec said that she had been determined to put her Holocaust past behind her, but that in 1975 her childhood experiences demanded her attention.“When these demands turned into a compelling force,” she wrote in “Defiance,” “I decided to revisit my past by writing an autobiography.”In that autobiography, “Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood” (1982), she recalled the attitude that Helena, the grandmother in the family of rescuers in Kielce, had toward Jews.“I would not harm a Jew,” Dr. Tec recalled Helena saying, “but I see no point in going out of my way to help one.” She added: “You and your family are not like Jews. If they wanted to send you away now, I would not let them.”In another book, “Into the Lion’s Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen” (1990), Dr. Tec explored the life of another Polish Jew, who hid his identity, worked as a translator for the German police and helped save about 200 Jews in the Mir ghetto.“Especially riveting are the details of his translations for his German superiors,” Susan Shapiro wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “in which his careful change of two words could save an entire Jewish community.”After his identity was revealed, Mr. Rufeisen took refuge in a monastery, converted to Catholicism and joined partisan fighters, according to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance and research center in Jerusalem. He became a Catholic priest after the war and moved to Israel, where he joined a monastery on Mount Carmel.In addition to her son, Dr. Tec is survived by her daughter, Leora Tec; two grandsons; one great-grandson; and a half sister, Catharina Knoll. Her husband and her sister, Giza Agmon, both died in 2013.During the filming of “Defiance,” Dr. Tec was pleased to see that the Bielski partisan camp in the Belarusian forest had been faithfully recreated in Lithuania, with a kitchen and workshops to repair shoes and watches and to tan leather.“She was in awe of what they had built; it was really incredible,” said her son, who was a co-producer of the film. He added: “As soon as Daniel Craig saw her on the set, he cornered her and spent an hour or an hour and a half asking her questions. It was wonderful.” More

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      in Theater

      Tom Jones, Half of Record-Setting ‘Fantasticks’ Team, Dies at 95

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      He wrote the book and lyrics to a little show that opened in 1960 in Greenwich Village and became “the longest-running musical in the universe.”Tom Jones, who wrote the book and lyrics for a modest musical called “The Fantasticks” that opened in 1960 in Greenwich Village and ran for an astonishing 42 years, propelled in part by its wistful opening song, “Try to Remember,” died on Friday at his home in Sharon, Conn. He was 95.His son Michael said the cause was cancer.Mr. Jones and his frequent collaborator, Harvey Schmidt, first worked together when they were students at the University of Texas, Mr. Jones in the drama department’s directing program, Mr. Schmidt studying art but indulging his musical inclinations on the side.They kept in touch after graduating, writing songs together by mail after they were drafted during the Korean War. Mr. Jones got out first and tried his luck in New York, failing to find work as a director but writing for the revues being staged by the impresario Julius Monk and fiddling with a musical with another composer, John Donald Robb.Mr. Jones and Mr. Robb called that show, which was loosely based on a comedy by the French playwright Edmond Rostand, “Joy Comes to Deadhorse,” and in 1956 they staged it at the University of New Mexico, where Mr. Robb was a dean. It was a big-cast production that included a small squadron of dancers.The two men had different reactions to their production. “I felt it was basically wrong,” Mr. Jones wrote in an unpublished memoir. “He felt it was basically right. So we split.”Mr. Jones, left, with his frequent collaborator, Harvey Schmidt, and the British actress Stephanie Voss, promoting “The Fantasticks” in London in 1961.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones kept working on the piece, now with Mr. Schmidt, who had arrived in New York after leaving the military and was having some success as a commercial artist. They were still envisioning it as a big Broadway musical, but in 1959, when a friend was looking for a one-act musical for a summer festival at Barnard College, they did a radical revision. Instead of trying to imitate Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mr. Jones wrote, “we decided to break all the rules.”“We didn’t understand them anyway,” he added.Their pared-down musical, about two young lovers and their seemingly feuding fathers, used a narrator, minimalist staging and other touches that bucked the formula of a big Broadway musical.Among those who saw it at Barnard was the producer Lore Noto, who brought it to the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, where it opened in May 1960. The cast included Jerry Orbach, early in his storied career, as El Gallo, the narrator, who delivers “Try to Remember.”It also included, in a smaller role, one Thomas Bruce — who was actually Mr. Jones. He said he didn’t use his own name because he wanted to head off accusations that “The Fantasticks” was a vanity production.Mr. Jones wrote that the opening night performance, attended by critics, was rocky, and at the after-party all involved awaited the reviews with trepidation. They came in around midnight; Word Baker, the director, related them to the assembled group, beginning with the mixed review from Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times.“All we could hear, any of us, were the bad parts,” Mr. Jones wrote.Walter Kerr in The New York Herald Tribune also said both positive and negative things, while some of the other New York papers raved.In any case, the show had a resilience that no one back then could have predicted. It continued to run at Sullivan Street for more than 17,000 performances, finally closing in 2002 as the longest-running musical in history. (“The Mousetrap,” the Agatha Christie play, has been running longer in London, but not continuously in the same theater.)Mr. Jones, right, with Mr. Schmidt in 1999. They worked together on several musicals, including “I Do! I Do!” and “110 in the Shade.”Ray Fisher/Getty ImagesMr. Jones and Mr. Schmidt, who died in 2018, went on to collaborate on other shows. Mr. Jones wrote the lyrics for Mr. Schmidt’s music for “110 in the Shade,” which opened on Broadway in 1963 and ran for 330 performances, and he wrote the book and lyrics for “I Do! I Do!,” another collaboration with Mr. Schmidt, which ran for a year and a half on Broadway in the mid-1960s.Each of those shows earned the men Tony Award nominations. Ed Ames’s version of “My Cup Runneth Over,” a song from “I Do! I Do!,” peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967 and received Grammy Award nominations.But “The Fantasticks” overshadowed everything else. After its initial long run, a revival that opened in 2006 in Midtown Manhattan ran for more than 4,300 performances, with Mr. Jones again in the opening night cast in the same secondary role. As in the original production, actors cycled through the various roles in the revival, which continued for more than a decade. In 2010, Mr. Jones, then 82, returned to the cast briefly to mark the 50th anniversary of the original show’s opening.In 2006, an interviewer for American Theater Wing, introducing Mr. Jones, described “The Fantasticks” as “the longest-running musical in the universe.”“I don’t know about Saturn,” Mr. Jones replied.Thomas Collins Jones was born on Feb. 17, 1928, in Littlefield, Texas. His father, William, was a turkey farmer, and his mother, Jessie (Bellomy) Jones, was a homemaker.He grew up in Coleman, Texas, where he got a job as an usher at a movie theater, which morphed into a role as master of ceremonies for a weekly talent show held on Wednesday nights between features.As Mr. Jones put it in his memoir, “sometime during my sophomore year at Coleman High School, I became a ‘character’” — wearing bow ties and a straw hat to school, smoking a pipe, signing his articles for the school newspaper “T. Collins Jones, Esquire.”“Even now, nearly 70 years later, I can’t help but stop and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing,” he wrote. “Even more, I wonder at the fact that the other kids — farmers mostly, and ranchers and 4-H girls — took it all in their stride.”In 1945, when he enrolled in the drama department at the University of Texas, “for the first time, there were other people actually like me.”“Here, marvel of marvels,” he wrote, “everybody was T. Collins Jones, Esquire.”He earned a bachelor’s degree and, in 1951, a master’s degree at the university, and soon after was drafted. By happenstance — and passing a typing test — he managed to avoid being sent to fight in Korea; instead he was assigned to administrative work in a counterintelligence unit.There, he proposed that he write a manual on how to conduct covert operations. (“The Army loves manuals,” he wrote in the memoir. “More than machine guns. More than medals.”) Superiors liked the idea, and he worked on that until he was discharged after the war ended in 1953.In the American Theater Wing interview, Mr. Jones recounted the story of “Try to Remember,” the signature song from “The Fantasticks.” Mr. Schmidt had come up with the music in just a few minutes during an idle moment in a rehearsal hall. Mr. Jones heard an opportunity.“I thought, well, it would be fun to take this simple, long-line song and then play with lots of assonance and near sounds and near rhymes and inner rhymes and sort of encrust it verbally on top of this flowing, basically folklike, simple melody,” he said. “That took me weeks to do. It took him 20 seconds and me three weeks.”His lyrics still echo across the decades:Try to remember the kind of SeptemberWhen life was slow and oh, so mellow.Try to remember the kind of SeptemberWhen grass was green and grain was yellow.Try to remember the kind of SeptemberWhen you were a tender and callow fellow.Try to remember and if you rememberThen follow, follow.Mr. Jones’s first marriage, to Eleanor Wright, ended in divorce. His second marriage was to the choreographer Janet Watson, who died in 2016. Michael Jones and another son from that marriage, Sam, survive him.Mr. Jones and Mr. Schmidt seemed to have a knack for long runs. “I Do! I Do!” has had countless other productions since it was on Broadway, including one in Minneapolis that ran from 1971 to 1993, with the same two actors, David Anders and Susan Goeppinger, in the same roles the whole time.Among the other shows on which Mr. Jones and Mr. Schmidt collaborated was “Celebration,” which ran for three months on Broadway in 1969 and which Mr. Jones also directed. They created a musical version of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” but when Mary Martin, who had originated the female role in “I Do! I Do!” on Broadway and was to star, became ill, the project was derailed.In a 2002 interview with The Times, Mr. Jones said that though he wasn’t displeased that “The Fantasticks” had dominated his career, he regretted that it overshadowed some of the other work he and Mr. Schmidt had done.“It’s nice to be remembered for anything,” he said. “I do hope and believe that there is going to come a time, probably after we’re dead, when someone will say, ‘What are these other weirdo titles?’ and they’ll say, ‘This is strange; this is interesting stuff.’” More