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      April Stevens Dies at 93; Her ‘Deep Purple’ Became a Surprise Hit

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      Her unusual version of the standard, which she recorded with her brother, Nino Tempo, reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1963 and won a Grammy.April Stevens, whose rushed recording of “Deep Purple” with her brother, Nino Tempo, became a chart-topping single in 1963 and won a Grammy Award, died on April 17 at her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 93.The death was confirmed by her stepson Gary Perman.The Stevens-Tempo version of “Deep Purple” — a jazz standard that had been a hit for Bing Crosby — featured the siblings harmonizing over a mellow arrangement accented with a harmonica. Ms. Stevens had the idea to record the song, originally written for piano by Peter DeRose, with lyrics added by Mitchell Parish; Mr. Tempo came up with the arrangement; and Glen Campbell played on the record as a session musician.In one section, Ms. Stevens recited the lyrics and Mr. Tempo sang them back in falsetto. They went, in part:“When a deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls/ and the stars begin to twinkle in the night/ In the mist of a memory you wander back to me/ breathing my name with a sigh.”The siblings had stumbled on the spoken-word idea after Mr. Tempo had failed to memorize the lyrics in time for a rehearsal, so Ms. Stevens fed them to him during that session. A friend loved the effect, Mr. Tempo said in a phone interview, and “we knew we had backed into something magical.”They recorded “Deep Purple” in just 14 minutes, at the tail end of a session with Ahmet Ertegun, the Atlantic Records co-founder who had signed them to his Atco Records imprint. Mr. Tempo, who was not a harmonica player, picked up the instrument and tried a few licks.But the final result felt sloppy, Mr. Tempo said, and after executives at the label listened to the song, Mr. Ertegun told him that his partners “think it’s the worst record you’ve ever made.”In response, the siblings said that if Mr. Ertegun did not release “Deep Purple,” they would want to be released from their contract — they hoped to sign with the music producer Phil Spector. Mr. Ertegun relented. The song came out in September 1963 and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week of Nov. 16.The song did not stay on top for long: About a week later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and most of the country’s attention was drawn far from the Top 40.But “Deep Purple” went on to sell more than a million copies, and the siblings won a Grammy for best rock ’n’ roll recording of the year.The duo of April Stevens and Nino Tempo released several more records that made the charts, but they never again reached No. 1; their brand of jazz-inflected pop music soon gave way to the rock ’n’ roll of the British invasion, with the Beatles first topping the Billboard charts in 1964.Carol Vincenette LoTempio was born in Niagara Falls, N.Y., on April 29, 1929, to Samuel and Anna (Donia) LoTempio, both descended from Italian immigrants from Sicily. Her mother was a homemaker, her father a grocer.Her brother, born Anthony Bart LoTempio, was musically gifted and sang onstage with Benny Goodman before he was 10 years old. The family moved to Los Angeles to develop his music career, where Carol attended Belmont High School.Before they became a brother-and-sister act, the siblings each established solo musical careers — he as a jazz saxophonist who played with artists like Bobby Darin, and she as a singer who recorded popular versions of songs like Cole Porter’s “I’m in Love Again.”Ms. LoTempio took the name April Stevens before releasing several records during the 1950s, including “Teach Me Tiger,” a sultry number with lyrics like “Take my lips, they belong to you.” Though some listeners found the song offensive, it reached a modest No. 86 on the Billboard chart in 1959. (In 1983, NASA used the song to awaken astronauts on a shuttle mission and invited Ms. Stevens to watch the landing.)The siblings appeared on “American Bandstand” and shared a stage with the Righteous Brothers and the Beach Boys among other gigs in the United States, Europe and Australia.Their other charting singles included versions of the standards “Whispering” (No. 11) and “Stardust” (No. 32), both in 1964. Both made use of their spoken-and-sung lyrics device.Ms. Stevens married William Perman in 1985; he survives her. In addition to her brother and stepson Gary, she is survived by another stepson, Robert Perman; two stepdaughters, Laura LeMoine and Lisa Price; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.With bookings drying up, the siblings stopped performing together as the 1970s gave way to the ’80s. Mr. Tempo later recorded and performed as a jazz saxophonist, but Ms. Stevens never returned to singing.They had left an imprint, though. Not long before the Stevens-Tempo act dissolved, another brother and sister duo, Donny and Marie Osmond, recorded their own duet of “Deep Purple.” Complete with harmonica riffs and the same spoken and sung lyrics, it reached No. 14 on the Billboard chart in 1976. More

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      Karl Berger, 88, Who Opened Minds of Generations of Musicians, Is Dead

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      A vibraphonist, pianist, educator and musical thinker, he co-founded the Creative Music Studio to bring all kinds of musicians together to foster cross-pollination and improvisation.Karl Berger, a musician, composer, educator and author who taught improvisation and his concept of an attentive, collaborative “music mind” to generations of musicians and artists at his Creative Music Studio near Woodstock, N.Y., died on April 9 in Albany, N.Y. He was 88.Billy Martin, the studio’s executive director, said the death, at Albany Medical Center, was caused by complications following gastrointestinal surgery.Mr. Berger was a pianist and vibraphonist who performed and recorded with leading jazz musicians including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, John McLaughlin, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Pharoah Sanders, Dave Brubeck and Lee Konitz, among many others.Mr. Coleman, Mr. Berger and his wife, the singer Ingrid Sertso, founded the Creative Music Foundation in the early 1970s, to focus on improvisation and musical cross-pollination. The foundation ran the Creative Music Studio, in various locations in and near Woodstock, where Mr. Berger and other artists performed and taught. There, internationally known musicians from jazz and other traditions worked with musicians at all levels of skill, from amateur to virtuoso.Through the years, Mr. Berger played with small and large ensembles, recorded extensively, led university music departments, wrote arrangements for rock and pop albums, taught schoolchildren and adults, and developed his own techniques to unlock and encourage individual and collaborative musical thinking. His compositions often made connections with non-Western styles, and his musical practices drew on Eastern spirituality and meditation.“It’s not what you play, it’s how you play,” he often said.Mr. Martin said Mr. Berger’s musical approach was “not about genre.”“It’s about listening and making sound together,” he said, “starting from that fundamental place and building from there.”The jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, a frequent collaborator with Mr. Berger, with students at the Creative Music Studio in 1978.In his book, “The Music Mind Experience,” written with Rick Maurer, Mr. Berger insisted that “everyone is born with an abundance of musical talent,” and that all music shares fundamental common elements: rhythm, sound, space and dynamics. He sought to teach both players and listeners to escape routine and to concentrate their attention “fully in the moment.”Mr. Berger was born on March 30, 1935, in Heidelberg, Germany. He began studying classical piano at 10, but at 14 he heard a jazz jam session that made him decide to play his own music. In 1953, he joined a group that included Ms. Sertso, whom he would soon marry. She survives him along with their daughter, Savia.In the 1950s, as the house pianist at the Heidelberg club Cave 54, Mr. Berger learned modern jazz in late-night jams with American musicians from military bands stationed nearby. He earned a Ph.D. in musicology and philosophy in Germany in 1963 and held philosophy professorships at two universities in Germany. But by the mid-1960s he had turned to music.He moved to Paris and joined a group led by the trumpeter Don Cherry, who had been learning world-music melodies from shortwave radio broadcasts. In 1966, Mr. Cherry invited Mr. Berger to New York City to play on “Symphony for Improvisers,” a landmark free-jazz album.Mr. Berger made his debut album as a leader, “From Now On,” in 1967, and recorded with Mr. Cherry and others in the late 1960s. He went on to make more than two dozen albums as a leader and many others as a sideman. His lean, linear, freely melodic vibraphone playing repeatedly made him the top vibraphonist in the Down Beat magazine musicians’ poll.In 1971, Mr. Berger started the Creative Music Foundation with Ms. Sertso, Mr. Coleman and an advisory board that included John Cage, Gil Evans, Buckminster Fuller and Willem de Kooning. He moved to Woodstock in 1972 and inaugurated the Creative Music Studio, which settled into a nearby mountain lodge with residences and performance spaces.Leading musicians including Mr. Braxton, Mr. DeJohnette, Cecil Taylor and Dave Holland joined students in improvising groups. More than 550 performances were recorded and later digitized for an archive that was purchased by the Columbia University Library in 2012.During the 1980s, grant funding dwindled, and the studio curtailed its programs in 1984. But Mr. Berger remained active as a performer, touring Europe, Asia and Africa with Ms. Sertso.In the 1990s, he was also in demand as a string-section arranger. After working on Jeff Buckley’s 1994 album “Grace,” he wrote arrangements for albums by Natalie Merchant, Angelique Kidjo and others.Mr. Berger in 2008. The Creative Music Studio lost funding and curtailed its programs in the 1980s, but he continued to teach, perform and compose.Phil Mansfield for The New York TimesMr. Berger was a professor of composition and dean of music education at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany, and chairman of the department of music at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth during the early 2000s — although he objected to the department’s emphasis on classroom study rather than performance.He and Ms. Sertso opened Sertso Recording Studio in Woodstock in 2004. In 2010, with the help of musicians who had studied at Creative Music Studio decades earlier, they revived the organization. Mr. Berger led concerts in New York City and elsewhere by an Improvisers Orchestra, and in 2013 the studio restarted intensive semiannual workshops in the Catskills with musicians including Vijay Iyer, Henry Threadgill, Steven Bernstein and Joe Lovano.Mr. Berger relinquished the leadership of Creative Music Studio in 2017. But he continued to record and perform. His most recent release, in 2022, was a trio album, “Heart Is a Melody,” with Kirk Knuffke on cornet and Matt Wilson on drums. The album reached back to Mr. Berger’s free-jazz inspirations, with an Indian-inspired Don Cherry piece, “Ganesh,” and a tune called “Ornette.”“We all are infinitely more talented than we’ll ever realize in one lifetime,” Mr. Berger wrote in “The Music Mind Experience.” He continued, “Once we get in touch with our own voice, our own ways, we simply have to stay with it.” More

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      Harry Belafonte, 96, Dies; Barrier-Breaking Singer, Actor and Activist

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      In the 1950s, when segregation was still widespread, his ascent to the upper echelon of show business was historic. But his primary focus was civil rights.Harry Belafonte, who stormed the pop charts and smashed racial barriers in the 1950s with his highly personal brand of folk music, and who went on to become a dynamic force in the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 96.The cause was congestive heart failure, said Ken Sunshine, his longtime spokesman.At a time when segregation was still widespread and Black faces were still a rarity on screens large and small, Mr. Belafonte’s ascent to the upper echelon of show business was historic. He was not the first Black entertainer to transcend racial boundaries; Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and others had achieved stardom before him. But none had made as much of a splash as he did, and for a while no one in music, Black or white, was bigger.Born in Harlem to West Indian immigrants, he almost single-handedly ignited a craze for Caribbean music with hit records like “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell.” His album “Calypso,” which included both those songs, reached the top of the Billboard album chart shortly after its release in 1956 and stayed there for 31 weeks. Coming just before the breakthrough of Elvis Presley, it was said to be the first album by a single artist to sell more than a million copies.Performing at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in 1956.Al Lambert/Associated PressMr. Belafonte was equally successful as a concert attraction: Handsome and charismatic, he held audiences spellbound with dramatic interpretations of a repertoire that encompassed folk traditions from all over the world — rollicking calypsos like “Matilda,” work songs like “Lead Man Holler,” tender ballads like “Scarlet Ribbons.” By 1959 he was the most highly paid Black performer in history, with fat contracts for appearances in Las Vegas, at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and at the Palace in New York.Success as a singer led to movie offers, and Mr. Belafonte soon became the first Black actor to achieve major success in Hollywood as a leading man. His movie stardom was short-lived, though, and it was his friendly rival Sidney Poitier, not Mr. Belafonte, who became the first bona fide Black matinee idol.But making movies was never Mr. Belafonte’s priority, and after a while neither was making music. He continued to perform into the 21st century, and to appear in movies as well (although he had two long hiatuses from the screen), but his primary focus from the late 1950s on was civil rights.Early in his career, Mr. Belafonte befriended the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and became not just a lifelong friend but also an ardent supporter. Dr. King and Mr. Belafonte at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem in 1956.via Harry BelafonteEarly in his career, he befriended the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and became not just a lifelong friend but also an ardent supporter of Dr. King and the quest for racial equality he personified. He put up much of the seed money to help start the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was one of the principal fund-raisers for that organization and Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.He provided money to bail Dr. King and other civil rights activists out of jail. He took part in the March on Washington in 1963. His spacious apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan became Dr. King’s home away from home. And he quietly maintained an insurance policy on Dr. King’s life, with the King family as the beneficiary, and donated his own money to make sure that the family was taken care of after Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.(Nonetheless, in 2013 he sued Dr. King’s three surviving children in a dispute over documents that Mr. Belafonte said were his property and that the children said belonged to the King estate. The suit was settled the next year, with Mr. Belafonte retaining possession.)In an interview with The Washington Post a few months after Dr. King’s death, Mr. Belafonte expressed ambivalence about his high profile in the civil rights movement. He would like to “be able to stop answering questions as though I were a spokesman for my people,” he said, adding, “I hate marching, and getting called at 3 a.m. to bail some cats out of jail.” But, he said, he accepted his role.The Challenge of RacismIn the same interview, he noted ruefully that although he sang music with “roots in the Black culture of American Negroes, Africa and the West Indies,” most of his fans were white. As frustrating as that may have been, he was much more upset by the racism that he confronted even at the height of his fame.His role in the 1957 movie “Island in the Sun,” which contained the suggestion of a romance between his character and a white woman played by Joan Fontaine, generated outrage in the South; a bill was even introduced in the South Carolina Legislature that would have fined any theater showing the film. In Atlanta for a benefit concert for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1962, Mr. Belafonte was twice refused service in the same restaurant. Television appearances with white female singers — Petula Clark in 1968, Julie Andrews in 1969 — angered many viewers and, in the case of Ms. Clark, threatened to cost him a sponsor.He sometimes drew criticism from Black people, including the suggestion early in his career that he owed his success to the lightness of his skin (his paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother were white). When he divorced his wife in 1957 and married Julie Robinson, who had been the only white member of Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe, The Amsterdam News wrote, “Many Negroes are wondering why a man who has waved the flag of justice for his race should turn from a Negro wife to a white wife.”Mr. Belafonte with Ed Sullivan in 1955. At a time when segregation was still widespread and Black faces were still a rarity on screens large and small, Mr. Belafonte’s ascent to the upper echelon of show business was historic.Associated PressWhen RCA Victor, his record company, promoted him as the “King of Calypso,” Mr. Belafonte was denounced as a pretender in Trinidad, the acknowledged birthplace of that highly rhythmic music, where an annual competition is held to choose a calypso king.He himself never claimed to be a purist when it came to calypso or any of the other traditional styles he embraced, let alone the king of calypso. He and his songwriting collaborators loved folk music, he said, but saw nothing wrong with shaping it to their own ends.“Purism is the best cover-up for mediocrity,” he told The New York Times in 1959. “If there is no change we might just as well go back to the first ‘ugh,’ which must have been the first song.”Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. was born on March 1, 1927, in Harlem. His father, who was born in Martinique (and later changed the family name), worked occasionally as a chef on merchant ships and was often away; his mother, Melvine (Love) Bellanfanti, born in Jamaica, was a domestic.In 1936, Harry, his mother and his younger brother, Dennis, moved to Jamaica. Unable to find work there, his mother soon returned to New York, leaving him and his brother to be looked after by relatives who, he later recalled, were either “unemployed or above the law.” They rejoined her in Harlem in 1940.Awakening to Black HistoryMr. Belafonte dropped out of George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan in 1944 and enlisted in the Navy, where he was assigned to load munitions aboard ships. Black shipmates introduced him to the works of W.E.B. Du Bois and other African American authors and urged him to study Black history.He received further encouragement from Marguerite Byrd, the daughter of a middle-class Washington family, whom he met while he was stationed in Virginia and she was studying psychology at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). They married in 1948.He and Ms. Byrd had two children, Adrienne Biesemeyer and Shari Belafonte, who survive him, as do his two children by Ms. Robinson, Gina Belafonte and David; and eight grandchildren. He and Ms. Robinson divorced in 2004, and he married Pamela Frank, a photographer, in 2008, and she survives him, too, along with a stepdaughter, Sarah Frank; a stepson, Lindsey Frank; and three step-grandchildren.Mr. Belafonte and his wife, Julie Robinson, during a civil rights event — the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom — at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1957.George Tames/The New York TimesBack in New York after his discharge, Mr. Belafonte became interested in acting and enrolled under the G.I. Bill at Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop, where his classmates included Marlon Brando and Tony Curtis. He first took the stage at the American Negro Theater in Manhattan, where he worked as a stagehand and where he began his lifelong friendship with a fellow theatrical novice, Sidney Poitier.Finding anything other than what he called “Uncle Tom” roles proved difficult, and even though singing was little more than a hobby, it was as a singer and not an actor that Mr. Belafonte found an audience.Early in 1949, he was given the chance to perform during intermissions for two weeks at the Royal Roost, a popular Midtown jazz nightclub. He was an immediate hit, and the two weeks became five months.Finding Folk MusicAfter enjoying some success but little creative satisfaction as a jazz-oriented pop singer, Mr. Belafonte looked elsewhere for inspiration. With the guitarist Millard Thomas, who would become his accompanist, and the playwright and novelist William Attaway, who would collaborate on many of his songs, he immersed himself in the study of folk music. (The calypso singer and songwriter Irving Burgie later supplied much of his repertoire, including “Day-O” and “Jamaica Farewell.”)His manager, Jack Rollins, helped him develop an act that emphasized his acting ability and his striking good looks as much as a voice that was husky and expressive but, as Mr. Belafonte admitted, not very powerful.A triumphant 1951 engagement at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village led to an even more successful one at the Blue Angel, the Vanguard’s upscale sister room on the Upper East Side. That in turn led to a recording contract with RCA and a role on Broadway in the 1953 revue “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.”Dorothy Dandridge and Mr. Belafonte in a scene from the 1954 film “Carmen Jones.”20th Century FoxPerforming a repertoire that included the calypso standard “Hold ’em Joe” and his arrangement of the folk song “Mark Twain,” Mr. Belafonte won enthusiastic reviews, television bookings and a Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical. He also caught the eye of the Hollywood producer and director Otto Preminger, who cast him in the 1954 movie version of “Carmen Jones,” an all-Black update of Bizet’s opera “Carmen” with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, which had been a hit on Broadway a decade earlier.Mr. Belafonte’s co-star was Dorothy Dandridge, with whom he had also appeared the year before in his first movie, the little-seen low-budget drama “Bright Road.” Although they were both accomplished vocalists, their singing voices in “Carmen Jones” were dubbed by opera singers.Mr. Belafonte also made news for a movie he turned down, citing what he called its negative racial stereotypes: the 1959 screen version of “Porgy and Bess,” also a Preminger film. The role of Porgy was offered instead to his old friend Mr. Poitier, whom he criticized publicly for accepting it.Stepping Away From FilmIn the 1960s, as Mr. Poitier became a major box-office attraction, Mr. Belafonte made no movies at all: Hollywood, he said, was not interested in the socially conscious films he wanted to make, and he was not interested in the roles he was offered. He did, however, become a familiar presence — and an occasional source of controversy — on television.His special “Tonight With Belafonte” won an Emmy in 1960 (a first for a Black performer), but a deal to do five more specials for that show’s sponsor, the cosmetics company Revlon, fell apart after one more was broadcast; according to Mr. Belafonte, Revlon asked him not to feature Black and white performers together. The taping of a 1968 special with Petula Clark was interrupted when Ms. Clark touched Mr. Belafonte’s arm, and a representative of the sponsor, Chrysler-Plymouth, demanded a retake. (The producer refused, and the sponsor’s representative later apologized, although Mr. Belafonte said the apology came “one hundred years too late.”)Jacob Harris/Associated PressWhen Mr. Belafonte returned to film as both producer and co-star, with Zero Mostel, of “The Angel Levine” (1970), based on a story by Bernard Malamud, the project had a sociopolitical edge: His Harry Belafonte Enterprises, with a grant from the Ford Foundation, hired 15 Black and Hispanic apprentices to learn filmmaking by working on the crew. One of them, Drake Walker, wrote the story for Mr. Belafonte’s next movie, “Buck and the Preacher” (1972), a gritty western that also starred Mr. Poitier.But after appearing as a mob boss (a parody of Marlon Brando’s character in “The Godfather”) with Mr. Poitier and Bill Cosby in the hit 1974 comedy “Uptown Saturday Night” — directed, as “Buck and the Preacher” had been, by Mr. Poitier — Mr. Belafonte was once again absent from the big screen, this time until 1992, when he played himself in Robert Altman’s Hollywood satire “The Player.”He appeared onscreen only sporadically after that, most notably as a gangster in Mr. Altman’s “Kansas City” (1996), for which Mr. Belafonte won a New York Film Critics Circle Award. His final film role was in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” in 2018.Political ActivismMr. Belafonte continued to give concerts in the years when he was off the screen, but he concentrated on political activism and charitable work. In the 1980s, he helped organize a cultural boycott of South Africa as well as the Live Aid concert and the all-star recording “We Are the World,” both of which raised money to fight famine in Africa. In 1986, encouraged by some New York State Democratic Party leaders, he briefly considered running for the United States Senate. In 1987, he replaced Danny Kaye as UNICEF’s good-will ambassador.Never shy about expressing his opinion, he became increasingly outspoken during the George W. Bush administration. In 2002, he accused Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of abandoning his principles to “come into the house of the master.” Four years later he called Mr. Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world.”Harry Belafonte demonstrated against nuclear weapons in Bonn, Germany, in 1981.Klaus Rose/Picture-alliance, DPA, via Associated Press ImagesMr. Belafonte was equally outspoken in the 2013 New York mayoral election, in which he campaigned for the Democratic candidate and eventual winner, Bill de Blasio. During the campaign he referred to the Koch brothers, the wealthy industrialists known for their support of conservative causes, as “white supremacists” and compared them to the Ku Klux Klan. (Mr. de Blasio quickly distanced himself from that comment.)Such statements made Mr. Belafonte a frequent target of criticism, but no one disputed his artistry. Among the many honors he received in his later years were a Kennedy Center Honor in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2000.In 2011, he was the subject of a documentary film, “Sing Your Song,” and published his autobiography, “My Song.”In 2014, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in recognition of his lifelong fight for civil rights and other causes. The honor, he told The Times, gave him “a strong sense of reward.”He remained politically active to the end. On Election Day 2016, The Times published an opinion article by Mr. Belafonte urging people not to vote for Donald J. Trump, whom he called “feckless and immature.”“Mr. Trump asks us what we have to lose,” he wrote, referring to African American voters, “and we must answer: Only the dream, only everything.”Looking back on his life and career, Mr. Belafonte was proud but far from complacent. “About my own life, I have no complaints,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Yet the problems faced by most Americans of color seem as dire and entrenched as they were half a century ago.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesFour years later, he returned to the opinion pages with a similar message: “We have learned exactly how much we had to lose — a lesson that has been inflicted upon Black people again and again in our history — and we will not be bought off by the empty promises of the flimflam man.”Looking back on his life and career, Mr. Belafonte was proud but far from complacent. “About my own life, I have no complaints,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Yet the problems faced by most Americans of color seem as dire and entrenched as they were half a century ago.”Richard Severo and Alex Traub contributed reporting. 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      in Theater

      Megan Terry, Feminist Playwright and Rock Musical Innovator, Dies at 90

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      She wrote 70 plays, won an Obie Award and wrote and directed “Viet Rock,” a musical that predated “Hair” and is considered the first U.S. stage work to address the Vietnam War.Megan Terry, an Obie Award winner, a founding member of the Open Theater group and a prolific feminist playwright who wrote and directed a rock musical on the New York stage that predated “Hair,” died on April 12 at a hospital in Omaha. She was 90.Elizabeth Primamore, a writer who is working on a book about Ms. Terry and four other women writers, confirmed the death on Monday.Ms. Terry’s “Viet Rock: A Folk War Movie” opened at the Martinique Theater, an Off Broadway house, on Nov. 10, 1966, during the Vietnam War, after earlier performances at the Yale Repertory Company and La MaMa E.T.C., in the East Village.The rock numbers’ lyrics were poignant and pointed: “The wars have melted into one/A war was on when I was born.” One song advised against optimism: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket/Baskets wear out and men die young/ Better to marry trees or elephants/Men die young.”The dialogue played with politics and popular culture. “Let’s all go gay with L.B.J.,” one character said, a twist on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign slogan “All the way with L.B.J.” Others declared: “I lost my way with L.B.J.,” “March to doomsday with L.B.J.” and “I lost my green beret on the Road to Mandalay.”“Viet Rock” was believed to be the first American stage work to address the Vietnam War.“The piece ended with an image of rebirth,” the critic Dan Sullivan wrote in The Los Angeles Times, “but the image that stayed with the viewer was a mound of dead soldiers, male and female, muttering ‘Who needs this?’”The New York Times panned the production. Walter Kerr, the newspaper’s chief theater critic, dismissed it as “essentially thoughtless, from-the-gut-only noise.” The Village Voice called it extraordinary.A year later, one of its cast members, Gerome Ragni, and two partners presented their musical “Hair” at the Public Theater, which moved to Broadway in 1968 and found overwhelming international success.A 1966 poster for the Open Theater production of “Viet Rock” at La MaMa E.T.C. in the East Village. The musical received mixed reviews.LaMama ArchivesMs. Terry, in her mid-30s, went on to write “Approaching Simone” (1970), about Simone Weil, the French activist philosopher. It won the Obie Award for best Off Broadway play.Jack Kroll wrote in Newsweek magazine that “Simone” was “a rare theatrical event” filled with “the light, shadow and weight of human life and the exultant agonies of the ceaseless attempt to create one’s humanity.” Clive Barnes of The Times called it “a superb theatrical coup.”Marguerite Duffy was born on July 22, 1932, in Seattle, the daughter of Harold and Marguerite (Henry) Duffy. Her father was a businessman. Marguerite became fascinated with theater after seeing a play at age 7 — a passion that, by her account, her disapproving father ridiculed, giving her nicknames like Tallulah Blackhead and Sarah Heartburn, as opposed to Bankhead and Bernhardt.In high school, she worked with the Seattle Repertory Playhouse, learning early that politics and theater could be powerful but prickly bedfellows. The playhouse closed in 1951 under pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee.Marguerite won a scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada, where she earned a certificate in acting, directing and design. Returning to her home state, she completed her bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Washington.She then took a teaching job at the Cornish School of Allied Arts, today Cornish College of the Arts, in Seattle. Her first plays, including “Beach Grass” and “Go Out and Move the Car,” were criticized for their frankness, which led her to take two drastic steps.She began doing her theater work under a pseudonym. Megan was the Celtic root of her first name, and Terry was a tribute to the 19th-century British actress Ellen Terry. And she moved to New York City.Her plays in New York included “The Magic Realist” (1960), “Ex-Miss Copper Queen on a Set of Pills” (1963), “When My Girlhood Was Still All Flowers” (1963), “Eat at Joe’s” (1964) and “Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool, Dry Place” (1967).“Plays by Megan Terry” is an anthology of three of her works, “Approaching Simone,” “Babes in the Bighouse,” and “Viet Rock.”Broadway Play PubOne of Ms. Terry’s most talked-about techniques with the Open Theater, an experimental New York company founded in 1963 by Joseph Chaikin, was known simply as transformation. An actor might begin speaking in one language and suddenly switch to another, having taken on a new character’s identity.In a scene in “Viet Rock,” one actor mimes being hit by gunfire and the others catch him. “Then, abruptly, the sounds change, the body is held high, and the group, rotating weirdly, has become a helicopter, transporting the wounded to Saigon,” the critic Michael Feingold wrote in The Times in 1966. Seconds later, he wrote, the actors became the hospital, and “shortly afterward turn it, without a qualm, into a Buddhist funeral.”The Open Theater’s last production was “Nightwalk” (1973), written by Ms. Terry, Sam Shepard and Jean-Claude van Itallie and performed in repertory with two other works. Mel Gussow of The Times called it “enormously enjoyable,” with a “strong and disquieting impact.”Ms. Terry also worked with the Firehouse Theater in Minneapolis. In her 40s, she moved to Nebraska to become the playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theater in Omaha and continued to produce experimental work.At the end of her career, she had written 70 plays. They include “Babes in the Bighouse: A Documentary Fantasy Musical About Life in Prison” (1974), “Sleazing Toward Athens” (1977), “15 Million 15-Year-Olds” (1983), “Dinner’s in the Blender” (1987) and “Breakfast Serial” (1991).Much of her work was intended, at least partly, for young audiences. “The Snow Queen” (1991) was a playful adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. “Headlights” (1990) was an examination of illiteracy.Ms. Terry was a founder, with five others, of the short-lived but influential Women’s Theater Council in 1972. She received the Dramatists Guild Award in 1983. Along with her wife, Jo Ann Schmidman, and Sara Kimberlain, she was an editor of “Right Brain Vacation Photos” (1992), an illustrated book of two decades of Magic Theater productions.Ms. Terry is survived by Ms. Schmidman.Saying goodbye was one of Ms. Terry’s least favorite activities. When she was getting her degree in education, she remembered the pain of losing the third-grade class she had student-taught all year. In her career, she found a way to avoid that kind of enforced separation.“I’ve always loved being in a theater company and being with people year after year,” she said in a 1992 interview at Wichita State University. “It satisfies my emotional needs and my intellectual needs. I come from a huge family, and theater gives you the chance to recreate the family in your own image.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Len Goodman, Judge of ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ Dies at 78

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      Mr. Goodman, who was also a longtime judge on the British show “Strictly Come Dancing,” was known for his wry humor and colorful phrases and delivery.LONDON — Len Goodman, a former British exhibition dance champion who was a longtime judge on the BBC reality show “Strictly Come Dancing,” as well as its American spinoff, “Dancing With the Stars,” died on Saturday in a hospice in Kent, England. He was 78.The cause was bone cancer, his agent, Jackie Gill, said on Monday. Mr. Goodman, who had been working until up to a few weeks ago, was with his wife, Sue Barrett, and his son, James, when he died, Ms. Gill added.Mr. Goodman was the head judge on the BBC show “Strictly Come Dancing” for over a decade until 2016. From 2005 until last year, he also judged the U.S. version, ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” where he was known for addressing contestants with wry humor, charm and colorful phrases, as well as a distinctive delivery that included the way he would announce the score of “se-VEN!”“He retained his sense of humor during his illness and dealt with it with great dignity,” said Ms. Gill. “He was always a true gentleman. He loved his work and never took anything for granted.”Leonard Gordon Goodman was born in Bethnal Green, London, his agent said. He moved to Blackfen, then in Kent, England, and now part of London, when he was 6 and attended Westwood Secondary Modern School. He started dancing when he was 19, relatively late in life for someone who later becomes a professional, according to Ms. Gill.Mr. Goodman went on to have a successful career as a dancer, winning Dual of the Giants, the British Rising Stars, the British Exhibition Championships (four times) and the World Exhibition Championships. He then opened the Goodman Academy, a dance school in Dartford, England.His first marriage, which ended in divorce, was to Cherry Kingston, a dancer, in 1972. He then had his son, James, with his partner Lesley. In 2012, he married Sue Barrett.In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Goodman is survived by his two grandchildren.Mr. Goodman, right, shakes hands with the then-Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in 2018.John Stillwell/Press Association, via Associated Press More

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      Todd Haimes, 66, Who Rebuilt the Roundabout Theater Company, Dies

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      After rescuing the company from bankruptcy, he turned it into a major player on Broadway and one of the largest nonprofit theater companies in the country.Todd Haimes, who rescued New York’s Roundabout Theater Company from bankruptcy and built it into one of the largest nonprofit theaters in America, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 66.A spokesman, Matt Polk, said his death, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, was caused by complications of osteosarcoma. Mr. Haimes had lived with the cancer since 2002, when he was diagnosed with sarcoma of the jaw.As the artistic director and chief executive at Roundabout, Mr. Haimes had an extraordinarily long and effective tenure. He led the nonprofit company for four decades, turning it into a major player on Broadway, where it now runs three of the 41 theaters.Roundabout has focused on classics and revivals but has also been a supporter of new work. Under Mr. Haimes’s leadership, it excelled on both fronts, winning 11 Tony Awards for plays and musicals it produced and nurturing the careers of contemporary American writers, including Stephen Karam, Joshua Harmon and Selina Fillinger.Among Roundabout’s biggest successes during his tenure was a 1998 revival of “Cabaret,” originally starring Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson, that survived a bumpy start (a construction accident interrupted performances for four weeks) and then ran for nearly six years. It returned a decade later for a one-year reprise.There were many other triumphs, including a 2020 revival of “A Soldier’s Play” that is now touring the country. Both productions won Tony Awards.Catalyzed by America’s social unrest over racial inequality in 2020, Mr. Haimes led Roundabout in an effort to unearth lost gems written by artists of color. One result was an acclaimed Broadway production of the Black playwright Alice Childress’s 1955 backstage drama, “Trouble in Mind.” It had never made it to Broadway because Ms. Childress had refused to soften the show’s ending to make it less challenging for white theatergoers.Mr. Haimes joined Roundabout in 1983 as managing director. He was just 26, and the company, founded in 1965 and saddled with debt, was operating in rented space in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. At one particularly desperate point he used his own credit card to keep the company afloat. But a few weeks after he arrived, the board of directors voted to shut it down.A board member subsequently donated enough money to buy the company some time, and Mr. Haimes engineered a turnabout — cutting the staff, reducing expenses, improving marketing and, over time, expanding the audience with measures such as early weekday curtain times to attract an after-work crowd, special events for singles and gay theatergoers, and discounts for children. In 2016, he became the first presenter to allow the livestreaming of a performance of a Broadway show, a much-praised revival of “She Loves Me.”Mr. Haimes, right, with Gene Feist, Roundabout’s artistic director, in the theater in 1986. “I have no desire to be on stage, but I get a tingle just being around one,” he said.Jack Manning/The New York TimesBernard Todd Haimes was born on May 7, 1956, in Manhattan to Herman and Helaine Haimes. His father was a lawyer, his mother a homemaker.His onstage life was exceedingly brief: In elementary school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he wore a dress to play the title role in a production of “Mary Poppins.” He later claimed that he had landed the part because he was the only child who could pronounce “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. at Yale. Before arriving at Roundabout, he was general manager of the Hartman Theater Company in Stamford and managing director of the Westport Country Playhouse, both in Connecticut.“I had no desire to trade stocks and bonds, and making Nivea cream wouldn’t turn me on,” he told The New York Times in 1986. “I’ve loved the theater all my life. I have no desire to be onstage, but I get a tingle just being around one, ever since I worked on the stage crew for ‘How to Succeed in Business’ on Broadway when I was in 10th grade.”He became producing director of Roundabout in 1989 and added the title of chief executive in 2015.“The advantage of my background is that all of my artistic decisions are being informed by management concerns,” Mr. Haimes said in 2004. “No one’s ever going to accuse me of being a crazy artist. The disadvantage is the same: that perhaps there are brilliant things other people could accomplish that I just can’t.”He is survived by his wife, Jeanne-Marie (Christman) Haimes; two children, Dr. Hilary Haimes and Andrew Haimes; two stepdaughters, Julia and Kiki Baron; and four grandchildren. His first two marriages, to Dr. Alison Haimes and Tamar Climan, ended in divorce.Mr. Haimes led Roundabout’s move to Broadway in 1991, when he began presenting work in the Criterion Center, which no longer exists. The move was a turning point for the company. “Because of the Tony Award eligibility,” he said, “we will have a tremendous advantage when it comes to obtaining the rights to plays, securing directors and attracting distinguished actors.”In 2000, he moved the company into the renamed American Airlines Theater, which is now Roundabout’s flagship house. It has since also acquired the theater at Studio 54 and assumed operations of the theater now known as the Stephen Sondheim.Among the Tony-winning shows produced by Roundabout during Mr. Haimes’s tenure were revivals of the plays “Anna Christie” and “A View From the Bridge” and of the musicals “Nine,” “Assassins,” “The Pajama Game” and “Anything Goes.” Roundabout was also among the producers of Tony-winning productions of two new plays, “Side Man” and “The Humans.”The company now runs five theaters, all in Midtown Manhattan, including the three Broadway houses, an Off Broadway theater and an Off Off Broadway black-box space that it developed to give a platform to emerging playwrights.Over the years there have also been flops and budget deficits, and some critics have suggested that Roundabout was overextended. Its enormous real estate footprint became a financial challenge that the company addressed partly by renting out some of its Broadway venues to commercial producers. The company made a significant amount of money, for example, by renting out the Sondheim for five years to the producers of “Beautiful,” the Carole King biomusical.Mr. Haimes was one of a handful of leaders of nonprofit theater companies in New York whose decades-long tenures have raised eyebrows among those who want more turnover. He held onto the Roundabout job even when he took another one, as artistic director of the deeply troubled Toronto theater company Livent, in 1998; that company collapsed, and Mr. Haimes stayed at Roundabout.Roundabout’s size — 150 employees and a $50 million annual budget — has given it the ability to support significant endeavors offstage. It operates education and training programs, including school partnerships that serve more than 4,000 students each year and a partnership with the stagehands union to train theater technicians.But like many nonprofits, it has not yet fully rebounded from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Roundabout staged one show on Broadway this season, a revival of “1776.”Mr. Haimes, who was often content to remain in the background, was a well-liked and enthusiastic figure in the industry. He was active in both the Broadway and the Off Broadway communities, serving on numerous committees, and over the years he taught at Yale and Brooklyn College.But he remained a businessman and a booster at heart.“Basically I’m incredibly insecure and don’t take myself seriously as an artist,” he said in a 1998 interview. “But somehow my taste seems to match up with what the public wants.” More

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      Barry Humphries, a.k.a. Dame Edna, Is Dead at 89

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      Bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, Mr. Humphries’s creation was one of the longest-lived characters ever channeled by a single performer.Oh, Possums, Dame Edna is no more.To be unflinchingly precise, Barry Humphries, the Australian-born actor and comic who for almost seven decades brought that divine doyenne of divadom, Dame Edna Everage, to delirious, dotty, disdainful Dadaist life, died on Saturday in Sydney. He was 89.His death was confirmed by the hospital where he had spent several days after undergoing hip surgery. In a tribute message posted on Twitter, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia praised Mr. Humphries as “a great wit, satirist, writer and an absolute one-of-kind.”A stiletto-heeled, stiletto-tongued persona who might well have been the spawn of a ménage à quatre involving Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dalí, Auntie Mame and Miss Piggy, Dame Edna was not so much a character as a cultural phenomenon, a force of nature trafficking in wicked, sequined commentary on the nature of fame.For generations after the day she first sprang to life on the Melbourne stage, Dame Edna reigned, bewigged, bejeweled and bejowled, one of the longest-lived characters to be channeled by a single performer. She toured worldwide in a series of solo stage shows and was ubiquitous on television in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere.A master improviser (many of Dame Edna’s most stinging barbs were ad-libbed) with a face like taffy, Mr. Humphries was widely esteemed as one of the world’s foremost theatrical clowns.“I’ve only seen one man have power over an audience like that,” the theater critic John Lahr told him, after watching Dame Edna night after night in London. “My father.” Mr. Lahr’s father was the great stage and cinematic clown Bert Lahr.Mr. Humphries conceived Edna in 1955 as Mrs. Norm Everage, typical Australian housewife. “Everage,” after all, is Australian for “average.”Housewife, Superstar, National TreasureBut Edna soon became a case study in exorbitant amour propre, lampooning suburban pretensions, political correctness and the cult of celebrity, and acquiring a damehood along the way. A “housewife-superstar,” she called herself, upgrading the title in later years to “megastar” and, still later, to “gigastar.”Mr. Humphries, wearing a hat in the shape of the Sydney Opera House, in 1976.Wesley/Getty ImagesIn Britain, where Mr. Humphries had long made his home, Dame Edna was considered a national treasure, a paragon of performance art long before the term was coined.In the United States, she starred in a three-episode series, “Dame Edna’s Hollywood,” a mock celebrity talk show broadcast on NBC in the early 1990s, and was a frequent guest on actual talk shows.She performed several times on Broadway, winning Mr. Humphries a special Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Theater World Awards, for “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour,” his 1999 one-person show.In her stage and TV shows, written largely by Mr. Humphries, Dame Edna typically made her entrance tottering down a grand staircase (Mr. Humphries was more than six feet tall) in a tsunami of sequins, her hair a bouffant violet cloud (she was “a natural wisteria,” she liked to say), her evening gown slit to the thigh to reveal Mr. Humphries’s surprisingly good legs, her body awash in jewels, her eyes agape behind sprawling rhinestone glasses (“face furniture,” she called them).Addressing the audience, she delivered her signature greeting, “Hellooooo, Possums!”By turns tender and astringent, Dame Edna called audience members “possums” often. She also called them other things, as when, leaning across the footlights, she would address a woman in the front row in a confiding, carrying voice: “I know, dear. I used to make my own clothes, too.”Mr. Humphries with the English actress Joan Plowright at the Lyric Theater in London.Evening Standard/Getty ImagesPerformances concluded with Dame Edna flinging hundreds of gladioli into the crowd, no mean feat aerodynamically. “Wave your gladdies, Possums!” she exhorted audience members who caught them, and the evening would end, to music, with a mass valedictory swaying.Between the “Hellooooo” and the gladdies, Dame Edna’s audiences were treated to a confessional monologue deliciously akin to finding oneself stranded in a hall of vanity mirrors.There was commentary on her husband and children (“I made a decision: I put my family last”); her beauty regimen (“Good self-esteem is very important. I look in the mirror and say, ‘Edna, you are gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous’”); and the constellation of luminaries who routinely sought her counsel, among them Queen Elizabeth II and her family. (“I’ve had to change my telephone number several times to stop them ringing me.”)Dame Edna’s TV shows were often graced by actual celebrity guests, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charlton Heston, Sean Connery, Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall.They came in for no less of a drubbing than the audience did, starting with the inaugural affront, the affixing of immense name tags to their lapels — for eclipsed by the light of gigastardom so close at hand, who among us would not be reduced to anonymity?“Chuck,” Mr. Heston’s name tag read. Ms. Gabor received two: a “Zsa” for the right shoulder and a “Zsa” for the left.A few pleasantries were exchanged before Dame Edna moved in for the kill.Mr. Humphries as Dame Edna in 1978. She referred to him as “my manager” and accused him of embezzling her fortune.John Minihan/Evening Standard, via Getty ImagesMr. Humphries as himself in 1978. He always spoke of Dame Edna in the third person.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“You’ve had nine hits this year,” she purred fawningly at the singer-songwriter Michael Bolton on one of her British TV shows. “On your website.”Turning to the audience after delivering a particularly poisonous insult, she would ooze, “I mean that in the most caring way.”Those guests who emerged relatively unscathed had the savvy to take Dame Edna at face value and interact with her as though she were real. The moment he donned those rhinestone glasses, Mr. Humphries often said, Dame Edna became real to him too, an entirely separate law unto herself.‘I Wish I’d Thought of That’“I’m, as it were, in the wings, and she’s onstage,” he explained in a 2015 interview with Australian television. “And every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think, ‘I wish I’d thought of that.’”But the truly funny thing, Possums, is that when Mr. Humphries first brought Dame Edna to life, he intended her to last only a week or so. What was more, she was meant to have been played by the distinguished actress Zoe Caldwell.Mr. Humphries created a string of other characters over the years, notably the boorish, bibulous Australian cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson. But it was Dame Edna, the outlandish aunt who engenders adoration and mortification in equal measure, who captivated the public utterly — despite the fact that in later years, her mortification-inducing lines sometimes landed her, and her creator, in trouble.So fully did Mr. Humphries animate Edna that he was at continued pains to point out that he was neither a female impersonator in the conventional sense nor a cross-dresser in any sense.“Mr. Humphries, do you ever have to take your children aside and explain to them why you like to wear women’s clothes?,” an American interviewer once asked him.“If I were an actor playing Hamlet,” he replied, “would I have to take my children aside and say I wasn’t really Danish?’”By all accounts far more erudite than Dame Edna — he was an accomplished painter, bibliophile and art collector — Mr. Humphries, in a sustained act of self-protection, always spoke of her in the third person.She did likewise. “My manager,” she disdainfully called him. (She also called Mr. Humphries “a money-grubbing little slug” and accused him of embezzling her fortune. He did, it must be said, cash a great many of her checks.)But as dismissive of her creator as Dame Edna was, she rallied to his aid when he very likely needed her most: after years of alcoholism culminated in stays in psychiatric hospitals and at least one brush with the law.Mr. Humphries at the Booth Theater on Broadway in 1999 in “Dame Edna: The Royal Tour,” for which he won a special Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Theater World Awards.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘I Hated Her’John Barry Humphries was born in Kew, a Melbourne suburb, on Feb. 17, 1934. His father, Eric, was a prosperous builder; his mother, Louisa, was a homemaker.From his earliest childhood in Camberwell, a more exclusive suburb, he felt oppressed by the bourgeois conformism that enveloped his parents and their circle, and depressed by his mother’s cold suburban propriety.Dame Edna was a response to those forces.“I invented Edna because I hated her,” Mr. Humphries was quoted as saying in Mr. Lahr’s book “Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage With Barry Humphries” (1992). “I poured out my hatred of the standards of the little people of their generation.”Dame Edna emerged when the young Mr. Humphries, under the sway of Dadaism, was performing with a repertory company based at the University of Melbourne; he had dropped out of the university two years before.On long bus tours, he entertained his colleagues with the character of Mrs. Norm Everage — born Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga, Australia, sometime in the 1930s — an ordinary housewife who had found sudden acclaim after winning a nationwide competition, the Lovely Mother Quest.Unthinkable as it seems, Edna was dowdy then, given to mousy brown hair and pillbox hats. But she was already in full command of the arsenal of bourgeois bigotries that would be a hallmark of her later self.For a revue by the company in December 1955, Mr. Humphries wrote a part for Edna, earmarked for Ms. Caldwell, an Australian contemporary. But when she proved too busy to oblige, he donned a dress and played it himself. After Edna proved a hit with Melbourne audiences, he performed the character elsewhere in the country.By the end of the 1950s, hoping to make a career as a serious actor, Mr. Humphries had moved to London, where Edna met with little enthusiasm and was largely shelved. (She blamed Mr. Humphries ever after for her lack of early success there.)Mr. Humphries played Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker, in the original West End production of the musical “Oliver!” in 1960, and reprised the role when the show came to Broadway in 1963.But though he worked steadily during the ’60s, he was also in the fierce grip of alcoholism. Stays in psychiatric hospitals, he later said, were of no avail.His nadir came in 1970, when he awoke in a Melbourne gutter to find himself under arrest.With a doctor’s help, Mr. Humphries became sober soon afterward; he did not take a drink for the rest of his life. He dusted off Dame Edna and, little by little, de-dowdified her. By the late ’70s, with celebrity culture in full throttle, she had given him international renown and unremitting employment.Edna did not seduce every critic. Reviewing her first New York stage show, the Off Broadway production “Housewife! Superstar!!,” in The New York Times in 1977, Richard Eder called it “abysmal.”Nor did Edna’s resolute lack of political correctness always stand her, or Mr. Humphries, in good stead. In February 2003, writing an advice column as Dame Edna in Vanity Fair, he replied to a reader’s query about whether to learn Spanish.“Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to?” Dame Edna’s characteristically caustic response read. “The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you’re American, try English.”A public furor ensued, led by the Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek, who appeared on the magazine’s cover that month. Vanity Fair discontinued Dame Edna’s column not long afterward.In an interview with The Times in 2004, Mr. Humphries was unrepentant.“The people I offended were minorities with no sense of humor, I fear,” he said. “When you have to explain the nature of satire to somebody, you’re fighting a losing battle.”Mr. Humphries drew further ire after a 2016 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph in which he denounced political correctness as a “new puritanism.” In the same interview, he described males who transition to female as “mutilated” men, and Caitlyn Jenner in particular as “a publicity-seeking ratbag.”Sailing Above the FrayDame Edna, for her part, appeared to sail imperviously through. She returned to Broadway in 2004 for the well-received show “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance” and in 2010 with “All About Me,” a revue that also starred the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein.Mr. Humphries was back on Broadway as Dame Edna in 2010 with “All About Me,” a revue that also starred the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs herself — it was she, and not Mr. Humphries, who was credited — Dame Edna played the recurring character Claire Otoms (the name is an anagram for “a sitcom role”), an outré lawyer, on the Fox TV series “Ally McBeal.”Under his own name, Mr. Humphries appeared as the Great Goblin in “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (2012); as the voice of Bruce, the great white shark, in “Finding Nemo” (2003); and in other pictures.Mr. Humphries’s books include the memoirs “More Please” (1992) and “My Life as Me” (2002) and the novel “Women in the Background” (1995). He was named a Commander of the British Empire in 2007.Dame Edna also wrote several books, among them “Dame Edna’s Bedside Companion” (1983) and the memoir “My Gorgeous Life” (1989).Mr. Humphries’s first marriage, to Brenda Wright, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Rosalind Tong, and his third, to Diane Millstead. He had two daughters, Tessa and Emily, from his marriage to Ms. Tong, and two sons, Oscar and Rupert, from his marriage to Ms. Millstead.The Sydney Morning Herald reported that his survivors include his wife of 30 years, Lizzie Spender, the daughter of the British poet Stephen Spender, as well as his children and 10 grandchildren.Mr. Humphries had returned to Australia late last year for Christmas.Dame Edna’s husband, Norm, a chronic invalid “whose prostate,” she often lamented, “has been hanging over me for years,” died long ago. Her survivors include an adored son, Kenny, who designed all her gowns; a less adored son, Bruce; and a despised daughter, the wayward Valmai. (“She steals things. Puts them in her pantyhose. Particularly frozen chickens when she’s in a supermarket.”)Another daughter, Lois, was abducted as an infant by a “rogue koala,” a subject Dame Edna could bring herself to discuss with interviewers only rarely.Though the child was never seen again, to the end of her life Dame Edna never gave up hope she would be found.“I’m looking,” she told NPR in 2015. “Every time I pass a eucalyptus tree I look up.”Constant Meheut contributed reporting. More

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      Moonbin, Member of K-Pop Band ASTRO, Dies at 25

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      The K-pop star was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Seoul.Moonbin, a member of the K-pop band ASTRO, died on Wednesday at his home in Seoul. He was 25.The pop star’s death was confirmed by the band and its management agency in a statement in Korean posted to Twitter. They did not specify a cause.“On April 19, ASTRO member Moonbin suddenly left us and has now become a star in the sky,” the agency said. It called on fans to refrain from “speculative and malicious reports” so that his family could process the news. To respect their wishes, the agency added, the funeral would be held as privately as possible, with only family, friends and colleagues.According to the Korean news agency Yonhap, Moonbin was found dead at his home in the upscale neighborhood of Gangnam at about 8:10 p.m. on Wednesday by his manager, who contacted the Seoul Gangnam Police Station. Moonbin, born Jan. 26, 1998, was an actor, dancer and model as well as a singer, who also performed as part of the band Moonbin & Sanha. ASTRO, originally a six-person male K-Pop group, shot to fame in 2016 with their debut EP “Spring Up.” They were named to Billboard’s top 10 list of new K-Pop groups that year.In a statement shared early Wednesday, ASTRO announced the cancellation of the Moonbin & Sanha tour in Jakarta “due to unforeseen circumstances.”News of Moonbin’s death reverberated throughout the K-pop world, as fans praised the star for introducing them to the genre, and mourned the sudden loss.Moonbin is the most recent of a series of Korean celebrities in their 20s dying suddenly. In 2019, the deaths of two other K-pop stars left South Korea soul searching over what had gone wrong in one of its most popular cultural exports. Earlier this month, Jung Chae-yull, a 26-year-old South Korean actress, was also found dead in her home. Some, though not all, of the cases have been acknowledged as suicide.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. More