Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Theater

      Helen Gallagher, Winner of Two Tonys and Three Emmys, Dies at 98

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      She was honored on Broadway for roles in “Pal Joey” and “No, No, Nanette” and then turned to TV, where she won three Daytime Emmys for her work on “Ryan’s Hope.”Helen Gallagher, who parlayed her song-and-dance skills into Tony Award-winning performances in revivals of the musicals “Pal Joey” and “No, No, Nanette,” and who turned to television to play the matriarch on the long-running soap opera “Ryan’s Hope” when theater no longer provided her a living, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 98.Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Patti Specht, a friend and the executor of her will.Ms. Gallagher was 18 when she made her Broadway debut in 1944, in the chorus of a Cole Porter revue, “Seven Lively Arts.” Over the next several decades, she worked with an A-list group of choreographers, including Jerome Robbins (“High Button Shoes”), Agnes de Mille (“Brigadoon”), Bob Fosse (“Sweet Charity”) and Donald Saddler (“No, No, Nanette”).Ms. de Mille nearly fired her from “Brigadoon” in 1947. “Agnes wanted very lyrical work, and I’d just done ‘Billion Dollar Baby’ and everything came out bumps and grinds,” Ms. Gallagher told The New York Times in 1971.But in 1958, when she played Ado Annie, her favorite role, in a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” at New York City Center, she unexpectedly earned Ms. de Mille’s praise.“She came in and restaged ‘All Er Nuthin’ for me, and she made it a little dance beside the song,” Ms. Gallagher said on the Behind the Curtain theater podcast in 2017.“She sent me an orchid on opening night,” she added, with a note saying, “‘You are truly a star.’”By then, Ms. Gallagher had been a Tony Award winner for six years. In 1952, she had portrayed the bitter chorus girl Gladys Bumps in a revival of “Pal Joey,” the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical about a notorious, womanizing nightclub owner, Joey Evans (Harold Lang), who is targeted by Ms. Gallagher’s character and a mobster in a revenge scheme.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Andy Paley, Whose Imprint Was All Over Pop Music, Dies at 73

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      Musician, singer, songwriter, producer and more, he collaborated with Madonna and a raft of other artists and helped resuscitate the career of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.Andy Paley, a music producer, composer and rock ’n’ roll chameleon who worked with artists as varied as Madonna, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jonathan Richman, and who helped resuscitate the career of the Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson after his much-chronicled emotional flameout, died on Nov. 20 in Colchester, Vt. He was 73.The death, at a hospice facility, was caused by cancer, his wife, Heather Crist Paley, said.A curator of the spirit of classic 1960s pop, Mr. Paley played many roles over an ever-evolving career. He got his start in the late 1960s as the frontman for a Boston-area power pop outfit called the Sidewinders, which briefly included the future FM radio staple Billy Squier on guitar and opened for groups like Aerosmith.Later that decade, he banded with his younger brother, Jonathan, to form a highly regarded, if short-lived, pop duo, the Paley Brothers. With their winsome looks and mops of blond hair, they appeared in the pages of teen bibles like 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat and toured with the pop confection Shaun Cassidy.A skilled multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Paley often went on the road with his close friend Mr. Richman and filled in on keyboards on Patti Smith’s 1976 tour of Europe.During the 1980s, he began to produce for Seymour Stein, the visionary label chief of Sire Records. Influenced by studio wizards like Phil Spector, Mr. Paley produced songs for numerous performers, including Debbie Harry, K.D. Lang, NRBQ, Little Richard and Brenda Lee.From left, Darlene Love, Phil Spector, Joey Ramone, Mr. Paley and Jonathan Paley in 1978. Even as an intimate of musical luminaries, Mr. Paley maintained the wide-eyed wonder of a fan throughout his career.Bob MerlisWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Charles Dumont, Who Wrote Enduring Melodies for Édith Piaf, Dies at 95

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      His dozens of songs included “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” a powerful anthem of redemptive love that became one of Piaf’s signature songs.Charles Dumont, who wrote the music for “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” the soaring song about sweeping away the past to find love anew that the hallowed but troubled singer Édith Piaf turned into an anthem of French culture, died on Nov. 18 at his home in Paris. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his daughter Sherkane Dumont.Mr. Dumont had a prolific career, writing melodies for the likes of Jacques Brel, Juliette Gréco and Barbra Streisand and music for French television and film. In the 1970s, he embarked on an award-winning career as romantic crooner.Still, it was the roughly 30 songs that he, with the lyricist Michel Vaucaire, wrote for Piaf — the diminutive and radiant chanteuse known as the Little Sparrow — that, by his own admission, defined his career. “My mother gave birth to me, but Édith Piaf brought me into the world,” Mr. Dumont said in a 2015 interview with Agence France-Presse.“Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (“No, I Regret Nothing”), introduced in 1960, became a definitive song for a definitive French singer, a woman who became not just a global star but also a cultural ambassador for her country.With its martial solemnity, the song had the feel of a patriotic anthem, which gave power and drama to lyrics that express, in blunt and defiant terms, a rejection of past memories, both good and bad, while moving toward a new future.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Chuck Woolery, Host of ‘Love Connection,’ Dies at 83

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      After a career that included stints on “Wheel of Fortune” and other popular game shows, he took a combative turn as a right-wing podcast host.Chuck Woolery, the affable host of “Love Connection,” “Wheel of Fortune” and other television game shows, who later criticized liberal values and the Democratic Party as the co-host of a popular right-wing podcast, died on Saturday at his home in Texas. He was 83.His death was confirmed by Mark Young, the co-host of his podcast, “Blunt Force Truth.” He did not specify the cause.In the late 1970s, Mr. Woolery was the inaugural host of “Wheel of Fortune,” now one of the longest-running game shows on television. And in the early 1980s, he was tapped to host “Love Connection,” a dating show that helped to make him a household name.On a stage flush with red and pink cutout hearts, he maneuvered with an easy charm through interactions that could be both endearing and irreverent.At times he could be a coaxing Cupid; at others, a referee as contestants traded barbs over who was complaining or who had skipped out on dinner.“I felt more like the audience,” Mr. Woolery said in a 2020 interview with the journalist Adam Wurtzel. “What would the audience ask? What would the audience feel?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Alice Brock, Restaurant Owner Made Famous by a Song, Dies at 83

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      Arlo Guthrie’s antiwar staple “Alice’s Restaurant” was inspired by a Thanksgiving Day visit to her diner in western Massachusetts.Alice Brock, whose eatery in western Massachusetts was immortalized as the place where “you can get anything you want” in Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 antiwar song “Alice’s Restaurant,” died on Thursday in Wellfleet, Mass. — just a week before Thanksgiving, the holiday during which the rambling story at the center of the song takes place. She was 83.Viki Merrick, her caregiver, said she died in a hospice from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Ever since Mr. Guthrie released the song, officially called “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” in 1967, it has been a staple of classic-rock stations every late November, not to mention car trip singalongs on the way to visit family for Thanksgiving dinner.Ms. Brock’s restaurant, the Back Room, does not feature much in the song itself. Over the course of a little more than 18 minutes, Mr. Guthrie — doing more talking than singing — recounts a visit that he and a friend, Rick Robbins, paid to Ms. Brock and her husband, Ray Brock, for Thanksgiving dinner.Ms. Brock with Mr. Guthrie in 1977. They met when she was a school librarian and he was a student.Peter Simon Collection, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst LibrariesA shaggy-dog story ensues: Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Robbins take some trash to the city dump, but, finding it closed, leave it in a ravine instead. The next morning the police arrest them for littering, and Ms. Brock has to bail them out.That night she cooks them all a big meal, and the following day they appear in court, where the judge fines them $50. Later, Mr. Guthrie is ordered to an Army induction center, where he is able to avoid the draft because of his criminal record.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Peter Sinfield, Lyricist for King Crimson, Dies at 80

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      His swirls of poetic imagery helped define progressive rock in the 1970s. He later turned his focus to pop acts like Celine Dion.Peter Sinfield, whose mystical and at times politically pointed lyrics for the British band King Crimson became emblematic of the progressive rock movement of the 1970s, died on Nov. 14 in London. He was 80.His death was announced on the website of DGM, the record label founded by the King Crimson mastermind and virtuoso guitarist Robert Fripp, along with David Singleton. The statement did not say where Mr. Sinfield died or cite a cause, but it noted that he “had been suffering from declining health for several years.”Mr. Sinfield, who once referred to himself as the band’s “pet hippie,” linked up with Mr. Fripp in 1968 after living an itinerant life in Spain and Morocco. He was the lyricist on the first four King Crimson albums, starting with “In the Court of the Crimson King” in 1969, which is widely regarded as the first album in the genre that came to be known as prog rock.But his role was varied. He also helped produce King Crimson’s albums and worked as a roadie, lighting operator and sound engineer and, as art director, oversaw the band’s album covers. He even came up with the name of the band, plucked from his lyrics for the song “The Court of the Crimson King.”“I was looking at things like Led Zeppelin, the Who — I could see that it had to be something powerful,” Mr. Sinfield recalled in a 2012 video interview. “And I thought, actually, if we just take it from the song and just call it King Crimson, that’s pretty powerful. And it isn’t the Devil. It isn’t Beelzebub, but it’s arrogant, and it’s got a feeling of darkness about it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Vic Flick, Guitarist Who Plucked the James Bond Theme, Dies at 87

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      A busy session musician, he also recorded music for the Beatles’ film “A Hard Day’s Night” and contributed to several hit songs.Vic Flick, a British guitarist whose driving riff in the theme for the James Bond movies captured the spy’s suave confidence and tacit danger, died on Nov. 14 in Los Angeles. He was 87.His death, in a nursing facility, was announced on social media by his son, Kevin, who said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.The Bond films produced signature catchphrases (“shaken, not stirred,” “Bond, James Bond”) that have been endlessly recited and parodied since “Dr. No,” the first in the series, was released in Britain in 1962. But it was the sound of Mr. Flick’s guitar in the opening credits that helped make the spy thrillers instantly recognizable.During the title credits of “Dr. No,” when moviegoers were introduced to or reacquainted with the works of the author Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond books, Mr. Flick’s thrumming guitar sounded out through a brass-and-string orchestra.“The selection of strings available in the late ’50s and early ’60s was abysmal compared to today,” he wrote in his 2008 autobiography, “Vic Flick, Guitarman: From James Bond to The Beatles and Beyond.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Morgan Jenness, Whose Artistic Vision Influenced American Theater, Dies at 72

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      A beloved figure in the theatrical community, she redefined the role of dramaturg, influencing playwrights like David Adjmi and David Henry Hwang.Morgan Jenness, a dramaturg, teacher and theatrical agent who nurtured the work of countless playwrights — including Taylor Mac, David Adjmi, David Henry Hwang, Larry Kramer and Maria Irene Fornés — died on Nov. 12. Ms. Jenness, who in recent years began using the pronouns they/them and she interchangeably, was 72.Mx. Mac confirmed the death. “In Act 3 of her life, she was exploring her gender identity,” said Mx. Mac, who went to Ms. Jenness’s apartment in the East Village of Manhattan with two friends after she failed to show up for a class she taught at Columbia University and discovered her body. The cause of death had not yet been determined.Ms. Jenness was a revered and beloved figure in the theater community — particularly the downtown theater community. (In many ways, she was its embodiment.) She had a deep moral seriousness, colleagues said, as well as a fierce artistic integrity and a passion for subversive work that had depth charges in all the right places. She also had “a complete indifference to material success,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, where Ms. Jenness began her career. “She was frankly repelled by it.”The play was the thing.“She would ask writers, ‘What do you want to inject into the bloodstream of the American theater?’” recalled Beth Blickers, a theatrical agent.“If you said, ‘I just want to tell good stories,’ she would turn to me and say, ‘That was a terrible answer,’” Ms. Blickers continued. “She wanted someone to say, ‘I have a passion for this community or this idea.’ To tell good stories wasn’t enough.”A dramaturg has been defined as a sort of literary and theatrical adviser who helps the actors and director understand the play they’re presenting. “But that was the European model, focused primarily on the classics,” Mr. Eustis said. “Morgan was one of the first generation of people who were defining what a new play dramaturg was: the midwife and support system of a playwright.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More