Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Television

      Ron Ely, Who Played an Updated Tarzan in the 1960s, Dies at 86

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      He later built a career as a reliable TV guest star. His life turned tragic in 2019 when his son killed Mr. Ely’s wife and was then shot to death by the police.Ron Ely, a veteran television actor best known for his role as an educated, urbane vine-swinger on the 1960s show “Tarzan,” died on Sept. 29 at the home of one of his daughters near Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 86.That daughter, Kirsten Ely, announced the death on Wednesday on social media. It had not been previously reported.A tall, muscled Texas native, Mr. Ely (pronounced “EE-lee”) had made his name by the early 1960s as a reliable supporting actor on popular TV shows like the sitcoms “Father Knows Best,” “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” before landing the lead role on “Tarzan” in 1966.The show, which ran on NBC for 57 episodes across two seasons, featured a Tarzan updated for a modern audience. Gone were the semi-verbal grunts of previous iterations; in this version, Tarzan had left the jungle and learned the ways of modern civilization before deciding to return to the creature comforts of his former home.Gone, too, was Jane, Tarzan’s traditional love interest, though Cheetah, his chimpanzee sidekick, remained.Mr. Ely performed almost all his own stunts, which left him with two broken shoulders, a torn back muscle and two lion bites.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

      Paul Di’Anno, Early Iron Maiden Frontman, Dies at 66

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      The English singer played with the band in its early years. He later worked with other bands and pursued a solo career.Paul Di’Anno, an English singer who was an early frontman for the popular heavy metal band Iron Maiden in the 1970s and ’80s, has died at his home in Salisbury, England. He was 66.Conquest Music, a label that represented Mr. Di’Anno, announced his death in a statement on social media on Monday. No additional details were given.Mr. Di’Anno, whose legal name was Paul Andrews, gained popularity on the heavy metal scene in the late 1970s after he joined Iron Maiden as the band’s lead singer. He performed with the band from 1978 through 1981.While Mr. Di’Anno was with Iron Maiden, the band released two albums — the eponymous “Iron Maiden” in 1980 and “Killers,” which came out in February 1981.From left, Clive Burr, Dave Murray, Steve Harris, Dennis Stratton and Paul Di’Anno in a park in the United Kingdom in 1980.Virginia Turbett/Redferns, via Getty ImagesAfter leaving Iron Maiden, Mr. Di’Anno performed with other bands such as Battlezone and Killers and also played solo. He released his first career retrospective album, “The Book of the Beast,” in September.Mr. Di’Anno said in a recent interview with Metal Hammer magazine that he didn’t blame the band for replacing him with Bruce Dickinson, who would go on to lead Iron Maiden during its most successful years.“In the end I couldn’t give 100 percent to Maiden anymore and it wasn’t fair to the band, the fans or to myself,” he said.In his autobiography, “The Beast,” which was published in 2010, Mr. Di’Anno wrote that he also thought his band members had grown worried about his partying habits, a topic he wrote openly about.“That was just the way I was,” he wrote. “I’d let off a bit of steam, have a few drinks and generally act as if I was taking part in a 24-hour party, which I honestly felt I was.”Mr. Di’Anno suffered from health issues in the past few years, but he continued to perform shows in a wheelchair. He played more than 100 shows since 2023, according to his label.Paul Andrews was born in Chingford, East London, on May 17, 1958. In “The Beast,” he wrote that he had an interest in music since he was young. He remembered skipping school once to see the band AC/DC, which he described as “just on the verge of becoming really big then.”A list of survivors was not immediately available.The first time he saw Iron Maiden play was at a venue in East London. The band’s performance, he wrote in his book, was unremarkable.“It was a very early incarnation of the band, but Christ almighty, they bloody stank to high heaven,” he wrote.Mr. Di’Anno later met the band, and soon they began writing songs together and rehearsing. After that, as he wrote in his book, he “really began to think the band had the potential to be something a bit special.” More

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      in Music

      Libby Titus, Introspective Singer and Songwriter, Dies at 77

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      Her “Love Has No Pride” was widely recorded, and she had high-profile relationships with Levon Helm and Donald Fagen. But she was uneasy with life in the spotlight.Libby Titus, a singer-songwriter known for her wistful ballad “Love Has No Pride,” covered by Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt, and for her collaborations with the likes of Burt Bacharach, Dr. John and her husband, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan, died on Oct. 13. She was 77.Mr. Fagen announced her death on the Steely Dan website, but he did not cite a cause or say where she died.A highly regarded songwriter and backup vocalist in the 1970s, Ms. Titus never scaled the commercial heights as a solo artist. Still, she garnered critical praise for her first and only major-label album, called simply “Libby Titus” and released by Columbia Records in 1977, on which she was backed by an all-star cast of friends, including Paul Simon, Robbie Robertson of the Band, James Taylor and Carly Simon. Ms. Simon wrote or co-wrote four of the tracks.A showcase for Ms. Titus’s jazz leanings and her taste for torch songs, the album “immediately distinguishes her from the Hollywood cowgirls of the Ronstadt regiment,” the influential rock critic Dave Marsh wrote in a review for Rolling Stone. She is “a sophisticated pop singer,” he added, “closer to Bette Midler than anyone else.”The album included her version of “Love Has No Pride,” a heart-rending song about lost love and longing, written with her childhood friend Eric Kaz. Stephen Holden, reviewing a performance by Ms Titus for The New York Times in 1983, called it “one of the finest ballads of the rock era.”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

      Toni Vaz, Stuntwoman and Founder of N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, Dies at 101

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      She created a program to honor Black artistic success in the 1960s. But she spent decades trying to get its organizers to recognize her role.Toni Vaz, who cut a path as one of the first Black stuntwomen in Hollywood, with appearances in more than 50 movies, and then created the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards to recognize the often unsung work of Black writers and performers, died on Oct. 4 in Los Angeles. She was 101.Cheryl Abbott, her great-niece, said her death, at a retirement home for actors in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, was caused by congestive heart failure.The notion of a Black stunt performer did not really exist when Ms. Vaz began her career in the 1950s — she and others were officially cast as extras, received no training, and often did not know what dangers they might face on a set until the cameras began to roll.During the filming of “Porgy and Bess” (1959), Ms. Vaz was instructed to lean out a window to catch a glimpse of two of the film’s stars, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier. Unbeknown to her, a carpenter had purposely weakened the railing; it broke as soon as she leaned on it, sending her falling several feet onto a mattress.Shaken, she was handed a shot of brandy to recover.Throughout her career, Ms. Vaz played a critical part in support of Black actresses like Eartha Kitt, Cicely Tyson and Juanita Moore as they began to break out of the racially stereotyped roles that had long been their only options in Hollywood.But she and other Black stunt performers were typically paid less than their white counterparts for the same work. Standing in for Ms. Moore in a scene for “The Singing Nun” (1966), she and a white stuntwoman were directed to crash a jeep; Ms. Vaz got $40, she told the interviewer Amie Jo Greer in 2010, while the white performer got $350.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

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Adam Abeshouse, Prolific Producer of Classical Music, Dies at 63

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      A trained violinist, he found his calling in the studio control room. He also started a foundation to help fund recordings that lack major-label support.Adam Abeshouse, a Grammy Award-winning producer of classical music for more than 30 years who also ran a foundation that helps fund the recording of works not supported by major labels, died on Oct. 10 at his home in South Salem, N.Y., in Westchester County. He was 63.His wife, Maria Abeshouse, said the cause was bile duct cancer.Mr. Abeshouse, who was also a concert violinist, was prolific: Starting in the early 1990s, he produced (and often engineered and edited) hundreds of albums. Among the musicians he worked with were the violinists Joshua Bell and Itzhak Perlman, the pianists Simone Dinnerstein, Garrick Ohlsson, Leon Fleisher and Lara Downes, and the Kronos Quartet. In 2000, he won the Grammy for classical music producer of the year.Musicians described Mr. Abeshouse as a technically brilliant and joyful producer.“He had so many different qualities necessary for recording, but you don’t expect them all to be contained in one person,” said Ms. Dinnerstein, who recorded 14 albums with Mr. Abeshouse, including her newest, “The Eye Is the First Circle,” which documents a 2021 performance of Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata.“He had a fantastic, acute ear,” she added. “He knew how to do a recording session; he knew when you needed a break or needed to move on or to be pushed. He was an amazing engineer; he knew all about sound, microphones, acoustics, and had a huge array of vintage microphones.“And he was astonishingly good at editing. From all the takes in a session, putting them together was almost like being a sculptor.”Mr. Bell said that Mr. Abeshouse’s background as a violinist helped their collaborations.“He was a wonderful violinist; he didn’t just hack away at it,” Mr. Bell recalled, adding that Mr. Abeshouse helped him get past his perfectionism in the studio.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

      Bob Yerkes, Bruised but Durable Hollywood Stuntman, Dies at 92

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      A body double to the stars, he performed sometimes bone-breaking feats in movies like “Return of the Jedi” and “Back to the Future.” And he was still at it in his 80s.Bob Yerkes, who was set on fire, thrown down stairs and hurled from skyscrapers, bridges and trains during a nearly 70-year career in Hollywood as a stunt double for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Bronson and other big-screen stars, died on Oct. 1 in Northridge, Calif. He was 92.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Tree O’Toole, a stuntwoman who had been his caretaker. He had recently been ill with pneumonia.Though he was virtually unknown to audiences, Mr. Yerkes was a Tinseltown legend.In the 1980s alone, he flew through the air as Boba Fett in “Return of the Jedi,” hung from a clock tower as Christopher Lloyd’s character in “Back to the Future” and clung to scaffolding atop the Statue of Liberty in “Remo Williams.”“He is one of the few stuntmen I would say have celebrity status in the stunt business,” Jeff Wolfe, the president of the Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures, said in an interview. “His lack of fear was kind of renowned.”Mr. Yerkes (rhymes with “circus”) performed stunts in the films “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Poltergeist” (1982), “Ghostbusters” (1984) and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), as well as on television in “Gilligan’s Island,” “Wonder Woman,” “Starsky and Hutch” and “Dukes of Hazzard.”He was concussed more times than he could remember.“I’m better now, though,” he said in a 2016 video produced by My Gathering Place International, a religious organization. “It used to be that when I’d talk, I wouldn’t finish a sentence.”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

      Mitzi Gaynor, Leading Lady of Movie Musicals, Is Dead at 93

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      She was best known for starring in the 1958 screen version of “South Pacific.” But her Hollywood career was brief, and she soon shifted her focus to Las Vegas and TV.Mitzi Gaynor, the bubbly actress, singer and dancer who landed one of the most coveted movie roles of the mid-20th century, the female lead in “South Pacific,” but who abandoned film as the era of movie musicals came to an end, died on Thursday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 93. Her managers, Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda, confirmed the death.The role of Nellie Forbush, a World War II Navy nurse and (in the words of a song lyric) a “cockeyed optimist” in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit 1949 Broadway musical, had been originated and defined by Mary Martin. But when it came time to cast the 1958 movie of “South Pacific,” some considered Ms. Martin too old (she was in her 40s) and perhaps too strong-voiced for any actor who might be cast opposite her. (Ezio Pinza, her Broadway co-star, had died.)Doris Day was considered. Mike Todd wanted his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, to play the role. Ms. Gaynor was the only candidate to agree to do a screen test, she recalled decades later, although she was an established actress, with a dozen films, seven of them musicals, to her credit.In fact, she was shooting “The Joker Is Wild” (1957), a musical drama with Frank Sinatra, when Oscar Hammerstein II came to town and asked to hear her sing. (Ms. Gaynor always credited Sinatra with making her best-known role possible, because he asked for a change in the shooting schedule that would give her a day off to audition.)Ms. Gaynor in 1962. A year later, she would make her last movie, but she became a star in Las Vegas.Don Brinn/Associated Press“South Pacific” was a box-office smash, and Ms. Gaynor’s performance, opposite Rossano Brazzi, was well received. (She turned out to be the only one of the film’s stars to do her own singing.) But she made only three more films, all comedies without music; the last of them, “For Love or Money” with Kirk Douglas, was released in 1963. She turned instead to Las Vegas, where she headlined shows at major resorts for more than a decade, and to television.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

      Liam Payne, 31, Former One Direction Singer, Dies in Fall in Argentina

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      Payne, who was one of the group’s standout singers, fell from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, emergency services officials said.Liam Payne, who rose to fame as a singer and songwriter for the British group One Direction, one of the best-selling boy bands of all time, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. He was 31.His death was confirmed by Alberto Crescenti, the director of emergency services in Buenos Aires. The circumstances of the fall were unclear.One Direction burst onto the scene in 2011 when the group’s debut single, “What Makes You Beautiful,” hit No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Five of its other songs reached the chart’s Top 10, including “Story of My Life,” “Drag Me Down” and “Live While We’re Young.”The group, which had 29 total hits on Billboard’s Hot 100, would go on to release five albums and become one of the definitive boy bands of the 2010s, largely by eschewing the sleek precision and polish of an earlier generation of pop vocal groups.One Direction announced in 2015 that it was taking a break from performing as an ensemble, and each of the artists has since invested most of their time in their solo careers. “It’s just a break 🙂 we’re not going anywhere !!,” Louis Tomlinson, one of the band’s members, posted on Twitter at the time. 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