Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Bruce Logan, Who Blew Up the Death Star in ‘Star Wars,’ Dies at 78

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      A special effects artist and cinematographer, he also worked on “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Tron,” and took a detour to comedy with “Airplane!”Destroying the Death Star — the Empire’s space station and superweapon in George Lucas’s “Star Wars” — was a signature moment for the visual effects artist Bruce Logan.In the climactic scene of what is now known as “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” (1977), Luke Skywalker demolishes the Death Star by firing two proton torpedoes into it from his X-wing fighter, a triumph for the Rebel Alliance.“Blowing up the Death Star is my greatest P.R. coup, but was in fact very low-tech,” Mr. Logan told the Los Angeles Post Production Group, a filmmakers’ organization, in 2020. He added that he found newer effects to have “an unsatisfying synthetic gloss.”Mr. Logan — who was also a cinematographer and director — recalled that he could not film the Death Star’s detonation as if it were happening on Earth.“When you shoot an explosion conventionally, with the camera straight and level, with forces of gravity and atmospherics acting on it, what you get is a mushroom cloud which doesn’t look like it’s exploding in outer space,” he wrote on Zacuto.com, a film equipment website, in 2015.To achieve the needed effect, Mr. Logan manned a high-speed camera, which was surrounded by a sheet of plywood, with a hole cut out for the lens and a sheet of glass covering it. With the camera pointed upward, Joe Viskocil, a pyrotechnics specialist, set off a series of miniature bombs overhead, which created the illusion of the explosions occurring in zero gravity in outer space.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

      Rick Derringer, 77, Who Sang ‘Hang On Sloopy’ and ‘Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo,’ Dies

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      A Zelig-like rocker, the guitarist, singer and songwriter collaborated with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Peter Frampton and composed Hulk Hogan’s “Real American” theme.Rick Derringer, the ubiquitous rocker who sang the hit songs “Hang On Sloopy” and “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” in a music career that spanned several decades and also included collaborations with Hulk Hogan and Weird Al Yankovic, died on Monday in Ormond Beach, Fla. He was 77.His longtime caretaker and friend, Tony Wilson, announced his death in statement on Tuesday. No cause was given.From his early garage rock success to his many contributions to albums or tours by music royalty — Barbra Streisand, Cyndi Lauper and Peter Frampton all enlisted him — Mr. Derringer introduced himself to audiences across several generations.One of his better-known and enduring collaborations was with the Edgar Winter Group, for which he produced the instrumental chart-topper “Frankenstein,” which the band released in 1972.Early on, Mr. Derringer was the shaggy-haired guitar impresario who was the frontman for the band the McCoys, who rose to the top of the Billboard singles chart in October 1965 with their catchy rendition of “Hang On Sloopy.”The song, about a girl known as Sloopy from a rough part of town, has become synonymous with Ohio State University, where the marching band first played it during a Buckeyes’ football game in 1965. In 1985, the Ohio Legislature adopted it as the official state rock song.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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      Marcel Ophuls, ‘The Sorry and the Pity’ Director, Dies at 97

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      He was best-known for “The Sorrow and the Pity,” a landmark film that debunked ideas of vast French resistance to the Nazi occupation.Marcel Ophuls, the German-born filmmaker whose powerful documentary “The Sorrow and the Pity” exploded the myth of widespread French resistance to the Nazi occupation during World War II, died over the weekend in France. He was 97.His death was announced by his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert, who did not provide further details. Mr. Ophuls had directed several minor feature films before vaulting to fame in 1969 with “The Sorrow and the Pity,” his four-and-a-half-hour documentary on wartime Clermont-Ferrand, an industrial city located almost at the center of France. In a dispassionate, incisive style, he interviewed shopkeepers and farmers, bankers and entrepreneurs, teachers and lawyers who either collaborated with the Nazis and the Vichy regime or actively resisted the occupation — but who in most instances had turned a blind eye to the roundups of Jews and anti-Nazis.When the film was first shown in Paris cinemas, it was met with shock, outrage and tears. It stripped away the myth — fostered by Charles de Gaulle when he returned to France with the victorious Allied armies in 1944 — that a vast majority of his compatriots were either open or secret supporters of his resistance movement.Originally produced for television, “The Sorrow and the Pity” was banned from French airwaves until 1981. Conservative politicians denounced Mr. Ophuls, calling his work a “prosecutorial film” that unfairly portrayed the French as cowardly or worse. “It doesn’t attempt to prosecute the French,” Mr. Ophuls insisted in a 2004 interview with The Guardian newspaper. “Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?”‘The Sorrow and the Pity’ used French and German wartime newsreels, including one of Adolf Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower during a visit to France.Milestone Film)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

      ‘Duck Dynasty’ Patriarch Phil Robertson Dies at 79

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      He founded the duck-call business that became the foundation of his family’s reality television empire.Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the hit show “Duck Dynasty” and the founder of a duck hunting gear business that became the foundation of his family’s reality television empire, has died. He was 79.His death was confirmed by his son Jase Robertson in a social media post late Sunday that did not specify a cause.Jase said on the family’s podcast last year that his father had early-stage Alzheimer’s and other health problems.Mr. Robertson was one of the stars of “Duck Dynasty,” an A&E series that stars his family — Mr. Robertson and his wife, Kay; their sons; the sons’ wives; an uncle and some grandchildren — and revolves loosely around their duck hunting gear business.Mr. Robertson was born on April 24, 1946, in Vivian, a rural town in the northwestern corner of Louisiana, as one of seven children.He attended Louisiana Tech University on a football scholarship and after receiving his bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s in education, spent several years teaching in Louisiana schools.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Michael Roemer, Maker of Acclaimed but Little-Seen Films, Dies at 97

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      His “Nothing but a Man” and “The Plot Against Harry” drew critical praise but never found an audience. He said he took “a certain pride in not having been a success.”Michael Roemer, an independent filmmaker who earned critical praise for his keen understanding of character and his sensitive exploration of relationships in a slender portfolio that included “Nothing but a Man” and “The Plot Against Harry,” died on Tuesday at his home in Townshend, Vt. He was 97. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Ruth Sanzari.Mr. Roemer’s interest in moviemaking began at Harvard in the late 1940s. In 1939, when he was 11 and living in Berlin, he and his sister had been among thousands of Jewish children rescued from Nazi Germany and sent to England. There he would stay — writing plays to improve his English, he said — until he came to the United States in 1945, at the end of World War II.His career as a director began when NBC gave him the opportunity to make “Cortile Cascino,” a 46-minute documentary about slum life in Palermo, Sicily, that he made with Robert M. Young. It was also the start of a pattern in which his films would all but disappear for decades at a time.“Cortile Cascino” depicted a Sicilian life so grim that NBC executives balked at putting it on the air. It did not reappear until it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993.Long delay also befell “Nothing but a Man,” directed by Mr. Roemer and written by him and Mr. Young, a frequent collaborator. With Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln in central roles, it tells the story of a Black railroad worker married to a preacher’s daughter who struggles to maintain his dignity in the segregated Alabama of the early 1960s.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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      David Lazer, Executive Who Joined the World of Muppets, Dies at 89

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      At IBM, he hired a young Jim Henson to make humorous corporate films using his puppet creations. Mr. Henson later hired Mr. Lazer to help run his company.David Lazer, who as an IBM executive in the mid-1960s hired Jim Henson’s Muppets to star in a series of short films that injected laughs into sales meetings — and who a decade later joined Mr. Henson’s company as a producer — died on April 10 at his home in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 89.His death, which had not been widely reported, was confirmed by Doyle Newberry, a manager of Mr. Lazer’s estate. He did not cite a cause.“What David brought to the company was class,” Brian Henson, Mr. Henson’s son and the chairman of the Jim Henson Company, said in an interview. “Even my dad would say you couldn’t call Muppets Inc. classy. Up until then, it was a bunch of beatniks making weird stuff.”In 1965, Mr. Lazer was making commercials and sales training films for IBM’s office products division and had learned the importance of keeping in-house audiences at the company interested during meetings. Intrigued by a reel of commercials and short films made by Mr. Henson, Mr. Lazer wanted to bring his “sense of humor and crazy nuttiness” to IBM, he told Brian Jay Jones for his book “Jim Henson: The Biography” (2013).The star of Mr. Henson’s early films for IBM was Rowlf the Dog, who typed letters to his mother on a series of IBM manual and electric typewriters in which he described his new career as a salesman for the company. He promoted real products; he also plugged an electric guitar from IBM’s “Hippie Products Division” that, improbably, dispensed coffee.In another short, an early version of Cookie Monster devoured a talking coffee machine.“The idea is that if you can give people a good laugh, they’ll listen better,” Mr. Lazer told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1985.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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      George Wendt, Who Played Norm on ‘Cheers,’ Dies at 76

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      A burly, easygoing Chicago native, he became a staple of living rooms across the country for more than a decade as one of America’s favorite barflies.George Wendt, who earned six consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his role as the bearish, beer-quaffing Everyman Norm Peterson on the enduring sitcom “Cheers,” died on Tuesday morning at home in Studio City, Calif. He was 76.His death was confirmed by his manager, Geoff Cheddy, who did not specify a cause.Over more than four decades, Mr. Wendt racked up about 170 film and television credits. But he was best known for “Cheers.” He appeared on every episode of the sitcom during its 11-year run on NBC, which began in 1982. His streak of Emmy nominations for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series began in 1984.Mr. Wendt, a native of the South Side of Chicago, started his entertainment career in inglorious fashion, sweeping the floors at the Second City, the famed improvisational comedy club in his hometown that helped launch the careers of generations of stars, including John Belushi, Mike Myers, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.In 1974, he became part of the Second City’s touring production and resident company. “I had no acting experience in my background,” he said in a 2013 interview with The Democrat and Chronicle newspaper of Rochester, N.Y., “but something just clicked.” He remained with the company until 1980.With his easy charm and lunch-pail demeanor, Mr. Wendt headed for Hollywood to appear in the pilot for an NBC show called “Nothing but Comedy․” He later popped up on popular television shows like “Taxi,” “Alice” and “Hart to Hart” before becoming one of America’s favorite barflies on “Cheers.”He later said that his pronounced girth was key to the role, making Norm the relatable guy that viewers would feel like sidling up next to at their neighborhood bar.“One nice thing about being fat for a living is that you don’t worry about losing weight or dieting,” Mr. Wendt once said. “I don’t know how much I’d have to lose before it was noticeable. Anyhow, if I lost 100 pounds people would say, ‘Oh, no, not another fat comedian wanting to be a leading man!’”While the Norm character felt natural to who he was, he said, there were definitely differences between fiction and reality.“The Norm you see in ‘Cheers’ has been years in the making,” he said. “I have some characteristics in common with him besides our fondness for beer. But I think I’m a lot happier than Norm.”He added: “I was a beer drinker long before ‘Cheers.’ When I put a couple of six packs on top of my grocery shopping cart, people are pleased. I tell ’em I’m taking them home to rehearse.”A complete obituary will be published soon.Ash Wu More

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      in Music

      Shane Doyle, Founder of a Storied East Village Venue, Dies at 73

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      An Irish expatriate, he created Sin-é, a bare-bones cafe that became an unlikely magnet for stars like Sinead O’Connor, Bono of U2 and Iggy Pop.Shane Doyle, the Irish expatriate who founded Sin-é, a matchbox of a cafe and music venue in New York City that in the 1990s became a retreat for the likes of Sinead O’Connor and Shane MacGowan of the Pogues and a springboard for the shooting-star career of Jeff Buckley, died on April 22 in Manhattan. He was 73.The cause of his death, in a hospital, was septic shock after a series of unsuccessful lung surgeries, his wife, Mimi Fisher, said.Mr. Doyle opened Sin-é (pronounced shih-NAY) in 1989 at 122 St. Marks Place in the East Village, in an era when that neighborhood was still known for beer-soaked punk clubs, outsider art galleries and squatters in abandoned tenements who would soon be immortalized by the hit Broadway musical “Rent.”“Sin-é” means “that’s it” in the Irish language, and that pretty well summed it up. With sparse décor and secondhand wood furniture, the venue (a cafe by day) was about the size of an East Village living room, as Ms. Fisher put it. There was no stage and, in the early days, no P.A. system, which forced guitar-based solo acts to stand against a wall and strum behind a microphone stand, looking more like indoor buskers than marquee toppers.“I remember people coming in from other countries and going, ‘Where’s the rest of it?,’” Tom Clark, a singer-songwriter who had a weekly gig there, said in an interview.Nor did Sin-é have a liquor license, although it did sell beer on the sly, and food options were limited. Mr. Doyle would occasionally whip up a pot of Irish stew in his apartment on East Seventh Street and lug it over for patrons. (He also owned a nearby bar called Anseo — Irish for “here.”)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