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#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWalter Bernstein, Celebrated Screenwriter, Is Dead at 101His movies included “Fail Safe,” “Paris Blues” and, perhaps most notably, “The Front,” based on his own experience of being blacklisted.The screenwriter Walter Bernstein in 1983. His leftist politics influenced both his life and his art.Credit…Susan Wood/Getty ImagesJan. 23, 2021, 6:06 p.m. ETWalter Bernstein, whose career as a top film and television screenwriter was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist, and who decades later turned that experience into one of his best-known films, “The Front,” died on Saturday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 101.His wife, Gloria Loomis, said the cause was pneumonia.Described in a 2014 Esquire profile as a “human Energizer bunny,” Mr. Bernstein was writing, teaching and generating screenplay ideas well into his 90s. Until recently, he had several projects in various stages of development. He created the BBC mystery mini-series “Hidden” in 2011, and he was an adjunct instructor of dramatic writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts until he retired in 2017. “They’ll carry me off writing,” he told Variety.Mr. Bernstein’s politics — he called himself a “secular, self-loving Jew of a leftist persuasion” — influenced both his life and his art.“Fail Safe” (1964), the story of an accidental bombing of Moscow, was a bold rejoinder to the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. “Paris Blues” (1961), which he wrote for the director Martin Ritt, a fellow blacklist victim and frequent collaborator, starred Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman as expatriate American jazz musicians and delivered pointed commentary on racial intolerance. “The Molly Maguires” (1970), also directed by Mr. Ritt, concerned union-busting in the coal mines of 19th-century Pennsylvania, mirroring the social upheavals of the late 1960s and ’70s.Mr. Bernstein with Woody Allen on the set of the 1976 film “The Front,” based on Mr. Bernstein’s experience during the blacklist of the 1950s. Mr. Bernstein’s screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.Credit…Columbia PicturesThe subject of “The Front” (1976), also directed by Mr. Ritt and the only film for which Mr. Bernstein received an Academy Award nomination (it was also nominated for a Writers Guild of America award), was the blacklist itself: Woody Allen starred as a “front,” a stand-in for a writer who, like Mr. Bernstein, had been blacklisted. (Mr. Bernstein made a cameo appearance for Mr. Allen that same year in “Annie Hall.”)Not all Mr. Bernstein’s subjects were political. The football-themed “Semi-Tough,” starring Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh and Kris Kristofferson and based on a novel by Dan Jenkins, lampooned the New Age spirituality of such ’70s movements as EST; “Yanks,” starring Richard Gere and Vanessa Redgrave, explored the romantic entanglements and cultural differences between American troops and local Englishwomen during World War II. Mr. Bernstein’s lone feature film as a director was a comedy, “Little Miss Marker,” a 1980 version of the oft-filmed Damon Runyon story that starred Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews.A Hollywood EducationMr. Bernstein was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 20, 1919, to Louis and Hannah (Bistrong) Bernstein, Eastern European immigrants who were “not really affected by the Depression,” as Mr. Bernstein recalled in his autobiography, “Inside Out” (1996), because his father, a schoolteacher, was protected by civil service employment rules. He attended Erasmus High School in Flatbush, which was so crowded the students were split into three shifts, a boon for the film-loving Walter: When he was on the 6:30-to-noon shift, he could catch matinees next door at the Astor Theater, where admission during the day was a dime.Upon graduation, Mr. Bernstein was offered what he called a “wild, dubious” gift from his father: six months of an intensive language course at the University of Grenoble. His father knew a French family Walter could stay with and “had aspirations for me I did not share,” Mr. Bernstein recalled, adding, “If I had a choice of where to go for six months it would have been Hollywood.”Walter Matthau, Julie Andrews and Sara Stimson in “Little Miss Marker” (1980), the only feature film Mr. Bernstein directed. Credit…Universal PicturesBut the experience broadened him, thrusting him as it did into the midst of young intellectuals, often Communists, living on a continent where Hitler, war and Marxism were the currency of conversation.He then attended Dartmouth College, where he became the film critic of The Daily Dartmouth, a job that came with a pass for the local cinema. “The only catch,” Mr. Bernstein recalled in “Inside Out,” “was that there were no screenings or previews, so you had to write the review before seeing the movie.”“I found this no real impediment,” he added. “Anyone could review a movie after seeing it; that was mere criticism. Doing it this way made it art.”He also became a contributor to The New Yorker, for which he would write during and after the war, and where he eventually became a staff writer.First, however, there was a war to get through. Shortly after graduating from Dartmouth, he was drafted and sent to Fort Benning, Ga., where in 1941, during the relatively relaxed period before Pearl Harbor, soldiers staged a show titled “Grin and Bear It,” written by Mr. Bernstein. (“It wasn’t very good,” he recalled, “but it was a show.”)“Brooks Atkinson was coming down from The Times to see it,” he said, “and John O’Hara, who was the reviewer for Newsweek. It was a big thing. We were supposed to open on Dec. 10.” On Dec. 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.“One of the actors said, ‘Now we’re not going to get the critics,’” Mr. Bernstein recalled. “And we didn’t.”Making Wartime NewsWhile contributing military-themed articles to The New Yorker, Mr. Bernstein, who eventually attained the rank of sergeant, became a globe-trotting correspondent for Yank, the Army journal, a job that would last throughout World War II. It was for Yank that he got the scoop that would give him his first taste of fame.“Army Writer Also Sees Tito but Censors Stop His Story” read the May 20, 1944, Associated Press headline: Mr. Bernstein, defying military protocol, had been spirited into war-torn Yugoslavia by anti-German partisans and given the first interview with Marshal Josep Broz, known as Tito, the Communist leader who would head the postwar Yugoslav republic until his death in 1980.“I was the first Western correspondent to see him,” Mr. Bernstein recalled. “The Allies were planning to send in a couple of reporters from the pool and photographers, but the military wanted to delay any news about Tito till after the Second Front opened; the partisans wanted the opposite. They wanted publicity.”Although Mr. Bernstein’s interview with Tito was temporarily quashed, the Associated Press article made it world news.The screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, center, in 1947 after testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refusing to say whether he was or had been a member of the Communist Party. Mr. Trumbo, like Mr. Bernstein and a number of other Hollywood writers, was blacklisted.Credit…Henry Griffin/Associated Press“I had an aunt who was a charter member of the Communist Party; she worked for the party as a stenographer or something like that,” Mr. Bernstein said in 2010 in an interview for this obituary. “And when I came back from the war, she asked me if I would talk to some Communist functionaries. I said that was all right with me. They wanted to know about Tito; nobody was telling them anything. And I told them about my adventures.”“I didn’t join the party until after the war,” Mr. Bernstein said, although the events of the ’30s, including the Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism in Europe, made the Communist cause attractive to him. “The Communists,” he said, “seemed like they were doing something.”In 1947, with his Yank and New Yorker experience under his belt, a well-received collection of his war stories (“Keep Your Head Down”) on the bookshelves and a hankering to get into movies, Mr. Bernstein went to Hollywood. He had been offered a contract with the writer-producer Robert Rossen at Columbia Pictures, where he did uncredited work on “All the King’s Men.”Mr. Bernstein ended up staying in Hollywood for six months: His agent, Harold Hecht, had formed what would be a prolific production partnership with the actor Burt Lancaster and “offered me a job for twice what I was getting,” Mr. Bernstein recalled, “which still wasn’t much.”That led to his first Hollywood credit, “Kiss the Blood Off My Hands” (1948), a crime drama starring Mr. Lancaster and Joan Fontaine. But by this time the blacklist was starting to make itself felt within an industry where left-wing political sentiments had previously been both common and tolerated.Suddenly Untouchable“I was still in Hollywood in 1947, during the Hollywood Ten,” Mr. Bernstein said, referring to the prosecution of writers, producers and directors who had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to answer questions about their Communist affiliation. “I was working for Rossen, who was a Communist. At first it was the Hollywood 19, then it was cut down to 10. I don’t know why. Rossen was very upset that he hadn’t made the cut.”No one took the hearings seriously at first, but they soon would. Mr. Bernstein was considered untouchable both in Hollywood and in the fledgling television industry in New York once his name appeared in “Red Channels,” an anti-Communist tract published in 1950 by the right-wing journal Counterattack.“I was listed right after Lenny Bernstein,” Mr. Bernstein recalled. “There were about eight listings for me, and they were all true.” He had indeed written for the leftist New Masses, been a member of the Communist Party and supported Soviet relief, the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and civil rights.Mr. Bernstein at his apartment in Manhattan in 2000. He continued to write, teach and generate screenplay ideas well into his 90s.Credit…Jim Cooper/Associated PressMr. Bernstein and other blacklisted writers were forced to work under assumed names for sympathetic filmmakers like Sidney Lumet, who used Mr. Bernstein, now back in New York, throughout the ’50s on “You Are There,” the CBS program hosted by Walter Cronkite that re-enacted great moments in history.It was during this period that Mr. Bernstein and his colleagues, notably the writers Abraham Polonsky and Arnold Manoff, began the ruse of protecting their anonymity by sending stand-ins to represent them at meetings with producers, a ploy later dramatized in “The Front.” (In addition to Mr. Allen, the movie starred Zero Mostel, who, like the film’s director, Mr. Ritt, had also been blacklisted.)“Suddenly, the blacklist had achieved for the writer what he had previously only aspired to,” Mr. Bernstein joked in “Inside Out.” “He was considered necessary.”It was the now largely forgotten “That Kind of Woman” (1959), with Sophia Loren, that restarted Mr. Bernstein’s “official” career. The film’s director was Mr. Lumet, who hired Mr. Bernstein under his own name, thus effectively restoring him to the ranks of the employable.In the years following the blacklist, Mr. Bernstein worked regularly for Hollywood, although he continued to live in New York. Among his film credits were the westerns “The Wonderful Country” (1959) and “Heller in Pink Tights” (1960), the Harold Robbins adaptation “The Betsy” (1978) and the Dan Aykroyd-Walter Matthau comedy “The Couch Trip” (1988). He received an Emmy nomination for the television drama “Miss Evers’ Boys” (1997), based on the true story of a 1932 government experiment in which Black test subjects were allowed to die of syphilis, and wrote the teleplay for the live broadcast of “Fail Safe” in 2000.In addition to his wife, a literary agent, Mr. Bernstein is survived by a daughter, Joan Bernstein, and a son, Peter Spelman, from his first marriage, to Marva Spelman, which ended in divorce; three sons, Nicholas, Andrew and Jake, from his third marriage, to Judith Braun, which also ended in divorce, as did a brief second marriage; his stepdaughter, Diana Loomis; five grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a sister, Marilyn Seide.Six decades after the fact, Mr. Bernstein voiced a warmly nostalgic view of the Red Scare period, an era that has become synonymous with intolerance and fear.“I don’t know if it’s true of other people getting older,” he said, “but I look back on that period with some fondness in a way, in terms of the relationships and support and friendships. We helped each other during that period. And in a dog-eat-dog business, it was quite rare.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookA Trip Into the Otherworldly With Adrienne Kennedy as GuideA digital four-play retrospective, capped by a world premiere, illuminates this writer’s fascination with doubling, violence and Black identity.Maya Jackson, left, and Michael Sweeney Hammond in Adrienne Kennedy’s “He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box,” a Round House Theater production in association with the McCarter Theater Center.Credit…via Round House TheaterPublished More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Playwright’s New Subject: Her Husband, the Pandemic ExpertProlific and widely-produced, Lauren Gunderson didn’t have to look far to create “The Catastrophist,” a play about risk that’s both timely and personal.The playwright Lauren Gunderson, right, with her husband, Nathan Wolfe, an expert on pandemics and the subject of her new play “The Catastrophist.”Credit…Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesJan. 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSAN FRANCISCO — Confined by the pandemic to her three-story Victorian home, Lauren Gunderson did not have to go far to find inspiration for her latest play. He was one room away, in the home office next to hers on the top floor.Over Rombauer chardonnay (for her) and a vodka tonic (for him) she set her phone down, opened the voice recording app and interviewed Nathan Wolfe, her husband of eight years. The transcripts of those conversations are the basis of “The Catastrophist,” her new solo play that was filmed on a stage near San Francisco in December and will premiere as “cinematic theater” later this month.With the exception of Shakespeare, Gunderson has been the most produced playwright in the United States in recent years, according to a tally by American Theater magazine.Wolfe has his own claims to stardom, albeit of the more academic variety. He is an expert on plagues who warned presciently about the risks of a big pandemic years before the word became such an everyday, and despised, piece of vocabulary. (“This is Nathan Wolfe,” read the cover headline on the summer issue of Wired magazine. “We should have listened to him.”)The founder of a company that models the risk of epidemics, Wolfe speaks with a measured cadence, as if an algorithm had carefully selected the words. Asked how he plans his own activities, his answer would not be out of place in a World Health Organization news release: “We are not going to take any risks that are unnecessary because it’s not socially responsible and it’s not individually responsible.”Gunderson is colloquial and effervescent, speaking in metaphors that could be slotted into her next play. She tends to interrupt her husband to add some color to his gray sentences. “We all feel afloat, adrift. Where is the land? What do we stand on?” she said, summarizing our collective psychological response to the pandemic.Gunderson’s long list of works includes many that spotlight the lives of scientists, some well known, some obscure. This piece — which was commissioned by the Round House Theater in Bethesda, Md., and the Marin Theater Company in Mill Valley, Calif., where Gunderson is playwright in residence — is of course more intimate.That’s not to say she didn’t go in well aware of the pitfalls in basing a play around the life of her spouse, including hagiography. “Truly never been more terrified of writing anything than writing this,” Gunderson announced on Twitter.She, and they, will quite literally live with the consequences. “The Catastrophist” will be available for streaming from Jan. 26 through Feb. 28.“My job is to look at people’s complexities and faults, and failures and betrayals,” Gunderson said on a recent afternoon, seated in her backyard next to her children’s trampoline. Her voice was muffled by a paisley face mask. “To turn that kind of eye to my husband, who I love, is bracing. It was way harder than I thought.”William DeMeritt in tech rehearsal during filming of Lauren Gunderson’s play “The Catastrophist.”Credit…via Marin Theatre CompanyGunderson’s “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” is streaming through Jan. 17 from TheaterSquared in Arkansas. Her previous subjects include Émilie du Châtelet, an 18th-century French mathematician and philosopher, and Olympe de Gouges, a French playwright and early women’s rights activist.None were able to peer over her shoulder as she worked. “They are all dead, so they can’t fact check me,” she said. Gunderson said she hadn’t considered writing about her husband until Jasson Minadakis, the artistic director of the Marin Theater, sent her a text proposing the idea. Her initial thought: “No, no — no!”But she came to believe that her husband would be a good vehicle to talk about the pandemic. Minadakis would direct.“The Catastrophist” tells the story of Wolfe’s upbringing by a father who, along with other relatives, shares a particular medical vulnerability. It follows his quest as a virus hunter whose early career was spent in Africa and Asia looking for clues to the next major pandemic.In past science-related works, Gunderson has not hesitated to be educational as well as entertaining. And the Wolfe character’s disquisitions in “The Catastrophist” can have the feel of a National Geographic documentary. “We have only a minor sliver of knowledge of the viral world,” he says. “Viruses are the most abundant life-forms on the planet.”But at its heart “The Catastrophist” is a personal story about risk and mortality. And at a time when so much in our lives is disrupted or simply just canceled, part of Gunderson’s mission was to open a discussion about how we anticipate and deal with future risks.In one particularly explanatory scene Wolfe delves into the concept of the micromort — a measurement of the likelihood of death from a particular activity.Skydiving, at 8 micromorts per jump, is safer than a ride on a motorcycle at 10 micromorts, he tells us. Attempting to climb Mount Everest: 39,000 micromorts. His character admits that he is drawn to adventure sports, more so than his wife.“I promised her I’d never do anything over 200 micromorts,” he says.And at the risk of giving away too much, Gunderson, in “The Catastrophist,” explores how a man who spends his life calculating risk can do such a lousy job of assessing it for himself. “The playwright in me had to push all the buttons and unlock all the secret drawers,” Gunderson said of writing about her husband. Credit…Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesPerhaps inevitably for a play written in the throes of a plague there is a meta aspect to the work. Gunderson’s life in the pandemic was tightly intertwined with writing about it.San Francisco, like so many other cities, has been shaken and transformed since March. Tents sheltering homeless people have proliferated on the streets. Property crimes and drug overdoses have soared. Restaurants have closed, many forever.But from a purely medical standpoint, San Francisco appears to have beaten the odds. Its rate of deaths from the coronavirus, 27 per 100,000 people, is less than one quarter the national average. In the balancing act that we all face, the city has chosen safety and caution over economic continuity and normality.Gunderson was cloistered for much of the spring, starting in March when San Francisco and neighboring counties became the first in the nation to order residents to stay at home. She has bought her groceries online since; social interaction outside her family has been limited to a few walks with friends and sparsely attended birthday parties in the backyard for her two children, who are 6 and 4.But as a writer, Gunderson said, she was not handcuffed.“I’ve had the freest mind I’ve had in several years,” she said. “The deadlines evaporated.”“The play,” she added, “came out of that space.”That’s not to say putting it on has been easy.It was filmed the first week of December in the empty Marin Theater, across the Golden Gate Bridge. The crew included a woman whose job was to make sure the director stayed socially distanced from the camera operators; to provide hand sanitizer, gloves and other protective equipment; and to administer coronavirus tests. The tests were so expensive that the crew was forced to cut the filming from two weeks to one.“We were all building the boat as we were sailing it,” Gunderson said.William DeMeritt, a Shakespeare specialist whom she recruited to play her husband, flew in from New York and then worked from an auxiliary apartment near the theater, a mother-in-law unit owned by one of its patrons.“I rehearsed remotely from that little apartment with everyone else on a little Zoom screen,” DeMeritt said.The filming was done with only half a dozen crew members, each of whom was allowed access to a discrete space in the theater. It was shot in snippets, a novelty for a crew accustomed to works’ being performed from beginning to end.Gunderson watched from home via livestream.DeMeritt, who in pre-pandemic days had roles in “Shakespeare in Love,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and a handful of television shows, said he hopes the production inspires an industry that has been walloped by the virus. Anything, he said, to help theater survive the pandemic.He met Gunderson several years ago at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and they have kept up a friendship. After agreeing to take the part in “The Catastrophist,” he met with Wolfe and Gunderson on a hike in the Marin headlands, the steep ridges and canyons not far from the Golden Gate that afford wondrous views of the Pacific Ocean.But DeMeritt said the character he portrays has somewhat rougher edges than Wolfe the man, a tendency toward knowing-it-all that the director, Minadakis, encouraged, in part as a contrast to the personal vulnerabilities revealed in the script.“Lauren was able to put in some of Nathan’s less fabulous character traits because she knows him so intimately,” Minadakis said.“I had to encourage Bill to not get up there and play a hero,” he added, “but to play a very human individual who has pride and who has ambition.”Wolfe as a child with his father, Chuck Wolfe, a doctor who inspired his career path.Credit…via Lauren GundersonWolfe has become well known as a scientist whose warnings about the impact of a potential pandemic went unheeded.Credit…Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesWolfe has watched Zoom rehearsals and doesn’t seem bothered by the portrayal.“The play does a great job of showing the mildly irritating features of my personality,” he said in his backyard, before rushing off to take a call. “It’s an honest critique. We all have failings.”Gunderson said the play was a gift to their marriage. She, a master of words, learned more about her husband’s world of numbers and risk.And she’s confident she struck the right balance in writing about him.“The partner in me wanted to make my partner safe and happy and comforted,” she said. “The playwright in me had to push all the buttons and unlock all the secret drawers and make a mess.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWilliam Link, Co-Creator of ‘Columbo’ and ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ Dies at 87With his writing partner, Richard Levinson, Mr. Link helped shape the crime-drama genre on television for decades.William Link at his office in 2010. With his writing partner, he created the TV series “Mannix,” “Murder, She Wrote” and “Columbo.” Credit…Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesJan. 5, 2021, 2:56 p.m. ETWilliam Link, a prolific screenwriter who created classics of American television like “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote,” doing so in a writing partnership with a friend from junior high school that lasted nearly 40 years, died on Dec. 27 in Los Angeles. He was 87.His wife, Margery Nelson, confirmed the death, at a hospital.Mr. Link’s stories about unkempt detectives and persistent private eyes shaped the mystery and crime-drama television genre. With his partner, Richard Levinson, he also created shows like “Mannix,” “Jericho” and “Blacke’s Magic.”“Murder, She Wrote” starred Angela Lansbury as a mystery writer who solves crimes in the fictional Maine town of Cabot Cove. Network executives were initially skeptical of the idea of a female protagonist who wears reading glasses.But after they were sold on it, the series became one of the longest-running in television history and remains in syndication today. (Peter S. Fischer was also credited as a creator.)Angela Lansbury in “Murder, She Wrote,” which Mr. Link created with Richard Levinson and Peter S. Fischer.Credit…Corymore ProductionsAnother Link-Levinson production, “Tenafly,” starring James McEachin, was one of the first detective series to feature a Black lead actor.Their television movies also broke ground: “That Certain Summer” (1972), a drama that generated wide publicity, starred Martin Sheen as a divorced father who struggles to reveal his homosexuality to his 14-year-old son. “My Sweet Charlie” (1970), adapted from a novel and play by David Westheimer, depicted the friendship that forms between a Black New York lawyer (Al Freeman Jr.), who is falsely accused of murder, and a white pregnant teenager (Patty Duke), whom he encounters while on the run in Texas. The movie brought Mr. Link and Mr. Levinson an Emmy Award for outstanding writing in a drama.“Each time out, we tried to do something that hadn’t been seen before,” Mr. Link told The New York Times in 1987. “Something that would touch an emotional or social chord.”He met Mr. Levinson in junior high school in Philadelphia in 1946. After discovering that they both liked detective stories, they hit it off. “I was told to find a tall guy who liked to do magic and read mysteries,” Mr. Link told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1987, “and he was told, ‘There’s a short guy who reads mysteries and does magic.’”They began writing radio scripts and stories together as they discussed their mutual admiration of the director Billy Wilder. After graduation, they both attended the Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania.They sold their first short story, to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, in 1954. When Mr. Link was drafted into the Army and sent to Germany in the late 1950s, they continued collaborating on stories by airmail. In the 1960s, they decided to try their luck in Hollywood.As they started writing episodes for shows like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Fugitive” and creating their own, like “Mannix,” they became a prolific unit: rising early, brewing coffee and pounding out scripts to send to studios. (Mr. Link paced while Mr. Levinson typed.)They first brought the scruffy Lieutenant Columbo to life in a 1960 episode of the anthology series “The Chevy Mystery Show.” He appeared again in a play by Mr. Link and Mr. Levinson and later in a television movie they wrote, “Prescription: Murder.” The “Columbo” series, starring Peter Falk, began airing on NBC in 1971 and ran until 1978. The pair won an Emmy for their work, and the show was later revived on ABC.The first episode of the “Columbo” series, titled “Murder by the Book,” was directed by a 25-year-old Steven Spielberg. (In it, one member of a mystery writing team kills the other.)“Bill was one of my favorite and most patient teachers, and, more than anything, I learned so much from him about the true anatomy of a plot,” Mr. Spielberg said in a statement. “I caught a huge break when Bill and Dick trusted a young, inexperienced director to do the first episode of ‘Columbo.’”Mr. Link with Peter Falk, who portrayed the detective in “Columbo.” Mr. Link said of the character: “He’s a regular Joe: He’s the kind of guy you sit down, have a drink, a cup of coffee with.”William Theodore Link Jr. was born on Dec. 15, 1933, in Philadelphia and was raised in Elkins Park, a suburb. His mother, Elise (Rorecke) Link, was a homemaker. William Sr. was a textile broker who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen.Bill enjoyed drawing comic strips and began writing short mystery stories while still a boy. He and his Cub Scout friends recited his tales into a wire recorder and acted them out as if they were plays.“He loved reading Variety as a boy,” Ms. Nelson, his wife and only immediate survivor, said. “In Los Angeles, babies come out of the womb reading Variety, but he was probably the only kid in Philly reading Variety regularly in the 1940s.”Mr. Link graduated from Cheltenham High School in the early 1950s and earned a bachelor’s degree from Wharton in 1956. He married Ms. Nelson, an actor, in 1980.Mr. Levinson, who was a three-pack-a-day smoker, died of a heart attack in 1987. Afterward, Mr. Link experienced writer’s block and began seeing a psychiatrist to process the loss of his friend. The death led to his writing the television movie “The Boys” (1991), which starred John Lithgow and James Woods as two writers who develop a long partnership.“I had never written by myself; I had a fear I couldn’t write solo,” Mr. Link told The Philadelphia Inquirer that year. “I wrote the whole script in eight days. It usually took Dick and me a month. It poured out, like automatic writing. I felt like Dick was still in the room with me.”Mr. Link wrote well into his 80s, waking up early each morning to put words onto the page, and he contributed stories to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. In 2010, he published a book of original short stories about Lieutenant Columbo, bringing his best-known television character back to life years after the rumpled detective had been retired from the screen.In an interview with Mystery Scene Magazine at the time, Mr. Link reflected on the lasting adoration that people have for his cigar-chomping creation.“He’s a regular Joe,” he said. “He’s the kind of guy you sit down, have a drink, a cup of coffee with. He’s the regular working-class guy — who’s got a brilliant mind but doesn’t really tout it, you know? He’s humble, even to the murderer! And people identify with that. They like that.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
No one was more passionate about the cinema, one more experience we lost this year. More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Artists We Lost in 2020, in Their WordsGabe Cohn, Peter Libbey and Dec. 22, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETIt’s always difficult to lose a favorite actor or a beloved musician. But in 2020, a year of crisis upon crisis, some of those losses were especially painful, brought on by a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone. The artists on this list could help us better understand the time we’re living through, or at least help us get through it with a smile or cathartic cry. Here is a tribute to them, in their own words.Chadwick BosemanCredit…Magdalena Wosinska for The New York Times“When I dared to challenge the system that would relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical backgrounds, no hopes or talents, when I questioned that method of portrayal, a different path opened up for me, the path to my destiny.”— Chadwick Boseman, actor, born 1976 (Read the obituary.)Ann ReinkingCredit…Jack Mitchell/Getty Images“It’s crucial to know where the work stops and your life begins.”— Ann Reinking, dancer, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)Larry KramerCredit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a very opinionated man who uses words as fighting tools.”— Larry Kramer, writer, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Luchita HurtadoCredit…Anna Watson/Camera Press, via Redux“When that first photograph was taken of Earth from space and you saw this little ball in blackness … I became aware of what I felt I was. I feel very much that a tree is a relative, a cousin. Everything in this world, I find, I’m related to.”— Luchita Hurtado, artist, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Sean ConneryCredit…Bob Haswell/Express, via Getty Images“If you start thinking of your image, or what the mysterious ‘they’ out there are thinking of you, you’re in a trap. What’s important is that you’re doing the work that’s best for you.”— Sean Connery, actor, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Little RichardCredit…Eloy Alonso/Reuters“I’m not conceited — I’m convinced.”— Little Richard, singer, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)Alex TrebekCredit…Alamy“My life has been a quest for knowledge and understanding, and I am nowhere near having achieved that. And it doesn’t bother me in the least. I will die without having come up with the answers to many things in life.”— Alex Trebek, TV host, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)Othella DallasCredit…Beda Schmid“Dancing and singing is all I always wanted. Doing what you want makes you happy — and old.”— Othella Dallas, dancer, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Eddie Van HalenCredit…Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty Images“All I know is that rock ’n’ roll guitar, like blues guitar, should be melody, speed and taste, but more important, it should have emotion. I just want my guitar playing to make people feel something: happy, sad, even horny.”— Eddie Van Halen, guitarist, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)Ennio MorriconeCredit…Paul Bergen/EPA, via Shutterstock“In my opinion, the goal of music in a film is to convey what is not seen or heard in the dialogue. It’s something abstract, coming from afar.”— Ennio Morricone, composer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)Diana RiggCredit…Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“The older you get, I have to say, the funnier you find life. That’s the only way to go. If you get serious about yourself as you get old, you are pathetic.”— Diana Rigg, actress, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Helen ReddyCredit…Herb Ball/NBC Universal, via Getty Images“I would like to thank God because she makes everything possible.”— Helen Reddy, singer, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Jerry StillerCredit…Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times“Laughter is the answer to all the pain I experienced as a kid. When I’m not doing it, it all gets eerie and weird. I am only left with the memories that inhabit me that can only be knocked out by hearing laughter.”— Jerry Stiller, comedian, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)Christiane Eda-PierreCredit…Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“I have never had any support, I have not been encouraged by anyone, it is not in my character or the customs of my family. I made myself on my own, thanks to my work.”— Christiane Eda-Pierre, singer, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)Milton GlaserCredit…Robert Wright for The New York Times“I am totally a believer in the idea that style is a limitation of perception and understanding. And what I’ve tried in my life is to avoid style and find an essential reason for making things.”— Milton Glaser, designer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)CristinaCredit…Ebet RobertsMy life is in a turmoilMy thighs are black and blueMy sheets are stained so is my brainWhat’s a girl to do?— Cristina, singer, born 1956 (Read the obituary.)Adam SchlesingerCredit…Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty Images“I’d rather write about a high school prom or something than write about a midlife crisis, you know?”— Adam Schlesinger, songwriter, born 1967 (Read the obituary.)Anthony ChisholmCredit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m an actor. I can play a lizard, anything. I’ve worked in ‘nontraditional’ theater. I did ‘Of Mice and Men.’ Played Slim. The great Joe Fields did a Willy Loman. We as actors want to act.”— Anthony Chisholm, actor, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Olivia de HavillandCredit…Julien Mignot for The New York Times“I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword.”— Olivia de Havilland, actress, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)Krzysztof PendereckiCredit…Rafal Michalowski/Agencja Gazeta, via Reuters“Listening to classical music is like reading philosophy books, not everybody has to do it. Music is not for everybody.”— Krzysztof Penderecki, composer, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Helen LaFranceCredit…Bruce Shelton, via Associated Press“If I do something somebody likes, well, I’m satisfied because somebody liked what I did, but I don’t think it’s important.”— Helen LaFrance, artist, born 1919 (Read the obituary.)Kirk DouglasCredit…Associated Press“If I thought a man had never committed a sin in his life, I don’t think I’d want to talk with him. A man with flaws is more interesting.”— Kirk Douglas, actor, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)Aileen Passloff, leftCredit…Nina Westervelt for The New York Times“I was strong and tireless and full of passion and loved dancing as deeply as one could ever love anything.”— Aileen Passloff, dancer, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Kenny RogersCredit…Wally Fong/Associated Press“I love my wife, I love my family, I love my life, and I love my music.”— Kenny Rogers, singer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Peter BeardCredit…Shawn Ehlers/WireImage, via Getty Images“An artist who goes around proclaiming that the art he’s making is art is probably making a serious mistake. And that’s one mistake I try not to make.”— Peter Beard, artist, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Charley PrideCredit…Bettmann Archive, via Getty Images“What we don’t need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgment of what belongs and what doesn’t.”— Charley Pride, singer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)Elizabeth WurtzelCredit…Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times“The way I am is that I put everything I have into whatever I’m doing or thinking about at the moment. So it’s not right when people say I’m self-absorbed. I think I’m just absorbed.”— Elizabeth Wurtzel, author, born 1967 (Read the obituary.)Leon FleisherCredit…Steve J. Sherman“I was driven, if anything, even harder by all of my successes. There was always more to attain, and more to achieve, and more musical depths to plumb, and lurking behind it all, the terrifying risk of failure.”— Leon Fleisher, pianist, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)Zoe CaldwellCredit…Patrick A. Burns/The New York Times“I know the business of acting is sharing an experience, provoking an emotion. I don’t want to use the world love. It’s an abused word, hackneyed. But the truth is that I love to act in the theater.”— Zoe Caldwell, actress, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Louis Johnson, leftCredit…Marbeth“I am a dancer who loves dance, any kind of dance. In choreographing, I don’t think of dance as ballet, modern or anything, just dance.”— Louis Johnson, dancer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Terrence McNallyCredit…Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“I like to surprise myself. I’ve always been attracted to projects where I don’t know how they’re going to turn out. If I ever evince bravery in my life, it tends to be at a keyboard.”— Terrence McNally, playwright, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Jean ErdmanCredit…Jack Mitchell/Getty Images“I found myself involved with the dance as a child in Hawaii. We’d have picnics on the sand and get up and do hulas. I didn’t even know what I was talking about at the time, but I wanted to create my own theater.”— Jean Erdman, dancer, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)Bill WithersCredit…Jake Michaels for The New York Times“I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able to write songs that people could identify with. I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia.”— Bill Withers, singer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)ChristoCredit…Andrea Frazzetta for The New York Times“I am allergic to any art related to propaganda. And everything: commercial propaganda, political propaganda, religious propaganda — it is all about propaganda. And the greatness of art, like poetry or music, is that it is totally unnecessary.”— Christo, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)John le CarréCredit…Charlotte Hadden for The New York Times“I’m horrified at the notion of autobiography because I’m already constructing the lies I’m going to tell.”— John le Carré, author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Mirella FreniCredit…Karin Cooper/Washington National Opera“Life nails you to something real in the falsehood of the stage. I have always felt a connection between daily life and art. I’ve always known where the stage door was, to get in and get out. Some others get lost in the maze. My reality has been my key.”— Mirella Freni, singer, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Ming Cho LeeCredit…Robert Caplin for The New York Times“I’ve been criticized for doing very Brechtian design, but when I go to a play or an opera, I love getting involved rather than just looking at it. I prefer a total theatrical experience to an analytical experience.”— Ming Cho Lee, theater designer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Lynn SheltonCredit…Stuart Isett for The New York Times“You can pick up a camera. The technology is there. You can get your friends together and you can make a movie. You should do it. Now.”— Lynn Shelton, director, born 1965 (Read the obituary.)Nick Cordero, center.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“The producer kept telling me: ‘Get tough. Get mean. Get angry.’ But I’m a nice guy. I’m Canadian.”— Nick Cordero, actor, born 1978 (Read the obituary.)Toots HibbertCredit…Michael Putland/Getty Images“You have got to be tough. Don’t just give up in life. Be strong, and believe in what you believe in.”— Toots Hibbert, singer, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)Regis PhilbinCredit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times“I want people to enjoy what I do, and understand what I’m doing is for their enjoyment. And that’s all I can ask for.”— Regis Philbin, TV host, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Mary Higgins ClarkCredit…Tony Cenicola/The New York Times“Let others decide whether or not I’m a good writer. I know I’m a good Irish storyteller.”— Mary Higgins Clark, author, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)Irrfan KhanCredit…Chad Batka for The New York Times“No one could have imagined I would be an actor, I was so shy. So thin. But the desire was so intense.”— Irrfan Khan, actor, born 1967 (Read the obituary.)Betty WrightCredit…Paul Bergen/Redferns, via Getty Images“As long as you keep yourself in love with people, you can transcend time.”— Betty Wright, singer, born 1953 (Read the obituary.)John Prine Credit…Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesWhen I get to heavenI’m gonna take that wristwatch off my armWhat are you gonna do with timeAfter you’ve bought the farm?— John Prine, musician, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWill a Famous Critic’s Desk Cure My Writer’s Block?Seeking inspiration from Vincent Canby’s Gothic trestle table.Vincent Canby, a film critic who later also reviewed theater, at The New York Times in 1969. Not shown: Mr. Canby’s personal desk, which the author would acquire in 2020.Credit…The New York TimesDec. 17, 2020, 11:34 a.m. ETBecause of the pandemic, I have Vincent Canby’s desk. Millions of witty words must have drummed from his fingertips where I now slouch, stalled and mostly unproductive, without deadlines to drive me.During a 35-year career at The New York Times that ended in 2000, Mr. Canby wrote thousands of reviews and profiles, plus novels and plays in his spare time. Just look at the adjective in the headline of his Times obituary, published 20 years ago: “Vincent Canby, Prolific Film and Theater Critic for The Times, Is Dead at 76.” His byline even appeared nearly three years after his death, an advance 3,212-word obituary of Bob Hope, painting him as “a fast-talking wiseguy, a quaking braggart, an appealing heel with a harmless leer and a ready one-liner.”It’s a lot to live up to. Could his desk help straighten my spine, get me back in the game?My friend Ridgely Trufant, whose mother was Mr. Canby’s first cousin, inherited his estate, including his personal desk: six feet long, chocolate-hued with gargoyle legs and brawny, clawed feet. A rail of timber embellished with chiseled rosettes supports the structure, so it’s actually called a trestle table, Google tells me.The author’s temporary desk, courtesy of a friend who was related to Mr. Canby.Credit…James KnappI have scrutinized its undersides, crannies and shallow drawer with a flashlight and found no identifying markers other than a strip of masking tape on the left side labeled “6755.” The lot number or price Mr. Canby paid for it? Ridgely doesn’t know, but suspects her cousin bought it in the 1960s or ’70s when he lived in Brooklyn Heights, and Atlantic Avenue was lined with antique shops.I found a photo online of Mr. Canby posed at the desk in 1980, an ashtray to the right of his typewriter. I’ve framed it, so he’s here to challenge me, his eyes contemplating something in the distance, his smile a little skeptical. By this time he had settled into a roomy apartment on the Upper West Side, where he put up Ridgely when she came to the city to be a dancer.In the mid-1980s, Ridgely and I met at Perretti Italian Café on Columbus Avenue, where we were both waitresses. Mr. Canby, at the height of his career as a film critic, would sometimes visit the restaurant. As a cinephile and aspiring writer, I revered his opinion, and he was curious about mine, never treating me like a peon because my job involved an apron. His erudite, lucid film reviews drove me to haunt now-bygone theaters like the Thalia, the Beekman, the Plaza, the 57th Street Playhouse, the 68th Street Playhouse, and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.In 1967, Mr. Canby, right, visited Frank Sinatra on set during the filming of “The Detective.” The next year, he panned it.Credit…Neal Boenzi/The New York TimesSince all movie houses went dark in March, the Criterion Channel has served as my personal theater, its vintage offerings leading me to reread scores of Mr. Canby’s reviews before I ever dreamed of possessing his desk. We don’t always agree, but they hold up, lively and illuminating as ever.In 1993, he switched to the theater beat. He often took Ridgely as his guest when reviewing shows, and Perretti’s was a convenient stop on his way home. His longtime girlfriend, Penelope Gilliatt, had died that year, at 61. Another prolific writer, her short stories, profiles and film criticism had appeared in The New Yorker, her screenplay for “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” was nominated for an Oscar, and she wrote five novels.Ridgely said Mr. Canby deeply loved Penelope, but at Perretti’s he was adroit at masking his grief, charming and quick to laugh. He sat in the smoking section and started with a vodka on the rocks. He had a trim physique and dressed like a dapper newspaperman in a tweed jacket with elbow patches, Oxford shirt buttoned just so, his short gray hair neatly parted.One night in particular endeared him to me. I can see him at Table 3, looking up and asking me how I was.Terrible, I told him. I had moved to New York from Arkansas to be a writer and didn’t have to be at work until 4 o’clock and yet had written nothing that day.“You are a real writer!” he declared, jutting his brown cigarette at me. “That’s exactly how I feel if a day goes by and I haven’t written anything. Just lousy.”I was a waitress at Perretti’s for 13 years. The restaurant’s health care plan was invaluable as I advanced my freelance writing career, covering the entertainment world, restaurants and travel. When the restaurant closed in 1998, I hung up my apron, and doggedly got enough assignments to write full time.Those gigs were consistent until this March, when restaurants and travel shut down. I used to wonder what I might accomplish — a novel, a biography, a play, a sellable screenplay — if I didn’t have constant deadlines. It turns out I’m teeming with ideas, but without an editor checking in on me, I lack focus.Other productive writer friends have expressed similar chagrin. A tweet from David Wondrich struck a chord, likening these unnatural days to “writing with a head full of molasses and fireflies.”In the first few months of the shutdown, I, like many other New Yorkers, found purpose in decluttering the apartment, culling books and getting rid of obsolete bank statements, press materials and embarrassing screenplays. Some of my aborted creative writing projects made me cringe, while others made me tilt my head, thinking, Not so bad. Why hadn’t I tackled another draft?Maybe it was the lack of a real, official desk that left me uninspired. In 22 years of being a professional writer, I had never put much thought into my work space. Until this year, I wrote on a slab of wood propped up by two black file cabinets.The coronavirus changed that. In August, I found myself on a Zoom chat that included Ridgely. She lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the West Village, where she had recently committed herself to multiple virtual movement classes taught by yogis, choreographers and tango taskmasters around the world. Her living room had become a dance studio, with one big problem.“I’ve got to get rid of Vin’s desk,” she said.My hand shot up.Credit…James KnappThe Canby desk is a gem. I spent most of an afternoon rubbing its broad tabletop with beeswax polish and plugged away with a toothbrush to gouge the lint from legs bulging with cartoonish round eyes, libertine tongues and feathery toes. Curious about its provenance, I emailed photographs of it to antique shops and auction houses, but got no definitive answer other than that it was probably made in Europe in the mid- to late-19th century.I do know one thing: The desk should stay in the Canby family. I have retooled my will to leave it to Ridgely or her survivors. In the meantime, here I sit, rebuilding my writing life sentence by sentence. I just got an unexpected assignment for 3,000 words. The deadline is calling me back to work, and the desk feels like an old friend here to help.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
