People

Spinney created two indelible characters, and, in his long tenure on Sesame Street, assisted in the creation of many more. “His Big Bird had a childlike innocence, sometimes goofy, sometimes subdued, outgoing or shy, like most children a creature of habit and mood. His themes were simple: that it was good to speak up, O.K. to make a mistake, all right to be sad sometimes. At Jim Henson’s memorial service in 1990 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Big Bird sang a heart-rending farewell, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.'” – The New York Times

Leibman won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in the 1993 Broadway production of Angels in America. At that point, he had Drama Desk Awards and an Emmy, but it was as Cohn that his reputation grew. “So striking was Mr. Leibman’s portrayal that no less an actor than F. Murray Abraham, an Oscar winner, found him a hard act to follow when he took over as Cohn in 1994.” – The New York Times

In the early 20th century, Spiritualism was at its peak, and so were fake psychics who fleeced people who just wanted to communicate with a dead loved one. Into the breech between weird and real stepped Rose Mackenberg, who “investigated more than 300 psychics and seers in the two years she worked for Houdini and many more after that. In a career that lasted decades and led her to testify before Congress, she proved to be quick-witted, adept with disguises and unblinkingly skeptical.” – The New York Times

Camus had sided publicly with the Hungarian uprising since autumn 1956, and was highly critical of Soviet actions. He also publicly praised and supported the Russian author Boris Pasternak, who was seen as anti-Soviet. – The Guardian

“From [his chemistry] studies came an idea that he could translate science into art by using polarized light to bring rainbow colors out of transparent plastic shapes. In the late 1960s he used this process to create kinetic, or moving, sculptures. … Over the next 50 years, Mr. Peiperl’s kinetic art would be displayed at the Hirshhorn, Kreeger and other galleries in Washington and at art spaces in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and in Europe.” – The Washington Post

“Garrett helped transform J. Paul Getty’s pet project museum, which the billionaire originally operated out of his own home, into what is now arguably the wealthiest art museum in the world.” – artnet

“While [he] was not as famous as underground comics stars like R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, his artistic influence was nonetheless felt strongly, especially among other gay cartoonists. In the early 1980s he was the first editor of Gay Comix, a series of occasional comic books … He then developed Wendel, an adventurous strip about a man and his lover navigating the early years of the AIDS epidemic.” Cruse won multiple awards for Stuck Rubber Baby, a graphic novel that we might describe today as autofiction. – The New York Times

“Fontana, the first female writer on the show, … was perhaps second only to Gene Roddenberry, the series’ creator, in molding the sprawling Star Trek story-telling empire. … [She] wrote or co-wrote some of the most notable episodes of the original series, which ran from 1966 to 1969, and, with Roddenberry, co-wrote the pilot for its revival as Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.”. – NBC News

“When I began to explore Handel’s personal accounts at the Bank of England twenty years ago, I was often asked why. For me the answer was always ‘follow the money’. Handel’s financial records provide a unique window on his career, musical environments, income, and even his health.” – Bank Underground

“In monumental biographies of Peter the Great (1672-1725), Catherine the Great (1729-96) and Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra, who were assassinated with their five children and others in 1918, Mr. Massie captivated audiences with detailed accounts that read to many like engrossing novels. One was even grist for Hollywood: Nicholas and Alexandra (1967) was adapted into a film of the same title in 1971.” – The New York Times

When a woman in a close-knit Jewish family gets divorced and moves in with her parents, her friends tell her she’s just like Mrs. Maisel. But she’s no comedian, she thinks. And then the first open-mic night beckons. – The New York Times

Burgie, known professionally as Lord Burgess, said that the calypso hits he adapted and wrote for Belafonte “‘revolutionized music’ by introducing Afro-Caribbean rhythms to the pop mainstream.” – The New York Times

He was born and raised in Soviet-occupied Latvia and trained in what was then Leningrad; he became well-known in the West as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic and then the Pittsburgh Symphony. “In the first decades of this century he was frequently awarded the accolade of greatest living conductor. His tours in those years … with his two primary orchestras, the Bavarian Radio Symphony and the [Royal] Concertgebouw [Orchestra] of Amsterdam, were eagerly awaited events and rarely did they disappoint.” – The Guardian

Yalom, who was a professor of French at Stanford before she segued into writing history books for a wider audience, admired the salons of the 18th century in France and ran one of her own in the Bay Area “where women found support and encouragement for their writing projects as well as practical advice about publishing.” – The New York Times

Well, no time to confront those fears like filming a Noah Bambach movie, of course. Julie Hagerty has been in everything from Airplane to Lost In America (and a whole lot more), but it was new to work with Bambach – and for Netflix. Wallace Shawn, a frequent collaborator, says: “I’ve seen her act on Broadway. I know that she has an incredible … ability to control what she does to make the audience laugh, to do whatever the director wants her to do. When you act with her, it feels as if it’s never happened before.” – Los Angeles Times

McClinton, who was mourned on actors’ Instagram feeds and Twitter posts as soon as word spread that he had passed, was “a noted director who was a favorite of the playwright August Wilson and took two of his plays to Broadway.” McClinton was also an actor and a playwright who did some of his best work in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. “‘London and New York have the glamour and money,’ he told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2007, when he was directing Samm-Art Williams’s Home at the Pillsbury House Theater in Minneapolis. ‘But when you are working on Broadway, you are as much a director as a manager solving people’s problems. Here, I get to concentrate on the art, without distractions.'” – The New York Times

From the 1980s, beginning with the classic Unreliable Memoirs, he published a series of uproarious biographies that charted his journey from dusty Australia to windy Cambridge to grubby Fleet Street and on to eventual success with TV shows such as Clive James on Television. James may, however, be best remembered for inventing modern television criticism. – Irish Times

“He first achieved fame as an actor in the anti-establishment revue “Beyond the Fringe,” a hit in both London and New York. He went on to win acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic for his productions of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado” and other works. He also produced and hosted television shows. Most unusually, he was a medical doctor, with a special interest in neurology, who periodically left the world of theater to practice medicine.” – The New York Times

“[Paul] Sills, who directed the show, came up to him, and said, ‘Mike, I want you to meet the only other person on campus who’s as hostile as you are: Elaine May.’ She looked over Mike’s shoulder at the rave and went, ‘Ha!’ and walked off. It’s the beginning of a romantic comedy.” – Tablet

“It is saddening for me to say this, but I doubt that he ever wrote anything which could make a novice reader feel that the theatre (or film, or literature, or music) was an art worth pursuing, or worth attending to, as having some value for civilization. John published many books collecting his reviews, and I read through most of them, but I don’t recall them offering me any insight on why I should care about a given work, or about the art as a whole. I gave them away.” – American Theatre

“As Life magazine’s art editor, Ms. Seiberling helped shape public opinion about the 20th century’s foremost avant-gardist artists” — most notably, Georgia O’Keeffe and the Abstract Expressionists — “encouraging open-minded consideration of their importance.” – The New York Times

He was to theatre criticism as pigeons are to statues, William F. Buckley once observed. “In a style that danced with literary allusions and arch rhetoric — and composed with pen and ink (he hated computers) — he produced thousands of critiques and a dozen books, mostly anthologies of his own work.” – The New York Times

The 28-year-old was a member of one of the first big K-pop girl groups, Kara. She had attempted suicide in May. In her solo career, she had some hits and also some TV and movie roles. – The New York Times

Kappe founded the Cal Poly Pomona architecture program and was fired for being, as he called it, “free-swinging.” But, unlike many a faculty member could or would do now, he picked up his bags, recruited his own faculty, and started another architecture school: “The New School, soon to become the influential Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc, opened in 1972 with 75 students at its original Santa Monica campus.” – Los Angeles Times

Wilson’s “outlandish, often ghoulish cartoons added a bizarrely humorous touch to Playboy, The New Yorker, National Lampoon and other publications in the era when magazines propelled the cultural conversation.” – The New York Times

The Broadway veteran, perhaps best known as the original Wiz in the musical, won a Tony in June for his portrayal of Mercury in Hadestown, and he gave an “instantly iconic speech in which he gave his three rules for ‘longevity'” in the theatre. – American Theatre

Sir Stephen Cleobury conducted the King’s College Choir for nearly 40 years and instituted the annual commissioning of a new Christmas carol. He retired two months ago. “He was influential in the musical world beyond the choir, conducting a number of ensembles including the Academy of Ancient Music and the BBC Singers, and through his association with the Cambridge University Musical Society.” – BBC

In the years after the man who invented the essay died in 1592, his remains were moved between several sites. One of those places was a convent in Bordeaux whose building now houses the Musée d’Aquitaine, where a tomb was found in the basement last year. When that tomb was opened recently, there was a coffin with “Montaigne” written on it; scientists will now analyze the wood in the coffin and the bones inside. – Yahoo! (AFP)