Category: people

“In May, the 95-year-old Marvel superhero creator launched the suit against [Pow! Entertainment’s] co-founder Gill Champion and its CEO, Shane Duffy, after it was alleged Lee had been tricked into signing a document giving away rights to use his name and likeness.” In his statement announcing the end of the suit, Lee said, “The whole thing has been confusing to everyone, including myself and the fans.”

“Few musicians have broken free of the questionable tag ‘child prodigy’ as completely as Knussen, who transformed himself from the nervous teenager who conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in his own symphony at the age of 15 to a consummate musician: a composer, conductor and teacher who became one of the most respected figures in contemporary music.”

“Mr. Butler’s music was encyclopedic, precise and wild. He was acclaimed as a member of a distinctively New Orleans piano pantheon alongside Jelly Roll Morton, James Booker, Tuts Washington, Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint and Dr. John. He was also a forthright, bluesy singer who often used New Orleans standards as springboards for improvisation.”

The 57-year-old actor, who is in Sardinia shooting a TV adaptation of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, was riding a scooter when he was hit by a car that failed to yield right-of-way at an intersection. He has reportedly been discharged from a local hospital with only minor injuries.

With his Malibu-style, boy-next-door looks and stage name dreamed up by Henry Willson — the agent for Rock Hudson as well — the blondish Hunter was a constant presence on the front of fan and teen magazines in his heyday.

She lost her Hollywood career (though she found work on stage) thanks to her advocacy for free speech. “Hunt is the last surviving member of what was known as the Committee for the First Amendment. It was a group of a few dozen big Hollywood names, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston and Judy Garland. They produced a radio show called Hollywood Fights Back, protesting HUAC as itself un-American. And several members, including Hunt, flew to Washington, D.C. to show support for the writers and directors who’d been called to testify before HUAC.”

At the time of the profile, the 88-year-old documentarian was editing footage from the New York Public Library, and he had more than 150 hours to cut down to two or three. “While the technique is uncompromising, some of the observations are laugh-aloud funny – as when a telephone operator valiantly attempts to explain that unicorns don’t exist, or a picture librarian demonstrates a system of themed archiving with images of ‘dogs in action’. ‘Everything that I find is coincidental, but there’s nothing coincidental about the final film,’ explains Wiseman, who is not only the director and editor, but the sound recordist and producer.”

“Tom Wolfe, who died on May 14, had a lesser-known but not-so-secret passion: He loved to draw caricatures and cartoons with the same incisive, sarcastic wit that came through in his written social commentary.”

“Sometimes billed as ‘the world’s greatest trombonist,’ Watrous was universally admired among jazz musicians for the beauty and fluency of his playing, as well as both his speed and lyricism. Over a 55-year career he developed a long and spectacular résumé that included work with such luminaries as Kai Winding, Maynard Ferguson, Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, and Chick Corea, as well as the jazz-rock band Ten Wheel Drive and his own Wildlife Refuge Orchestra.”