Category: people

The illustrator of Eloise, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and so many more was inspired partly by his time in the Navy. “Perhaps his most important education, though, occurred in movie palaces and at the lushly outfitted live entertainments that used to be Broadway staples. Vitrines at the library contain collaged homages to a chorus line of showbiz muses like Liliane Montevecchi (‘the most remarkable person,’ said Mr. Knight, a connoisseur of the appreciative adjective), Ann Miller (‘like a steam engine’) and Dame Edna (‘extraordinary’).”

After Williams’ star turn as Omar made him a celebrity in East Flatbush, “what followed was something of an existential crisis. Months removed from filming, Mr. Williams struggled to shake the grave psyche of his character. He was racked by doubts both personal and political: Had he lost hold of his identity? Was he glorifying the ills of his community, or exposing their roots? He couldn’t divine the answers.”

“Earlier folklorists had focused on black religious expression, the language of the church and pulpit. Mr. Abrahams described a new and vibrant verbal world, exuberant, profane and endlessly inventive. He explained the fine points of the dozens – a street-corner battle of wits in which participants traded insults … [as well as] jump-rope rhymes and counting rhymes.”

Adam Gopnik looks at Papa’s biography, writing style, and (yes) kinks, and finds that, for all the “stoical stance” in his prose and his persona, he had quite a sensual (if not quite hedonistic) side – and, what’s more, “he was naturally garrulous and jocose: indeed, by the time he was a celebrity he was so garrulous and jocose that it shocked people, though he was just being himself.”

The director said “he plans to concentrate on his other job, leading the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C.” What will happen to the Lincoln Center Festival? That’s unclear; “keeping the festival world-class and fresh, year after year, is a challenge, and some critics have warned that Lincoln Center’s was growing stale.”

How the books, which have sold millions worldwide and been translated into dozens of languages, got their start: “The story began on Christmas Eve 1956, when he was working as a BBC TV camera operator. On his way home, he stopped by Selfridges department store and spotted a toy bear alone on a shelf. ‘It looked rather forlorn,’ he told the London newspaper The Sunday Telegraph in 2007. He took the bear home as a stocking stuffer for his wife and soon began writing a story about it. After 10 days he had a completed novel, which William Collins & Sons bought for £75.”

“Branwell’s legacy has been shaped by sensation, such as the story that he once set his own bed on fire, or the suggestion that he died standing up. His erratic, out-of-control behaviour has contributed to his legacy as the family’s black sheep. … Despite being a passionate poet, writer and artist, he failed to hold down conventional jobs, and repeatedly succumbed to vice. Finally, his world fell apart after the end of an affair with a married woman, Lydia Gisborne, which accelerated his dependence on opiates and alcohol. He died at the young age of 31 from the long-term effects of substance abuse.”

The actor, who also had roles in action movies like ‘John Wick’ and ‘Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol,’ had lung cancer. “Nyqvist got his start training at the Malmö Theatre Academy, one of Sweden’s leading theaters and where Ingmar Bergman would frequently stage productions in the 1950s” – and one of his big screen breaks came in a BET series about Nelson Mandela.

“[Allen] defied classification while steadfastly affirming her roots in the hard-bop tradition of her native Detroit … In addition to her varied and commanding work as a leader [of her own ensemble], Allen made her mark as a venturesome improviser on notable albums with the saxophonist-composers Ornette Coleman, Oliver Lake, Steve Coleman and Charles Lloyd; drummer Ralph Peterson, Jr.; bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian; and many others.”