Category: people

In Gigi, “the delicate Delorme (who was followed by Audrey Hepburn on stage and Leslie Caron in the Hollywood musical) was perfectly cast as a young girl trained as a courtesan by her aunt, but who opts for true love and marriage to a rake whom she reforms.”

“When that film process first came into use, nothing seemed to show off its splendor better than her rich red hair, bright green eyes and flawless peaches-and-cream complexion. One critic praised her in an otherwise negative review of the 1950 film ‘Comanche Territory’ with the sentiment ‘Framed in Technicolor, Miss O’Hara somehow seems more significant than a setting sun.'”

With her husband, Bill, who died in 2007, she was a leading supporter of the performing arts in their hometown of Edmonton, Alberta and in Dallas, to which the Winspears moved in 1975.

“A raspy-voiced Brooklynite who co-starred with John Astin in the early-1960s sitcom I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster,” Ingels appeared on sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Addams Family and in such films as The Horizontal Lieutenant and Wild and Wonderful; among his many voice roles was Pac-Man. “But he was best known as half of what many thought to be one of Hollywood’s oddest couples.”

“At our house, even as an adult, I was always daddy’s little girl—his reading and conversation partner. But in other ways, I think I fell short of his fantasy. I think he had hoped my sexuality as a woman would be crisp and refined, but I wasn’t the delicate girl under the big hat. I ate butter with a fork.”

For thirty-five years at Harvard, George Scialabba did his clerical duties, and then wrote commanding philosophical essays after work.

“‘I don’t consider myself political, but I am an artistic activist,’ said the soprano, whose grandparents survived the 1915 genocide. ‘I grew up hearing their stories. To this day, I feel their pain, because their pain wasn’t resolved.'”

Jedediah Purdy acknowledges the truth of Kathryn Schulz’s takedown: “He was, in fact, a miserable asshole, … and the writing he is best remembered for sucks.” And yet: Henry Thoreau was a genuine American weirdo. He did not believe in niceness, or even civility, but in justice. … Thoreau is no model, but he is a useful and difficult conversation partner across the centuries, a difficult friend as he was a difficult citizen.”

“Mr. Anderson brought a deep understanding of masters like Piero della Francesca, Velázquez, Poussin and Degas to his still lifes, portraits, landscapes and streetscapes, while applying a modern twist that lifted them from the common run of academic realism.”

“Instead of using her $75,000 to ‘pay the rent,’ La Bissonnière wants to use it for a dream project – most likely, to publish a book on her philosophy of “poetic space” that would also be an illustrated retrospective of her career.”