Category: people

While his career in both theater and movies included such hits as Mame, Same Time Next Year and I Love My Wife, Saks was best known for a long series of collaborations (stage and screen) with Neil Simon, from Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple through to the “Brighton Beach Trilogy.”

Following the successful struggle to keep Brandeis University from closing the Rose and selling off its collection, Rush went on to become founding director of the Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

Four years ago, when he was still prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described a peace monument by sculptor Mehmet Aksoy near the Turkish-Armenian border as a “monstrosity.” Under libel laws that Erdoğan has been quick to use himself against critics, he was ordered to pay Aksoy 10,000 lire (about $3,800). The president is appealing.

“I began to see analogues between the founding of the United States and what we would need to do to go into space. I want to point out very, very strongly that this analogy between the founding of the US and space law is not a call for United States dominance or Manifest Destiny in space.”

Sally Forrest, who died March 15 at age 86, “began studying dance at an early age and was signed to an MGM contract shortly after graduating from high school. She had several uncredited roles as a dancer before being cast as a woman who has a child out of wedlock in the 1949 drama ‘Not Wanted.'”

“Inspired by Chinese landscape paintings, [Tyrus Wong] used watercolor and pastels to make sample sketches that evoked forest scenes with simple strokes of color and special attention to light and shadow. … Wong’s sketches caught Disney’s eye and became the guide for Bambi’s background artists, who were later trained to mimic his style.”

“He wrote in exceptionally pure, cold Swedish without frills. His descriptions of nature were as sparse and alive as a Japanese painting. … His sparse output was highly praised from the moment his first collection, 17 Poems, appeared in 1954 and he was acknowledged as Sweden’s greatest living poet long before he won the Nobel Prize. He was translated into more than 60 languages.”

Goff, who died on Wednesday after a long illness, masterminded the Booker for more than three decades. “The current health of English fiction can be explained in two words: Martyn Goff,” wrote John Sutherland, when the former bookseller announced he was stepping down from the prize in 2002.

“For an English monarchy that has lasted more than 1,000 years, there can have been few more improbable occasions than the ceremony of remembrance here on Thursday for the reburial of one of the most bloodstained medieval sovereigns.”

“I don’t want my statements to be frozen in time. A date should always be attached to them. Certainly if you take a picture of yourself 30 years ago, that same picture cannot be used as a picture of yourself today.” His incendiary comments, whether directed at his contemporaries (he has described Duchamp as ‘a pompous bore’, Cage as ‘a performing monkey’, and Stockhausen, ‘a hippie’), or more general topics such as culture and history, however, suggest that he enjoys the controversy.