Category: people

“Her feminist war cry of a play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, is [her] signature work, produced on Broadway in 1976 when she was in her 20s. Now 61, her speech and movements slowed by a series of minor strokes but her intensity undimmed, Ms. Shange is having another moment, or two, this fall.”

While he performed on most of the opera world’s great stages, in such classic basso parts as Mozart’s Sarastro, Verdi’s Philip II and Wagner’s Gurnemanz, Polgar was best known for the title role in Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, for which he shared a Grammy with Jessye Norman and Pierre Boulez.

“Mr. Skinner never asked to become part of rock ‘n’ roll lore. He didn’t even like rock ‘n’ roll. He was just a by-the-book gym teacher … who, in the late 1960s, sent some students to the principal’s office because their hair was too long.” One of those students went on to found Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“Rocker Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore but gained greater popular acclaim in Europe than in the United States. On Sunday, devout European fans of the late musician brought his mustachioed likeness back home in the form of a bronze bust.”

“Her debut album I Dreamed A Dream was the fastest selling album by a UK female and also had the most successful first week’s sales of a UK debut album. Boyle, who shot to worldwide fame after appearing on a TV talent show, was also the oldest person to reach number one with a debut album.”

Alphonsus Cassell, known by his stage name, Arrow, “was among the best-known artists of Caribbean-born soca, a music derived from soul and calypso that emphasizes music over lyrics.” He shot to global fame with the 1982 hit “Hot Hot Hot.”

Movie fans will remember him as Woody Allan’s rival in Love and Death or Kid Twist in The Sting. For one generation of television viewers he’ll always be Rhoda Morgenstern’s father; for another, he’s Golden Girl Rose Nylund’s boyfriend. Yet over a five-decade career, he was in dozens of films and TV shows – and dozens of plays, which were his great love.

“I’m deeply embarrassed. Thrilled, but deeply embarrassed. … Partly because I’ve always hated my last name. It just doesn’t sing.“

The letters appear to reveal Wilde “propositioning” a magazine editor at a time when homosexuality was illegal. Alan Judd from Bamfords auction house said they are important as they “help to fill in pieces of Oscar Wilde’s tempestuous jigsaw”.

On Roman Polanski: “really a director that loves to direct actors, I really listened to him very closely.” Lars von Trier: “we do the scenes like they are in the script, but…at the end of the shooting, he said, now…you are going to improvise.” On François Ozon: “He knows very well what he wants. Of course, he expects something else, you know, something he hasn’t thought of.”