Category: people

“Mr. Waugh started out writing private-detective mysteries before he tried his hand at writing a novel that focused on the details of an unfolding police investigation.” Among his novels were Last Seen Wearing, The Night It Rained, The Con Game, 30 Manhattan East and Finish Me Off.

“Page Cavanaugh, a veteran pianist-singer whose trio was a popular nightclub and recording group in the late 1940s and ’50s and who became one of Southern California’s most enduring lounge jazz artists, has died. He was 86.”

Mulligan, who died on Dec. 20 of heart disease, was best known for the movies To Kill a Mockingbird, Up the Down Staircase, Inside Daisy Clover and Summer of ’42.

“For me, acting is torturous, and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great – well, that’s absolutely torturous.”

“Julius Fast, who won the first Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers of America and went on to publish popular books on body language, the Beatles and human relationships, died on Tuesday in Kingston, N.Y. He was 89.”

“Russian authorities have reshaped the Georgia-born dictator’s image into that of a misunderstood, demonized leader who did what he had to do to mold the Soviet Union into the superpower it became.” These efforts go as far as the confiscation by police of archives containing firsthand evidence of Stalin’s reign of terror.

The Victorian novelist is certainly remembered as a social reformer, but relatively few people know that one of his dearest projects was a home for young rescued prostitutes – but a humane place where they would be treated with kindness as well as discipline, and made ready to build a new life in the colonies.

“In his many public performances in this country and around the world, he shifted English poetry from correctness and formality towards inclusiveness and political passion.” In the foreword to his first book, he wrote, “Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”

The actor and director (Gandhi), now 85, injured his head in a fall earlier this week. He was reportedly in a coma afterwards, but has regained consciousness and is in stable condition.

A star of the Bolshoi Ballet for 30 years (1933-63), Lepeshinskaya won the Stalin Prize four times and said that the Soviet leader had once called her “dragonfly.”