Category: people

His Naked City (1948) was one of the first police dramas shot on location. He was forced to leave the US in the 1950s after being blacklisted because he had joined the Communist Party in his youth. “I was one of the lucky ones. I was only unemployed five years … others never worked again.”

The estate has been having money problems. “The organization that owns the estate, Edith Wharton Restoration, has borrowed $4.3 million for operating costs, but in January missed a $30,000 payment, prompting a bank to start foreclosure proceedings.”

“Angus Fairhurst, one of the original Young British Artists who blazed such a trail through the 1990s, has taken his own life in a remote part of Scotland, it was announced today. He was 41.”

Three Zeffirelli productions are being performed this season, including Puccini’s “La Boheme.” Its season opening Saturday was a celebration of the Italian director who made his Met debut in 1964 with a production of Verdi’s “Falstaff.”

Director Anthony Minghella was involved in dozens of movie, opera and theatre projects. And “he served as a mentor-consultant-friend to many projects he wasn’t officially tied to. Colleagues and friends agree they cannot recall another contemporary artist who cut such a wide swath through so many sectors of pop culture and who was as generous in helping associates.”

Three years ago Lubniela Milev found herself in a homeless shelter. Grateful for the help, since she’s got back on her feet again, “not only has she returned to the homeless coalition to teach art classes to the children there, but twice she has donated a percentage of her art sales to the shelter. Though she is hardly a wealthy woman, so far she has raised nearly $1,000 and counting.”

A prominent artist who had run-ins with both church and state in her native Russia after taking part in a controversial exhibition has disappeared without a trace from her new home in Berlin.

Farrell Frentress spent 40 years raising funds for top Chicago cultural institutions. “He once aspired no higher than to run a YMCA. But he worked with leaders in Chicago opera as he helped to sustain Lyric’s rebound from near-insolvency. He helped reshape the board and culture at the parent of WTTW-Ch. 11 and WFMT-FM 98.7 and finance an ambitious expansion there.”

Harrison Birtwhistle is one of the UK’s most influential and underappreciated composers, says Norman Lebrecht. “Birtwistle has a knack, almost unique among composers, of retuning our ears to the world… Not that everyone appreciates his onslaughts.”

Famed British actor Paul Scofield, who died last week at 86, was one of the least actor-ish actors ever to tread the boards, shunning fame and public adulation even as his reputation grew. “That he did not commit himself to playing the star – even though he was one – is what made him so fascinating to many of us.”