Category: people

In a Q&A with Cameron Crowe about a new disc of unreleased recordings, Mitchell said, “Polio didn’t grab me like that, but the aneurysm took away a lot more, really. Took away my speech and my ability to walk. And, you know, I got my speech back quickly, but the walking I’m still struggling with. But I mean, I’m a fighter. I’ve got Irish blood!” – BBC

Smith was called a “hep girl” and billed as the “fastest girl drummer in the world.” In the formerly all-male preserve of the big band and swing eras, “Smith sat behind a giant drum set that included a double bass drum, an instrument that would years later become a tool for hard-hitting rock drummers.” – The Guardian (UK)

As his biographer puts it, “In the 1960s and ’70s Lee radically and almost single-handedly transformed the American approach to stage design.” His work for spoken theater, dance, and opera won him numerous awards, including two Tonys and the National Medal of Arts; he had an equally great impact during his 48-year career teaching stage design at Yale. – The New York Times

Perlman was extraordinary, truly. The painter once said, “‘In my work I need to identify myself with the essence of things.’ Such fierce focus as a visionary expressionist painter nourished her in a life of unforeseen and radical changes of circumstance. She was essentially self-taught, and it was following her arrival in the Dutch West Indies as a young Jewish refugee from Europe in 1940 that her art emerged with a consummate self-assurance.” – The Guardian (UK)

Maschler upended the “clubby” world of British publishing and established all kinds of new and powerful voices. “Among the authors Mr. Maschler discovered, incubated or published and who would win the Nobel Prize in Literature were Gabriel García Márquez (‘the greatest writer I have published ever,’ he once said), Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, Mario Vargas Llosa and V.S. Naipaul. He also published or nurtured Martin Amis, Jeffrey Archer, Julian Barnes, Bruce Chatwin, Roald Dahl, John Fowles, Clive James, Ian McEwan, Edna O’Brien, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut.” – The New York Times

Her life was like a New York urban legend: “Ms. O’Hara didn’t move to Manhattan until midway through her long life, but once she did she plunged into the theater scene with gusto. Her children called her the Hurricane.” – The New York Times

“I thought that this was how I was going to die,” he recalled two weeks later, describing the attack in a written note because it was still painful to talk about it. He did not know how many in the group had hit him. They fractured his right collarbone, injured his arm and bruised him all over. After surgery for the broken bones, he was not sure whether he will ever be able to play the piano again. He has been unable to use his right hand at all, and said he is learning to do everything with his left hand. – The New York Times

“An inveterate skeptic and bristly contrarian in his profession, Mr. Randi insisted that magic is based solely on earthly sleight of hand and visual trickery. He scorned fellow magicians who allowed or encouraged audiences to believe their work was rooted in extrasensory or paranormal powers. In contrast, [he] cheerfully described himself as a ‘liar’ and ‘cheat’.” He made something of a second career out of exposing (and fending off lawsuits from) psychics and faith healers; he spent much of his MacArthur “genius grant” on attorney fees. – The Washington Post

Rhimes proceeded to call a “high-ranking executive” at the company to figure out the issue, but he showed no interest in giving television’s most prominent showrunner a $154 ticket to the park. “Don’t you have enough?” he allegedly responded. Rhimes collected herself, hung up, and called her lawyer with a simple directive: She was going to move to Netflix, and she’d “find new representatives” if that couldn’t be accomplished. – The Hollywood Reporter

“Fame arrived in the late 1940s, when she and Gower Champion began a professional dance partnership that continued through the next decade. … In television appearances and a slew of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie musicals including Show Boat (1951), they produced a chemistry that recalled for many viewers … the earlier performances of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.” And yes, as a young woman she modeled movement for Walt Disney’s animators, not only as Snow White but also as Dopey the dwarf and the hippo in Fantasia. – The Washington Post