“Mr. Lee was 35 when his breakthrough film, Terence Fisher’s British horror movie “The Curse of Frankenstein,” was released in 1957. He played the creature. But it was a year later, when he played the title role in Fisher’s “Dracula,” that his cinematic identity became forever associated with Bram Stoker’s noble, ravenous vampire, who in Mr. Lee’s characterization exuded a certain lascivious sex appeal.”
Tag: 06.11.15
Jazz Great Ornette Coleman, 85
“Mr. Coleman widened the options in jazz and helped change its course. Partly through his example in the late 1950s and early ’60s, jazz became less beholden to the rules of harmony and rhythm, and gained more distance from the American songbook repertoire. His own music, then and later, became a new form of highly informed folk song: deceptively simple melodies for small groups with an intuitive, collective language, and a strategy for playing without preconceived chord sequences.”
Cooper Union President And Five Trustees Quit In Bitter Dispute
“Recent controversial decisions — including the board’s announcement last year that Cooper Union would abandon its tuition-free model — and the dismissal of Jamshred Bharucha, who is deeply unpopular with many student and alumni groups and the New York State attorney general, have led to contention and unrest at the New York City college, especially among the leadership ranks.”
Ludvik Vaculik, Influential Czech Writer And Dissident, Dies At 88
“Mr. Vaculik was a key figure in the Czechoslovak underground publishing world in the 1970s and ’80s, helping to give voice to other dissident writers in the country who were banned by the government. He himself was censored for more than two decades, but still managed to write a series of influential articles, books and novels” – as well as the famous Prague Spring manifesto Two Thousand Words.
Judge Rejects Claim For A Pissarro By Heirs In Nazi Art Case
“The ruling came after a decade-long dispute over ownership of the 1897 canvas, Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie, a Paris street scene by Pissarro, which is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.” In 1939, the work’s owner, a Jewish woman, was forced to sell it to a Nazi art appraiser for the equivalent of $360.