Obituaries
This page lists the obituaries of people who made news during their lifetimes. Obituaries of historians can be found here.
SOURCE: NYT(9-30-10)
Tony Curtis, a classically handsome movie star who earned an Oscar nomination as an escaped convict in Stanley Kramer’s 1958 movie “The Defiant Ones,” but whose public preferred him in comic roles in films like “Some Like It Hot” (1959) and “The Great Race” (1965), died Wednesday of a cardiac arrest in his Las Vegas area home. He was 85.
His death was confirmed by the Clark County coroner, The Associated Press reported.
As a performer, Mr. Curtis drew first and foremost on his startlingly good looks. With his dark, curly hair, worn in a sculptural style later imitated by Elvis Presley, and plucked eyebrows framing pale blue eyes and wide, full lips, Mr. Curtis embodied a new kind of feminized male beauty that came into vogue in the early 1950s. A vigorous heterosexual in his widely publicized (not least by himself) private life, he was often cast in roles that drew on a perceived ambiguity: his full-drag impersonation of a female jazz musician in “Some Like It Hot,” a slave who attracts the interest of a Roman senator (Laurence Olivier) in Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” (1960), a man attracted to a mysterious blond (Debbie Reynolds) who turns out to be the reincarnation of his male best friend in Vincente Minnelli’s “Goodbye Charlie” (1964)....
His death was confirmed by the Clark County coroner, The Associated Press reported.
As a performer, Mr. Curtis drew first and foremost on his startlingly good looks. With his dark, curly hair, worn in a sculptural style later imitated by Elvis Presley, and plucked eyebrows framing pale blue eyes and wide, full lips, Mr. Curtis embodied a new kind of feminized male beauty that came into vogue in the early 1950s. A vigorous heterosexual in his widely publicized (not least by himself) private life, he was often cast in roles that drew on a perceived ambiguity: his full-drag impersonation of a female jazz musician in “Some Like It Hot,” a slave who attracts the interest of a Roman senator (Laurence Olivier) in Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” (1960), a man attracted to a mysterious blond (Debbie Reynolds) who turns out to be the reincarnation of his male best friend in Vincente Minnelli’s “Goodbye Charlie” (1964)....
2010-09-30 09:41
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SOURCE: NYT(9-25-10)
MOSCOW— Gennadi I. Yanayev, a former Soviet apparatchik who was part of a short-lived coup in 1991 that hastened the fall of the Soviet Union, died Friday in Moscow, according to Russian news reports. He was 73.
Mr. Yanayev died in near obscurity, crushed by a wave of history he struggled in vain to resist. He had been ill for some time, but the cause of death was not immediately made public.
Mr. Yanayev was among eight powerful Soviet government hard-liners, including the head of the K.G.B. and the minister of defense, who seized power on Aug. 19, 1991, seeking to reverse the democratic reforms of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
As the conspirators declared a state of emergency, Mr. Yanayev named himself acting president. For three days the so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency held control, banning protests, shutting down independent media outlets and sending tanks rumbling through the streets — a nightmarish chain of events for those who had watched in awe the rapid transformations of the perestroika era with its dreams of democracy and freedom....
Mr. Yanayev died in near obscurity, crushed by a wave of history he struggled in vain to resist. He had been ill for some time, but the cause of death was not immediately made public.
Mr. Yanayev was among eight powerful Soviet government hard-liners, including the head of the K.G.B. and the minister of defense, who seized power on Aug. 19, 1991, seeking to reverse the democratic reforms of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
As the conspirators declared a state of emergency, Mr. Yanayev named himself acting president. For three days the so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency held control, banning protests, shutting down independent media outlets and sending tanks rumbling through the streets — a nightmarish chain of events for those who had watched in awe the rapid transformations of the perestroika era with its dreams of democracy and freedom....
2010-09-27 15:36
SOURCE: NYT(9-24-10)
Jack Kershaw, who represented James Earl Ray as he fought to overturn his conviction in the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., arguing that Ray was an innocent participant in a conspiracy led by a mysterious figure named Raul, died Sept. 7. in Nashville. He was 96.
His death was announced by the League of the South, an organization Mr. Kershaw helped found that tries to keep the spirit of the Confederacy alive.
Mr. Kershaw, who was also a sculptor, was best known in his hometown for creating a 27-foot equestrian statue of the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Unveiled in 1998, it was erected in a private park along Interstate 65.
The monument, offensive to many, drew criticism, but Mr. Kershaw did not shy from offending. “Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery,” he once told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans....
His death was announced by the League of the South, an organization Mr. Kershaw helped found that tries to keep the spirit of the Confederacy alive.
Mr. Kershaw, who was also a sculptor, was best known in his hometown for creating a 27-foot equestrian statue of the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Unveiled in 1998, it was erected in a private park along Interstate 65.
The monument, offensive to many, drew criticism, but Mr. Kershaw did not shy from offending. “Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery,” he once told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans....
2010-09-27 15:35
SOURCE: NYT(9-6-10)
Jefferson Thomas, one of the nine black students who integrated an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 in a landmark confrontation of the civil rights movement, died Sunday in Columbus, Ohio. He was 67.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from Carlotta Walls LaNier, another of the students — known as the Little Rock Nine — who desegregated Central High School and the current president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation.
The Little Rock Nine presented the first major test of the federal government’s ability to enforce a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.
After Gov. Orval Faubus refused to integrate the school, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort the students. Central High’s desegregation began the agonizing, decade-long process of integrating schools across the country....
The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from Carlotta Walls LaNier, another of the students — known as the Little Rock Nine — who desegregated Central High School and the current president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation.
The Little Rock Nine presented the first major test of the federal government’s ability to enforce a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.
After Gov. Orval Faubus refused to integrate the school, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort the students. Central High’s desegregation began the agonizing, decade-long process of integrating schools across the country....
2010-09-07 09:57
