Paul Marantz, a prominent architectural lighting designer who illuminated disco floors and skylines, libraries and chic hotels, train stations and concert halls, museums and embassies, died on May 26 at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. The cause of death was complications of a stroke, his wife, Jane Marantz, …
Barbara Holdridge, who co-founded the first commercially successful spoken-word record label, one that began with the poet Dylan Thomas reciting his story “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” and that led to today’s multibillion-dollar audiobook industry, died on Monday at home in Baltimore, Md. She was 95. Her daughter, Eleanor Holdridge, …
In 1983, William H. Luers, a new American ambassador to Czechoslovakia, bet on a long shot for its future: Vaclav Havel, the often-imprisoned poet-playwright and enemy of the Communist state. But after leading a peaceful revolution to oust the regime, the long shot cultural leader became the democratically-elected last president …
Robert A.G. Monks, a lawyer and businessman from a prominent Massachusetts family who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate three times but found a calling in his 40s as an influential defender of shareholder rights, died on April 29 at his home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He was 91. The …
Clarence O. Smith, who convinced skeptical mainstream advertisers of the power and worth of the Black female consumer market as a founder of Essence, the first general-circulation magazine directed at Black women, died on April 21. He was 92. Mr. Smith, who lived in Yonkers, N.Y., died in a hospital …
Sybil Shainwald, a lawyer who for nearly half a century represented women whose health had been irreparably and often catastrophically harmed by poorly tested drugs and medical devices, died on April 9 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96. Her daughter Laurie Shainwald Kleeger announced the death, which was …
Ted Kotcheff, a shape-shifting Canadian director whose films introduced audiences to characters including the troubled Vietnam War hero John Rambo, a dead body named Bernie and the young hustler Duddy Kravitz, died on April 10 in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he had lived for more than a decade. He was …
Jane Gardam, a novelist whose works captured with wit and concision the last rays of the sun setting on the British Empire and the lifestyles that were extinguished with it, died on Monday in Chipping Norton, England. She was 96. The death, at a care facility, was confirmed by her …
Peter Lovesey was working as a college lecturer in 1968 when he answered an ad in The Times of London offering a thousand pounds for the best crime novel written by a novice. The prize was more than his annual salary. He had already written a book about the history …
Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, a star dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet and an elegantly refined principal dancer at New York City Ballet who later nurtured generations of dancers as a teacher and as the director of the Charlotte Ballet, died on April 13 in Charlotte, N.C. He was 82. His ex-wife, …