Marvin Hamlisch, the composer who wrote the scores for dozens of movies and a half-dozen or so Broadway shows and won Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, a Tony and a Pulitzer Prize, has died in Los Angeles. He was 68. The musical creative force behind the films “The Sting” and “The Way We Were” for which he…
Sami Rohr, a major philanthropist whose giving created and sustained hundreds of Chabad Lubavitch houses around the world, died at the age of 86. Rohr, who died Sunday in South Florida and was buried Tuesday in Jerusalem, reportedly gave some $250 million to Jewish causes, especially Jewish education and culture, throughout the world through his…
Ulrike Hessler, the first woman to be appointed intendant of the historic, four-century old Saxon State Opera in Dresden, popularly known as the Semper Opera, died July 30 in Munich, after a 19-month battle with cancer. She was 57. I first met Hessler eight years ago, when she was the director of the press office…
My Facebook feed blew up last night with appreciative status updates in tribute to Nora Ephron. The burst of activity made me wonder whether everyone’s Facebook feed was full of Ephron’s urbane wit, or if things were quieter in places where people prefer NASCAR to Zabar’s. Today, the day after her untimely death from illness…
When my husband and I decided to move from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, several friends and family members made me feel like a traitor. Nora Ephron, however, sent me a list of restaurants, hair salons, nail salons, and dry cleaners. She said I was making the best move…
Screenwriter, film director, essayist, novelist and cultural figure Nora Ephron has died at age 71, The New York Times reports. The cause of death was pneumonia brought on by myeloid leukemia, a blood disorder from which she had been suffering for six years. Ephron, best known for films like “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) and…
Maurice Sendak, author of beloved children’s books such as “Where the Wild Things Are” and “In the Night Kitchen,” died May 8 at age 83 of complications from a stroke. Sendak, who was born in Brooklyn to Jewish immigrants from Poland, broke the conventions of children’s literature with his dark and psychologically acute early books….
Adam Yauch, a member of the seminal hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at age 47. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been treated for cancer since 2009. Brooklyn-born Yauch founded the Beastie Boys in 1979 with Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz. They achieved fame in 1986 with their first full-length…
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