Born to an aristocratic family during the last days of Victoria’s reign, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon married King George V’s shy son Bertie. When his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, Bertie (now King George VI) ascended to the throne and Elizabeth became queen. When Buckingham Palace was bombed during World War II, the queen said that it only made it easier for her “to look the East End in the face.” That reference to working-class London cemented national solidarity. Elizabeth spent half her life watching her daughter Elizabeth II preside over a monarchy perennially rocked by tabloid scandal. But the Queen Mum’s popularity never wavered. Her last year was marked by sadness: the death of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret, 71.
PAUL WELLSTONE, 58
When Paul Wellstone went to the Senate in 1991, Capitol security guards often checked his ID, unconvinced he belonged. A flannel-wearing ex-professor, Wellstone was the perfect Minnesotan, which is to say he didn’t seem to fit in anywhere else. The unabashed liberal came to office with a vote against the Persian Gulf War, and just before he died he voted against the use of force in Iraq. Asked if he was worried his stance on Iraq would hurt him politically, he replied: “What would really hurt is if I was giving speeches and I didn’t even believe what I was saying.”
PEGGY LEE, 81
The songwriter Alec Wilder once said Peggy Lee had a voice like a streetwalker you’d pass by–but if you stopped, you’d never leave. “Now, I don’t exactly think of myself as a streetwalker,” Lee said, “but I think I know what he means.” That was the secret: underneath the cool, dry tone and the effortlessly swinging delivery, you knew damn well what she meant. In 1958 her minimalist, finger-popping “Fever” made her a pop personage–you could see steam wafting up out of the grooves–and the dark, wistful 1969 hit “Is That All There Is?” touched the hearts of the gin-and-Geritol generation. But millions of children know that insinuating voice from Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp.” Kid stuff? Not from this lady. Not ever.
ROD STEIGER, 77
As Marlon Brando’s mobbed-up brother Charlie in “On the Waterfront,” Rod Steiger shared the most famous taxi ride ever filmed. Raised by an alcoholic mother (the neighbors laughed when he pulled her out of saloons), Steiger swore to one day earn respect for the tarnished family name. He did just that, first as a torpedo man at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and then as an actor. Steiger, who won an Oscar as a bigoted sheriff in “In the Heat of the Night,” was much more than a contender.
LIONEL HAMPTON, 94
In 1936 Lionel Hampton, a black vibraphonist, joined the band of Benny Goodman, a white clarinetist. And the jazz world was changed forever. For the next 65 years Hampton was one of jazz’s best-known and most beloved figures. Besides helping to break down the color line, Hampton’s 1942 recording “Flying Home,” with its honking sax solo, helped set the emotional stage for rock and roll.
BYRON WHITE, 84
Let’s just call him the smartest football player ever. Byron (Whizzer) White (he hated the nickname, by the way) was an All-American running back for the University of Colorado, the 1938 NFL rookie of the year, a Rhodes scholar, a magna cum laude graduate of Yale Law School and, for 31 years, a Supreme Court justice. Appointed to the court by President Kennedy in 1962, White was a conservative during the liberal Warren era. He cast dissenting votes in Miranda v. Arizona in 1966 (suspects’ rights) and Roe v. Wade in 1973 (the right to abortion). But White the judge was no easier to box in than White the football player; he backed federal enforcement of civil rights and was adamantly opposed to school segregation.
TED WILLIAMS, 83
He approached hitting as if it were a science, and he did it better than any man, before or since. Despite losing more than four years of a glorious career to military service, the Red Sox left fielder hit 521 home runs. He was the last batter to hit .400 in a season. He won a pair of triple crowns. And in a fairy-tale ending, he smacked a homer in his final at-bat, in 1960. John Updike wrote about that moment in The New Yorker: “He didn’t tip his cap. He hid in the dugout. Gods do not answer letters.” Nor, apparently, do they win World Series, the one final goal Williams was never able to achieve.
JOHN GOTTI, 61
John Gotti may have learned his ruthlessness from reading Machiavelli, but his flamboyance came right out of Hollywood. After rubbing out rival Paul Castellano in 1985 to gain control of New York’s Gambino crime family, Gotti proceeded to turn himself into a star. He favored $2,000 suits and extravagant nights on the town–a dangerously high profile for a crime boss, but good enough to earn him a place in history as the Dapper Don. For a while Gotti had a second nickname–the Teflon Don, for his ability to elude the law while swanning around the streets of New York and raking in $12 million a year. But his recklessness eventually led to the downfall of the whole Gambino family. Gotti died in jail. But as any “Sopranos” fan knows, his legacy is alive and well.
BILLY WILDER, 95
Billy Wilder couldn’t speak English when he arrived in the United States in 1934, but he brought a new language to American film. A successful director in Berlin before fleeing Hitler, Wilder learned English by listening to baseball games on the radio and by going to the movies. His unflinching portrayals of human weakness and his incisive wit–he once told Walter Matthau, “We’re on the track of something absolutely mediocre”–infused his work. He still defines most every genre he tried, from the farce “Some Like It Hot” to the noir “Double Indemnity.” He won six Oscars, but that didn’t mean he liked watching his work. When friends tried to take him to a screening of “Double Indemnity,” he said, “I don’t want to see all those dead people.”
LISA LOPES, 30
The pixie-size singer was always larger than life. In early concerts, she covered her slightly larger left eye with a condom, paying homage to the “Left Eye” nickname an ex-boyfriend had given her. In 1994, Lopes admitted she had burned down boyfriend Andre Rison’s house after an argument. And her band, TLC, won four Grammys and sold more records than any female group in pop history–despite releasing only three albums. Lopes, who died after the SUV she was driving crashed in Honduras, was always the group’s most flamboyant member, the “crazy” of the band’s chart-topping “CrazySexyCool” album. “Drama comes in dozens,” she rapped on her solo album, “Supernova,” “and I know you love it.” And we did.
DAVE THOMAS, 69
A square shooter who built a fast-food empire selling square burgers, Dave Thomas struck out on his own at 15 and ended up one of the most recognized people in the country. He was a hard worker and a shrewd marketer–Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” campaign is still a classic, and advertising became key to building the company into the third largest hamburger chain in the world. In 1989, Thomas himself began star-ring in the commercials. One critic said he looked like “a steer in a half-sleeve shirt,” but his deadpan delivery made him a hit with the viewing, and chewing, public.
LEW WASSERMAN, 89
Lew Wasserman began his career in Hollywood as a theater usher. By the time he died, the onetime head of MCA was, as Steven Spielberg put it, the “chief justice” of the film industry. In the 1940s, as an MCA agent, he helped end the indentured servitude of film stars, nixing the long-term contracts that tied actors to specific studios. A decade later, he pushed Hollywood to embrace the fledgling television industry. In the ’60s, he showed his political muscle by backing Democrats–even though he had once been the agent of an actor named Ronald Reagan–and in the 1970s, he helped create the summer blockbuster with his aggressive promotion of Spielberg’s “Jaws.” When he finally sold MCA in 1990, he had changed the face of moviemaking in America forever.
WALTER ANNENBERG, 94
Walter Annenberg was a friend to presidents, an ambassador to the Court of St. James, a philanthropist who gave away billions, a legendary art collector. And he owed it all (or a great deal of it, anyway) to millions of couch potatoes whose idea of fun was curling up in front of the TV and basking in the glow of their favorite programs. Annenberg created TV Guide in 1953, when only 9 percent of Americans had television sets. At its peak, the boob-tube bible’s circulation reached an estimated 17 million. The magazine’s concise descriptions–“Wally and Beaver paint the garage”–may not have been literature, but Annenberg knew they were exactly what the people wanted.
STEPHEN AMBROSE, 66
The best-selling and prolific historian Stephen Ambrose could be as combative as the soldiers he chronicled in “Band of Brothers” and “D Day, June 6, 1944,” published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. “Any book with more than five readers is automatically ‘popularized’ and to be scorned,” he told an interviewer last spring. “I did my graduate work like anybody else, and I kind of had that attitude myself. The problem –with my colleagues is they never grew out of it.” (He was equally foursquare in his own defense against recent charges of plagiarism.) Then again, they didn’t have the kind of popular success that Ambrose ultimately enjoyed. Until he was 60, he lived on a professor’s salary, but “D-Day,” “Band of Brothers” and “Citizen Soldiers” landed him among the Kings and Grishams as a citizen soldier of letters.
JAMES COBURN, 74
How cool was James Coburn? In the 1960s, when America needed its own international man of intrigue to reclaim some of the turf staked out by Sean Connery’s supersuave James Bond, Coburn got the job done. His portrayal of Derek Flint in the spy spoofs “Our Man Flint” and “In Like Flint” proved you didn’t need an English accent to wow the ladies and save the world. The Nebraska-born Coburn broke out in 1960 as a taciturn, knife-throwing tough-guy-with-a-good-heart in “The Magnificent Seven.” In 1999 he received the Academy Award as best supporting actor for his role as Nick Nolte’s alcoholic father in “Affliction.” A veteran of more than 80 movies, Coburn was reading scripts and looking for his next job at the time of his death.
ANN LANDERS, 83
Fittingly, Eppie Lederer was born on July 4. For close to half a century, the woman who reinvented herself as Ann Landers helped define American norms, dishing out advice on topics ranging from AIDS to alcoholism, to everyone from Bummed Out in Boston to Teary in Tucson. (Lederer’s twin sister became the Abigail Van Buren of Dear Abby.) Lederer was a pioneer–socially liberal, morally traditional, an outspoken woman in the 1950s and a sentimental favorite for the ages. In 1978, a World Almanac survey named her the most influential woman in the United States. “I would rather have my column on 1,000 refrigerator doors than win a Pulitzer,” she once said. By the time she died, no one remembered that she wasn’t even the first woman to write advice columns with the Ann Landers mantle. She’ll undoubtedly be the last.
ROONE ARLEDGE, 71
The Olympics as an all-out TV spectacle. Graphic teasers. Up-close- and-personal high-lights. Slo-mo replays. Howard Cosell, for chrissakes! Virtually everything we associate with television sports–including those twin goal posts known as “Monday Night Football” and “Wide World of Sports” –we owe to Roone Arledge, who turned the struggling ABC network into a national powerhouse in the ’60s and ’70s. In 1977, when he took over as president of ABC News, he did it again. Arledge transformed the news business, first by turning anchors such as Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel into superstars, then when ABC’s coverage of the Iran hostage crisis evolved into “Nightline.” “I’m prouder of that program than of almost anything I’ve done,” said Arledge. And he had much to be proud of.
RICHARD HELMS, 89
His biography was titled “The Man Who Kept the Secrets,” and for more than 30 years as a member of the CIA and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, Richard Helms did exactly that. Indeed, Helms’s commitment to secrecy led him to be less than open while testifying about CIA activities before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1973. Helms, who headed the agency for seven years, later pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor counts connected with that appearance. It was a dark moment in an often brilliant career in service to his government. But Helms said he wore the conviction “like a badge of honor.” Silence was his duty, and he did it well.
MILTON BERLE, 93
He had many nicknames: Mr. Television, the Thief of Bad Gags, Uncle Miltie. But Milton Berle was best known as the first star of TV. Berle worked in vaudeville, film, radio and onstage before taking a shot in 1948 with the new medium–television. His “Texaco Star Theatre” was said to cause water shortages–Detroit experienced severe pressure drops every Tuesday at 9 p.m., when his show ended and viewers finally went to the bathroom. Berle did anything for a laugh: physical comedy, bad puns (“Good evening, ladies and germs” was his sign-on) and of course his legendary drag. Whatever he tried, it worked. When Berle started, TV was in only 500,000 homes; by the end of the “Star Theatre” in 1954, it was in 26 million. And most of them were tuned to a very funny man in a very ugly dress.
ROSEMARY CLOONEY, 74
The warm, winning and masterly singer Rosemary Clooney was probably saved–in spite of herself–by rock and roll. She became famous in the ’50s for such unlistenable pop-novelty hits as “Come On-a My House” and “Botcha Me,” and she might have kept them coming for years if Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley hadn’t virtually put her musical generation out of business. She quickly moved on to TV and films (including “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby); by the ’60s she’d fallen out of fashion and become addicted to pills. But after a stint in a psychiatric ward, she re-emerged in the ’70s as a mature pop-jazz and cabaret performer, interpreting classic songs by Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen in that large, generous, now rueful voice.
STEPHEN JAY GOULD, 60
Perhaps the only biologist more famous than Stephen Jay Gould was Charles Darwin. It’s fitting, then, that Gould spent his career tweaking Darwin, arguing that evolution proceeds in fits and spasms rather than a steady march. But Gould’s fame, and his appeal, wasn’t due so much to his recondite theories or his fieldwork on the land snails of the Bahamas. It was everything else: the Gehrig-esque 27-year run of columns in Natural History magazine, the best-selling books making science both understandable and beautiful, the packed Harvard lectures, the essays about baseball. He was even a hilarious guest on “The Simpsons.” If only all of science were as fun.
JOHNNY UNITAS, 69
Twice–in 1969 and again in 2000–he was voted the best quarterback, ever. In 17 years with Baltimore (and a final one in San Diego), Johnny U. created magic on the field, poking holes in airtight defenses, winning through sheer will and determination. The numbers are huge–his record of throwing a touchdown in 47 straight games will likely stand forever–but it was his insatiable hunger for winning that defined the crew-cut QB. As his teammate John Mackey said, playing with Unitas was like “being in a huddle with God.”
CYRUS VANCE, 84
For more than 20 years Cyrus Vance served his country with quiet distinction as a diplomat and international troubleshooter. But there was nothing quiet about the way he ended his term as secretary of State. He resigned in 1980, after three years in the post, to protest President Jimmy Carter’s decision to rescue the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran. The supple-minded Vance, who preferred diplomacy and negotiation to achieve his ends, stepped down before the fate of the mission was known. (It failed, and cost the lives of eight U.S. servicemen.) A true statesman, Vance couldn’t abide such blunt tactics.
ENOS SLAUGHTER, 86
With a name like Enos Slaughter, the farmer’s kid from North Carolina was bound to make it big, wasn’t he? The Hall of Fame outfielder played 19 seasons in the major leagues, most of them with the St. Louis Cardinals. He racked up 2,383 hits, scored 1,247 runs, posted a lifetime batting average of .300 and played in five World Series. His most legendary achievement had a name of its own–the Mad Dash. The play happened in the seventh game of the 1946 World Series, when Slaughter made it from first to home on a hit to left-center by Harry Walker. It turned out to be the winning run in a victory over Boston. The Red Sox haven’t been the same since.
WAYLON JENNINGS, 64
If Buddy Holly’s young bass player Waylon Jennings hadn’t given up his seat and had gone down with his boss’s plane in 1959, country music would still be the corporate product it is today, but we would have missed a hell of a man. Maybe he was no less a package than Shania Twain–the black duds, the beard, the Telecaster, the roughneck voice–but he was his own homemade invention, and he aimed to placate nobody. In the ’70s he chucked the polished Nashville sound for a stripped-down, stomping, rock-inflected form of country; such hits as “Good-Hearted Woman” put him in the pantheon of American musical outlaws. And he stayed outlaw to the end: he even blew off his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. “It means absolutely nothing,” he said, “if you want to now the truth.”
DUDLEY MOORE, 66
Sly and elfish, 5-foot-2 Dudley Moore was an unlikely leading man. But audiences fell for the twinkle in his eye as a composer entranced by Bo Derek in “10” and later the lovable drunk in “Arthur.” A graduate of Oxford, Moore had already risen to prominence in England in the ’60s performing in the savage comic revue “Beyond the Fringe.” But the physical comedian never abandoned his first love, music. He started playing the piano when he was 6, performed as a jazz pianist in the ’50s and later as a classical concert pianist in the ’90s. Moore was a lot of things–including a husband to four wives–but he was not short on talent.
WALTER LORD, 84
It was as if the great ship sank twice. “A Night to Remember,” Walter Lord’s 1955 account of the sinking of the Titanic, mesmerized readers with its extraordinarily detailed re-creation of the tragic events of April 14, 1912. The book became an immediate best seller. Lord got hooked on the story at 10, when he read a slim volume by a Titanic survivor. His own account of the sinking, which weaves together the stories of a diverse group of passengers and crew, was a pioneering work of narrative journalism and had a great impact on popular historians. Nearly half a century after publication, it remains a book to remember.
SAM SNEAD, 89
Sam Snead, the wily country boy with the silky swing, the ready smile and the mellow drawl, made championship golf look easy. The dapper Virginian strode the fairways as a professional for nearly 50 years, picking up more than 130 wins world-wide, including seven majors. Though Snead never won the U.S. Open, over the course of his career he outdueled some of the greatest players who ever teed it up. Ben Hogan was at the top of his game when Snead beat him by a stroke in an 18-hole playoff to win the 1954 Masters. In the flush of that virtuoso performance, Snead displayed his equally well-honed talent for the down-home quote. “The sun doesn’t shine on the same dog’s tail all the time,” he said. But it shone plenty on Slammin’ Sam.
BILL BLASS, 79
In the ’50s, Bill Blass understood that if women were evolving, so should their clothes. He gave their rigid dress code some classic style, and society ladies like Nancy Reagan, Brooke Astor and Pamela Harriman–all of whom he called “Babe”–were devoted to him. Born in Indiana, the son of a hardware-store owner, he became one of the first megadesigner brands, but he never lost touch with the wealthy women who made him rich. “We never talked about clothes,” said Reagan, “because he had a zest for living and an interest in everything else.”
RICHARD HARRIS, 72
After Richard Harris turned down the role of the wizard Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, his granddaughter told him she’d never speak to him again if he didn’t take the part. If only she’d been advising him sooner. Despite an Oscar nomination for “The Field,” a No. 1 hit with “MacArthur Park” and his signature role as King Arthur in “Camelot,” Harris had a notably uneven career. He was almost as celebrated for his drinking as he was for acting. Not that Harris had regrets. “I was called an angry young man, but I had women camped out in my garden,” he said. “I couldn’t have been happier.”
CHUCK JONES, 89
In 1938, the world had its first taste of one of the most debonair and enduring leading men of all time. His name was Bugs Bunny. Director Chuck Jones and his Warner Brothers collaborators always considered their characters–including Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Elmer Fudd and Road Runner–actors. While kids for half a century have giggled at all their shenanigans, Jones’s colorful humanity–he decreed such rules as “the coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures”–was a groundbreaking development in animation. Beep, beep!
title: “Final Bows” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Jose Paz”
PIM FORTUYN, 54
Never one to mince words, Fortuyn had views that shook up the Dutch political scene. His assassination in May came just nine days before national elections, which saw the Lijst Pim Fortuyn party–which he had led into the national spotlight–pick up 17 percent of the seats in Parliament. His calls to discontinue immigration were deemed xenophobic and anti-Muslim, but they struck a chord with a frustrated and youthful constituency. The openly gay Fortuyn defied easy political categorization–making his death a loss for discourse, if not for Dutch immigrants.
QUEEN MOTHER, 101
Born to an aristocratic family during the last days of Victoria’s reign, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon married King George V’s shy son Bertie. When his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 to marry the American Wallis Simpson, Elizabeth and Bertie (now King George VI) ascended to the throne. During World War II, when Buckingham Palace was bombed, the queen said that it only made it easier for her “to look the East End in the face.” That reference to working- class London cemented national solidarity and won her a lasting affection. Though she spent the last half of her life watching her daughter Elizabeth II preside over a steadily declining monarchy, the Queen Mum’s popularity never wavered. Her last year was marked by sadness: the death of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret, 71.
EDUARDO CHILLIDA, 78
According to Kosme de Baranano, director of Valencia’s Institute of Modern Art, there were three pillars of sculpture in the 20th century: Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti and Eduardo Chillida. To Spain’s 2 million Basques, Chillida was the only one whose work stood for anything worthwhile. His abstract sculptures won him international acclaim (including the top prize for sculpture at the 1958 Venice Biennale) and highbrow friends (among them: German philosopher Martin Heidegger). But Chillida never abandoned his roots, campaigning for the release of Basque political prisoners in the late 1970s. His masterpiece, “Peines del Viento” (“Wind Combs”), still stands in the Bay of San Sebastian, a Basque national monument.
LEW WASSERMAN, 89
Lew Wasserman began his career in Hollywood as a theater usher. By the time he died, the onetime head of MCA was, as Steven Spielberg put it, the “chief justice” of the film industry. In the 1940s, as an agent at MCA, he helped end the indentured servitude of film stars, nixing the long-term contracts that tied actors to specific studios. A decade later he pushed Hollywood to embrace the fledgling television industry. In the 1960s, he showed his political muscle by backing Democrats–even though he had once been the agent of an actor named Ronald Reagan–and in the 1970s, he helped create the summer blockbuster with his aggressive promotion of Spielberg’s “Jaws.” When he finally sold MCA in 1990, he had changed the face of moviemaking in America forever.
CHOI HONG-HI, 83
As a general in the South Korean Army, Choi used karate to help train soldiers. But he wasn’t completely satisfied with the Japanese martial art, so he began applying certain Korean techniques. Eventually, his version evolved into the worldwide phenomenon known as tae kwan do. Touting the trend wasn’t always easy: Choi’s efforts to promote the art in North Korea–his birthplace–got him in trouble at home. Though he insisted his intentions were peaceful, Seoul viewed them as acts of treason. But his dedication paid off everywhere else. Over the past half century, an estimated 50 million people have practiced the Korean art in 123 nations, and tae kwon do became an official Olympic sport at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. Said Choi: “I am the man who has the most followers in the world.”
SPIKE MILLIGAN, 83
Most of the world has heard of Monty Python. But if it hadn’t been for Irish comic Spike Milligan, the Python team might never have been. In the 1950s, Milligan and his zany partners, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe, unleashed snippets of insanity on the British public in the “Goon Show,” inspiring John Cleese & Co. to follow their offbeat style. Throughout his life, Milligan continued the craziness through whatever medium would have him–including barmy books, like “Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.” To the end, Milligan was renowned for his sly, wacky and irreverent one-liners. “I don’t mind dying,” he once said. “I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
NE WIN, 91
Ne Win’s name means “brilliant as the sun”–yet his 26-year reign as dictator of Burma was anything but. His regime is largely to blame for Burma’s slide from a nation with post-World War II prospects–it was one of the leading exporters of rice–to the decrepit state it’s in today. Xenophobic and gripped by paranoid superstitions, he sealed off Burma from the outside world, transforming a lush country into an Orwellian nightmare. (Obsessed with the number nine and its multiples, he switched the currency to 45- and 90-kyat denominations, rendering other banknotes worthless.) When he retired in 1988, Burma was ranked as one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. Born Shu Maung (“apple of one’s eye”), he took the revolutionary name Ne Win when he joined Burma’s independence movement in 1941; he was heralded as one of the heroes of “liberation” from the British in 1948. Yet he ended his days under house arrest, accused of plotting to overthrow his successors in the current military regime.
MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO, 100
Growing up on the outskirts of Mexico City at the height of the bloody Mexican revolution, Manuel Alvarez Bravo developed a keen eye for jarring juxtapositions: the blending of scenes from everyday life with the brutalities of war. Later, as an aspiring young photographer, he taught himself techniques using books and magazines, and in 1929 he left his local government job to pursue photography full time. Over the next 73 years, Bravo captured almost every aspect of Mexican life, from shots of dramatic landscapes and Mayan ruins to cityscapes and portraits of Frida Kahlo. By placing his famous subjects in unusual surroundings–no doubt inspired by his childhood–Bravo made pictures renowned for being both shocking and painfully real.
STEPHEN JAY GOULD, 60
Perhaps the only biologist more famous than Stephen Jay Gould was Charles Darwin. It’s fitting, then, that Gould spent his career tweaking Darwin, arguing that evolution proceeds in fits and spasms rather than a steady march. But Gould’s fame, and his appeal, was due less to his recondite theories or his fieldwork on the land snails of the Bahamas than to everything else: the Gehrig-esque 27-year run of columns in Natural History magazine, the best-selling books making science both understandable and beautiful, the packed Harvard lectures, the essays about baseball. He was even a hilarious guest on “The Simpsons.” If only all of science were as fun.
JOAQUIN BALAGUER, 95
Standing just above five feet, the bespectacled Balaguer never looked the part of a Latin American caudillo, or strongman. But during his U.S.-backed tenure as president of the Dominican Republic from 1966 to 1978 (and then again between 1986 and 1996), Balaguer emulated his mentor and predecessor, dictator Rafael Trujillo. Political opponents and many journalists–the “incontrollable elements,” Balaguer liked to call them–were systematically repressed, and thousands of Dominicans fled. Balaguer’s “democracy of the gallows,” as it was known by leftist leaders, failed to fix a forlorn economy, but it did do some good: massive public-works projects provided jobs–and a makeover. Still, Balaguer is damned by faint praise; he is likely to be remembered as tolerant only in comparison with the tyrannical Trujillo.
LIONEL HAMPTON, 94
In 1936, Lionel Hampton, a black vibraphonist, joined the band of Benny Goodman, a white clarinetist. And the jazz world was changed forever. Goodman’s popularity, and Hampton’s ebullience, broke down a racial barrier more than a decade before blacks and whites played on professional sports fields together. For the next 65 years, Hampton was one of jazz’s best-known and most beloved figures. Besides helping to break down the color line, Hampton’s 1942 recording, “Flying Home,” with its honking sax solo, helped set the emotional stage for rock and roll.
BILLY WILDER, 95
Billy Wilder couldn’t speak English when he arrived in the United States in 1934, but he brought a new language to the films he would go on to co-write and direct. A successful filmmaker in Berlin before fleeing Hitler, Wilder learned English by listening to baseball games on the radio and by going to the movies. His unflinching portrayals of human weakness and his incisive wit–he once told Walter Matthau, “we’re on the track of something absolutely mediocre”–infused his work. He still defines most every genre he tried, from the farce “Some Like It Hot” to the noir “Double Indemnity.” He won six Academy Awards, but that didn’t mean he always liked watching his work. When friends tried to take him to a screening of “Double Indemnity” he said, “I don’t want to see all those dead people.”
ABBA EBAN, 87
Abba Eban’s eloquence was often compared to Winston Churchill’s. And for decades, Israel used it as a potent weapon in the war for world opinion. Eban was Israel’s representative to the United Nations during the independence struggle of 1948, U.S. and U.N. ambassador during the Middle East war of 1956 and Israel’s foreign minister during the 1967 and 1973 wars. Through it all, the Zionist’s passionate speeches helped make the case for his country’s right to exist, and bolstered pride and support among Jews worldwide. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, once called him “the voice of the Hebrew nation.”
DHIRUBAI AMBANI, 69
Dubbed the “polyester prince,” Ambani rose out of an impoverished childhood in Gujarat, India, to head a $13.5 billion petrochemical and oil-refining empire. His was a true rags-to-riches story: at 17, he was a gas-station attendant; a decade later he started his own textile business; by the middle of his career he had cornered the national polyester market, building one of the largest companies in India. Reliance Industries was the first privately owned firm from the Subcontinent to make it on the Forbes 500 list.
THOR HEYERDAHL, 87
Back in 1947, Heyerdahl set off to cross the Pacific Ocean on a wooden replica of a pre-Inca raft, hoping to prove that the Polynesian islands could have been settled by prehistoric South American people. Few were convinced. But his daring stunt turned the anthropologist into an instant popular hero. The book he wrote about his bizarre adventure was translated into 65 languages and made into an Oscar-winning movie. Heyerdahl used the proceeds to fund more adventures. Among other things: he crossed the Atlantic in a papyrus boat to show that Egyptians could have taught pyramid-building to pre-Colombian Americans. And he navigated a reed vessel to experience seafaring Mesopotamian style.
ASTRID LINDGREN, 94
This is a child who has power," Lindgren once said of her carrot-haired creation, Pippi Longstocking. Rebellious, wealthy and endowed with superhuman strength, Pippi made kids everywhere wish for freckles and a life devoid of authority figures. “She had no mother and no father, and that was of course very nice,” the book begins. Lindgren grew up on a farm in southern Sweden, where she derived much of the inspiration for her more than 70 children’s books. Her most famous character, however, was named by her 7-year-old daughter, Karin. First published in 1945, “Pippi Longstocking” and its sequels went on to sell millions of copies in more than 50 languages–and to inspire untold numbers of orange wigs with braids sticking out.
BILL BLASS, 79
In the ’50s, Bill Blass understood that if women were evolving, so should their clothes. He gave their rigid dress code some classic style, and society ladies like Nancy Reagan, Brooke Astor and Pamela Harriman–all of whom he called “Babe” were devoted to him. Born in Indiana, the son of a hardware-store owner, he left home at 17 and started sketching fashions at a New York sportswear company. He became one of the first megadesigner brands, but he never lost touch with the wealthy women who made him rich.
RICHARD HARRIS, 72
After Richard Harris turned down the role of the wizard Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, his granddaughter told him she’d never speak to him again if he didn’t take the part. If only she’d been advising him sooner. Despite an Oscar nomination for “The Field” and his signature role as King Arthur in “Camelot,” Harris had a notably uneven career. He was almost as celebrated for his drinking and rocky personal life as he was for his acting. Not that Harris had regrets. “I was called an angry young man, but I had women camped out in my garden,” he said. “I couldn’t have been happier.”
CHUCK JONES, 89
In 1938, the world had its first taste of one of the most debonair and enduring leading men of all time: Bugs Bunny. Director Chuck Jones and his Warner Brothers collaborators always considered their characters–including Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Elmer Fudd and Road Runner–actors. While kids for half a century have giggled at all their shenanigans, Jones’s colorful humanity–he decreed such rules as “the coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures”–was a groundbreaking development in animation. Beep, beep!
title: “Final Bows” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Marina Kazunas”
As head of Fiat, Agnelli not only turned his grandfather’s auto company into a global conglomerate but also became a widely admired symbol of Italy’s postwar success. Dapper and congenial, Agnelli made plenty of friends in high places–like the Kennedys and many of Europe’s royals–and relished jetting around the world to meet them for dinner or a party. But he was also a shrewd businessman, building Fiat into the country’s largest private employer and expanding its holdings to include everything from chemicals to candy bars.
FODAY SANKOH, 65
In a region known for its brutal violence, Sankoh raised the bar just a little bit higher. In 1991 he ignited a decadelong civil war in his native Sierra Leone. Although conceived as an idealistic movement aiming to topple the country’s corrupt political powers, Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front soon became rich on diamonds and infamous for its signature methods of wreaking terror, including the hacking off of civilians’ hands, feet, ears and noses. The conflict displaced half the country’s population and saw tens of thousands of people killed, mutilated or raped, before British and U.N. intervention put an end to the madness in 2000.
COMPAY SEGUNDO, 95
The 1997 album “Buena Vista Social Club” didn’t bring him out of obscurity. A star in 1950s Havana, Segundo had already been touring Europe. Nor was his name Compay Segundo; Maximo Francisco Repilado Munoz got that nickname (roughly, Comrade No. 2) because he used his deep, rich voice to sing backup. Otherwise, you can trust the myth: he was a cigar smoker, a rum-drinking ladies’ man and one of the most powerful and tasteful musicians who ever strode onto a stage.
NINA SIMONE, 70
What Eunice Waymon had wanted, when she was growing up, was to be a concert pianist. What she ended up with was the creation she called Nina Simone: a dark-voiced, almost scary singer, an eclectic jazz-based pianist, a civil-rights activist, a cult favorite, a troubled soul. “I was forced into showbiz to make a living,” Simone recalled. “And I’m still angry about it.” But her anger served her art–it, too, turned out to be a gift. One she had the courage to accept and strength to use.
SERGIO VIEIRA DE MELLO, 55
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the top U.N. official in Baghdad was killed in August by a truck bomb, dealing a devastating blow to the institution Vieira de Mello had served for more than 30 years. The Brazilian diplomat was a top U.N. troubleshooter, working crises from Rwanda to East Timor, and most often leaving peace in his wake. Once living proof that multilateral efforts could solve some of the world’s worst problems, he is in death a sober reminder of how dangerous that work can be.
SADRUDDIN AGA KHAN, 70
As the longest-serving U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, he found homes for millions. And always an advocate for those who couldn’t defend themselves, he was one of the first and most eloquent leaders to protest against genocide in Bosnia. “The true message of Islam,” he used to say, “is about brotherhood and solidarity.” Especially now, his is a message, and a voice, that are sorely missed.
BERNARD LOISEAU, 52
One of France’s most respected chefs, Loiseau ultimately found the pressures of running a world-renowned restaurant too much. His suicide, which came shortly after the downgrading of his Hotel de la Cote d’Or’s GaultMillau rating, sent the culinary world into shock. But Loiseau should be remembered less for the way he died than for how he lived–and cooked. His deftness with natural flavors led him to celebrity outside the kitchen, and ever the innovator, he was the first French restaurateur to float his business on the Paris Bourse in 1998.
LESLIE CHEUNG, 46
When Leslie Cheung jumped to his death from the top of a Hong Kong hotel on April 1, devastated fans couldn’t help drawing a sad parallel to one of the talented performer’s most memorable roles: as a homosexual opera star who commits suicide in the 1993 film “Farewell My Concubine.” As an actor he was unafraid of risk, a quality that appealed to directors from John Woo to Wong Karwai to Chen Kaige, who saw in him a moody Asian antihero. Off-screen he battled with demons; he left behind a suicide note alluding to depression.
ALIJA IZETBEGOVIC, 78
A Muslim by faith and a pacifist by conviction, Izetbegovic had no army of his own to call on when Yugoslavia crumbled. But as Bosnia’s first president, he faced down Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, two men determined to carve up the ethnic-ally divided country through brute force, and stood out as a rare voice of reason during the war. Un-like Milosevic and Tudjman, he will be remembered as the man who upheld the West’s values when the West abandoned Bosnia.
EDWARD SAID, 67
His influential 1978 book “Orientalism” helped launch the field of post-colonial studies. But Columbia University professor Edward Said–born into a Christian family in British-controlled Jerusalem–was best known as an articulate champion of the Palestinian cause in America. A relentless critic of Israeli and U.S. policies, Said also turned against Yasir Arafat in the 1990s, denouncing him for selling out his people. With Said’s death, they lost an eloquent voice.
WALTER SISULU, 90
In 1941, Sisulu, then a regional African National Congress leader, took in a young lodger named Nelson Mandela. The two later formed the ANC youth league and fought side by side for the ANC’s military wing before being captured and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island in 1963. Released in 1989, Sisulu helped lead the final stages of the antiapartheid struggle before finally retiring in 1994.
title: “Final Bows” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Diana Kelly”
Not since Noah’s Ark has so much ridden on the fate of a single ewe. In 1996, when Scottish doctors created a baby sheep named Dolly from the cells of an adult, she became the first-ever successfully cloned mammal. Her–well, not birth–her emergence also sparked a fierce debate about ethics, biology and playing God. She died at 6–half the life expectancy for her species. But Dolly’s doctors insisted her death was unrelated to the fact that she was a freak of nature–or of whatever. She simply caught a virus she couldn’t shake, and had to be euthanized.
BOB HOPE, 100
He was such a lousy actor that Oscar night at his house was called Passover. (Laughter.) “But lemme tell ya…” We thought he’d never stop. Actually, for a radio guy, Bob Hope did fine in Hollywood. His “Road” pictures with Bing Crosby made him a movie star; radio and film made him a natural on TV. But his visits to U.S. troops from World War II through Gulf War I made him a legend. Those rat-a-tat one-liners got old before he did, but he milked laughs for 80 years without cuss words or cruelty: his favorite target was himself. (“I’ve performed for 12 presidents… and entertained six.”) What he lacked in cool, he made up for in warmth. Wartime is always hard, but this time around, it’s just a little harder.
STROM THURMOND, 100
Before becoming the oldest and longest-serving senator ever–48 years–he was governor of South Carolina and the Dixiecrat presidential candidate. The Senate was truly his life; he died only months after his retirement. Strom Thurmond will be remembered for his fights to keep blacks off the voting rolls and out of white public schools–and for the most recent news. His family finally acknowledged that the man who’d campaigned against “the social intermingling of the races” had fathered a child with a black teenage maid who worked in his family’s home.
MADAME CHIANG KAI-SHEK, 105
In America she was once a dazzling symbol of China’s future–modern, educated, pro-Western. In China she was a hated reminder of tyranny and corruption. Married to the Chinese Nationalist Party chief, she was his link to the United States–and its aid dollars. The couple squandered millions before being exiled to Taiwan in 1949.
ELIA KAZAN, 94
Whether by choice or not, Elia Kazan was an outsider all his life. The director of “On the Waterfront,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “East of Eden” crafted powerful films about life on America’s margins; his advocacy of the Method, with its channeling of raw emotion, revolutionized Hollywood acting. (His stars earned 21 Oscar nominations.) But at the height of his success, he spilled the names of communists he’d known to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was derided and ostracized; even 40 years later, his lifetime-achievement Oscar met with protest. The controversy will burn long after his death. So will the work.
KATHARINE HEPBURN, 96
She didn’t do coy. She wasn’t a femme fatale. She wasn’t about being pretty. And she didn’t give a damn. She came to conquer, and she did: she earned 12 Oscar nominations, a record four wins–three of them after the age of 60–and became the most indomitable actress of her era, which still isn’t over. Hepburn once said she wanted to “live like a man.” Instead, she re-defined what it meant to live like a woman. She played queens, debutantes, athletes–and even actresses–but her greatest role was Katharine Hepburn. We could have watched her play it forever.
JOHNNY CASH, 71 JUNE CARTER CASH, 73
It was country music’s best love story: the craggy Man in Black and a daughter of country’s First Family, the legendary Carters. She stuck with him through drugs and degenerative illness; when she died, he was soon to follow. Johnny Cash’s plain-as-dirt baritone gave his songs of hard luck and violence, love and faith, a directness and conviction that transcended their genre. June wasn’t in his league as a singer –who was?–but “Ring of Fire,” which she wrote about their scary early relationship, was one of his greatest hits, and one of country’s great songs. The stark 1994 “American Recordings” helped a new generation hear Johnny Cash as a still-vital contemporary–but really, he always was.
EDWARD TELLER, 95
His admirers say the Father of the H-bomb helped keep the Soviet Union in check with Mutually Assured Destruction. Edward Teller’s detractors call him a Strangeloveian obsessive, cheerleader for an arms race whose products could still destroy humanity. Early on, the Hungarian-born physicist helped America split the atom; when the U.S.S.R. set off its own fission bomb, he started work on fusion weapons: thermonuclear devices a thousand times more powerful. Teller’s hatred of Soviet tyranny led him to promote fantastic antimissile technology; some of it became the basis for the Star Wars defense initiative.
GERTRUDE EDERLE, 98
Yes, Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Channel, but there was more to it than that. In 1926 the 20-year-old made it from Cape Gris-Nez, France, to Kingsdown, England–21 miles as the crow flies–in 14 hours and 31 minutes, more than two hours faster than any of the five men who’d done it before. Imagine what her time would have been if rough seas hadn’t kept tossing her off course. She actually swam some 35 miles, keeping up her pace by singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”
FRED ROGERS, 74
The cardigan, white Keds and indelible jingle “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” became part of America’s collective childhood thanks to PBS’s “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” From 1968 to 2001, Fred Rogers (an ordained Presbyterian minister) invited kids into his tiny make-believe town to meet X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat. Rogers himself was the show’s puppeteer, script- and songwriter. After 9/11, he came out of retirement to do a public-service announcement helping children deal with the not-so-perfect neighborhood outside their doors.
DONALD O’CONNOR, 78
Nobody hated the “Francis the Talking Mule” movies more than Donald O’Connor himself. The song-and-dance man with the flexibility of a Gumby and the buoyancy of a helium balloon never rose above second fiddle in Hollywood: sidekicking with Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain,” belting with Ethel Merman in “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” But–a mule? Still, O’Connor never let the bitterness show. A second fiddle, maybe, but the man knew how to play.
SAM PHILLIPS, 80
He’d aspired to be a criminal lawyer, but Sam Phillips had to settle for becoming the most legendary producer in American music. In his Memphis storefront studio, Phillips was the first to record B. B. King and Howlin’ Wolf, and put out what’s been called the first rock-and-roll song: Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88.” But Phillips was also looking for a white singer who sounded black; he found Elvis Presley. His tiny Sun Records also launched Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison… in other words, the second American Revolution.
AL HIRSCHFELD, 99
An institution at The New York Times for more than 75 years, the artist Al Hirschfeld drew nearly every ninaoteworthy performer to grace the Broadway stage or the silver screen. His pen-and-ink caricatures were immediately recogninazable and conferred upon their subject a status that arguably no writer or photographer could. But he was perhaps best known for his whimsy: he hid the name of his daughter in every drawing. Pity we can’t recall her niname.
LENI RIEFENSTAHL, 101
She was a vastly promising director when Hitler hired Leni Riefenstahlto film a 1934 Nazi rally at Nuremberg. “Triumph of the Will”–the greatest propaganda film ever–destroyed her. After four years in prison she became a photographer, swearing to the end she didn’t know the evil she’d estheticized. Whatever. Except for one underwater documentary, she never directed again.
CELIA CRUZ, 77
The Queen of Salsa was Cuba’s premier diva throughout the ’50s, before she defected to the United States during a tour of Mexico in 1960. She never went back again. In the States, she worked with such top Latin bandleaders as Tito Puente; eventually she recorded more than 70 albums. Fans loved her powerhouse vocals, sassy attitude (she wouldn’t divulge her age) and Technicolor wigs. Beginning in the ’70s, interest in their heritage among younger Latinos gave Cruz a new prominence; her last CD won a Grammy in 2002.
GREGORY PECK, 87
Atticus Finch, he once said, “will be the first line in my obituary.” And sure enough. His Oscar-winning role in “To Kill a Mockingbird”–a white Southern lawyer defending a black man on trial for rape–made Gregory Peck America’s white-collar hero with a blue-collar heart. Atticus’s square-chinned nobility would define Peck’s career, on screen and off. He made Richard Nixon’s enemies list, and Ronald Reagan didn’t like him much, but for most Americans he remains a symbol of what we aspire to, for our country and ourselves: Honor. Humility. Courage. Atticus.
DAVID BRINKLEY, 82
He and NBC News co-anchor Chet Huntley both disliked that sign-off: “Good night, Chet.” “Good night, David.” But it brought a note of comfort to the generally grim news of the 1960s–and it was great TV. David Brinkley’s lean visage and his slightly wry, slightly North Carolina-accented delivery was something new: an authoritative but cool presence that ideally suited the medium. So did his writing: crisp, clear and with a sense of when to shut up and let the footage speak for itself. “Brinkley,” said Reuven Frank, his boss at NBC, “writes silence better than anyone else I know.” He’d think this was tacky, but–good night, David.
IDI AMIN, 78
During the 1970s, this telegenic, sadistic tyrant horrified the world by systematically murdering 300,000 of Uganda’s 12 million people, expelling tens of thousands of others and turning the coffers of his once thriving African nation into a personal piggy bank. A career soldier, Idi Amin seized control of the Army and police force and, eventually, the country. Once in power, he quashed dissent by publicly executing his critics: cabinet ministers, diplomats and church leaders were shot point-blank or forced to bludgeon one another to death before a horrified citizenry. He fled Uganda in 1979 and wound up living in seclusion in Saudi Arabia.
ALTHEA GIBSON, 76
She learned to play tennis in the most unlikely of places: the blacktop in front of her childhood home on West 143d Street in Harlem, which police had cordoned off as a play area for local kids. It took talent, will–and this stroke of luck–for a poor black girl in a segregated world to become a champion at one of the whitest, most privileged of sports. In 1957, Althea Gibson became the first black person, male or female, to win at Wimbledon. Shaking the hand of Queen Elizabeth II as she accepted the trophy, Gibson said, “At last, at last.” And she won again the next year.
DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, 76
In 1980, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said the decade’s defining event would be the end of the Soviet Union. Prescient as usual. The witty, tweedy Harvard professor was an ambassador under Nixon and Ford before becoming a Democratic senator from New York–yet found time to write such influential books as “Beyond the Melting Pot.” Moynihan was early in arguing that family breakup slowed black advancement; his ideas crossed partisan lines, prompting the debate he so loved–and often the action, too.
JOHN RITTER, 54
Critics never cared for the hit sitcom “Three’s Company,” but none of them ever blamed John Ritter. As Jack Tripper, the closeted heterosexual posing as gay so his landlord would let him shack up with two female roommates, Ritter soared above the show’s lowbrow instincts, singlehandedly turning it into one of TV’s top series from 1977 to 1984. Another actor would’ve spent the rest of his career trying to escape such a creation, but Ritter was so versatile that his work in such indie films as “Sling Blade,” and as TV’s most dependable guest star ( “Ally McBeal”), bore no trace of Tripper. At the time of his sudden death, Ritter was again carrying a sitcom, ABC’s “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.”
ROBERT C. ATKINS, 72
Dieting once meant Melba toast and celery. Then, in 1972, the best-selling “Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution” made steak and eggs America’s weight-loss plan of choice–though the cardiologist battled the medical establishment, which warned against his no-starch, high-fat plan. To date, 30 million people have lost 200 million pounds, and even onetime critics order burgers–hold the bun.
IN A TIME OF WAR
As we went to press, 460 American troops had died in Iraq this past year, along with 85 soldiers from other nations, 53 of them from the United Kingdom and 17 from Italy. The civilian death toll in Iraq may have approached 10,000; in Baghdad alone, more than 2,000 occupation-related deaths have been reported since May 1, the official end of hostilities. These are the numbers–and we know they don’t quite register. How could they possibly? But each one had a name, though some may never be known. Each one had a story, of incalculable worth, though some may never be told.
title: “Final Bows” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-04” author: “Lawrence Mckee”
DANA REEVE, 44 Just 10 months after her husband, Christopher, the paralysis activist and “Superman” star, died suddenly, Reeve herself was diagnosed with lung cancer. She never smoked a day in her life. It was just more bad luck for a family that surely deserved a reprieve. Reeve attacked her illness as courageously as her husband battled his disability, but she died less than a year later. During her life she was an actress on television and Broadway–the couple met after Christopher watched her perform a cabaret act–but she became far more noted as a devoted caregiver for her husband and a dogged supporter of his cause.
MICKEY SPILLANE, 88 He once described his own writing as “the chewing gum of American literature,” which is modest enough, but hey, who doesn’t like gum? Spillane, the creator of the bold, bloodthirsty private dick Mike Hammer, was never a critic’s darling. But in the 1940s and ’50s, his pulpy, violent crime novels made him wealthy and famous, and they inspired a generation of imitators whose chewing gum rarely tasted quite as juicy as his.
MILTON FRIEDMAN, 94 In every generation," he once said, “there’s got to be somebody who goes the whole way.” Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist–and longtime NEWSWEEK columnist–was godfather to libertarian conservatives. He championed the free market, tax cuts–“under any circumstances and for any excuse”–and a hands-off government. This meant opposing a draft, drug laws, even driver’s licenses. If the Reagan and Thatcher governments didn’t adopt all his views in the ’80s, it wasn’t because he failed to make them plain.
THE REV. WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN, 81 One of the rare high-profile religious voices from the left, Coffin spent his life spreading the gospel that social justice was an essential value of Christianity. His beliefs were forged in the fire of the 1960s, when, as the youngest-ever chaplain at Yale University, he was a fierce critic of the Vietnam War and an active participant in the civil-rights movement. He was immortalized, in a lighter fashion, by “Doonesbury” creator (and Yale grad) Garry Trudeau, who cited Coffin as the inspiration for his strip’s hip minister, the Rev. Scot Sloan.
RED AUERBACH, 89 During his 16 years as coach of the Boston Celtics, Red Auerbach often lit his famed cigar before the clock hit zero–a mischievous taunt to defeated foes. He hated losing, so he made sure it didn’t happen often. Beginning in 1957, his Celts won an unthinkable nine NBA titles in 10 years. Then he won six more as Boston’s general manager. His best move? Maybe in 1978, when he drafted a goofy white kid from French Lick, Ind. He couldn’t run or jump, but at least he was Larry Bird.
JEANE KIRKPATRICK, 80 Kirkpatrick wasn’t sure she’d fit in at the Reagan White House. She was, after all, a lifelong Democrat. “I was a Democrat once, too,” Reagan told her, cleverly. He made her America’s first female U.N. ambassador, and she quickly established herself as a voice for American strength. She was a staunch defenderof Israel and the invasion of Grenada, and a fervent criticof the Soviet Union. And when Kirkpatrick spoke in her deep, smoky voice, the world listened.
CASPARWEINBERGER, 88 When he was serving as Nixon’s budget director, Weinberger was so passionate about cutting costs that he earned the nickname Cap the Knife. That kind of zeal was the hallmark of Weinberger’s two decades in Washington, which culminated in his term as Reagan’s Defense secretary. It also contributed to the one blemish on his storied career: an indictment in the Iran-contra scandal.
ED BRADLEY, 65 It’s still hard to imagine Sundays without Ed Bradley’s salt-and-pepper beard and that charmingly incongruous stud in his ear. Over 25 years on “60 Minutes,” he interviewed presidents and killers, entertainers and scam artists. “I knew I had arrived in national politics when Ed Bradley wanted to interview me,” Bill Clinton said at Bradley’s memorial service. Others in attendance: Howard Stern, Bill Cosby and Jimmy Buffett. How did a “60 Minutes” guy get to be this cool?
BUCK OWENS, 76 Yeah, “Hee Haw” was hokey. No, he was no master singer. But 40-odd years ago, working out of Bakersfield, Calif., Owens counterrevolutionized country music. With his muscular, minimalist Buckaroos, he combined country purism and rock-and-roll energy, precision and soul. The Beatles’ cover of “Act Naturally” sold much more than his version. But he died rich, hours after his last gig–in Bakersfield.
SHELLEY WINTERS, 83 Winters was born to play the blowsy dumb blonde from the wrong side of the tracks, but she won two Oscars, for the edgy Mrs. Van Daan in “The Diary of Anne Frank” and the hellish mother in “A Patch of Blue.” Winters was funny, sexy and candid behind the scenes, too. In her memoir, “Shelley, Also Known as Shirley,” she claimed Sean Connery, William Holden and Burt Lancaster as lovers. Not bad for old Shirley Schrift, from Brooklyn, N.Y.
AL LEWIS, 82 He’ll go down in pop-culture history for playing TV’s Grandpa Munster–so that accounts for three years. And the other 79? He ran a restaurant, hosted a radio show, performed in the circus, scouted basketball talent for such coaches as Red Auerbach. When he was 75, he ran for governor of New York. In a ponytail. OK, George Pataki beat him, but by gosh, he got some 52,000 votes.
BETTY FRIEDAN, 85 If any single event sparked the women’s movement in the United States, it was the 1963 publication of Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” A summa cum laude graduate of Smith College turned suburban mom, she was surveying fellow alumnae and found deep dissatisfaction–which she shared–among educated American housewives. Friedan went on to become one of feminism’s strongest voices, and a founder of the National Organization for Women.
AHMET ERTEGUN, 83 The son of a Turkish ambassador to the United States, Ertegun fell in love with American jazz and blues. In 1947, he cofounded Atlantic Records: first as an R&B label (Ray Charles, the Drifters), then on to soul (Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett), rock (the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin), pop (the Bee Gees), pap (Sonny and Cher) and rap (Tupac Shakur, Lil’ Kim, Sean Paul). Ertegun hired such legendary producers as Arif Mardin (who also died this year) and Jerry Wexler; his brother Neshui ran the jazz arm, recording seminal work by Coltrane, Mingus and Ornette Coleman. In October, the still-vibrant Ertegun was backstage at a Stones concert–for Bill Clinton’s 60th birthday–fell, hit his head and went into a coma. If he had to go at all, it wasn’t the worst way.
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, 64 He ranked among the beasts of a savage 20th century. Reviving long-dormant Serbian nationalism, Milosevic skillfully played on enduring ethnic grievances to plunge post-communist Yugoslavia into fragmentation and civil war. The result: a decade of brutal ethnic cleansing that claimed more than 200,000 lives. His four-year-long war-crimes and genocide trial was finally coming to an end when the man known as the Butcher of the Balkans robbed his victims of justice. He died, quietly and alone, of a heart attack in his prison cell in The Hague.
WENDY WASSERSTEIN, 55 We watched the smart, sensitive women in Wasserstein’s plays come of age, and while they often found intellectual fulfillment, they also faced dashed expectations, disappointing romances, loneliness and mortality. Yet, with Wasserstein’s canniness, warmth and wise-cracking wit, her plays weren’t downers. In 1989, “The Heidi Chronicles,” about an art historian staring down the vicissitudes of contemporary life, won a Pulitzer Prize and the Tony–the first time a woman playwright had won it solo.
GORDON PARKS, 93 His eyes were always open, capturing cleaning women, civil-rights leaders and cognoscenti with equal reverence. The first African-American photographer to shoot for Life magazine, Parks used his camera to expose social inequities and class divisions, hoping to spark discussions on how to mend the rifts. In 1971, he directed the iconic “Shaft,” paving the way for black photographers and filmmakers alike. When Parks died, adoring successors came to his funeral, cameras at the ready, to pay respect by capturing him–perhaps for the first time–with his eyes closed.
KENNETH LAY, 64 Lay, founder of the energy-trading giant Enron, was convicted in May of fraud and conspiracy. Enron’s 2001 bankruptcy cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars–many investors, unlike Lay, hadn’t sold their stock before the news broke. In July, he died of heart disease, and his conviction was erased: he hadn’t had a chance to appeal. At the funeral, the minister called the outrage against Lay a “lynching.” Thousands of Enron employees begged to differ.
ROBERT ALTMAN, 81 An anti-Hollywood iconoclast, the director was known for the overlapping dialogue, meandering camera and improvisational feel of such now classic films as “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “The Long Goodbye” and “Nashville”–and his last, the elegiac “A Prairie Home Companion.” In a career of ups and downs, he kept surprising us–especially with a movie like “The Player,” from 1992, his take-no-prisoners revenge on Hollywood itself. Actors loved the freedom he allowed them. “I’m looking for something I’ve never seen,” he once said, “so how can I tell them what to do?” Nominated for five Academy Awards, he never won–until he finally got an honorary Oscar this year.
ANN RICHARDS, 73 With her pile of silver hair and twangy voice, Richards seemed an odd leader of a “New Texas.” But when elected governor in 1990, she kept her campaign promise to open up state government to minorities and women. She’d become a star two years before, at the Democratic convention, with a swipe at George H.W. Bush: “Poor George … He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” In 1994, she lost her re-election bid to his son.
WILLIAM STYRON, 81 He was a Southern novelist in his 1951 debut, “Lie Down in Darkness,” but Styron’s career defied categorization. “Sophie’s Choice” was a haunting Holocaust story. “Darkness Visible” was his brave memoir of depression. Yet some blacks believed he’d poached on their turf in “Nat Turner,” and some Jews asked why he focused on a non-Jew in “Sophie’s Choice.” Styron’s response: racism and anti-Semitism were, at bottom, “anti-human.”
AUGUSTO PINOCHET, 91 In September 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet led a military coup that, with U.S. support, overthrew Chile’s leftist government and launched a violent era of repression. His regime “disappeared” more than 3,000 political opponents and tortured thousands more. He stepped down as president in 1990 but retained control of the armed forces for an additional eight years. He spent his last years in poor health, fighting efforts to prosecute him for a variety of abuses.
LLOYD BENTSEN, 85 Clinton’s Treasury secretary once beat future president George H.W. Bush for the Senate. Not bad. But he’s perhaps remembered most for the vice presidential debate of 1988, when Dan Quayle dared to compare himself to John Kennedy. “Senator,” Bentsen replied icily, “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” The Dukakis-Bentsen ticket lost anyway.
MIKE DOUGLAS, 81 A former big-band singer, the genial Douglas became a fixture in American living rooms with his easygoing afternoon talk show in the 1960s and ’70s. “I asked him once if he was an interviewer who sings or a singer who did interviews,” Larry King said after Douglas died. His answer was no surprise: “He considered himself an entertainer who happened to do interviews.” No one ever accused him of skewering a guest with a pointed question–one reason that “The Mike Douglas Show” was an essential stop for politicians, including seven presidents, as well as top performers. Even Tiger Woods once appeared–as a 3-year-old golf prodigy.
STEVE IRWIN, 44 On his TV specials, Irwin had the exuberance of a spider monkey and the guts of a lion. “The Crocodile Hunter” had been in more dangerous spots than he was on Sept. 4, shooting for Animal Planet off the coast of Australia. But Irwin got too close to a stingray–usually a docile species–and its barb pierced his heart. Dead almost instantly, he was mourned globally.
CORETTA SCOTT KING, 78 On Coretta Scott’s first date with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1952, he said to her: “The four things I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty, and you have them all.” When her husband was assassinated in 1968, and for nearly 40 years when she carried on his mission of civil rights and nonviolence, Coretta Scott King showed the nation all those qualities. Thousands of grateful Americans attended her funeral, as did four presidents.
PETER BOYLE, 71 If you must, remember him as Ray Romano’s surly pop on “Everybody Loves Raymond.” But there are other options. Long before his sitcom days, Boyle was often cast as a gritty type in films such as “Taxi Driver” and “Joe.” His funniest turn came not on a sitcom, but on screen as a reanimated monster belting out “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein.” Did you know that he took up acting only after leaving a monastery? That the best man at his wedding was John Lennon? Sure, he was great on TV, but his life was better.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, 97 The iconoclastic Galbraith was less economic theorist than liberal visionary: he believed in Keynesian deficit spending and Rooseveltian government. Well before his 1958 best-seller “The Affluent Society,” a critique of consumerism, he’d advised top Democrats. JFK made him ambassador to India; Galbraith believed that Kennedy wanted his pet maverick at “a suitable distance.”
ANOTHER YEAR AT WAR As we went to press, at least 761 American and 28 other Coalition troops had died in Iraq in 2006. In Afghanistan, at least 97 and 191. The number of soldiers killed since the March 20, 2003, invasion of Iraq is approaching a grim milestone: 3,000. Civilian casualties this year? More than 1,000 in Afghanistan. Perhaps 24,000 in Iraq. For America, the conflict there has now lasted as long as our engagement in World War II.
