Joan Micklin Silver obit

Joan Micklin Silver, Director of ‘Crossing Delancey,’ Dies at 85

She broke barriers for women, directing seven feature films, including “Hester Street” and “Between the Lines,” as well as TV movies.

She was not on the list.

Joan Micklin Silver, the filmmaker whose first feature, “Hester Street,” expanded the marketplace for American independent film and broke barriers for women in directing, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.

Her daughter Claudia Silver said the cause was vascular dementia.

Ms. Silver wrote and directed “Hester Street” (1975), the story of a young Jewish immigrant couple from Russia on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1890s. It was a personal effort, a low-budget 34-day location shoot, that became a family project.

Studios said the story was too narrowly and historically ethnic. For one thing, much of the film, in black and white, was in Yiddish with English subtitles.

“Nobody wanted to release it,” Ms. Silver recalled in a visual history interview for the Directors Guild of America in 2005. “The only offer was to release it on 16 to the synagogue market,” she added, referring to 16-millimeter film.

Ms. Silver’s husband, Raphael D. Silver, a commercial real estate developer, stepped in to finance, produce and even distribute the film after selling it to some international markets while attending the Cannes Film Festival. “Hester Street” opened at the Plaza Theater in Manhattan in October 1975, then in theaters nationwide, and soon earned $5 million (about $25 million today), almost 14 times its $370,000 budget. (Ms. Silver sometimes cited an even lower budget figure: $320,000.)

Richard Eder of The New York Times praised the film’s “fine balance between realism and fable” and declared it “an unconditionally happy achievement.” Carol Kane, who was 21 during the filming, in 1973, was nominated for the best actress Oscar for her role as Gitl, the newly arrived wife who is, in the opinion of her husband (Steven Keats), humiliatingly slow to assimilate.

“Hester Street” made Ms. Silver’s reputation, but the next time she wanted to depict Jewish characters and culture, the same objections arose.

“Crossing Delancey” (1988) was a romantic comedy about a sophisticated, single New York bookstore employee (Amy Irving) who is constantly looking over her shoulder to be sure that she’s made a clean getaway from her Lower East Side roots.

With the help of her grandmother (played by the Yiddish theater star Reizl Bozyk) and a traditional matchmaker (Sylvia Miles), she meets a neighborhood pickle dealer (Peter Riegert) who has enough great qualities to make up for his being just another nice guy (her tastes ran more in the bad-boy direction).

The studios found this film “too ethnic” too — “a euphemism,” Ms. Silver told The Times, “for Jewish material that Hollywood executives distrust.”

 Luckily, Ms. Irving’s husband at the time, the director Steven Spielberg, was fond of Jewish history himself. He suggested that she send the script to a neighbor of his in East Hampton, N.Y. — a top Warner Entertainment executive. The film grossed more than $116 million worldwide (about $255 million today).

It is difficult to say which was Ms. Silver’s most vicious antagonist, anti-Semitism or misogyny.

“I had such blatantly sexist things said to me by studio executives when I started,” she recalled in an American Film Institute interview in 1979. She quoted one man’s memorable comment: “Feature films are very expensive to mount and distribute, and women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”

Filmography (director)

 

    The Immigrant Experience: The Long Long Journey (1972 short)

    The Case of the Elevator Duck (1974 short)

    Hester Street (1975)

    Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976 TV film)

    Between the Lines (1977)

    Chilly Scenes of Winter (Head Over Heels) (1979)

    How to Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days (1983 TV film)

    Finnegan Begin Again (1985 TV film)

    Crossing Delancey (1988)

    Loverboy (1989)

    Prison Stories: Women on the Inside (1991 TV film) - segment 2

    Big Girls Don't Cry... They Get Even (1992)

    A Private Matter (1992 TV film)

    In the Presence of Mine Enemies (1997 TV film)

    Invisible Child (1999 TV film)

    A Fish in the Bathtub (1999)

    Charms for the Easy Life (2002 TV film)

    Hunger Point (2003 TV film)

 

Dick Thornburgh obit

Dick Thornburgh, ex-Pa. governor and US attorney general, dead at 88

The Republican guided Pennsylvania through the Three Mile Island nuclear crisis in 1979

 

 He was not on the list.

Dick Thornburgh, who as Pennsylvania governor won plaudits for his cool handling of the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis and as U.S. attorney general restored credibility to a Justice Department hurt by the Iran-Contra scandal, has died. He was 88.

Thornburgh died Thursday morning at a retirement community facility outside Pittsburgh, his son David said. The cause is not yet known. He suffered a mild stroke in June 2014.

 

Thornburgh built his reputation as a crime-busting federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh and as a moderate Republican governor. As the nation’s top law enforcement official, he prosecuted the savings and loan scandal. He also shepherded the Americans with Disabilities Act; one of his sons had been severely brain damaged in an auto accident.

 

After leaving public office, Thornburgh became a go-to troubleshooter who helped CBS investigate its news practices, dissected illegalities at telecommunications company WorldCom and tried to improve the United Nations’ efficiency.

 

"I’ve always had an opportunity to right a vessel that was somewhat listing and taking on water," he told The Associated Press in 1999. "I wouldn’t object to being characterized as a ‘Mr. Fix It.’ I’ve liked the day-in, day-out challenges of governance."

 

President Ronald Reagan appointed Thornburgh attorney general in the waning months of his administration. Thornburgh succeeded the embattled Edwin Meese III, who was investigated by a special prosecutor for possible ethics violations, and his appointment in August 1988 was hailed on Capitol Hill as an opportunity to restore the agency’s morale and image.

He was asked to stay on as attorney general when George H.W. Bush became president in 1989.

Thornburgh ran into trouble with the press and members of Congress who were put off by his imperious manner. He also battled liberals and conservatives in Congress over Justice Department appointments.

 

Despite the difficulties, Thornburgh enjoyed the continued backing of President Bush and won unprecedented increases from Congress in the Justice Department’s budget to fight crime.

The prosecution of savings and loan operators and borrowers increased during his tenure as the nation faced a growing crisis in the thrift industry. He set up securities fraud and S&L task forces in several major cities.

Also under Thornburgh, the Justice Department pursued the prosecution of deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was brought to Miami to face drug trafficking charges after a U.S. invasion.

Thornburgh tried to halt unauthorized leaks of information about criminal investigations, but he ran into trouble in the spring of 1989 when CBS News aired a story that the FBI was investigating the congressional office of Rep. William Gray, D-Pa. The story produced expressions of outrage among Democrats because it was aired when Gray was seeking to be elected House majority whip.

An internal investigation later showed that Thornburgh’s own chief spokesman played a role in confirming the story.

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey said Thornburgh led Pennsylvania and the Department of Justice "successfully and with integrity."

"The steady nature in which he guided Pennsylvania through one of its most dangerous crises – the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island – should serve as an example for all elected officials," the Republican senator said.

"The steady nature in which he guided Pennsylvania through one of its most dangerous crises – the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island – should serve as an example for all elected officials."

— U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, shared Toomey's sentiment, describing Thornburgh during the accident as a "necessary and steady voice of calm in the midst of a crisis."

As Pennsylvania governor from 1979 to 1987, Thornburgh won a reputation as a squeaky-clean, reform-minded executive who cut the state government’s payroll, but his defining moment came barely two months into office.

In March 1979, he was confronted with the worst nuclear accident in American history when a routine equipment failure at the Three Mile Island power plant turned into a partial meltdown, which released radioactive elements.

Thornburgh agonized over whether to order an evacuation of the area around the plant. He recalled years later that "some people were telling us more than they knew and others were telling us less than they knew."

He eventually ordered pregnant women and young children to leave an area five miles around the plant, which caused thousands of others near Harrisburg to flee.

His cool handling of the 10-day crisis was credited with averting panic.

He was praised in later years for recognizing that Pennsylvania’s manufacturing industry was fading and pumping state money into economic development for new businesses.

Thornburgh’s career in government services stretched back to the 1960s. He was U.S. attorney in western Pennsylvania from 1969 to 1975, prosecuting drug traffickers, organized crime figures and corrupt politicians.

From 1975 to 1977, he was assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, where he stepped up federal prosecutions of public corruption in the post-Watergate era.

He showed his sense of humor at events during his first gubernatorial campaign in 1978, mocking the state Legislature’s generous compensation to the tune of "My Favorite Things." "Nice big fat paychecks and liberal pensions / Fringes and perks that we won’t even mention ..." As attorney general, he referred to white-collar crime as "crime in the suites," as opposed to streets.

When Thornburgh left the U.S. attorney general post in 1991, he made a run for U.S. Senate, losing to Harris Wofford in the general election.

The election landed Thornburgh in a courtroom in Texas, where Karl Rove, one of George W. Bush’s closest advisers, sued him to try to get back nearly $300,000 in back campaign debts. Thornburgh lost in court, appealed and eventually settled the case.

In 1992, Thornburgh accepted a top administrative job at the United Nations to fight bureaucratic excess and corruption. He left the job after his one-year contract ended, expressing frustration at inefficiency and saying the U.N. is "almost totally lacking in effective means to deal with waste, fraud and abuse by staff members."

In recent years, Thornburgh was tapped to investigate wrongdoing in the corporate world.

In 2002, the Justice Department tapped Thornburgh to help investigate WorldCom for mismanagement, irregularities and fraud. He described the company, which made the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, as "the poster child of corporate governance failures."

Thornburgh was co-leader of an investigation conducted by CBS when its "60 Minutes Wednesday" program used faked documents to bolster a 2004 story that questioned George W. Bush’s Vietnam War-era military service. The probe’s damning final report led to the firing of three news executives.

Richard Lewis Thornburgh was born July 16, 1932, and grew up in Rosslyn Farms, near Pittsburgh. He trained as an engineer at Yale, seeking to follow his civil-engineer father’s footsteps, but went to law school at the University of Pittsburgh.

Upon graduation, he went to work as a corporate lawyer, later joining the law firm of Kirkpatrick and Lockhart.

Thornburgh married his childhood sweetheart, Virginia "Ginny" Hooton, in 1955. She was killed in an automobile crash in 1960 that left one of their three sons, Peter, severely brain damaged.

Three years later, Thornburgh married Ginny Judson, who raised his three sons and bore another, William. (He wrote in his memoir that "Ginny and my first wife shared not only a name but many characteristics that would no doubt have made them fast friends.")

He said the accident was a defining moment that forced him to refocus his life on what his mission and legacy would be.

Both he and his second wife became active in programs for the disabled. In 1985, the Thornburghs were named "Family of the Year" by the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens.

Five years later, the Americans With Disabilities Act was signed into law after Thornburgh played a key role in negotiating compromises with Congress.

Eugene Wright obit

Eugene Wright, bassist with classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, dies aged 97

Last surviving member of group who cut Take Five and Blue Rondo à la Turk was described as an ‘honorary uncle to the Brubeck family

 

He is not on the list.

Jazz bassist Eugene Wright, who was the last surviving member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s classic lineup, has died aged 97.

The Brubeck estate announced the news on Twitter, saying they were “deeply saddened” and added that he “remained a good friend and honorary uncle to the Brubeck family to the end”.

Wright, nicknamed The Senator in jazz circles, was born in Chicago in 1923, and first became proficient on cornet, leading the group Dukes of Swing as a young man. He then taught himself the double bass and became even more successful at the peak of the swing era, earning slots under bandleaders including Count Basie and Erroll Garner. He also played with Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, and displayed his versatility as the swing era ended, playing bebop with the likes of Sonny Stitt and Latin jazz with Cal Tjader. Wright was known for nimble soloing as well as providing rhythmic backing.

His most celebrated work, though, came with the Dave Brubeck Quartet from 1958 until 1968, alongside the bandleader on piano, Paul Desmond on alto saxophone and Joe Morello on drums. Wright played on Take Five, one of the most instantly recognisable tunes in jazz, as well as another classic, Blue Rondo à la Turk, and recorded more than 30 albums with the group.

Dave Brubeck himself wrote that Wright “grounded the group”, allowing them “to play other tempos and do polyrhythmic things and he wouldn’t budge from this grounded beat”.

Wright also performed in The Real Ambassadors, the Brubeck-penned jazz musical featuring vocals by Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae. Set in the fictional African nation of Talgalla, it satirically explored the role of musicians as cultural ambassadors during the cold war, and the racism Black jazz musicians – including Wright – often endured in the US. When Wright joined the group, concert promoters baulked at hosting a Black musician alongside the rest of the white Brubeck quartet, but Brubeck would refuse to perform without him. The estate wrote on Twitter: “We remember the challenges Gene and the Quartet had to undergo in order to play at segregated universities on their US tours in the early 1960s.”

In his later life, Wright headed the jazz department at the University of Cincinnati and the International Society of Bassists.