Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Gail Lumet Buckley, Chronicler of Black Family History, Dies at 86

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      She wrote two books about multiple generations of her forebears, including her mother, Lena Horne.Gail Lumet Buckley, who rather than follow her mother, Lena Horne, into show business, wrote two multigenerational books about their ambitious Black middle-class family, died on July 18 at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 86.Her daughter Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter and film and television producer, said the cause was heart failure.Mrs. Buckley was inspired to chronicle her family history in the early 1980s, when her mother asked her to store an old trunk in her basement. It had belonged to Ms. Horne’s father, Edwin Jr., known as Teddy, and contained hundreds of artifacts that had belonged to relatives dating back six generations, to Sinai Reynolds, who had been born into slavery around 1777 and who in 1859 bought her freedom and that of members of her family.“There were photographs, letters, bills, notes,” Mrs. Buckley told The New York Times in a joint interview with her mother in 1986, as well as “speakeasy tickets, gambling receipts, college diplomas.”Those disparate paper fragments of history helped her structure “The Hornes: An American Family” (1986).Mrs. Buckley was inspired to chronicle her family history when she discovered, in an old trunk, hundreds of artifacts that had belonged to relatives dating back six generations.Alfred A. KnopfWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rosa Ross, Late-Blooming Author of Asian Cookbooks, Dies at 86

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      She was, she said, unable to cook a basic meal into her mid-20s. But she went on to a successful career as restaurateur and an authority on Asian cuisine.Rosa Ross, a Hong Kong-born chef who, despite lacking even basic kitchen knowledge into her 20s, became a noted cookbook author, Chinese cooking instructor and restaurateur on the North Fork of Long Island, died on June 28 at her home in East Marion, N.Y. She was 86.The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, her daughter Sarah Ross said.Drawing from a swirl of culinary influences from her youth — Chinese, English, Indian, Malaysian — Ms. Ross began her rise in the food world in the early 1980s by traveling to homes around New York City to provide Chinese cooking lessons with a business she called Wok on Wheels.She published the first of her four cookbooks, “365 Ways to Cook Chinese,” in 1994. Ten years later, after moving to Greenport, N.Y., she veered from classic Chinese cooking by opening the restaurant Scrimshaw there.Scrimshaw, which closed in 2016, was an early farm-to-table American restaurant that blended in elements of the Asian cuisine of her youth, including heritage-pork dumplings and duck-confit spring rolls that became the stuff of local legend.The restaurant also showcased Italian fare, which she first learned to make while living in Milan and honed under the tutelage of her friend Marcella Hazan, the author of “The Classic Italian Cook Book” (1973).Diners at Scrimshaw, Ms. Ross’s restaurant in Greenport, N.Y., in 2004, the year it opened. Scrimshaw showcased Italian and American cooking, but it was also noted for its heritage-pork dumplings and duck-confit spring rolls.Deirdre Brennan for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Esta TerBlanche, ‘All My Children’ Star, Dies at 51

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      Ms. TerBlanche played Gillian Andrassy, a Hungarian princess whose story line was beloved by fans.Esta TerBlanche, a South African actress best known for her role on “All My Children,” died on Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 51.Her death was confirmed by her publicist, Lisa Rodrigo. An autopsy report from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner was pending, Ms. Rodrigo said.The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.From 1997 to 2001, Ms. TerBlanche played Gillian Andrassy, a Hungarian princess who is sent to live with her cousin. Her enemies-to-lovers story line with Ryan Lavery, played by Cameron Mathison, was popular at the time.Esta TerBlanche was born on Jan. 7, 1973, in Rustenburg, South Africa.She began her career at 16 years old as the host of a television show for children called “K-T.V.” and a math show called “Math No Problem,” she said in an interview in April on the podcast “Conversations With Nicole.” In 1991, she was crowned Miss Teen South Africa.Ms. TerBlanche landed a recurring role as Bienke Naudé Hartman on South Africa’s longest-running soap opera, “Egoli: Place of Gold,” about three families in Johannesburg that are steeped in drama, sex, scandal and intrigue, according to News24 in South Africa.She moved to the United States when she was 23 to pursue acting. In the podcast interview, she recalled arriving at Los Angeles International Airport with two suitcases and a stomach full of fear and doubt, wondering whether she should go home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bernice Johnson Reagon, a Musical Voice for Civil Rights, Is Dead at 81

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      A singer, composer, curator and founder of the vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock, she provided a gospel soundtrack for the civil rights movement.Bernice Johnson Reagon, whose stirring gospel voice helped provide the soundtrack of the civil rights movement, then went on to become a cultural historian, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution and the founder of the women’s a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 81.Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her daughter, Toshi Reagon, who did not give a cause.Bernice Reagon, the daughter of a Baptist preacher in Albany, Ga., grew up in a church without a piano, and the first music she absorbed, rooted in spirituals and hymns, was performed by human voices to the accompaniment of clapping and foot stomping.She was an original member in 1962 of the Freedom Singers, a vocal quartet that provided anthems of defiance for civil rights protesters preparing to confront the police or as they were hauled away to jail. The Freedom Singers were associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sent them across the South as well as to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1963.Ms. Reagon once wrote, “I sang and heard the freedom songs and saw them pull together sections of the Black community at times when other means of communication were ineffective.”She went on to earn a doctorate in American history from Howard University in 1975 and to direct the Black American Culture Program at the Smithsonian. There, she amassed a collection of blues, gospel and spiritual music and presented that heritage to the public.During one gospel music presentation, in the 1980s, Ms. Reagon encouraged the audience to hum and sing along with the performers. “And if you can’t do that, grunt or sigh a little,” she instructed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Evan Wright, Award-Winning Reporter and Author of ‘Generation Kill,’ Dies at 59

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      Mr. Wright was known for his immersive journalism that focused on subjects outside mainstream media coverage to explore the nooks and crannies of American life.Evan Wright, an award-winning journalist whose reporting from the Iraq War formed the best-selling book “Generation Kill” and whose work illuminated the lives of those on the fringes of society, died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 59.His death was ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office and was confirmed in a statement released Monday night by his family.Mr. Wright was known for his immersive journalism that often focused on subjects outside mainstream media coverage, including traveling with anarchists behind the Battle of Seattle in 1999, covering the 1996 Aryan Nations World Congress and riding with the Marines leading the United States’ invasion of Iraq. His reporting on crime, war and American subcultures was published in Rolling Stone, where he was a contributing editor, as well as in Hustler, Vanity Fair and Time.“I failed at everything else,” he told The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2011, discussing what led him to journalism. “I was optimistic. It was a refuge for rogues and miscreants.”Mr. Wright moved from his native Ohio to Los Angeles in the early 1990s to pursue screenwriting, according to a 2009 Los Angeles Times article. He landed his first paid journalism job in 1995 as an entertainment editor at Hustler, reviewing pornographic films and covering the adult film industry. At Rolling Stone Mr. Wright was introduced to combat and military culture, first on assignment in Afghanistan in 2002 embedding with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, and then in 2003 with the Marines’ First Reconnaissance Battalion in Iraq. Mr. Wright secured a spot in the lead vehicle in the push from Kuwait to Baghdad, eventually filing a three-part series in Rolling Stone called “The Killer Elite,” which received the 2004 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shannen Doherty, ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ Star, Dies at 53

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      Shannen Doherty, the raven-haired actress known for playing headstrong characters in the 1990s television dramas “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Charmed,” and who had tried in recent years to shed her rebellious reputation, died on Saturday. She was 53.The cause was cancer, her publicist, Leslie Sloane, said in an emailed statement. Ms. Doherty learned she had breast cancer in February 2015 and had been open about her struggle with it in the years since. In the summer of 2016, she shaved her head as a group of friends stood by, and in 2017, she announced that the cancer was in remission. It returned in 2020, and in June 2023, Ms. Doherty announced that the cancer had spread to her brain. In November, she said it had spread to her bones.But she continued to work, and started a podcast that month.“I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better,” she told People magazine. “I’m not done.”Ms. Doherty in 1996. “I have felt misunderstood my whole life,” she told People in 2019.Gary Null/NBCShannen Maria Doherty was born on April 12, 1971, in Memphis to John Doherty Jr., a mortgage consultant, and Rosa (Wright) Doherty, a beautician. By age 10, Shannen had established herself as a child actress, appearing as Jenny Wilder in 18 episodes of “Little House on the Prairie” and acting alongside Wilford Brimley and Deidre Hall in the NBC drama “Our House.”Those were quickly overshadowed by her performance as the acid-tongued, red-scrunchy-wearing Heather Duke in the 1988 movie “Heathers,” a campy comedy-thriller that starred Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Ms. Doherty as students who fight for lunchroom domination as the body count begins to rise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Anthea Sylbert, Costume Designer Who Became a Producer, Dies at 84

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      Her career unfolded in three phases: as the creator of costumes for movies like “Chinatown,” as a studio executive and as a producer, largely with her friend Goldie Hawn.Anthea Sylbert, the Oscar-nominated costume designer of the films “Chinatown” and “Julia,” who left Hollywood fitting rooms to be a studio executive and, later, Goldie Hawn’s producing partner, died on June 18 at her home on the Greek island of Skiathos. She was 84.Robert Romanus, her stepson, said the cause was complications of emphysema.Ms. Sylbert began designing costumes for films in 1967. Over the next decade, she collaborated with A-list directors like Mike Nichols, Roman Polanski and Elaine May and conceived what Jack Nicholson wore when he starred in “Chinatown,” “The Fortune” and “Carnal Knowledge.”“Jack Nicholson actually gave me the best compliment I ever got as a costume designer,” she said in “My Life in 3 Acts,” a forthcoming documentary about Ms. Sylbert directed by Sakis Lalas. “He said, ‘When “The Ant” does your clothes, you don’t have to act as much.’” (“The Ant” was short for Anthea, she explained.)Ms. Sylbert envisioned Jake Gittes, the natty, determined private detective played by Mr. Nicholson in “Chinatown” (1974), as a dandy.“I thought he would be interested in fashion,” she told Sam Wasson for his book “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood” (2020). “The one who would be noticing what the stars were wearing when he went to the races.”Deborah Nadoolman Landis, chair of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled a vivid scene in “Chinatown” in which Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway, sit together in a red restaurant banquette.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Benji Gregory, Child Star on ‘ALF,’ Dies at 46

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      Mr. Gregory was found dead on June 13 in his car, along with his service dog.Benji Gregory, who starred as a child in the hit television series “ALF” in the 1980s, has died. He was 46.His death was confirmed by his sister, Rebecca Pfaffinger, who said that an official cause of death was still pending.According to Mrs. Pfaffinger, Mr. Gregory and his service dog, Hans, were found dead in his car on June 13 at a bank’s parking lot in Peoria, Ariz. She said in a Facebook post that he had fallen asleep in the vehicle and had died of heatstroke.Mr. Gregory was best known for his role as Brian Tanner on “ALF,” an NBC sitcom that premiered in September 1986, when he was 8. The show featured a suburban family whose world is thrown upside down when a back-talking, pointy-eared alien from the planet Melmac crash-lands through their garage. The Tanner family calls the alien ALF, short for Alien Life Form, and he stays with them, causing mischief and voicing his observations about humankind. “ALF” was a hit and aired for four seasons.“It became quite natural to interact with ALF,” Mr. Gregory said of the experience in a 2022 interview with BTM Legends Corner, a show on YouTube.“ALF,” short for Alien Life Form, aired on NBC from 1986 to 1990. AlamyHe was born Benjamin Gregory Hertzberg on May 26, 1978, in the Los Angeles area, according to his IMDB profile.Alongside “ALF,” Mr. Gregory appeared in a string of other hit shows in the 1980s, including “The A-Team,” “Punky Brewster” and “Amazing Stories.”Mr. Gregory’s film credits include “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” a 1986 comedy about a lonely computer programmer in Manhattan played by Whoopi Goldberg, and the 1993 animated movie “Once Upon a Forest.”He eventually moved on from acting and in 2004 became an aerographer’s mate for the U.S. Navy stationed in Biloxi, Miss., according to IMDB.He had lived with bipolar disorder and depression and received care for both, his sister said. More