Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Anne Kaufman Schneider, 99, Ardent Keeper of Her Father’s Plays, Dies

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      She shepherded the works of George S. Kaufman from the 20th century into the next, encouraging regional theater productions and helping to steer two of them to Broadway.Anne Kaufman Schneider, who shepherded the plays of her father, George S. Kaufman, a titan of 20th-century American theatrical wit, into the 21st century with an acerbic sagacity all her own, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 99.Her executor, Laurence Maslon, confirmed her death.“Headstrong girls are difficult,” Ms. Kaufman Schneider once told The New York Times, “but that was the source of my good relationship with my father. And it started early. Because there wasn’t any baby talk. We went to the theater together starting when I was 4. Now I have made his work my agenda in life.”George Kaufman’s stellar career as a hit-making playwright and stage director included winning two Pulitzer Prizes — one, in 1937, for “You Can’t Take It With You,” a comedy he created with his most constant collaborator, Moss Hart; the other, in 1932, for “Of Thee I Sing,” a satirical political musical co-written with Morrie Ryskind to a score by George and Ira Gershwin.George S. Kaufman, left, with Moss Hart, his most constant collaborator, in 1937, the year their play “You Can’t Take It With You” won the Pulitzer Prize.Underwood Archives/Getty ImagesEven so, after his death in 1961 at the age of 71, Kaufman was a hard sell for theatrical revivals.“Very little happened at all,” Ms. Kaufman Schneider once recalled, “until Ellis Rabb revived ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ for the A.P.A./Phoenix Theater in 1965. Ellis proved that these are classic American plays.” (Founded by Mr. Rabb, an actor and director, the A.P.A., formally the Association of Producing Artists, was a Broadway entity notable for mounting revivals after it merged with the Phoenix Theater, another Broadway house.)Ms. Kaufman Schneider proceeded to oversee her father’s renaissance over the next 50-plus years — a term of service that outdistanced his own living stewardship of his career.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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      James Reason, Who Used Swiss Cheese to Explain Human Error, Dies at 86

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      Mistakes happen, he theorized, because multiple vulnerabilities in a system align — like the holes in cheese — to create a recipe for disaster.The story of how James Reason became an authority on the psychology of human error begins with a teapot.It was the early 1970s. He was a professor at the University of Leicester, in England, studying motion sickness, a process that involved spinning his subjects round and round, and occasionally revealing what they had eaten for breakfast.One afternoon, as he was boiling water in his kitchen to make tea, his cat, a brown Burmese named Rusky, sauntered in meowing for food. “I opened a tin of cat food,” he later recalled, “dug in a spoon and dolloped a large spoonful of cat food into the teapot.”After swearing at Rusky, Professor Reason berated himself: How could he have done something so stupid?The question seemed more intellectually engaging than making people dizzy, so he ditched motion sickness to study why humans make mistakes, particularly in high-risk settings.By analyzing hundreds of accidents in aviation, railway travel, medicine and nuclear power, Professor Reason concluded that human errors were usually the byproduct of circumstances — in his case, the cat food was stored near the tea leaves, and the cat had walked in just as he was boiling water — rather than being caused by careless or malicious behavior.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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      Selma Miriam, Founder of the Feminist Restaurant Bloodroot, Dies at 89

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      She and Noel Furie had just come out as lesbians when they opened an unusual gathering place for women in Connecticut. Nearly half a century later, it is still thriving.Selma Miriam and Noel Furie were unhappy housewives, as they put it, when they met at a gathering of the National Organization for Women in Connecticut in 1972. Soon after, they divorced their husbands, came out as lesbians and set about creating a place for women to congregate.Ms. Miriam was a talented and adventurous cook, and at first they held dinners at her house, charging $8 for a weekly buffet of lush vegetarian dishes — a culinary choice they made because a friend pointed out that a feminist food enterprise should not contribute to the suffering of animals.In 1977 they opened Bloodroot, a feminist restaurant and bookstore tucked into an industrial building on a dead-end street in Bridgeport. They had no waiters, no printed menu and no cash register, and they did not advertise. Against the odds, the business thrived.Ms. Miriam, center, with Samn Stockwell, left, and Betsey Beaven, two of the original members of the Bloodroot collective, in 1977, the year the restaurant opened.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“The people who need us, find us,” Ms. Miriam always said.Selma Miriam died on Feb. 6 at her home in Westport, Conn. She was 89.The cause was pneumonia, her longtime partner, Carolanne Curry, said.“We don’t just want a piece of the pie, we want a whole new recipe,” Ms. Miriam declared in “A Culinary Uprising: The Story of Bloodroot,” a feature-length 2024 documentary about the restaurant. (Another documentary, “Bloodroot,” came out in 2019.)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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      Geoff Nicholson, Author of Darkly Comic Novels, Dies at 71

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      In more than a dozen books, he created characters who were obsessed with maps, urban walking, sexual fetishes and Volkswagen Beetles.Geoff Nicholson, whose darkly comic literary novels and eclectic nonfiction were full of characters defined by their obsessions — with cartography, Volkswagen Beetles, urban walking, jokes and sexual fetishes, many of which were enduring interests of Mr. Nicholson himself — died on Jan. 18 in Colchester, England, northeast of London. He was 71.His death, in a hospital, was from chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, his partner, Caroline Gannon, said. It is a rare bone marrow cancer, though, as Mr. Nicholson mordantly observed, “not rare enough, obviously.”In novels with far-fetched plots, characters who often flirted with the cartoonish and stylized, noirish dialogue, Mr. Nicholson wrote with verve and biting wit, and he attracted a dedicated, if not large, readership for his prolific output.His Facebook profile once had a list of “liked” books whose first two titles were “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “The Big Sleep,” a thumbnail distillation of his own oeuvre of highbrow plundering of lowbrow culture.Mr. Nicholson was a verbal jokester, whether in ambitious fiction or in more prosaic writing. For the “About” page of his website, he annotated his own Wikipedia entry. In response to Wikipedia’s assertion that his work was “compared favorably” to that of Kingsley and Martin Amis, Will Self and Zadie Smith, Mr. Nicholson wrote, “I don’t recall anybody ever comparing me to Kingsley Amis, but I suppose they might have.”One person who did compare him to Kingsley Amis, the midcentury British satirist, was the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, writing a 1997 review of Mr. Nicholson’s best-known novel, “Bleeding London.”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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      Art Schallock, Oldest Surviving Major Leaguer, Dies at 100

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      A pitcher, he played for the Yankees and the Orioles. When Mickey Mantle was sent to the minors in 1951, Schallock was called up.Art Schallock, the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles left-handed pitcher of the 1950s who had been the oldest living former major leaguer, died on Thursday in Sonoma, Calif. He was 100.His death was confirmed by his family.When the Yankees sent 19-year-old Mickey Mantle to the minors in 1951, they called up Schallock, who was making his major league debut.Pitching for five seasons in the majors, he appeared in 58 regular-season games, 14 of them as a starter.Arthur Lawrence Schallock was born in Mill Valley, Calif., near San Francisco, on April 25, 1924, the fourth child of Arthur and Alice Schallock. His father was a telephone and telegraph lineman.After pitching for high school and semipro teams, he served in the Navy during World War II as a radio operator on an aircraft carrier.The Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in 1946, and he pitched in their minor league system until they traded him to the Yankees in July 1951.Art Schallock in 1955. He spent five years in the major leagues, playing in 58 games.Harry Harris/Associated PressHe was a member of the Yankee teams that defeated the Dodgers in the 1952 and 1953 World Series, though he had only one postseason appearance: In Game 4 of the last of those matchups, he allowed one run in two innings.“I roomed with Yogi Berra and he knew all the hitters on each team,” he once said. “Besides that, I had to run down to the lobby and get his funny books. Every morning.”The Orioles obtained Schallock off waivers in May 1955.He had a career record of 6-7, with an earned run average of 4.02 and 77 strikeoutsSchallock’s family was struck by tragedy one night in March 1973 when a man who was an outpatient at a mental institution invaded the home of his brother Melvin; Melvin’s wife, Ruth; and the couple’s son, Daniel, in Mill Valley, Calif. The man set the house on fire and killed all of them with shotgun blasts.Last April, the Yankees honored Schallock on his birthday when they sent him a team jersey signed by the players.A list of Schallock’s survivors was not immediately available. His wife, Donna, died in 2023.For all his fortitude, Schallock did not set a record for longevity in professional baseball. The pitcher Si Simmons of the Lincoln Giants of the Negro leagues lived to 111, and the Yankee pitcher Red Hoff reached 107. More

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      Joey Molland of the Power-Pop Band Badfinger Dies at 77

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      He was the last remaining core member of a group that was both propelled and pigeonholed in the 1970s by its close association with the Beatles.Joey Molland, a guitarist and songwriter who was the last surviving member of Badfinger, one of the first acts signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records and a power-pop force in the early 1970s on the strength of hits like “Day After Day” and “No Matter What,” died on March 1 in St. Louis Park, Minn. He was 77.His partner, Mary Joyce, said he died in a hospital from complications of diabetes.Mr. Molland joined Badfinger — originally called the Iveys — in 1969. The band had been signed the year before as a marquee act for Apple Records, the much-publicized label formed by the Beatles in 1968 as part of the parent company Apple Corps.“Badfinger gave me the opportunity to do everything a musician could want,” Mr. Molland said in a 2020 interview with Guitar World magazine. “I got to make records. I heard my music on the radio, and I toured all over. I couldn’t believe the luck we were having. For a time, everything was great.”Apple Corps was a high-minded, if financially dubious, initiative to tap the Beatles’ millions to fund unknown talents in music, film and electronics. It was created so that, as John Lennon said at the news conference announcing the venture, “people who just want to make a film about anything don’t have to go on their knees in somebody’s office — probably yours.”This experiment in “Western Communism,” as Paul McCartney called it, involved no shortage of misfires. (The company’s retail shop, known as the Apple Boutique, hemorrhaged 200,000 pounds — the equivalent of millions in today’s dollars — in a little more than a year.) But Badfinger was a gamble that worked, and its members enjoyed their new status as rock stars.Badfinger in about 1970. From left: Pete Ham, Tommy Evans, Mike Gibbins and Mr. Molland.via Getty ImagesWe 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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      Joan Dye Gussow, Pioneer of Eating Locally, Is Dead at 96

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      An indefatigable gardener, she was concerned, a colleague said, with “all the things that have to happen for us to get our food.”Joan Dye Gussow, a nutritionist and educator who was often referred to as the matriarch of the “eat locally, think globally” food movement, died on Friday at her home in Piermont, N.Y., in Rockland County. She was 96.Her death, from congestive heart failure, was announced by Pamela A. Koch, an associate professor of nutrition education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where Ms. Gussow, a professor emeritus, had taught for more than half a century.Ms. Gussow was one of the first in her field to emphasize the connections between farming practices and consumers’ health. Her book “The Feeding Web: Issues in Nutritional Ecology” (1978) influenced the thinking of writers including Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver.“Nutrition is thought of as the science of what happens to food once it gets in our bodies — as Joan put it, ‘What happens after the swallow,’” Ms. Koch said in an interview.But Ms. Gussow beamed her gimlet-eyed attention on what happens before the swallow. “Her concern was with all the things that have to happen for us to get our food,” Ms. Koch said. “She was about seeing the big picture of food issues and sustainability.”Ms. Gussow, an indefatigable gardener and a tub-thumper for community gardens, began deploying the phrase “local food” after reviewing the statistics on the declining number of farmers in the United States. (Farm and ranch families made up less than 5 percent of the population in 1970 and less than 2 percent of the population in 2023.)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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      Gwen McCrae, Singer Who Helped Open the Dance Floor to Disco, Dies at 81

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      Originally a gospel singer, she went on to meld soulful melodies with dance-floor-friendly grooves on songs like the 1975 Top 10 hit “Rockin’ Chair.”Gwen McCrae, whose gospel-infused R&B hits of the early 1970s like “Lead Me On” and “Rockin’ Chair” featured bouncing, dance-floor-friendly grooves that helped open the door to disco, died on Feb. 21 in Miami. She was 81.Her former husband and frequent singing partner, George McCrae, said she died in a care facility from complications of a stroke she had in 2012.Though she had her share of nationwide hits, Ms. McCrae was best known on the music scene in the Miami area, where her upbeat R&B fit perfectly with the hot nights and subtropical vibe.She released most of her best-known songs through TK Records, a regional powerhouse founded by Henry Stone that counted other proto-disco acts, like Betty Wright and KC and the Sunshine Band, among its stable.Ms. McCrae and her husband, George McCrae, in the early 1970s. After the worldwide success of his signature hit, “Rock Your Baby,” she recorded her own hit, “Rockin’ Chair.”GAB Archive/Redferns, via Getty ImagesShe began performing with Mr. McCrae as a duo. They recorded their own albums, sang backup on others and carved a presence for themselves in the clubs of South Florida.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