LBN Blog

LBN-R.I.P.: Mark Goldweber, who was a leading classical dancer with the Joffrey Ballet in the 1970s and ’80s and who won wide acclaim as the Blue Skater in Frederick Ashton’s ballet “Patineurs,” died on Dec. 9 in Salt Lake City. He was 53.

The cause was lymphoma, said Adam Sklute, the artistic director of Ballet West in Salt Lake City, where Mr. Goldweber was the ballet master.

LBN-R.I.P.: In 1973, a little boy named Mikey, a notoriously picky eater, dug enthusiastically into a bowl of a new, healthy cereal called Life. “He likes it!” his stunned older brother exclaimed in a memorable 30-second commercial that ran for over a decade.

The spot was written by Edie Stevenson, a copywriter at Doyle Dane Bernbach and the divorced mother of four, including three boys much like Mikey and his brothers. Its success earned her a promotion to vice president.

Ms. Stevenson died on Tuesday in an assisted-living facility near her home in Westport, Mass. She was 81. The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter, Karen, said.

LBN-R.I.P.: Ron Fletcher, a former dancer and choreographer who helped popularize the Pilates exercise system when he opened the first West Coast studio in 1972, died Tuesday at his home in Stonewall, Texas. He was 90.The cause was congestive heart failure, said Kyria Sabin, director of Fletcher Pilates, which trains instructors in the exercise methods Fletcher developed based on the teachings of Joseph and Clara Pilates.

LBN-R.I.P.: Marion Dougherty, who cast some of Hollywood’s biggest stars in their earliest parts, including Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, and who suggested Carroll O’Connor for the role of Archie Bunker in the long-running hit television show “All in the Family,” died Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 88. Her death was confirmed by Margaret Whitton, a friend and a co-producer of “Casting By,” a documentary about casting directors that is scheduled for release next year.

LBN-R.I.P.: Dugald Stermer, who achieved renown and sometimes angered the government as the art director of the influential left-wing magazine Ramparts in the 1960s, died on Friday in San Francisco. He was 74. The cause was respiratory and cardiac failure, his daughter Crystal Williams Stermer said.

LBN-R.I.P.: Dobie Gray, a versatile singer and songwriter who had a handful of hits in various pop genres but who was probably best known for his enduring 1973 soul anthem, “Drift Away,” a wistful paean to all songwriters and their songs, died on Tuesday in Nashville. He was believed to be 71. The cause was complications of cancer surgery, said his friend and fellow songwriter George Reneau.

LBN-R.I.P.: Dev Anand, the Indian actor revered the world over for his stylish film work and his youthful, ebullient approach to life, died in London on Sunday of a heart attack. He was 88.

LBN-R.I.P.:

A&R exec and producer Don DeVito, best known for his ’70s work with Bob Dylan, died Nov. 25 at a hospice in the Bronx after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 72.

DeVito, who served as senior VP of A&R at Columbia Records for many years, began his association with Dylan on the 1976 album “Desire,” one of only four albums by the singer-songwriter to reach No. 1 on the U.S. album chart. The same year, he also produced “Hard Rain,” a live collection drawn from a date on Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

LBN-R.I.P.:

Her mother was Loretta Young. Her father was Clark Gable. Yet Judy Lewis spent her first 19 months in hideaways and orphanages, and the rest of her early life untangling a web of lies spun by a young mother hungry for stardom but unwilling to end her unwed pregnancy. Loretta Young’s deception was contrived to protect her budding movie career and the box-office power of the matinee idol Gable, who was married to someone else when they conceived their child in snowed-in Washington State. They were on location, shooting the 1935 film “The Call of the Wild,” fictional lovers in front of the camera and actual lovers outside its range. Ms. Lewis, a former actress who died on Friday at the age of 76, was 31 before she discerned the scope of the falsehoods that cast her, a daughter of Hollywood royalty, into what she later described as a Cinderella-like childhood. Confronted by Ms. Lewis, Young finally made a tearful confession in 1966 at her sprawling home in Palm Springs, Calif.