Departures

Angela Lansbury

Lansbury, a film and television star whose nearly 80-year acting career generated Oscar, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Grammy nominations, died Oct. 11 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 96. The daughter of a British politician and Irish actress, Lansbury found work in Hollywood as a teenager, co-starring in the 1944 film Gaslight. Her role in the 1962 political drama The Manchurian Candidate earned her critical acclaim and her third Oscar nomination. In 1984, Lansbury returned to TV to play Jessica Fletcher, a crime-solving mystery writer, in Murder, She Wrote. She also voiced Mrs. Potts in the Disney animated hit Beauty and the Beast in 1991.

Bruce Sutter

Sutter, whose dominance pitching in late innings helped define the position of closer in major league baseball, died Oct. 13 at age 69. The Lancaster, Pa., native dropped out of college and was discovered by a Chicago Cubs scout while playing semi-professional baseball back home. After an elbow surgery in the minors left Sutter’s fastball greatly diminished, a Cubs instructor taught Sutter an experimental pitch—the split-fingered fastball. Sutter adopted the pitch, mastered it, and rode its success to the Cubs bullpen. In 1979, his 37 saves earned him the Cy Young Award. A trade to St. Louis landed Sutter on the mound, closing out Game 7 against the Milwaukee Brewers to win the 1982 World Series for the Cardinals.