Notable deaths: Arts and entertainment

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, December 30.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: notable deaths in 2022.

Today, we finish up our recap of people who died this year, this time from the world of the arts and media. Here’s WORLD reporter Anna Johansen Brown.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: First, we remember the man behind Conjunction Junction.

AUDIO Conjunction junction, what’s your function?

George Newall was a co-creator of Schoolhouse Rock, the animated series that set school to music.

AUDIO I’m just a bill, yes I’m only a bill, and I’m sitting here on Capitol hill…

Newall famously helped come up with the idea while working at an ad agency. His boss complained that his young son could sing along with Jimi Hendrix or the Rolling Stones, but couldn’t do basic multiplication. Newall brought together a team to make math facts singable, and Schoolhouse Rock was born.

AUDIO Three is a magic number…

The educational series ran from 1973 to 1985. It taught kids about science, math, grammar, and civics.

Newall was the last surviving member of the founding team. He died earlier this month at the age of 88.

Next, one of America’s first black movie stars.

AUDIO The winner is Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field [applause]

Sidney Poitier grew up in the Bahamas, the son of tomato farmers and the youngest of seven kids. At 15, Poitier headed to the US with three dollars in his pocket. He tried his hand at acting, but he couldn’t read very well and had trouble getting through scripts. Instead, Poitier got a job as a dishwasher. In between shifts, an elderly waiter helped him practice reading.

Soon, Poitier landed work with the American Negro Theater. He took acting lessons and softened his thick islander accent. Eventually, he got on Broadway and from there, Hollywood.

AUDIO Well what do they call you up there? They call me Mr. Tibbs.

At the time, Hollywood had few roles for black actors. Racial taboos kept Poitier from playing most romantic parts. But even with few options, Poitier was choosy about what roles he would take. He refused to play a part that wasn’t consistent with his values.

In 1963, Poitier starred in "Lilies of the Field." He played an itinerant worker who helps a group of East German nuns to build a chapel.

AUDIO It’s English lesson time. I build a chapel. I build a chapel. You build a chapel. You build a chapel…

Poitier won an Oscar for that performance.

Many of his films explored social changes and racial tensions in the midst of the civil rights movement.

AUDIO Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse, say last night about midnight? [slap, slap]...there was a time when I could have had you shot.

But Poitier sometimes got frustrated when people focused too much on racism. He said, “racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects to life.”

AUDIO [singing] Amen. Amen…

Poitier died in January at age 94.

AUDIO [singing] …amen, amen, amen.

Next, the architect behind an intergalactic planet-destroying space station.

AUDIO That’s no moon. It’s a space station. Too big to be a space station. I have a very bad feeling about this.

Colin Cantwell was the concept artist who designed multiple Star Wars spacecraft including the TIE fighter, X-wing, and Death Star.

AUDIO [music]

Cantwell graduated from UCLA with a degree in animation, then attended Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture. During the space race, he worked for NASA, creating educational programs for the public.

In 1974, Cantwell joined the Star Wars team. He built the ship prototypes for A New Hope. One of his original minis makes an appearance in the film. Luke Skywalker plays with it while talking to C-3PO.

Cantwell died in May at the age of 90.

Next, we remember the voice of an infamous villain.

AUDIO My dear, sweet child. That’s what I do. It’s what I live for. To help unfortunate merfolk like yourself.

Pat Carroll voiced Ursula in the 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid.

AUDIO Poor unfortunate souls, in pain, in need. This one wanting to be thinner, this one wants to get the girl and do I help them? Yes indeed.

Carroll was also an iconic comedian. She won an Emmy for her TV work and made regular appearances on “The Danny Kaye Show,” “The Red Skelton Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show.”

AUDIO Mimi, this is my kid sister, Kris. Is she just visiting, or does she live here permanently? Oh she’s staying with us til she gets married. Permanently, huh?

But one of Carroll’s favorite roles was Ursula the sea witch. She called her an “Ex-Shakespearean actress who now sold cars.”

Carroll died in July at age 95.

Next, we move behind the camera.

Ron Galella was a pioneer member of the paparazzi: One of the first photographers to take pictures of celebrities in their private lives. During his career, Galella took more than three million photographs of people like Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, and Brigitte Bardot.

AUDIO It’s curiosity, one word…We see them on the screen, glamorous, super stars. But are they as glamorous in real life?

Many grew frustrated with Gallela and accused him of stalking…of being obsessed with his subjects. In 1973, Galella followed Marlon Brando to a restaurant in New York City. Brando got fed up and punched him in the face, breaking his jaw and knocking out five of his teeth. Galella sued and won $40,000. Next time he chased Marlon Brando for a picture, he wore a football helmet.

Despite his subjects’ frustration, Galella’s work is exhibited in art galleries all over the world.

Galella died in April at age 91.

Next, we remember a sprawling dairy farm in Bethel, New York.

Michael Lang was a co-creator of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969.

AUDIO

Woodstock was a cultural flashpoint of the 60s. It was a three-day music festival meant to celebrate all the freewheeling countercultural values of the era.

Michael Lang was 24 at the time…a concert promoter, producer, and manager. He and a fellow music executive came up with the idea for Woodstock during the height of the Vietnam War.

AUDIO

He held the event on a farm in upstate New York. Popular artists like Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin performed.

AUDIO

Lang expected about 50,000 people to show up. But more than 400,000 came, creating a massive traffic jam. The setup couldn’t handle that many people, and festival-goers spent days with food shortages and poor sanitation. Drug use and overdoses ran rampant.

Michael Lang wanted Woodstock to celebrate peace, love, and music. He described it as a test: “Could we live as the peaceful community we envisioned? I’d hoped we could.”

Lang died in January at age 77.

Next, we remember a dancer and choreographer.

AUDIO I want you to enjoy the silence that you create when you step.

Yuriko was the daughter of Japanese immigrants. She was born in 1920 in California, but at age three, her father and two sisters died of influenza. Yuriko’s mother sent her to Japan to live with relatives. There, she studied German Expressionist dance. As a teen, Yuriko came back to the US to learn ballet and modern dance, but then came the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. American troops rounded up hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans and sent them to internment camps. Yuriko spent two years at a camp in Arizona. She decided to teach dance to the kids in the camp.

STOCK NUTCRACKER SOUND

They used tablecloths and old curtains for costumes, and gave a recital of The Nutcracker.

In 1943, Yuriko moved to New York. She danced with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and performed on Broadway in the original productions of The King and I and Flower Drum Song. Yuriko went on to start her own modern dance company.

AUDIO I expect the highest from you. Laurie. Hungry hands. Let me see it. Hungry, hungry. Not in your brain, in your body.

Yuriko died in March at the age of 102.

From the stage to the page. Next, we remember the author behind Sarah Plain and Tall.

Patricia MacLachlan wrote poignant stories about everyday life on the American plains. Many of her books were inspired by her own childhood in North Dakota.

AUDIO I think my voice comes from my upbringing. The prairie where I grew up is a very spare place. And so the language of my Russian uncles was spare. My father’s was too. They spoke like the landscape. There weren’t a lot of trees, not a lot of clutter.

She wrote Sarah Plain and Tall in 1985. MacLachlan based the book on her own family history.

AUDIO Sarah Plain and Tall is about my step-great-grandmother, who left Maine and went to Kansas to meet my great grandfather who had put an ad in the paper for a wife because he had lost his wife and he had children.

The book won a Newberry Medal in 1986.

MacLachlan often wove together stories of the young and old.

AUDIO I always had a great respect for how alike the old and the young are. So I work really hard to make it spare enough for children, but complicated enough of a story to challenge them.

MacLachlan died in March at age 84.

Finally, we remember the man who put books on tape.

Duvall Hecht was an Olympic gold medalist in rowing. But he might be more famous for making audiobooks mainstream.

In the 1960s, Hecht was working at a brokerage firm in Los Angeles. He had an hour-long commute to and from work and it was making him frantic. Radio, he said, offered “bad music and worse news.” He wanted to find a way to escape the daily misery, so he turned to audiobooks recorded for the blind.

CASSETTE AUDIO

Cassettes were still in their infancy. Some entrepreneurs had put books like the Bible on tape, but Hecht wanted modern literature. Full length novels, biographies, histories.

He tried to talk publishers into it. They didn’t bite. So Hecht took things into his own hands. In 1975, he started a company called Books on Tape and became the first great purveyor of full-length books on cassette. That first year, he made $17,000 dollars. By 1991, the company was making $7.5 million. Hecht sold the company to Random House in 2001.

Hecht died in February at age 90. But his legacy continues. Today, audiobooks are the fastest growing format in the publishing field.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

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