No fun to be found in the papers this weekend. Jack Cardiff, the groundbreaking cinematographer of many films, but notably, The Red Shoes and one of my favorites, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus, said goodbye. So did Beatrice Arthur, an actress who did her strong woman number in the TV series Maude and later, on The Golden Girls. Before that though, she was on the stage, in a renowed production of The Threepenny Opera opposite Lotte Lenya; a Tony Award winner as Vera Charles opposite Angela Lansbury in Mame (I got to see her onstage only once, in the Lincoln Center production of Woody Allen’s The Floating Lightbulb, in an affecting performance as the hero’s beleaguered mother).
Both were trail-blazing ultras—RIP.
Above, Arthur in The Threepenny Opera, Cardiff, context unknown (though it looks like he was working!)