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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tom Neuwirth, Cinematographer on ‘Cagney & Lacey,' Dies at 78
Tom Neuwirth, the cinematographer who worked alongside his wife, history-making TV director Karen Arthur, on episodes of Cagney & Lacey and many other projects, has died. He was 78. Neuwirth died June 29 at his home in Manhattan, friend and producer Craig Anderson announced (they worked on six films together). No cause of death was revealed. More from The Hollywood Reporter Ted Cordes, Longtime Broadcast Standards Executive at NBC, Dies at 87 Langley Perer, Producer and Mosaic Manager, Dies at 44 Richard Greenberg, Tony-Winning Playwright Behind 'Take Me Out,' Dies at 67 Over four decades, 'Neuwirth's career was defined by his extraordinary eye for capturing emotion, character and place — whether through the lens of his camera or from the cockpit of his own plane,' Anderson noted. 'He earned his pilot's license in high school and found joy and freedom in flying throughout his life. That same spirit guided his work behind the camera: bold, precise and always seeking a new perspective.' Survivors include his wife of 41 years, Arthur, who became the first woman to receive a Primetime Emmy for outstanding directing for a drama series when she won in 1985 for helming the Cagney & Lacey fourth-season episode 'Heat,' which featured a guest-starring turn by a young Michael Madsen. Her husband was the cinematographer on that installment and five others directed by Arthur during that 1984-85 season. 'We fell madly in love on the first show that we did together, which was 'Heat,'' Arthur said on a 2023 episode of the 80s TV Ladies podcast. 'And we made all my movies, his movies, our movies, from Cagney & Lacey on together.' Born in the Bronx, Neuwirth served as a photography apprentice in New York City before opening his own studio and moving to Hollywood after a photo assignment in Puerto Rico ignited his passion for filmmaking. Starting as a camera assistant on such films as Russ Meyer's Supervixens (1975), he advanced to helicopter camera operator on Ted Kotcheff's First Blood (1982) and second-unit director of photography on J. Lee Thompson's Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987). Neuwirth shot 18 of 22 episodes of Cagney & Lacey during its fourth season, which culminated with the show winning six Emmys, including its first for outstanding drama series and the trophy presented to Arthur. (In the 'Heat' episode, Tyne Daly's Mary Beth is taken hostage in a railroad yard by a psychopathic teenager portrayed by Madsen.) Over the years, Neuwirth also brought his visual storytelling to such acclaimed productions as the five-hour 1992 ABC miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream; the 1997 CBS miniseries True Women, starring Dana Delany and Angelina Jolie; the 1998 CBS telefilm The Staircase, starring Barbara Hershey; and the 2001 PBS telefilm The Song of the Lark, starring Maximilian Schell. (All were directed by Arthur.) 'When we started out together, most people, like agents and producers, said [their business relationship] would never work. We might get into an argument, but it was never an issue. It's always been professional,' Neuwirth said in 2012. 'When we watch a rehearsal, we look at each other and communicate with subtle movements and statements, and it allows Karen to focus more on the bigger picture.' Neuwirth and his wife also lived in the Bahamas, where they co-founded Island Films; their 2008-12 documentary series Artists of the Bahamas, which premiered at the Bahamas International Film Festival, spotlighted some of the nation's leading visual artists. 'Make a lot of films,' he often told young filmmakers. 'With every one, you realize mistakes and keep getting better.' In addition to Arthur, survivors include his son, Adam, and his twin sister, Hilary. A private memorial will be held. In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory can be made to the Make-a-Wish Foundation of America. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise Solve the daily Crossword
Boston Globe
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Richard Greenberg, whose plays probed love and baseball, dies at 67
'Among his peers,' New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley wrote in 2003, 'only Tony Kushner matches Mr. Greenberg in linguistic richness and playfulness.' Profiling Mr. Greenberg in 2020, The New York Times style magazine called him 'the Bard of American Privilege.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mr. Greenberg's characters were snobbish but self-aware, with a tendency to speak in pithy one-liners and epigrams. In his breakout hit 'Eastern Standard,' which opened on Broadway in 1989, two siblings discuss their mother, who is said to be so conservative that 'there's not a revolution in history that would have failed to execute her.' Advertisement Another of his Broadway plays - 2013's 'The Assembled Parties,' which brought him his second Tony nomination for best play - was set at a family's lavish Upper West Side apartment, taking place across two Christmas celebrations 20 years apart. Advertisement Although he often returned to elegant and urbane settings, Mr. Greenberg ranged widely, taking inspiration from historical figures while telling stories about self-invention, obsession, or deceit. In 'Night and Her Stars' (1994), he dramatized the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, using real-life celebrity Charles Van Doren as a central figure. 'The Dazzle' (2002) was inspired by New York City's most famous hoarders, the Collyer brothers, who were found dead in their overstuffed home in 1947. 'The Violet Hour' (2002) centered on an upstart book editor modeled after Maxwell Perkins, who discovered and published F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. 'We're always trying to make a cogent story out of our existence,' Mr. Greenberg told a Princeton University interviewer in 2013, 'and people in my plays often feel they have the story, but almost invariably they're wrong.' Two of his plays, 'Three Days of Rain' and 'Take Me Out,' were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The first, a study of familial disconnection, featured a trio of actors playing parents as well as their children. It ran off-Broadway in 1997 and became what Mr. Greenberg described as 'my cash calf,' appearing in theaters around the country and coming to Broadway in 2006, with a cast featuring Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd, and Bradley Cooper. In 'Take Me Out,' Mr. Greenberg explored racism and homophobia more than a decade before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide. The play imagined what would happen if an active major leaguer publicly announced that he was gay - a moment that Mr. Greenberg, a gay man who steadfastly rooted for the New York Yankees, was still waiting for when he died. Advertisement After premiering in London in 2002, 'Take Me Out' transferred to the Public Theater in New York and moved to Broadway in 2003, running for 355 performances. Its cast was led by Daniel Sunjata as Darren Lemming, a beloved and biracial center fielder for the fictional New York Empires, and Denis O'Hare as Mason Marzac, Darren's new accountant, who is also gay. The play won Tony Awards for Mr. Greenberg, O'Hare, and director Joe Mantello. A much-lauded 2022 revival also won Tonys, including for actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who delivered one of Mr. Greenberg's most acclaimed monologues while playing the role of Marzac, who comes to love baseball while working with his new client. 'Baseball is better than democracy - or at least than democracy as it's practiced in this country - because unlike democracy, baseball acknowledges loss,' he says. 'While conservatives tell you, leave things alone and no one will lose, and liberals tell you, interfere a lot and no one will lose, baseball says: Someone will lose. Not only says it - insists upon it!' 'Democracy is lovely,' he adds, 'but baseball's more mature.' The younger of two sons, Richard Greenberg was born in the Long Island suburb of East Meadow, N.Y., on Feb. 22, 1958. His father was a movie theater executive, and his mother was a homemaker. In high school, Mr. Greenberg played viola and acted in plays, winning a local theater prize for his performance in Jean-Paul Sartre's 'No Exit.' He majored in English at Princeton, where he wrote his senior thesis - a 438-page novel titled 'A Romantic Career' - under Joyce Carol Oates. She gave it an A. After graduating in 1980, he enrolled in an English PhD program at Harvard. He soon grew bored and, on the side, wrote a play that won him admission to Yale's playwriting program. By the time he received his MFA in 1985, one of his plays, 'The Bloodletters,' had been staged off-off-Broadway. Advertisement Mr. Greenberg gained a wider following with 'Eastern Standard,' which premiered in Seattle in 1988 and soon moved to Broadway. The show followed a quartet of young New York City strivers whose lives are upended when one of the group is diagnosed with AIDS. By Act Two, the friends have decamped to a summer house in the Hamptons and, partly out of guilt, invited a homeless woman to join them. The play found a high-profile champion in Times critic Frank Rich, who said it 'captures the romantic sophistication of the most sublime comedies ever made in this country.' Yet it also came in for criticism from detractors who argued that Mr. Greenberg, in writing a screwball comedy, failed to address AIDS with the seriousness it deserved. 'That was both the best-and worst-reviewed play of the season,' Mr. Greenberg told the Sunday Times of London in 2002, 'and, at the time, I had no idea who I was; I only knew myself by the way I'd been reviewed.' In the aftermath, Mr. Greenberg faded from public view, sticking mainly to his Chelsea apartment and a nearby diner he used as an office. In part, he told The New York Times, he avoided the spotlight because he wanted to focus on work. He had successfully battled Hodgkin's lymphoma in his 30s, and the illness left him with a newfound sense of his mortality. In addition to working on original plays, Mr. Greenberg adapted August Strindberg's 'Dance of Death' for a 2001 Broadway production starring Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. Advertisement He also wrote the book for the Tony-nominated 2008 revival of 'Pal Joey,' a Rodgers and Hart musical, featuring actors Stockard Channing, Martha Plimpton, and Matthew Risch; adapted Truman Capote's novella 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' for a short-lived Broadway play starring Emilia Clarke in 2013; and wrote the book for a musical adaptation of 'Far From Heaven,' filmmaker Todd Haynes's homage to the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, which ran off-Broadway the same year. Before his death, Mr. Greenberg was working with director Robert Falls on a contemporary adaptation of Barry's play 'Holiday,' the basis of an acclaimed 1938 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The play is slated to premiere in January at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. 'His plays held a mirror up - not just to society but to the strange inner workings of the human heart,' Falls wrote in a tribute on Bluesky. 'He wrote about baseball and betrayal, family and fame, loneliness and grace - always with elegance, irony, and a touch of something ineffable.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Richard Greenberg, Whose Plays Probed Love and Baseball, Dies at 67
Richard Greenberg, a Tony Award-winning playwright who was widely celebrated for his playful and sophisticated style, including in the locker room drama 'Take Me Out,' about a major league baseball player who comes out as gay, died July 4 at a nursing home in Manhattan. He was 67. The cause was cancer, said Edward Greenberg, his brother and only immediate survivor. Mr. Greenberg was one of America's most established dramatists, responsible for some 30 plays staged on or off Broadway since the mid-1980s. His work was wry yet tender, nipping at the divide between comedy and drama, and delved into questions of family, love and friendship – often in a worldly, upper-crust setting that sparked comparisons to the drawing-room plays of Philip Barry and Noël Coward. 'Among his peers,' New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley wrote in 2003, 'only Tony Kushner matches Mr. Greenberg in linguistic richness and playfulness.' Profiling Mr. Greenberg in 2020, the New York Times style magazine T called him 'the Bard of American Privilege.' Mr. Greenberg's characters were snobbish but self-aware, with a tendency to speak in pithy one-liners and epigrams. In his breakout hit 'Eastern Standard,' which opened on Broadway in 1989, two siblings discuss their mother, who is said to be so conservative that 'there's not a revolution in history that would have failed to execute her.' Another of his Broadway plays – 2013's 'The Assembled Parties,' which brought him his second Tony nomination for best play – was set at a family's lavish Upper West Side apartment, taking place across two Christmas celebrations 20 years apart. Before the first get-together, a college-age visitor seems to speak for the audience when he calls home to chat with his mother: 'You would love the apartment, Mom – it's like the sets of those plays you love. With the 'breezy dialogue.' They sort of talk that way and everybody's unbelievably nice and, like, gracious and happy. It's like you go to New York and you look for New York but it isn't there? But it's here.' Although he often returned to elegant and urbane settings, Mr. Greenberg ranged widely as a playwright, taking inspiration from historical figures while telling stories about self-invention, obsession or deceit. In 'Night and Her Stars' (1994), he dramatized the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, using real-life celebrity Charles Van Doren as a central figure. 'The Dazzle' (2002) was inspired by New York City's most famous hoarders, the Collyer brothers, who were found dead in their overstuffed home in 1947. 'The Violet Hour' (2002) centered on an upstart book editor modeled after Maxwell Perkins, who discovered and published F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. 'We're always trying to make a cogent story out of our existence,' Mr. Greenberg told a Princeton University interviewer in 2013, 'and people in my plays often feel they have the story, but almost invariably they're wrong.' Two of his plays, 'Three Days of Rain' and 'Take Me Out,' were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The first, a study of familial disconnection, featured a trio of actors playing parents as well as their children. It ran off-Broadway in 1997 and became what Mr. Greenberg described as 'my cash calf,' appearing in theaters around the country and coming to Broadway in 2006, with a cast featuring Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper. In 'Take Me Out,' Mr. Greenberg explored racism and homophobia more than a decade before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide. The play imagined what would happen if an active major leaguer publicly announced that he was gay – a moment that Mr. Greenberg, a gay man who steadfastly rooted for the New York Yankees, was still waiting for when he died. After premiering in London in 2002, 'Take Me Out' transferred to the Public Theater in New York and moved to Broadway in 2003, running for 355 performances. Its cast was led by Daniel Sunjata as Darren Lemming, a beloved and biracial center fielder for the fictional New York Empires, and Denis O'Hare as Mason Marzac, Darren's new accountant, who is also gay. The play won Tony Awards for Mr. Greenberg, O'Hare and director Joe Mantello. A much-lauded 2022 revival also won Tonys, including for actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who delivered one of Mr. Greenberg's most acclaimed monologues while playing the role of Mason, who comes to love baseball while working with his new client. 'Baseball is better than Democracy – or at least than Democracy as it's practiced in this country – because unlike Democracy, baseball acknowledges loss,' he says. 'While conservatives tell you, leave things alone and no one will lose, and liberals tell you, interfere a lot and no one will lose, baseball says: Someone will lose. Not only says it – insists upon it!' 'Democracy is lovely,' he adds, 'but baseball's more mature.' The younger of two sons, Richard Greenberg was born in the Long Island suburb of East Meadow, New York, on Feb. 22, 1958. His father was a movie-theater executive, and his mother was a homemaker. In high school, Mr. Greenberg played viola and acted in plays, winning a local theater prize for his performance in Jean-Paul Sartre's 'No Exit.' He majored in English at Princeton, where he wrote his senior thesis – a 438-page novel titled 'A Romantic Career' – under Joyce Carol Oates. She gave it an A. After graduating in 1980, he enrolled in an English PhD program at Harvard. He soon grew bored and, on the side, wrote a play that won him admission to Yale's playwriting program. By the time he received his MFA in 1985, one of his plays, 'The Bloodletters,' had been staged off-off-Broadway. Mr. Greenberg gained a wider following with 'Eastern Standard,' which premiered in Seattle in 1988 and soon moved to Broadway. The show followed a quartet of young New York City strivers whose lives are upended when one of the group is diagnosed with AIDS. By Act Two, the friends have decamped to a summer house in the Hamptons and, partly out of guilt, invited a homeless woman to join them. The play found a high-profile champion in Times critic Frank Rich, who said it 'captures the romantic sophistication of the most sublime comedies ever made in this country.' Yet it also came in for criticism from detractors who argued that Mr. Greenberg, in writing a screwball comedy, failed to address AIDS with the seriousness it deserved. 'That was both the best-and worst-reviewed play of the season,' Mr. Greenberg told the Sunday Times of London in 2002, 'and, at the time, I had no idea who I was; I only knew myself by the way I'd been reviewed.' In the aftermath, Mr. Greenberg faded from public view, sticking mainly to his Chelsea apartment and a nearby diner he used as an office. In part, he told the New York Times, he avoided the spotlight because he wanted to focus on work. He had successfully battled Hodgkin's lymphoma in his 30s, and the illness left him with a newfound sense of his mortality. In addition to working on original plays, Mr. Greenberg adapted August Strindberg's 'Dance of Death' for a 2001 Broadway production starring Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. He also wrote the book for the Tony-nominated 2008 revival of 'Pal Joey,' a Rodgers and Hart musical, featuring actors Stockard Channing, Martha Plimpton and Matthew Risch; adapted Truman Capote's novella 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' for a short-lived Broadway play starring Emilia Clarke in 2013; and wrote the book for a musical adaptation of 'Far From Heaven,' filmmaker Todd Haynes's homage to the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, which ran off-Broadway the same year. Before his death, Mr. Greenberg was working with director Robert Falls on a contemporary adaptation of Barry's play 'Holiday,' the basis of an acclaimed 1938 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The play is slated to premiere in January at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. 'His plays held a mirror up – not just to society but to the strange inner workings of the human heart,' Falls wrote in a tribute on Bluesky. 'He wrote about baseball and betrayal, family and fame, loneliness and grace – always with elegance, irony, and a touch of something ineffable.'
Daily Mail
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Richard Greenberg dead at 67: The Tony-winning Take Me Out playwright is remembered for legacy on Broadway
Richard Greenberg, the Tony award-winning playwright behind Take Me Out, has died at age 67. Over the weekend, the New York native's death was announced on social media by his friend and theater director Robert Falls. 'Heartbroken by the news of playwright Richard Greenberg's death. For the past several years we've been deep in collaboration on his gorgeous adaptation of Holiday, Philip Barry's great American play — premiering at the Goodman this February. A profound loss mid-process,' Falls wrote on Bluesky. He continued: 'For over 30 years, it's been one of life's great pleasures to know Rich and his writing. Dazzling, humane, wildly funny. … His kindness was real. His loss is enormous.' American actor, Denis O'Hare, who received a Tony Award for his role as Mason Marzac in Take Me Out, shared a heartfelt tribute to Greenberg on Instagram. 'Hard to believe the genius that was Richard Greenberg is no more. I owe him more than I could possibly say,' he wrote. 'He gave me the greatest gift ever--a beautiful character to inhabit in a beautiful play.' O'Hare went on to praise his former colleague for giving him his two best friends, Lisa Peterson and Linda Emond, who he recalled meeting on Greenberg's 'one act play, The Author's Voice, at Remains Theatre in 1987 in a festival of one acts called "Sneaky Feelings."' 'I have a sneaky feeling of grief mixed with gratitude for this man. RIP Rich,' he concluded. At this time, a cause of death has not been publicly revealed. His fans flooded X with tributes as they remembered the late playwright for pushing boundaries and inspiring 'thought for generations to come.' 'Farewell to the playwright Richard Greenberg, of Take Me Out, The Assembled Parties and Three Days of Rain. A lyrical chronicler of the mysteries that are human beings, he understood that the past, far from being another country, is forever a pulsing part of our present,' one tweeted. Another wrote: 'RIP Richard Greenberg, a great American playwright. His work included the award-winning TAKE ME OUT and the superb THREE DAYS OF RAIN. He wrote about everyone from Major League baseball players to upper crust New Yorkers, always with wit and compassion. A major loss.' In addition to Take Me Out, Greenberg is remembered for writing plays as The Dazzle, The American Plan, Life Under Water and The Author's Voice. Take Me Out, which had an all-male cast, followed a baseball star's coming out journey during a season filled of racial tension and violence. He also penned the Broadway adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's and the book for the musical Far From Heaven. Over his career, he had more than 25 plays premiere on, Off-Broadway, and off-off 'Broadway in New York City as well as eight at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, California. Greenberg, who was born in 1958, graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University. He studied creative writing under American novelist Joyce Carol Oates and was roommates with future Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Richard Greenberg, Tony-Winning ‘Take Me Out' Playwright, Dies at 67
Richard Greenberg, the Tony Award-winning writer of 'Take Me Out,' has died. He was 67 years old. Greenberg's death was announced on social media by collaborators and colleagues such as Denis O'Hare and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who won Tonys for their work in the original 2003 production of 'Take Me Out' and its 2022 revival, as well as director Robert Falls. More from Variety Jesse Williams and 'Take Me Out' Co-Stars Discuss Need for Hot Water in Infamous Shower Scenes Jesse Williams on Baring All Again in 'Take Me Out,' That Leaked Footage and Why He Doesn't Watch 'Grey's Anatomy' 'Take Me Out' Returning to Broadway in October With Jesse Williams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson 'For over 30 years, it's been one of life's great pleasures to know Rich and his writing. Dazzling, humane, wildly funny,' Falls wrote. 'He was also one of the smartest people I've ever met. But he wore that brilliance lightly—often cloaked in hilarity, or tossed off in the driest, most devastating line at dinner. His kindness was real. His loss is enormous.' Greenberg's plays were known for their wit and sophistication, and covered a wide range of topics, from a pro baseball team reacting to the presence of a gay player in the locker room in 'Take Me Out' to an Upper West Side family grappling with the consequences of their bad choices in 'The Assembled Parties.' Greenberg's work, which includes 'Three Days of Rain,' 'Our Mother's Brief Affair' and 'The American Plan,' was frequently produced on and off Broadway, as well as at top regional theaters. He also wrote a disastrous 2013 adaptation of 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' as well as penned a well-received adaptation of August Strindberg's 'Dance of Death' that brought Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren to Broadway. In addition to winning the Tony for best new play for 'Take Me Out' in 2003, Greenberg was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for that show and for 'Three Days of Rain.' Falls wrote on social media that Greenberg was working with him on a new adaptation of Philip Barry's 'Holiday' that was supposed to premiere next year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Best of Variety Oscars 2026: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, Wagner Moura and More Among Early Contenders to Watch New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts?
