AP Obits--3/8
ObitsMan
Obituaries in the News
Mon Mar 8, 8:01 PM ET
Nicolae Cajal
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Nicolae Cajal, the chairman of Romania's Jewish
community and an expert on viruses, died Sunday. He was 84.
Cajal was a professor of virology at the Institute of Medicine and Pharmacy in
Bucharest. He also chaired the Virology Institute of the Romanian Academy.
Born in Bucharest, he was elected to head Romania's small Jewish community in
1994 after the death of Rabbi Moses Rosen, who had led Romania's Jews since
1948.
Cajal had been conducting research in virology and had published more than 400
medical studies in Romania and abroad. He was also a member of the Royal
Society of Medicine in London.
___
Frances Dee
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Frances Dee, a dark-haired beauty who co-starred in the
1930s and '40s with Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman and her
husband, Joel McCrea, died Saturday, her son Peter McCrea said. She was 94.
Dee achieved stardom in 1930 opposite Chevalier in one of the first talkie
musicals, "The Playboy of Paris." Her beauty earned her leading roles in
comedies and dramas, notably in the 1931 "An American Tragedy" as Sondra
Finchley, the role played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1951 remake "A Place in
the Sun."
In 1933, Dee appeared with McCrea in "The Silver Cord." They married that year
and co-starred again in "Wells Fargo" (1937) and "Four Faces West" (1948). She
appeared in occasional movies in the 1940s and '50s and retired after "Gypsy
Colt" in 1954.
McCrea died in 1990. Dee rarely appeared in public in recent years, but in her
90s she was honored with retrospectives of her career at film festivals.
Frances Marion Dee was born Nov. 26, 1909, in Los Angeles, where her Army
officer father was stationed. He was transferred to Chicago, where she grew up.
She studied at the University of Chicago, and as a lark while visiting
relatives in Hollywood, worked as an extra in movies. That led to a contract
with Paramount.
___
Spalding Gray
NEW YORK (AP) — The body of actor-writer Spalding Gray was pulled from the
East River over the weekend, two months after he walked out of his Manhattan
apartment and disappeared. He was 62.
Gray, who laid bare his life and mingled performance art with comedy in
acclaimed monologues like "Swimming to Cambodia" and "It's a Slippery Slope,"
was identified through dental records and X-rays.
Gray was known to have been deeply troubled and had attempted suicide before.
His family told police he was last seen Saturday Jan. 10.
Gray was born on June 5, 1941, one of three sons of a WASP couple in
Barrington, R.I. His mother suffered a pair of nervous breakdowns, committing
suicide in 1967 after the second one.
In more than a dozen monologues starting in 1979, Gray told audiences about his
childhood, adventures as a young man and struggles as an actor. Many were
published in book form and several were made into films.
He also had an active career in Hollywood, with roles in films including David
Byrne's "True Stories," "Beaches" and "The Paper" — 38 film appearances in
all. In the 1993 Steven Soderbergh film "King of the Hill," he played an
eccentric bachelor who kills himself.
A horrific head-on car crash during a 2001 vacation in Ireland left him
disheartened and in poor health, and he tried jumping from a bridge near his
Long Island home in October 2002.
He was twice hospitalized for depression after the crash, and his suicide
attempt canceled the run of a new solo piece, "Black Spot."
___
Noah Sylvester Purifoy
JOSHUA TREE, Calif. (AP) — Trash-to-art "assemblage" sculptor Noah Sylvester
Purifoy, the African-American artist perhaps best known for his "66 Signs Neon"
made from 1965 Watts riot debris, died in a fire in his home. He was 86.
The fire was confined to Purifoy's wheelchair and it was believed he fell
asleep while smoking, a coroner's office spokesman said.
In a sculpture garden, Purifoy dedicated 2 1/2 acres to creating beauty from
castoffs. Known as "assemblage" art, Purifoy erected a spectacular display of
towering artworks using bowling balls, commodes, discarded tools, worn-out
appliances and other debris.
Known as the father of the Los Angeles black assemblage movement, Purifoy was
launched into notoriety in 1965 when he created works from Watts riot rubble.
The longtime civil rights activist had been working on the Watts Towers Art
Center when the riots began.
Purifoy took a lengthy hiatus from his artistic endeavors in 1976, when he was
appointed to the California Arts Council. He backed efforts to bring art to
correctional institutions, schools and social programs before leaving the
council in 1987.
Settling in the Mojave Desert, he began to sculpt on a grand scale. The
sculpture garden contains more than 100 art objects.
His works have been part of the collections of the Corcoran Gallery in
Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum in New York and the California
Afro-American Museum.
___
Bruno Wassertheil
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — Bruno Wassertheil, CBS News' former chief radio
correspondent in Israel, died March 3. He was 68.
During his career, Wassertheil received two Overseas Press Club awards and
spent 14 years with CBS News in Israel, from 1970 to 1978 and 1980 to 1986.
Wassertheil conducted 20,000 network broadcasts and interviewed such prominent
Middle East figures as Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon.
Colleagues, fans, and friends remember Wassertheil for two things: his
expertise on the Middle East and his resonant, authoritative voice.
Dan Raviv, a CBS News correspondent in Washington, D.C, said Wassertheil
provided an importance link between Israel and American Jews.
Born in Katowice, Poland, Wassertheil was on a steamship with his family
heading to the United States to visit the 1939 World's Fair when Hitler's
troops invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The family settled in New York and
never returned to Poland.
Wassertheil graduated from City College of New York in 1957 and served in the
U.S. Army for three years before moving to Israel. He began working for the
Associated Press in 1967 and joined CBS News in 1970.