Obituaries

Deanna Durbin, the singing starlet with the bubbly personality and the jewel-tone voice whose enormously popular movies were widely credited with saving Universal Pictures from bankruptcy during the Depression, has died. She was 91. Her popularity peaked by her late teens and by her mid-20s Durbin had left Hollywood forever, made wealthy by her relatively brief career. She died in April in France, said family friend Bob Koster, the son of Henry Koster, who directed Durbin in films early in her career.

Mike Gray, an author, activist and documentarian who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The China Syndrome," the provocative 1979 film about a cover-up at a nuclear power plant, died Tuesday of heart failure at his Hollywood Hills home, his family said. He was 77. Gray developed the "China Syndrome" story after reading books and interviewing scientists about the dangers of nuclear power. No one knew how timely the subject would prove. A nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went into partial meltdown barely three weeks after the opening of the movie, which starred Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas and became a box-office and critical success.

Guitarist and ethnomusicologist Bob Brozman, who progressed from an early fascination with the delta blues of the South to a consuming passion for the traditional music of Hawaii and became a leading authority on the National steel guitar, has died. He was 59. Brozman was found dead April 23 at his home in Santa Cruz. His death was ruled a suicide, according to the coroner's office of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department. Brozman emerged in Santa Cruz in the 1970s as a street musician, playing a decidedly uncontemporary American roots style of music ranging from obscure jazz tunes to Hawaiian chanties.

Jack Shea, a Hollywood veteran who directed popular sitcoms such as "The Jeffersons" and who, as president of the Directors Guild of America, forcefully argued for minority hiring and local production, has died. He was 84. Shea's death Sunday at a Tarzana care facility was caused by complications from Alzheimer's disease, a family spokesman said. His first TV directing gig came when he was 27, a frightened novice who suddenly was asked to fill in when the director of the game show "Truth or Consequences" called in sick.

Ben Pleasants L.A. poet and playwright Ben Pleasants, 72, a Los Angeles poet and playwright who also championed the work of Charles Bukowski and John Fante in literary critiques, died of a heart attack April 18 in Crescent City, his wife, Paula, said. Born Aug. 6, 1940, in Weehawken, N.J., Pleasants graduated from Hofstra University on New York's Long Island in 1962 and within a few years enrolled in graduate English courses at UCLA. Beginning in the mid-1960s he wrote for the Los Angeles Free Press and regularly contributed book and theater reviews to The Times from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s.

Janos Starker, a renowned concert cellist as well as a distinguished teacher and recording artist, died Sunday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He was 88 and had been in declining health. Since 1958, Starker had been a professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. The university announced his death. Starker's cello seminars attracted students from all over the world. "I personally cannot perform without teaching, and I cannot teach without performing," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1993.

Stanley A. Dashew, an inventor and entrepreneur who helped revolutionize the credit card industry, died of natural causes Thursday in Los Angeles, according to a family spokesman. He was 96. Dashew held 40 patents in fields as diverse as credit card processing, mining, mass transit, medical equipment and offshore oil transportation. He also was an avid sailor, writer and photographer who late in life wrote for the Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post. At 94, he distilled his insights about life and business in a book, "You Can Do It: Inspiration and Lessons from an Inventor, Entrepreneur, and Sailor.

Edward A. Frieman, a leading figure in American science for decades as a researcher with wide-ranging interests, a top-level governmental advisor on defense and energy issues, and director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, has died. He was 87. Frieman died April 11 at UCSD's Thornton Hospital in La Jolla of a respiratory illness, the university announced. His legacy extends to leadership posts in academia, government and private industry. There are "not many like him, and he will be sorely missed," said John Deutch, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former CIA director and deputy secretary of Defense.

Mary Thom, an early staffer at Ms. magazine who rose to executive editor and later wrote an insider's history of the groundbreaking, mass-market chronicle of the women's movement, died Friday in a motorcycle crash in Yonkers, N.Y. She was 68. Her death was announced by the Women's Media Center, a nonprofit New York-based organization founded in 2005 by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Ms. co-founder Gloria Steinem. Thom was editor-in-chief for the center, which publishes features on women's issues in addition to offering media training and advocacy.

Three decades ago, an east Texas singer named George Jones took on an impossibly melodramatic, shamelessly sentimental song about a man who desperately clutched at lost love until his dying breath. His 1980 recording of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" became one of the most revered songs in country music history. Singers Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard were known for the poetically crafted lyrics of their country standards. But Jones' anguish-drenched vocals elevated "He Stopped Loving Her Today" above its soap-opera lyrics in polls of the greatest country music songs.