Linda Lavin, the Tony Award-winning Broadway actress known also for starring as a waitress and single mom in the long-running TV sitcom “Alice,” died Dec. 29 in Los Angeles. She was 87. Between 1962 and 1973, Ms. Lavin performed I eight Broadway productions, including the lead role in Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.” On TV, “Alice” ran from 1976 to 1985 and earned Ms. Lavin two Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy [...]

Richard Foreman, the avant-garde playwright and impresario who founded the Ontological Hysteric Theater, won a bookshelf of Obie Awards, and received a MacArthur fellowship in his late 50s, died on Jan 4 in Manhattan. He was 87. Mr. Foreman established his company in 1968 and went on to present more than 50 of his own plays. The company name refers to the metaphysical study of the nature of existence and to Mr. Foreman’s conviction that [...]

Richard M. Cohen, an outspoken and award-winning television news producer whose career was eventually derailed by the ravages of multiple sclerosis, which he wrote about in a best-selling memoir, died on Dec. 24 in Westchester County. He was 76. Mr. Cohen spent more than 20 years in the news business, working with luminaries like Ted Koppel at ABC and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather at CBS. But his memoir, Blindsided: Lifting A Life Above Illness, [...]

Seymour P. Lachman, a former New York State senator who quit the Legislature in disgust with the political shenanigans in Albany in the 1990s, and wrote two books that helped spur reforms, died on Jan. 2 at his home in Manhattan. He was 91. The book told of the corrupting power of money, the outsize influence of lobbyists, and public authorities’ lack of accountability. At his death, Mr. Lachman was director emeritus of the Hugh [...]