Stephen M. Silverman, a long-time entertainment reporter and author who wrote a critically admired biography of British director David Lean and also a forthcoming book about the Broadway titan Stephen Sondheim, died on July 6 in Manhattan. He was 71. As a journalist, he wrote about Broadway and Hollywood for The New York Post, People Magazine and its website, People Daily, and was its news editor for 20 years. Some of Mr. Silverman’s books were [...]

Bo Goldman, a Hollywood screenwriter who took home Oscars for his work on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) and “Melvin and Howard” (1980), died on July 25 in Helendale, CA. He was 90. Film director Martin Brest, for whom Mr. Goldman worked on two films, “Scent of a Woman” (1992) and “Meet Joe Black” (1998), recalled that Mr. Goldman was known as “the screenwriter’s screenwriter,” but that he called him “the man with [...]

Paul Reubens, the comic actor whose bow-tied, childlike alter-ego Pee-wee Herman became an unlikely movie and television sensation in the 1980s, died on July 2 in Los Angeles. He was 70. Mr. Reubens had scores of acting credits in a career that began in the 1960s, but Pee-wee, a character he created in the late 1970s as a l0-minute bit when he was a member of the Los Angeles comedy troupe the Groundlings, overshadowed all [...]

Dorothy Tapper Goldman, a philanthropist and major collector of American historical documents who in 2021 sold her original printed copy of the U.S. Constitution, which her husband had bought in 1988 for $165,000, for a record-setting $43.2 million, died on July 23 at her home in Manhattan. She was 78. She used the proceeds from the sale to establish the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation, which has made substantial contributions to the New York Historical Society, [...]

Alan Sherman, a pioneer in strengthening connections between U.S. and Israeli sports for five decades, died on July 29 at his home in Potomac, MD. He was 87. He was instrumental in creating the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, a world resource for the contributions of Jews in sports. He was also the long-time vice president of the Maccabi USA/Sports for Israel, and introduced the U.S. to participation in the World Maccabiah Games. He [...]

Lois Libien, who provided household hints in books and in a nationally syndicated newspaper column, died on July 25 in River Vale, NJ. She was 87. Ms. Libien was best known for a practical, often witty, hand book first published in 1976 as “Super Economy Housecleaning.” Reviewing the handbook, The San Antonio Express said it provided “breezy advice on how to maintain appliances, make your own inexpensive cleaning solutions, and what to do if your [...]

Myron Goldfinger, whose monumental modernist houses around New York made him a favorite architect of the city’s rich and powerful during the 1980s, died on July 20, in Westchester County, NY. He was 90. Mr. Goldfinger designed his houses by amassing basic shapes — half-circles, blocks, triangles —  into dramatic sculptural statements. His interiors were likewise unusual, including bridges, conversation pits, and intimate hallways that led to living rooms with double-height ceilings. “He was a [...]

Julia Silverman Scully, editor of Modern Photography magazine for 20 years, died on July 18 at her home in Manhattan. She was 94. She began working at photography magazines in the 1950s and was hired to be editor of Modern Photography in 1966. During her tenure, the magazine was instrumental in the emerging recognition of photography as art. Ms. Scully was the project director of “The Family of Woman,” a 1979 book of pictures of [...]

Mark Margolis, the prolific actor with a simmering air of menace as the fearsome former drug lord Hector Salamanca in “Breaking Bad,” died August 3 in Manhattan. He was 83. Mr. Margolis notched more than 160 credits in movies and on television, but no role made him as instantly recognizable as Hector in the critically-acclaimed series, which ran for five seasons on AMC, starting in 2008, and in its prequel, “Better Call Saul,” which ran [...]

Florence Berger, a Cornell University professor who found a second calling as a pro bono matchmaker, leading her to successfully arrange some two dozen marriages, died on July 13 at her home in Charlottesville, VA. She was 83.           Ms. Berger was a popular presence on the Cornell campus, where she became an expert in the hospitality industry, teaching courses in organizational behavior, human relations and creativity, writing three academic books, and gaining distinction as [...]