William Friedkin, a filmmaker whose gritty style and fascination with characters on the edge helped make “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist” two of the biggest box-office  hits of the 1970s, died August 7 at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 87. His death came just weeks before the release of his most recent directorial effort, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” a movie based on the Herman Wouk play. In [...]

Joan Kaplan Davidson, a preservationist and philanthropist who set projects in motion that upgraded the quality of life in New York City, died on August 11 in Hudson, NY. She was 96. Ms. Davidson served as chair of the New York State Council on the Arts in the 1970s, as New York State parks commissioner in the 1990s, and president of the J.M. Kaplan Fund from 1977 to 1993. The fund often has been the [...]

Thousands of Hasidic men converged for the funeral of the Rachmastrivka Rebbe in Borough Park, Brooklyn, on August 16. He was 92.                                                                               Getty Images

Philip L. Sherman, a mohel for 45 years, who claimed to have performed more than 26,000 ritual circumcisions, 11 in a single day including two sets of twins, died on August 9 at his home in Englewood, NJ. He was 67. He also served as a cantor at several synagogues in New York, and occasionally worked as an actor. He played a judge on the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” and appeared in [...]

Nechama Tec, a Holocaust survivor whose book about the Bielski partisans inspired the Daniel Craig film “Defiance,” died on August 3 in New York City. She was 92. Prior to the film adaptation of her 1993 book, Tec was best known within the academic world and the community of American Holocaust survivors. In her book and the film, Tuvia and Zus Bielski led Jewish partisans to fight the German occupiers in what is now western [...]

Jerry Moss, who with the trumpeter Herb Alpert founded A&M Records, which at its peak from the 1960s to the ’80s was an independent powerhouse behind hits by the Carpenters, the Police, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton, and Mr. Alpert’s group, the Tijuana Brass, among many others. He died at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles at age 88. Built from humble beginnings in Mr. Alpert’s garage, A&M became a major force [...]

David Jacobs, the writer and producer who created the primetime soap operas “Dallas” and “Knots Landing” died on August 23 at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, CA. He was 84. “Dallas aired for 14 seasons and 3576 episodes, starting out as a five-part miniseries in April 1978 before wrapping in May 1991. It was the No. 1 show in the Nielsen ratings after its 4th, 5th and 7th seasons. Meanwhile, the spinoff, “Knots [...]