Harris Yulin, a character actor who for more than six decades portrayed unsympathetic, menacing, corrupt and glowering guys on stage and on screen, died on June 10 in Manhattan. He was 87.

Mr. Yulin never became a marquee name, but to many audiences, he was instantly recognizable. He portrayed J. Edgar Hoover, Hamlet and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Other roles ranged from crooked cops and politicians to a lecherous television anchorman.

Mr. Yulin never stopped working. At his death, he was preparing for a role in the TV series “American Classic,” with Kevin Kline and Laura Linney. The director said of him in a statement after his death, “His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I’ve experienced nowhere else.”

Leonard A. Lauder, the art patron and philanthropist who with his mother, Estée Lauder, built a family cosmetics business into a worldwide organization of brands, died on June 7 at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 92.

While best known for his business enterprises, Mr. Lauder was also one of America’s most influential philanthropists and art patrons. He gave hundreds of millions to museums, medical institutions and breast cancer and Alzheimer’s research, as well as to other cultural, scientific and social causes.

In 2013, he pledged the most significant gift in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a trove of nearly 80 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures by Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris. Scholars put the value of the gift at $1 billion and said its quality rivaled or surpassed that of the collections of the MOMA in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Estée Lauder’s sales, which hovered around $800,000 a year when Mr. Lauder joined the company, soared to more than $16 billion for fiscal 2021. Mr. Lauder’s personal fortune has been estimated at about 10.1 billion, according to Forbes, making him one of the 100 richest Americans.

For all his contributions to various causes, Mr. Lauder regarded himself as a frugal man with an eye on the bottom line. “I use slivers of soap, I reuse paperclips, I use the backside of memos,” he told The New York Times in 2004. “You can take the child out of the Depression, but you can’t take the Depression out of the child.”

Paul Marantz, a prominent architectural lighting designer who illuminated discos and skylines, libraries and hotels, museums and embassies, died on May 26 at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.

His projects included new buildings, including the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and renovations of Carnegie Hall, Grand Central Terminal, the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, and David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. Also Studio 54, the Palladium, and Times Square for New Year’s Eve in 1999.

It has been said that shoemakers’ children often go barefoot. Years ago, when the daughter of a family friend returned home after babysitting at the Marantz home, according to The New York Times, she told her parents, “I thought he was in the lighting business. I couldn’t find a good place to read.”

Marthe Cohn was barely 25 on April 11, 1945, and Jewish, but being blond and blue-eyed, she could pass for an Aryan. She was French, from northeastern Alsace, but spoke German fluently. She was a nurse and 4 feet 11 inches tall. She was also a spy, working with the French resistance to Nazi occupiers in WWII. She died on May 20 at her home in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, where she had settled with her American husband, long after her wartime exploits. Her husband found out about her experiences after they were married, and her children only recently. She was 105.

Early on, to escape the Nazis, a non-Jewish colleague provided false papers, she told The Southern New England Ledger in 2015. As she led her mother and maternal grandmother to safety, she feared that local peasants would report them to the authorities for a reward. One old man in work clothes stared at the three women. “Without saying a word,” she said, he suddenly dropped onto one knee and, hand on his chest, lowered his head in prayer. Next to him, his wife knelt on both knees in the dirt and made the sign of the cross.”

“I could hardly believe my eyes,” she added. “It was so beautiful, the humanity of it. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I nodded my head in silent thanks.”

Ms. Cohn was named a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 2004, and awarded the Order of Merit of Germany in 2014. “If you are thrown into certain circumstances, you are going to go through what you never thought you could do,” she said.

Terry Louise Fisher, who channeled her experience as a Los Angeles prosecutor into an Emmy Award-winning television career as a writer and producer for “Cagney & Lacey,” and a creator, with Steven Bochco, of the sleek drama “L.A. Law,” died June 10 in Laguna Hills, CA. She was 79.

In 1983, she began writing for “Cagney & Lacey,” bringing depth and realism to a CBS series focused on two female NYC detectives. “L.A. Law” ran for eight seasons on NBC, tackling thorny issues like abortion, sexual harassment, capital punishment, and AIDS.

 Leftist terrorist murdered two Israel Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The attack occurred on May 21, outside the Young Diplomats Reception for young Jewish professionals at the Capital Jewish Museum, hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The two staffers, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, a German-Israeli dual citizen, who had immigrated to Israel at the age of 16 and served in the Israel Defense Forces, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, were shot at close range by a gunman who opened fire and killed them.

Arrested was Elias Rodriguez, 31, who pretended to be a bystander after the shooting. When police arrived, the man turned himself in and told the officers, “I did this, I did this for Palestine.”

Don Mischer, an award-winning producer and director who brought meticulous preparation to live television extravaganzas like award shows, Olympic opening ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime performances, and the 2004 Democratic National Convention, died April 11 in Los Angeles. He was 85.

Mr. Mischer was the executive producer of NBC’s broadcast of the opening ceremony at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; the Primetime Emmy Awards numerous times between 1993 and 2019; and the Tony Awards from 1987 to 1989. He also directed the Academy Awards ceremonies in 2011 and 2012, and several Super Bowl halftime shows.

He won 15 Emmy Awards and 10 Directors Guild of America Awards as well as the guild’s Life Achievement Award in 2019.