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 also created the North American Maccabi Youth Games for athletes 16 years and under. He and his family also supported the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled.

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 toaster smokes, your iron drags, and your coffee tastes lousy.”

“One of the most distinct memories I have from the late 1970s was of having a TV crew come to the house to interview my mother about housecleaning, and we had a housekeeper come over the day before to give the house a good clean,” her daughter Jenny Libien recalled. “She knew how to do everything, but I think would rather spend her time doing other things than cleaning.”

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 complete original,” said Timothy Godbold, an interior designer working in Long Island’s fashionable Hamptons, where Mr. Goldfinger’s houses dot the wealthy enclaves. Mr. Godbold pointed out that Mr. Goldfinger’s work went out of fashion when clients returned to more traditional styles in the postmodern era, adding that younger architects today often can be seen fawning over a Goldfinger house. “We’re all going to be loving it in a few years,” he told The New York Times.

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 women from around the world, for which she sifted through 300,000 photographs. It was a response to Edward Steichen’s popular book “The Family of Man,” which arose from a successful exhibition at the MOMA in 1955. She also wrote an acclaimed memoir about her Depression-era, hardscrabble childhood in Alaska.

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 for six seasons starting in 2015.

In “Breaking Bad,” he spoke no words, but communicated by means of a wheelchair bell. “I tell people I’m the most famous bell ringer since Quasimodo,” he said.

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 the first woman to be elevated to full professor at the hotel administration school. But she was perhaps best known for matchmaking. She arranged marriages over more than four decades, almost all of which endured, according to her son, Larry. The only couple that divorced was the one that didn’t invite her to the wedding, he said.

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 2013, Mr. Friedkin received a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival. That same year, Harper published his book The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir.