Obit watch: September 18, 2019.

Betty Corwin. I hadn’t heard of her until I read the NYT obit, but it seems like she was one of nature’s noblewomen.

Ms. Corwin founded the New York Public Library Theater on Film and Tape Archive.

The still-growing archive — which at last count held 8,127 recordings, including artist interviews and theater-related films and television programs — has long been a rich resource for artists, students and researchers.
When Audra McDonald was preparing to perform in “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” on Broadway this summer, she went to the library to watch the archive’s 1988 recording of the original Manhattan Theater Club production, starring Kathy Bates. The week that Mike Nichols died in 2014, he had an appointment to look at “Master Class,” a version of which he was planning to direct for HBO.

…

The collection includes every play in August Wilson’s 20th-century cycle, starting with “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” in 1985; the 1978 New York Shakespeare Festival production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” starring Meryl Streep and Raul Julia; the original Broadway production of “Angels in America,” recorded in 1994; and the 1988 Lincoln Center Theater production of “Waiting for Godot,” starring Robin Williams and Steve Martin.

Sander Vanocur, noted TV journalist.

Mr. Vanocur, along with John Chancellor, Frank McGee and Edwin Newman, was one of NBC’s “four horsemen” — correspondents who prowled the floor of national conventions in the 1960s in search of news developments and tantalizing tidbits to report. (He was also the last surviving of those four.)

Cokie Roberts. NYT. NPR.

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