Norton Dodge, American economist and art collector, died he was 84.

Norton Townshend Dodge was an American economist who has amassed one of the largest collections of Soviet-era art outside the Soviet Union. died he was 84^[1][2]

^{(June 15, 1927 – November 5, 2011)} 

Art collection

A Sovietologist who did pioneering work on the role of women under Joseph Stalin, Dodge smuggled into the West the works of dissident artists, painters and sculptors in the former Soviet Union. He continued to acquire art and meet clandestinely with artists, often at great personal risk, till the death of dissident artist Evgeny Rukhin and the coming of perestroika. He managed to smuggle nearly 10,000 works of art from the USSR to the United States during the height of the Cold War. Dodge's role in the preservation and patronage of art disallowed by the government led to his being called "the Lorenzo de' Medici of Russian art" (Elena Kornetchuk in Mcphee 1994)."^{[citation needed]} Dodge's work is detailed at length in John McPhee's The Ransom of Russian Art (1994).
Dodge appears in an Andrei Zagdansky documentary Vasya (2002) about a Russian Nonconformist artist Vasily Sitnikov. The latest award-winning documentary about Norton Dodge and his unique art collection "The Russian Concept: Reflections on Russian Non-Conformist Art" was produced in 2009 by Igor Sopronenko.
The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art, which contains roughly 20,000 works of art, was donated to Rutgers University in the mid-1990s, where it is on permanent display at the University's Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum.
Dodge is one of the founding board members of the Kolodzei Art Foundation, a US-based group dedicated to advancing the study of Russian non-conformist art.

Education and teaching

A native Oklahoman and graduate of Deep Springs College, Dodge first traveled to the USSR in 1955, ostensibly to study tractors as part of his research for a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He completed his doctorate in 1960, with the thesis Trends in Labor Productivity in the Soviet Tractor Industry: a Case Study in Industrial Development. Johns Hopkins University Press published his research on women's roles in the Soviet economy in 1966 as Women in the Soviet Economy : Their Role in Economic, Scientific, and Technical Development. Dodge was a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, College Park for over twenty years until 1980 when he took a post at St. Mary's College in southern Maryland. He retired from St. Mary's in 1988.

Bibliography

• Rosenfeld, Alla (editor); Dodge, Norton T. (editor). From Gulag to Glasnost : Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. Thames and Hudson/The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, 1995. ISBN 978-0-500-23709-0.
• McPhee, John The Ransom of Russian Art. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. ISBN 978-0-374-52450-0.

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Les Daniels, American writer, died he was 68.

Leslie Noel Daniels III, known as Les Daniels  was an American writer died he was 68..

(October 27, 1943 – November 5, 2011^[1])

Background

He attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his master's thesis on Frankenstein, and he worked as a musician and as a journalist.^[2]

Career

He was the author of five novels featuring the vampire Don Sebastian de Villanueva,^[3] a cynical, amoral and misanthropic Spanish nobleman whose predatory appetites pale into insignificance compared with the historical catastrophes which he witnesses in his periodic reincarnations. These are: the Inquisition in The Black Castle (1978); the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in The Silver Skull (1979); and the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror in Citizen Vampire (1981). In the later novels Yellow Fog (1986, revised 1988) and No Blood Spilled (1991), Sebastian is resurrected in Victorian London and India, where the horror of his vampirism is again contrasted with non-supernatural evil, now in the person of Sebastian's human enemy, Reginald Callender. A sixth (and presumably final) Don Sebastian novel set in Tibet and entitled White Demon was planned and is advertised by some sources as being available for purchase, but in fact was never completed: Daniels had begun writing it before abandoning it due to the demands of his non-fiction projects and was told when able to resume that his publisher had lost interest.^[4]
Daniels also worked with the historical fiction genre. The Black Castle features appearances by Torquemada and Columbus; in The Silver Skull Sebastian confronts Hernán Cortés; in Citizen Vampire he has a couple of friendly encounters with the Marquis de Sade; and Madame Tussaud makes an appearance in Yellow Fog.^[4]
Daniels described his works as "tragedy, in which evil consumes itself", as opposed to the melodrama of most contemporary horror novels, in which "customarily good guys meet bad guys and win in two out of three falls".^[5] He cited Robert Bloch as an influence on his sardonic style, and was an enthusiast of the works of John Dickson Carr, who in several of his own works combined historical fiction with horror and the detective story.^[6]
Daniels was also the author of Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America (1971) and Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975).^[4][7]

Fiction

Don Sebastian de Villanueva

• The Black Castle (1978)
• The Silver Skull (1979)
• Citizen Vampire (1981)
• Yellow Fog (1986; revised and expanded edition 1988)
• No Blood Spilled (1991)
• White Demon (started circa 1991 but never completed)

Non-fiction

• Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America (1971)
• Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975)
• Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics (1991)
• DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (1995)
• Superman, the Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel (1998)
• Superman: Masterpiece Edition (1999)
• The Complete History: The Life and Times of the Dark Knight Batman (1999)
• The Complete History: Wonder Woman (2000)
• The Golden Age of the Amazon Princess: Wonder Woman (2001)
• The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days (2004)

As Editor

• Thirteen Tales of Terror (1971; with Diane Thompson)
• Fear (1975)
• Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre (1976)

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George Ansbro, American radio announcer, died he was 96.

George Ansbro was a radio announcer for NBC and ABC for six decades, working with soap operas, big bands, quiz shows and other programs died he was 96.
He began at NBC in 1928 as a boy soprano on Milton Cross' Sunday show, Children's Hour. Three years later, he was hired as an NBC page in 1931, but he was soon employed as an announcer at NBC. On Friday, May 18, 1934, radio columns in New York newspapers noted that Bert Parks of CBS would be “relinquishing his status as New York’s youngest network staff announcer to the newly appointed George Ansbro on the NBC announcing staff.”^[1]

^{(January 14, 1915 – November 5, 2011)}

Parade of programs

Ansbro’s radio career included announcing for FBI Washington, Treasury Salute, Wake Up, America, Young Widder Brown, Manhattan Maharajah and the popular Dr. I.Q. quiz show. He also announced for Across the Board and other television shows. During these years, he lived in Manhattan at 50 East 10th Street and thus could be at an NBC microphone in a matter of minutes.
By 1948, with NBC Radio's Blue Network subsidiary having led to the formation of the ABC Television Network, Ansbro had moved into television announcing as well. He would ultimately become one of ABC's longest-lasting and principal live voice-overs, in most of the network's weekday and weekend dayparts, along with the rotating staff of announcers. Come the 1980s, the majority of Ansbro's announcing was during the ABC daytime lineup, handling sponsor plugs for their daytime soap operas especially, mid-break bumpers (specifically for One Life to Live) and the show preview announcements that were run during end credits. However, in prime time, Ansbro would still be heard occasionally.
During the 1970s, he appeared on two shows looking back at vintage radio, beginning with ABC's Return To Studio 1A (1970). Radio's Golden Age which aired July 16, 1976, on WMUK-FM (Kalamazoo, Michigan), featured an interview with Ansbro about early radio soap operas. It was written and produced by Eli Segal for Western Michigan University.
In a letter dated October 1, 1986 (the 55th anniversary of his hiring by NBC), Ansbro was acknowledged by ABC's then-parent owner Capital Cities for not only being the oldest employee of ABC and its derivatives, but for being the longest-tenured employee of any network in the history of American broadcasting. Ansbro continues to hold the record to this day, having served fifty-eight years, three months and twelve days with ABC upon his retirement on January 14, 1990, his 75th birthday.^[1] Notably, within a few months after his retirement, Ansbro was officially replaced on ABC's daytime schedule with Ken Lamb, who in 2008 became ABC's chief booth announcer. (Bill Rice, who had become ABC's senior announcer in 1990, retired in 2008.)
Ansbro wrote a book about his radio experiences, I Have a Lady in the Balcony: Memoirs of a Broadcaster in Radio and Television (McFarland, 2000). The title is taken from the once familiar catch phrase heard weekly on Dr. I.Q. Leonard Maltin did the foreword for the book.^[1]
Ansbro was a resident of Spring Lake, New Jersey.^[1] He died on November 5, 2011 in Bloomfield, Connecticut, aged 96.


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Mario Roberto Álvarez, Argentine architect, died he was 97.

Mario Roberto Álvarez was an Argentine architect died he was 97..

(November 14, 1913 – November 5, 2011)^[1]

Early life

Álvarez was born in Buenos Aires in 1913, to Juana Elissamburu and Jerónimo Álvarez.^[2] He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires School of Arquitecture in 1932, and graduated with Gold Medal honors in 1936. He married Jorgelina Ortiz de Rozas, and they had two children.^[2]
His first design was that of the private San Martín Medical Group's new hospital (in the northwestern Buenos Aires suburb of San Martín), in 1937. The award of an Ader Scholarship in 1938 by his alma mater's School of Exact Sciences allowed Álvarez to study and work in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, during which time he gained experience collaborating on various public housing and public hospital projects.

Career

He returned to Argentina in 1939 and was named Director of Architecture for the important Buenos Aires suburb of Avellaneda, in 1942. Joining colleagues Leonardo Kopiloff and Eduardo T. Santoro, he established MRA in 1947. The firm's first major contract would be in 1954 with their design for the municipal Teatro General San Martín, the largest center for the stage in Argentina. Its success upon completion in 1960 helped secure MRA the design for the adjoining Centro Cultural General San Martín, built between 1962 and 1970. Other notable projects of Álvarez's in subsequent years included the Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel (completed in 1969), the Colón Opera House's labyrinthine production facilities (1972), the Buenos Aires headquarters for the state steel concern, Somisa (1977), the Salto Grande Dam (1979) and numerous office buildings, including the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange annex (1977) and the offices of IBM's Latin American division (1980). He also became a leading designer of residential and hotel properties in Punta del Este, a Uruguayan seaside city popular among Argentine vacationers. Álvarez was inducted into the American Institute of Architects as an honorary member in 1976.^[3]
Though an economic crisis during the 1980s resulted in less demand for Álvarez's work, he donated his design for the non-profit Leloir Institute's new facilities (completed in 1983). Some of his best-known designs from this era include the Chacofi building, the Buenos Aires American Express offices (facing San Martín Plaza), and the Costa Galana Hotel (Mar del Plata). An economic recovery in the early 1990s resulted in a rush of landmark designs for MRA, including the Rosario Stock Exchange's new building, the Le Parc tower (completed in 1996, the tallest in Argentina until 2003), the Buenos Aires Hilton (1999) and Microsoft's Latin American headquarters (2000), numerous luxury high-rises in the Recoleta and Palermo sections of Buenos Aires, and others.^[3]
Turning 90 in 2003, Álvarez's design for the redevelopment of the Northern District of Osaka, Japan earned him a First Prize at that year's competition. The Galicia Financial Group's new financial district headquarters, designed by MRA, attracted controversy, however, when it resulted in the demolition of a historic building^[4] Much as he had done for the new Rosario branch of the Argentine National Bank in 1983, Álvarez struck a compromise by incorporating parts of the beaux-arts façade into the new design. Other notable recent designs include the new Taravella International Airport (Córdoba) terminal, Torre Aqualina (Rosario), the new Proa Foundation cultural center building and the Bariloche Hilton, built into the mountain rock.^[3] He was named an Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires by the City Legislature in 2007.^[5]
Álvarez died in Buenos Aires in 2011, nine days shy of his 98th birthday. He was interred in the Jardín de Paz Cemetery, in Pilar.^[1]


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Tadeusz Walasek, Polish Olympic silver (1960) and bronze (1964) medal-winning boxer, died he was 75.

Tadeusz Walasek  was a Polish boxer died he was 75.^[1][2][3]

^{(July 15, 1936 – November 4, 2011)}

He won a silver medal for Poland at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games in the men's middleweight division (165 lbs/75 kg). Walasek lost a 3-2 decision in the final to Eddie Crook of the United States. Walasek returned again at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, and won a bronze medal at middleweight.^[1][4]
Walasek participated thrice at the European Amateur Boxing Championships and won 3 medals: two silver medals at Prague 1957 in the Light middleweight division^[5] and at Lucerne 1959 in the Middleweight division,^[6] and a gold one at Belgrade 1961 in the Middleweight division.^[7]
He was the winner of the Aleksander Reksza Boxing Award 1996.^[8]

Olympic results

1956 (as a welterweight)
Lost to Fred Tie
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Sarah Watt, Australian film director, died from cancer he was 53.

Sarah Ann Watt was an Australian film director died from cancer he was 53.

(30 August 1958 – 4 November 2011) 

Born in Sydney,^[1] Watt completed a Graduate Diploma of Film and Television (Animation) at the Swinburne Film and Television School (now VCA), Melbourne in 1990. Her student film "Catch of the Day" was to reflect the style of future work. In 1995, she directed a short film, Small Treasures, which won Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival. In 2000, she made a program for the SBS series Swim Between the Flags. She received the Australian Film Institute's award for Best Director for her 2005 film Look Both Ways.^[2]
Watt returned to the VCA School of Film and Television to teach animation and was to assist in the development of many animators including Academy Award winner Adam Eliot in 1996. Watt was instrumental in the development of scripts for all of her students, but left the School to further develop her own projects, returning on occasion as a script and final production assessor.
During the post-production of Look Both Ways, Watt was diagnosed with cancer. Her second film My Year Without Sex was released in 2009.
She died on 4 November 2011 after suffering for six years with breast and bone cancer, aged 53.^[2][3]
Sarah Watt was married to actor William McInnes.^[2] They had two children, Clem (b.1993) and Stella (b.1998).^[2]

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Theadora Van Runkle, American costume designer (The Godfather: Part II, Bonnie and Clyde), died from lung cancer she was 83.

Theadora Van Runkle was an American costume designer died from lung cancer she was 83. ^[1]

 

^{(March 27, 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – November 4, 2011, Los Angeles, California)} 

The first films she designed costumes for were Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and The Arrangement (1969), all of which starred Faye Dunaway, for whom Van Runkle also designed the gown Dunaway wore to the 1968 Oscars, as well as Dunaway's complete off-screen wardrobe at the time.
Van Runkle was nominated for an Oscar for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and has been nominated twice more, for The Godfather: Part II (1974) and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). She designed the costumes for Troop Beverly Hills (1989).
She was the recipient of the Costume Designer Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.^{[citation needed]}


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