Hal Prince could
turn anything into
a musical. As a pro-
ducer and director,
Prince embraced unlikely sources
to create some of Broadway’s most
enduring hits. A seedy nightclub
in Weimar Germany became a
metaphor for the rise of fascism
in Cabaret (1966). Rock music
provided the soundtrack to the life of Argentine
first lady Eva Perón in Evita (1978). Victorian-era
“penny dreadfuls” inspired the homicidal barber
of Sweeney Todd (1979). Prince won a record 21
Tony Awards, including best direction of a musi-
cal for The Phantom of the Opera, the longest-
running show on Broadway. His boldness led to
some equally epic flops. Prince’s 1982 production
of A Doll’s Life, a sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s play
A Doll’s House, closed after five performances.
“You’ve got to keep attempting something new,”
he said. “You’ve got to take risks in this game.”
He was born in Manhattan to wealthy parents
“for whom Saturday matinees in the theater with
their children were a regular occurrence,” said
the Associated Press. At age 8, he was wowed
by a production of Julius Caesar starring Orson
Welles and decided to pursue a Broadway career.After attending the University of
Pennsylvania, Prince returned to
New York City in 1948 “hoping
to make his way as a playwright,”
said The Times (U.K.). The legend-
ary producer George Abbott took
the youngster under his wing, and
in 1954 Prince co-produced his first
musical, The Pajama Game, about
love and labor troubles at a pajama
factory. Made on “a shoestring budget,” the show
was a smash, winning a Tony for best musical.
Prince collaborated with “a murderer’s row of cre-
ative talents,” said The New York Times, includ-
ing Bob Fosse, Leo nard Bern stein, and An drew
Lloyd Web ber. But his “most frequent confeder-
ate” was lyricist Stephen Sond heim. Together, they
pioneered the “concept musical,” in which the plot
is organized around themes rather than a linear
story. Their first “concept” was 1970’s Com pany,
a bittersweet exploration of marriage through
the travails of a New York City bachelor. Late in
his career, Prince lamented Broad way’s increasing
reliance on focus-grouped movie adaptations and
pop music best-of shows. “You can and should do
what you want to do and bring the audience with
you rather than have them lead you,” he said in- “It’s art, for God’s sake.”
D.A. Pennebaker
mastered the art of
being a fly on the
wall. In Don’t Look
Back, the documentary filmmaker
trailed Bob Dylan on his 1965 U.K.
tour, catching revelatory and often
unflattering moments. He recorded the
cocky singer-songwriter clashing with
an un-hip Time magazine journalist,
intimidating folk singer Donovan, and
needling his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend
Joan Baez. Pennebaker captured these intimate
moments with a portable camera he had developed
that could record sound synchronized with images.
He aimed to be invisible to his subjects—who
included Broadway star Elaine Stritch in Original
Cast Album: Company (1970) and Bill Clinton’s
1992 campaign team in The War Room—and
often placed his camera on the floor or a table. “If
you’re setting up lights and tripods and you’ve got
three assistants running around, people will want
to get you out as fast as they can,” he said. But “if
you make the camera the least important thing in
the room, then it’s different.”
Born in Evanston, Ill., Donn Alan Pennebaker
studied mechanical engineering at Yale and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said The
Guardian (U.K.). After graduating in 1947,
Pennebaker founded a company that used “then-primitive computer science to cre-
ate a pioneering airline reservation
system.” He sold the firm, thinking
he’d dabble in writing and painting,
but a friendship with filmmaker
Francis Thompson led to a career
behind the lens. For his first big
film, Primary, Pennebaker spent
five days trailing John F. Kennedy
during the 1960 Democratic nomi-
nation race. Five years later, Dylan’s
manager invited Pennebaker to tag
along in England, if he paid his way.
The resulting documentary starts with an “oft-
imitated scene” in which Dylan flips through
cue cards displaying the lyrics to “Subterranean
Homesick Blues,” said The New York Times.
That sequence effectively created the music video.
After Don’t Look Back, Pennebaker made another
“musical landmark with Monterey Pop,” said the
Associated Press, a chronicle of the 1967 rock
festival where Jimi Hendrix famously set his guitar
on fire. Pennebaker had a knack for catching such
moments: In Town Bloody Hall (1979), a debate
between author Norman Mailer and a panel of
feminists is interrupted by stage invaders who hold
an impromptu love-in with lesbian activist Jill
Johnston. “It’s like playing blackjack,” Pennebaker
said of documentary making. “You assume you’ll
be lucky or you wouldn’t do it.”Obituaries
D.A.
Pennebaker
1925–2019Ph
oto
fes
t,^ E
ve
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olle
cti
on
The Broadway giant who shook up musicals
The documentarian who showed life up close
Hal
Prince
1928–2019 Small for a football player,
Nick Buoniconti still made a
big impact on the gridiron.
The 5-foot-11, 220-pound
linebacker anchored the
Miami
Dolphins’
defense dur-
ing the team’s
glory years
in the 1970s. Toppling quar-
terbacks like a bowling ball,
he helped lead the team to
Super Bowl wins in 1972
and ’73. The Dolphins’ Super
Bowl victory in January 1973
capped a 17–0 campaign,
the only undefeated season
in NFL history. Buoniconti’s
legacy off the field was even
greater. After his son Marc
was paralyzed from the
neck down in a 1985 college
football game, Buoniconti
co-founded the Miami
Project to Cure Paralysis.
Over 30 years, he raised
some $500 million for spinal
cord and brain research. “I
should’ve been dead years
ago,” said Marc, now 52. “It’s
only because of my father
that I’m here today.”Born in Springfield, Mass.,
Buoniconti was a high school
football star and became “an
All-America football player
for Notre Dame in 1961,”
said the Miami Herald. Some
scouts thought Buoniconti
too small to go pro, but after
being drafted by the Boston
Patriots in the 13th round
of the AFL draft in 1962 he
proved his worth, “earn-
ing the team’s rookie of the
year award.” He joined the
Dolphins in 1969 and finished
playing after the 1976 season.Buoniconti was “pleased to
have retired with his health,”
said The New York Times,
and afterward worked as
a player agent, corporate
executive, and TV sports
personality. But in 2013 he
began showing signs of
dementia—likely a result of
brain trauma he suffered on
the field. Buoniconti donated
his brain to medical research.
“I loved [football], always
loved it, still do,” he said
earlier this year. “But I am
paying the price.”Nick
Buoniconti
1940–201935
The linebacker who
fought to make the
paralyzed walk again