Rostropovich buyer will return art to Russia

Rostropovich buyer
will return art to Russia

LONDON — An art collection belonging to the late Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich has been sold to a private buyer for substantially more than $40 million, Sotheby’s auction house said Monday. Sotheby’s said the anonymous buyer intended to return the collection to Russia. An auction of the collection, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, was canceled. Sotheby’s did not disclose the sale price, but said it was “substantially higher” than the pre-auction estimate of $40 million. Rostropovich, who died in April at age 80, was considered one of the finest cellists of the 20th century and was a staunch opponent of Soviet-era repression. He fled the Soviet Union in the early 1970s after sheltering the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, settling in Paris with his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. The couple amassed one of the world’s finest private collections of Russian art, including glassware, porcelain and works by leading painters such as Ilya Repin and Boris Grigoriev.

Filmmaker Burns talks
about wooing Turlington

NEW YORK — Ed Burns says it took hard work to woo Christy Turlington. “Friends of ours had tried to fix us up — we both live in New York, we’re both pretty low-key, both heterosexual — but she was like, ‘Uh, not really interested,”’ the 39-year-old actor-director tells Best Life magazine in its October issue. “That did not deter me. I just wanted to get her to laugh.” How long did it take to build up the nerve to kiss her? “Probably within five minutes of meeting her,” Burns says. “Which hurt my chances. It took her a long time to come around. But I got her good and drunk, if I remember correctly, which never hurts.” Turlington and Burns wed in 2003. They have two children. Burns was seen as the next Woody Allen after directing and starring in 1995’s “The Brothers McMullen.” “I was the toast of the town,” he tells the magazine. “All of a sudden I was semifamous. There were six-figure checks.” However, his other New York-based movies, including “Sidewalks of New York” and “The Groomsmen,” didn’t fare well at the box office, and failed to meet critics’ expectations.

Fantasy novelist
Robert Jordan dies

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Author Robert Jordan, whose “Wheel of Time” series of fantasy novels sold millions of copies, died Sunday of a rare blood disease. He was 58. Jordan, whose real name was James Oliver Rigney Jr., was born and lived in this southern city most of his life. He died at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston of complications from primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy, his personal assistant, Maria Simons, said Monday. The blood disease caused the walls of Rigney’s heart to thicken. He wrote a trilogy of historical novels set in Charleston under the pen name Reagan O’Neal in the early 1980s. Then he turned his attention to fantasy and the first volume in his Wheel of Time epic, “The Eye of the World,” was published in 1990 under the name Robert Jordan. Most of the books made The New York Times list of best sellers.

Today’s birthdays

Singer Jimmie Rodgers is 74. Actor Robert Blake is 74. Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, is 74. Actor Fred Willard is 68. Singer Frankie Avalon is 67. Rock musician Kerry Livgren is 58. Actress Anna Deavere Smith is 57. Movie director Mark Romanek is 48. Actor James Gandolfini is 46. Singer Joanne Catherall (Human League) is 45. Actress Holly Robinson Peete is 43. Rhythm-and-blues singer Ricky Bell (Bell Biv Devoe and New Edition) is 40. Actress Aisha Tyler is 37. Actress Jada Pinkett Smith is 36. Actor James Marsden is 34. Rapper Xzibit is 33. Actress Alison Lohman is 28. Actors Brandon and Taylor Porter are 14. Actor C.J. Sanders (“Ray”) is 11.