newsmakers

newsmakers

Actress, comedian Anne Meara dies

LOS ANGELES

Actress and comedian Anne Meara, whose comic work with husband Jerry Stiller helped launch a 60-year career in film and TV, has died. She was 85.

Jerry Stiller and son Ben Stiller say Meara died Saturday. No other details were provided.

The Stiller family released a statement to The Associated Press on Sunday describing Jerry Stiller as Meara’s “husband and partner in life.”

“The two were married for 61 years and worked together almost as long,” the statement said.

The couple performed as Stiller & Meara on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and other programs in the 1960s and won awards for the radio and TV commercials they made together. Meara also appeared in dozens of films and TV shows, including a longtime role on “All My Children” and recurring appearances on “Rhoda,” “Alf,” “Sex and the City” and “The King of Queens.” She shared the screen with her son in 2006’s “Night at the Museum.”

Meara was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role on “Archie Bunker’s Place,” along with two other Emmy nods, most recently in 1997 for her guest-starring role on “Homicide.” She won a Writers Guild Award for co-writing the 1983 TV movie “The Other Woman.”

Besides her husband and son, Meara is survived by her daughter, Amy, and several grandchildren.

Famed Detroit jazz trumpeter Marcus Belgrave dies at 78

DETROIT

Marcus Belgrave, a jazz trumpeter who graced stages and studios with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Cocker and Motown artists galore, died Sunday. He was 78.

Belgrave died at an Ann Arbor care facility, and the cause of death was heart failure, said Hazelette Crosby-Robinson, a cousin of Belgrave’s wife, Joan.

Belgrave remained active on the Detroit and international jazz scenes up until his death. Born into a family of musicians in Chester, Pa., he started playing professionally at 12 and joined The Ray Charles Band in the late 1950s – what he once described as “the beginning of my musical life.”

He came to Detroit in 1962 and became a studio musician for Motown Records, playing on hits including “My Girl,” “The Way You Do the Things You Do” and “Dancing in the Street.” After Motown decamped to California in the early 1970s, Belgrave stayed in Detroit and co-founded Tribe Records and recorded with a collective of jazz artists.

He became an original member of Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in 1988 at the request of Wynton Marsalis, and in 2006 was featured at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s presentation, “Detroit: Motor City Jazz.” He also was a prolific mentor and teacher, serving as a professor or visiting artist at numerous institutions, including Detroit-area schools, Michigan State University, Stanford University, University of California and Oberlin College.

Associated Press