The heavy-smoking, heavy-drinking Évora had suffered from numerous health issues in recent years. Last September, she had to cancel several planned concerts after announcing that she was retiring due to ill health.
A former seamstress who grew up in poverty, Évora (born Aug. 27, 1941, in São Vicente) began her career singing “morna” [Portuguese for “lukewarm”] songs in São Vicente’s local bars. “Morna” music, which sounds like a mixture of Portugal’s soulful fado and Brazil’s lively tropical jazz, is the national rhythm of the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, a series of volcanic islands off the northwestern coast of Africa.
Évora’s international career was launched following the success of the 1988 French-produced album “La Diva aux Pieds Nus” (“The Barefoot Diva”), in reference to her habit of taking off her shoes before each performance. In 1992, the Paris daily Le Monde said about her: “Cesária Évora, a lively fifty-year-old, sings morna with mischievous devotion … She belongs to the aristocracy of bar singers,” one with “a voice to melt the soul.”
In the next two decades, she went on to record songs in studios in Paris and Rio de Janeiro, and to perform in countries as diverse as Romania, Mexico, and South Africa. Along the way, she won two Victoire de la Musique Awards (“Café Atlantico” in 2000, “Voz d’Amor” [“Voice of Love”] in 2004) in France and a Grammy (also “Voz d’Amor”) in the United States.
For the big screen, Évora composed music for Laurence Ferreira Barbosa’s French-made dramatic comedy Normal People Are Nothing Exceptional / Les Gens normaux n’ont rien d’exceptionnel (1993), which starred Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Melvil Poupaud; Pol Cruchten’s Cape Verde-Portugal-Luxembourg immigration drama Black Dju (1997), in which Évora also had a supporting role as the mother of the film’s heroine; and Jilani Saadi’s Tunisian drama Tender Is the Wolf (2006). Additionally, she had a minor role in Francisco Manso’s Cape Verde-set love story O Testamento do Senhor Napumoceno / Napucemo’s Will (1997).
While performing in Los Angeles a few years ago, Évora, ever the barefoot diva, took her shoes off onstage. She then looked at the prominent NO SMOKING sign, casually picked up a cigarette, deliberately lit it, and then started to sing. Her gesture was greeted by enthusiastic applause.
Brief obit: Dialect coach Robert Easton, known in some quarters as the ‘Henry Higgins of Hollywood’
Actor and dialect coach Robert Easton, nicknamed the “Henry Higgins of Hollywood,” died at age 81 on Dec. 16 in the Los Angeles suburb of Toluca Lake.
According to the Los Angeles Times’ obituary, Easton’s students included Anne Hathaway, Liam Neeson, John Travolta, Patrick Swayze, Ben Kingsley, Charlton Heston, Arnold Schwarzenegger (who, as per the Times, learned to talk with a Russian accent), and Forest Whitaker (who learned to talk like Idi Amin Dada for his Oscar-winning role in The Last King of Scotland).
When not coaching, Easton taught at UCLA and USC. Additionally, he had small supporting roles in movies such as Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon (1969), Mike Nichols’ Working Girl (1988), and Nichols’ Primary Colors (1998). Easton also played a Klingon judge in Nicholas Meyer’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).
In a curious note about the workings of the American justice system, as mentioned in the Times obit Easton also coached “non-celebrities, such as the New York lawyer who was losing cases in California because juries, hearing his nasal, rapid speech, judged him slick and impatient.” According to Easton, the lawyer started winning cases after he helped him change his speech patterns.
Brief obit: Former Czech President and playwright Václav Havel directed 1 movie
Former Czech Republic president Václav Havel died at age 75 on Dec. 18.
Besides his role as a political dissident during Czechoslovakia’s decades as a communist dictatorship and as a key figure in that country’s transition from communist rule to economically and politically troubled constitutional democracy, Havel was also a playwright. A number of his plays were filmed for television throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2011, Havel himself directed for the big screen an adaptation of his play Leaving, which was released in the Czech Republic in March. Making clear allusions to Havel himself and to his nemesis and successor, Czech president Vaclav Klaus, Leaving is a dramatic comedy about a once-popular chancellor (played by veteran Josef Abrhám) whose fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the worse. As a result, he must vacate his posh official residence so his successor, Vlastik Klein (Jaroslav Dusek), can move in. (Havel denied any inference to Klaus, saying he wrote much of Leaving back in the 1980s.)
Havel had also been working with Czech-born two-time Best Director Oscar winner Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus) on an adaptation of Georges-Marc Benamou’s novel The Ghost of Munich. (Benamou was a former François Mitterrand adviser.) In the historical novel, French prime minister Édouard Daladier recalls his missteps following the 1938 Munich summit, the year before the onset of World War II. As per the IMDb, the French production is expected to hit theaters in 2012.
Havel also had brief roles in a handful of movies. He played “The President” in a couple of Czech productions: Tomás Vorel’s Stone Bridge (co-written by Jaroslav Dusek, 1996) and Jan Hrebejk’s Up and Down (2004), winner of five Czech Lions (the local Oscars), including Best Film and Best Director.