PATRICIA BRESLIN, ACTRESS AND WIFE OF FORMER RAVENS OWNER
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 13, 2011
Patricia Breslin, an actress who appeared on many television shows, including a memorable episode of “The Twilight Zone,” and who was married to the former N.F.L. team owner Art Modell, died on Wednesday in Baltimore. She was 80.
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Everett Collection
William Shatner and Patricia Breslin in the memorable “Nick of Time” episode of “The Twilight Zone” in 1960.
Her death was announced by the Baltimore Ravens, one of the teams her husband had owned until 2003.
During a 22-year acting career, Ms. Breslin — who later took Mr. Modell’s name — performed on the New York stage, in motion pictures and on television. In the 1950s she starred in the sitcom “The People’s Choice” as the wife of a politician (Jackie Cooper) whose basset hound, Cleo, is given voice on the soundtrack. She also played the role of Meg Baldwin in the soap opera “General Hospital” and Laura Brooks on the prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place.”
In the “Nick of Time” episode of “The Twilight Zone” in 1960, Ms. Breslin played the newlywed wife of a man, played by William Shatner, who becomes obsessed with a fortunetelling machine in a small-town diner while waiting for their car to be repaired. In 1963 she appeared in the “No Time Like the Past” episode, in which a character played by Dana Andrews uses a time machine to try to change events in the past.
She also appeared on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Perry Mason,” and “Maverick,” among other shows.
In 1969, Ms. Breslin married Mr. Modell, the former owner of the Cleveland Browns (a team that he moved to Baltimore that became the Ravens), and she retired from acting.
Patricia Breslin was born on March 17, 1931, in New York City, the daughter of Edward and Marjorie Breslin. Her father was a judge.
She graduated from the Academy of Mount St. Ursuline and the College of New Rochelle.
Besides her husband, she is survived by two sons, John and David, and six grandchildren.
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DORIS BELACK, JUDGE ON TV’S ‘LAW & ORDER’
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: October 9, 2011
Doris Belack, a veteran stage, television and screen actress best known for her roles as a no-nonsense judge on “Law & Order” and as the peeved soap opera producer in “Tootsie,” died on Tuesday in New York. She was 85.
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Photofest
Doris Belack in 1990.
Her death, which was confirmed by a family friend, Jason Watkins, came four months after the death of her husband, Philip Rose, the influential Broadway producer of “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Purlie Victorious,” both considered breakthroughs for racial equality in American theater. The couple were married for 65 years.
Ms. Belack played many roles on Broadway, and worked steadily in television beginning in the early 1960s. She had parts in “The Patty Duke Show,” “The Defenders,” “Barney Miller,” “Family Ties” and “The Cosby Show,” and a recurring role in the soap opera “One Life to Live” from 1968 to 1977. She appeared as Judge Margaret Barry on “Law & Order” in the 1990s.
As the tough-minded TV producer in the 1982 film “Tootsie” (who unwittingly casts a disguised Dustin Hoffman in a woman’s role in a soap opera), Ms. Belack was praised for the comic lightness with which she reinforced the film’s feminist themes.
The authority-figure role she played in her later years tapped into one side of Ms. Belack: she expected dinner guests to arrive punctually and maintained an Old World sense of propriety that she occasionally enforced with an acerbic wit. But at her core, she once said, was the desire to act.
She considered it a calling. “You can’t act, you mustn’t act, you shouldn’t act,” she said in a 1979 interview with The New York Times, “unless it’s the only thing in the world you want to do.”
Doris Belack was born on Feb. 26, 1926, in New York City, the younger of two daughters of Isaac and Bertha Belack, Jewish immigrants from Russia. She joined a summer stock theater company immediately after graduating from high school, and within months she met Mr. Rose, then an actor and singer.
Ms. Belack and her husband shared convictions about race and civil rights that made them full partners in the unlikely success of Mr. Rose’s efforts, friends said, especially in bringing “A Raisin in the Sun” to Broadway in 1959.
Already considered a long shot for being a nonmusical drama about blacks written by a black playwright, it was the first play Mr. Rose had ever produced.
“But she not only supported the idea, she worked and supported them both while Philip went around raising money to produce ‘Raisin,’ ” said Elizabeth Perry, an actress, playwright and friend. “She was a strong liberal voice, and she had a lot of influence over his choices.”
In her last years, Ms. Belack continued working in commercials and as a voice actor. She went to auditions regularly until the week before she died. When a final bout of illness led her friends to urge her to go to the hospital a couple of Sundays ago, she brushed them off because she had an audition the next day.
She made it to the audition, and then went to the hospital.
“I saw her a few days later,” said Esther Margolis, a book publisher and longtime friend. “She told me: ‘Would you believe it? I got a callback.’ ”
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A.C. NIELSON JR, WHO BUILT RATINGS FIRM
By BILL CARTER
Published: October 4, 2011
Arthur C. Nielsen Jr., who transformed the company his father founded in 1923 into an international leader in market research, helping to make its name synonymous with television ratings, died on Monday in Winnetka, Ill., where he lived most of his life. He was 92.
He had Parkinson’s disease, family members said in announcing his death.
The son of Arthur C. Nielsen, Mr. Nielsen became president of the A. C. Nielsen Company in 1957 and its chairman in 1975. He presided over the company’s growth from a modest operation, generating less than $4 million a year in revenue, to one with revenue of more than $680 million.
He worked for the company his entire adult life, joining in 1945 after serving four years in World War II as a major in the Corps of Engineers. One part of his wartime experience gave him insight into the potential importance of computers. He was assigned to construct a building to house a machine that would create elaborate tables to calculate the metrics for firing big artillery guns accurately.
Mr. Nielsen recognized the potential to use such calculations in the family business, which at that point had gained most of its profit from an index that measured and tracked sales of items in food and drug stores. The company, one of the first ever to offer market research, also began to measure radio stations’ audience size in 1936. But even after expanding to a national service in 1942, the radio arm of the business was not profitable.
In 1948, at Mr. Nielsen’s urging, the company invested $150,000 in building the first general-purpose computer, the Univac.
His father remained the entrepreneur of the company and led the way to creation of the first television audience measurement system in 1950. The younger Mr. Nielsen, who was known more for institutionalizing his father’s innovations, moved the company into new areas, like the creation of a clearinghouse for coupons, a service that had become a business generating more than $90 million in sales by the time the younger Mr. Nielsen retired.
He also led the company into tracking subscription data for magazines and even tracking oil and gas wells in the United States and Canada. And as chairman he presided over the development of scanning technology in its early days, allowing the company to collect information on consumer purchases of all kinds. The most visible expansion of the Nielsen business took place in the media measurement division. Nielsen fought to retain its place — critics have long labeled it a monopoly — over the measurement of television ratings, beating back the challenges of several potential rivals. As cable television began vastly expanding the number of networks needing national measurement, Nielsen was positioned to provide the numbers each of those channels needed to sell time to advertisers.
Arthur Charles Nielsen Jr. was born in Winnetka on April 8, 1919, the oldest of five children of Arthur C. and Gertrude Nielsen. While an Army engineer he met Patricia McKnew and soon married her. He was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.
An avid athlete, Mr. Nielsen played competitive tennis until he was in his 80s and had the distinction of winning the United States Father-Son Doubles Championships with his father in 1946 and 1948. He later represented the United States in senior tennis tournaments. He also won Midwest-based father-son doubles championships with two sons, Arthur III and Chris.
Patricia Nielsen died in 2005. Mr. Nielsen is survived by his sons as well as a daughter, Elizabeth Cocciarelli; a brother, Philip; two sisters, Margaret Stiegele and the Rev. Barbara Nielsen; and seven grandchildren. His father died in 1980.
Mr. Nielsen served on the boards of more than 20 companies, including Dun & Bradstreet, Walgreen, Marsh & McLennan and Motorola, and advised three presidents.
He also appeared as a mystery guest on the postwar TV show “What’s My Line?” and was questioned about his line of work by the panelists Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf and others.
Accepting the company’s strict retirement policy, Mr. Nielsen stepped down from active leadership in 1983 and became chairman emeritus. The following year he engineered the sale of A. C. Nielsen to the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation for $1.3 billion in stock.
The company was later acquired by the Dutch publishing company VNU. It is now an independent company, Nielsen Holdings N.V., which is publicly traded under the symbol NLSN. That is short for Nielsen, the name retained because of its wide brand recognition. In many circles of the television business, ratings are still frequently referred to simply as “the Nielsens.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 14, 2011
An obituary on Oct. 5 about Arthur C. Nielsen Jr., former chairman of the A. C. Nielsen Company, referred incorrectly to the company’s current status. It is an independent company, now known as Nielsen Holdings N.V.; it is no longer owned by the Dutch publishing company VNU.
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