'Ragtime' author; theater legend; 'Archie' cartoonist

• Few minds were as playful and as serious as E.L. Doctorow's.

Conjurer of old-time gangsters and ragtime stars. Commentator on wars and presidents and the laws of the land. Student of political and literary history and how they tell us who we are now.

Doctorow, who died last week at age 84, was the rare American writer to move gracefully between lives as engaged citizen and solitary inventor.

"Underlying everything - the evocative flashes, the dogged working of language - is the writer's belief in the story as a system of knowledge," he wrote in the introduction to his essay collection "Creationists," published in 2006. "This belief is akin to the scientist's faith in the scientific method as a way to truth."

Doctorow was among the most honored authors of the past 40 years. His prizes included the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle award and both competitive and honorary National Book Awards.

He forged his reputation around a series of novels - most set in and around New York City - that carried readers from the 1800s to modern times. Mixing fictional characters with historical figures, he looked back to the Civil War ("The March"), the post-Civil War era ("The Waterworks"), the turn of the 20th century (the million-selling "Ragtime"), the 1930s ("Billy Bathgate," "Loon Lake," "World's Fair") and the Cold War ("The Book of Daniel").

"I don't know what I set out to do," Doctorow said in 2006. "Someone pointed out to me a couple of years ago that you could line them up and in effect now with this book, 150 years of American history. ... And this was entirely unplanned."

In 1992, as the first George Bush opposed Democrat Bill Clinton, Doctorow considered the role of chief executives in American culture.

"With each new president, the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul," he wrote in the liberal weekly The Nation, for which he was a frequent contributor. "I would want a presidential temperament keen with a love of justice and with the capacity to recognize the honor of humbled and troubled people."

On Twitter, President Barack Obama praised Doctorow as "one of America's greatest novelists."

"His books taught me much," Obama wrote.

Doctorow taught creative writing at New York University and was an instructor at Yale University Drama School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College and the University of California, Irvine. He married Helen Setzer in 1954. They had two daughters and a son.

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born Jan. 6, 1931, in New York, his early years remembered warmly in "World's Fair." His father, David Doctorow, ran a music store, and his mother, Rose Doctorow, was a pianist.

Named after Edgar Allan Poe, whom he praised and disparaged as "that strange genius of a hack writer," young Edgar Doctorow read widely and decided he would become an author at age 9.

• Theodore Bikel, the Tony- and Oscar-nominated actor and singer whose passions included folk music and political activism, died of natural causes at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his agent Robert Malcolm. He was 91.

The Austrian-born Bikel was noted for the diversity of the roles he played, from a Scottish police officer to a Russian submarine skipper, Jewish refugee, Dutch sea captain and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He sang in 21 languages.

"No one loved theater more, his union better or cherished actors like Theo did. He has left an indelible mark on generation of members past and generations of members to come," Actors' Equity Association, which Bikel led as president from 1973-1982, said in a statement.

He also appeared on numerous television shows, recorded books on tape, appeared in opera productions and issued more than 20 contemporary and folk music albums.

He received an Oscar nomination for his 1958 portrayal of a Southern sheriff in "The Defiant Ones," the acclaimed drama about two prison escapees, one black and one white.

The following year, Bikel starred on Broadway as Capt. Georg von Trapp in the original 1959 production of "The Sound of Music."

But many viewers knew him best for his portrayal of Tevye in stage productions of "Fiddler on the Roof." Although he did not appear in the original 1964 Broadway version or the 1971 film, he played Tevye more than 2,000 times on stage from 1967 onward. His latest film was a documentary about interpreting the work of Yiddish author and playwright Sholem Aleichem, who wrote "Fiddler on the Roof."

Among his film roles, he played the grumpy Soviet submarine captain in the Oscar-nominated 1966 Cold War comedy "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming." He played Kissinger in the TV movie "The Final Days."

A prolific recording artist, Bikel also helped found the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, an event that has drawn hundreds of thousands of fans to Rhode Island over the decades and launched the careers of many notable musicians. He recorded 37 albums and sang with Pete Seeger and The Weavers.

Bikel, who jokingly referred to himself as "the poor man's Peter Ustinov," was 80 when he received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in 2005. Friends including Martin Landau and Ed Asner were among the fellow actors who flanked Bikel during the ceremony.

"Finally, Theo gets his due!" Asner said.

• Tom Moore, the "Archie" cartoonist who brought to life the escapades of a freckled-face, red-haired character, has died in Texas. He was 86.

Moore began drawing cartoons while in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War.

Moore drew Archie Andrews and his friends on and off from 1953 until he retired in the late 1980s. Annual sales of the comic regularly surpassed half a million during the 1960s, according to the El Paso Times.

"I did one comic book a month," Moore told the newspaper in 1996. "I did everything. We always worked six months ahead. I'd be doing Christmas issues in June and beach stories with a foot of snow outside my window."

After the war, Moore used funding available through the GI Bill to attend a school in New York for cartoonists. He studied under "Tarzan" comic strip illustrator Burne Hogarth.

Soon after, Moore signed up with Archie Comics in New York. Bob Montana created "Archie" in 1941, and Moore took over in 1953.

Archie Comics' editor in chief, Victor Gorelick, who has worked at the company for more than 50 years, said Moore "was a cartoonist's cartoonist." He noted that Archie Comics invited Moore back to help revamp Archie's friend, Jughead, and remained with the company until he retired.

"Tom was very funny and had a knack for putting together really great, hilarious gags and special pages when he worked at Archie," Gorelick said. "He was probably best known here for inking our 'Jughead' relaunch decades ago. We're all sad to hear this news and wish his family the very best during this time."

After retiring, Moore kept tabs on Archie - and disagreed when the comic book company decided to kill off the character.

The El Paso Museum of Art displayed some of Moore's work and his vast comic collection about 20 years ago.

"I have enjoyed what I've done and I am pleased that others liked it, too," Moore said at the time. "I think it's such a kick that my stuff is going to be hanging at the museum. Who knew Archie would have such universal appeal?"

• Paul Freeman, the founder of the Chicago Sinfonetta, is dead at age 79.

Freeman was born in Richmond, Virginia. He founded the Chicago Sinfonetta in 1987 as a mid-sized orchestra dedicated to promoting diversity and innovative programming.

In addition to classics, the orchestra performed music by minority composers. It also featured instruments considered offbeat for orchestras, including bagpipes, steel drums and sitars.

Perkins says Freeman's family is planning a a September public memorial service in Chicago.

• Dick Nanninga, a former Netherlands striker who scored in the 1978 World Cup final, has died, Dutch club Roda JC said. He was 66.

• Frank Mordica, the Vanderbilt running back who shares the single-best rushing performance in Southeastern Conference history, has died of a heart attack. He was 57.

Mordica ran for 321 yards against Air Force on Nov. 18, 1978, setting an SEC record matched only by Darren McFadden at Arkansas against South Carolina in 2007 on 12 more carries.

• Grammy-winning songwriter Wayne Carson, who wrote hits like the Willie Nelson classic "Always On My Mind," and The Box Tops' "The Letter," has died. He was 72.

Carson died on Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, in hospice care after a lengthy illness, according to family friend Shirley Hutchins.

He got his first No. 1 hit in 1966 on "Somebody Like Me," performed by Eddy Arnold, and his songs have been covered by artists across genres, from Elvis Presley to Al Green. "Always On My Mind," co-written with Johnny Christopher and Mark James, won two Grammy Awards in 1982.

He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997.

• Walter "Stormy" Crawford Jr., whose founding of one of North America's largest bird conservation and rehabilitation centers was fueled by a childhood spent in Venezuela fascinated by exotic jungle birds, has died in Missouri. He was 70.

The sanctuary - spanning roughly 300 acres of hardwood forest - has rehabilitated and returned more than 800 raptors to the wild since Crawford founded it in the late 1970s.

• Elio Fiorucci, founder of the Fiorucci brand that pioneered stretch jeans and exemplified the youthful, graphic ethos of the 1970s and 1980s, has died at age 80.

Fiorucci opened its first shop in Milan in 1967 with novelties from London's Carnaby Street, expanding into a lifestyle brand and adopting the famed two angel logo a few years later. The brand was linked with some of the biggest pop cultural moments of the 1970s and 1980s, with the Fiorucci team organizing the grand opening of Studio 54 in 1977, and Keith Haring decorating the Milan flagship store in 1984.

In 2001, Fiorucci gave up his creative role.

• Alex Rocco, the Emmy-winning character actor best known for taking a bullet through the eye as the Las Vegas casino boss Moe Greene in "The Godfather," has died. He was 79.

Rocco's career spanned five decades, and he remained active up until his death, including a recurring role on the Starz series "Magic City." His distinctively gravelly voice made him a frequent tough-guy presence in both hardboiled tales ("The Friends of Eddie Coyle," "St. Valentine's Day Massacre," "Get Shorty") and comedic sitcoms ("The Simpsons," "The Facts of Life").

His most famous role came in 1972's "The Godfather," where he played the humbled casino owner who meets his fate on a massage table, with a bullet through his thick eyeglass lenses. His confrontation with Al Pacino's Michael Corleone - in which he condescended to the new boss: "I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!" - was among the movie's many indelible scenes.

• Barbara Colby once recalled turning on the washing machine to muffle her husband's conversations. She accompanied him on a road trip in Scandinavia, purportedly to visit castles but in fact so that he could supply anti-communist operatives with radio devices hidden in the car's trunk. In Saigon, she protected her young children during a coup mounted against their neighbor, President Ngo Dinh Diem.

For nearly four decades, Colby lived the life of a CIA wife, performing what another agency spouse once described as "the traditional partnership role of 'two employees for the price of one.' "

From 1945 until their divorce in 1984, she was the wife of William Colby - the spy and later spymaster who, as CIA director from 1973 to 1976, revealed the assassination attempts and other clandestine activities known as the agency's "family jewels."

Colby, 94, died July 16 in Washington. The apparent cause was a heart attack, said her son Paul Colby. William Colby died in 1996 in a reportedly accidental drowning in the Wicomico River in Maryland.

The couple met on a blind date and were married shortly after William Colby returned from service in Europe during World War II with the Office of Strategic Services. He soon joined its successor espionage agency, the CIA, which would take him - and his family -on covert and often risky missions on several continents.