PASSINGS: Helen Stenborg, Loleatta Holloway

Helen Stenborg

Tony-nominated stage and screen actress

Helen Stenborg, 86, a Tony-nominated stage, film and TV actress who was the wife of the late Tony Award-winning actor Barnard Hughes and mother of the Tony Award-winning director Doug Hughes, died Tuesday at her Manhattan apartment, according to press agent Chris Boneau. The cause was not given.

Stenborg earned a Tony nomination for her 1999 role as pyromaniac Sarita Myrtle in Noel Coward’s “Waiting in the Wings.” She and her husband celebrated their 50th anniversary onstage in the Coward play and were honored with Drama Desk Awards for Lifetime Achievement in 2000. He died in 2006.

Stenborg’s last Broadway performance was in 2002 in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. Other Broadway appearances included the 1995 production of “A Month in the Country” and Hugh Leonard’s “A Life” in 1980-81.

She was a longtime member of New York’s Circle Repertory Company, appearing in the original productions of Lanford Wilson’s “The Hot L Baltimore” and “Talley and Son,” for which she won an Obie Award in 1986.

Her film credits include the Academy Award-winning short “My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples in New York,” and small parts in “Three Days of the Condor,” “Doubt” and other movies. She also appeared on the soap opera “Another World.”

She toured with her husband in the national company of Hugh Leonard’s Tony-Award winning “Da,” the play for which Hughes won the 1978 Tony for Best Actor.

Stenborg was born Jan. 24, 1925, in Minneapolis and moved to New York as a teenager to become an actress.

Loleatta Holloway

Disco singer known for ‘Love Sensation’

Loleatta Holloway, 64, a disco singer known for the 1980 hit “Love Sensation,” died of heart failure Monday at a suburban Chicago hospital, said her manager, Ron Richardson.

Holloway recorded several disco singles, including “Hit and Run” and “Runaway.” But she’s best known for “Love Sensation.”

Her vocals were sampled by Black Box for the 1989 hit “Ride on Time” and by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch for the song “Good Vibrations” in 1991.

Holloway was born in Chicago in 1946. She began singing gospel with the Holloway Community Singers and later with the Caravans. Her solo career began in the 1970s.

Los Angeles Times staff and wire reports

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