Icons we mourn: Pinter and Kitt

Apologies for the delay and the clumping, but I couldn't let these two get away without recognition. And I think it's a fun pairing, after all.

Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Dec. 24, 2008. He was 78 and lived in London.



Eartha Kitt, who purred and pounced her way across Broadway stages, recording studios and movie and television screens in a show-business career that lasted more than six decades, died on Dec. 25, 2008. She was 81 and lived in Connecticut. Forever Feline, Forever Fierce.