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Barbara O.Jones dead at 82: Actress who starred alongside Muhammad Ali in TV series, has passed away 

Actress Barbara O. Jones, who starred alongside boxer Muhammad Ali in Freedom Road, a NBC TV series, has died at the age of 82. Her brother Raymond Minor told The Hollywood Reporter that she  passed away at her home in Dayton, Ohio. 

Barbara O. Jones was born in Dayton, Ohio and attended Roosevelt High School where her mother Alberta worked as a business teacher. Barbara’s mother Alberta also went by the name of Bobbie Montogmery was also a radio personality on the local station WDAO.  

One of Barbara’s roles as an actress was a role as a nun in Uganda in a movie that was based on a short story by Alice Walker, the film was called Diary of An African Nun. She also starred in another film directed by Julie Dash, which was the 19991 movie Daughters of the Dust. 

Julie Dash shared a photograph of Barba in the 1977 movie Diary of An African

v=tJB3cio5ocM Nun and captioned the photograph: “Barbara O. ca. 1977 From Diary of An African Nun. Rest in Peace & Power.” In response to Julie’s tribute to Barbara, one fan said that “She was so wonderful in ‘Daughters of the Dust,’ whilst another said: “Beautiful Picture for a beautiful woman. May she rest in power and peace. I interviewed her years ago when Daughters in the Dust came out in Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts. Still shook by that movie.”

The movie Daughters of the Dust was screened at the Sundance Music Festival and was added to British Institute’s list of The Greatest Films of All Time. As well as starring in movies, Barbara O. Jones also appeared in TV shows such as Wonder Woman and Laverne & Shirley, both in 1977, 

Barbara O. Jones’s last role was in the 2001 drama Maangamizi: The Ancient One, She also starred in horror movies Black Chariot in 1971 and Demon Seed in 1977.

Norman Jewison obituary

The director and producer Norman Jewison, who has died aged 97, had a career dedicated for the most part to making films that, while entertaining, included socio-political content. His visual flair, especially in the use of colour, spot-on casting and intelligent use of music, enabled him to raise sometimes thin stories into highly watchable films. 

He hit the high spot critically and commercially with In the Heat of the Night (1967), which starred Sidney Poitier as a northern US city police detective temporarily held up in a small southern town and Rod Steiger as the local sheriff confronted with the murder of a wealthy industrialist. The detective mystery plot was perhaps mainly the vehicle for an enactment of racial prejudices and hostilities culminating in a grudging respect on both sides, but it worked well. The final scene, much of it improvised, in which the two men indulge in something approaching a personal conversation, was both moving and revealing.

The film won five Academy awards – for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best editing, best sound and, for Steiger, best actor – and gave Jewison the first of his three best director nominations; the others were for Fiddler on the Roof, his 1971 adaptation of the Broadway musical, and the romantic comedy Moonstruck (1987). In 1999 Jewison was the winner of the Irving G Thalberg memorial award from the academy for “a consistently high quality of motion picture production”.

The son of Dorothy (nee Weaver) and Percy Jewison, he was born and brought up in Toronto, Ontario, where his father ran a shop and post office. Educated at the Malvern Collegiate Institute, a Toronto high school, Jewison studied the piano and music theory at the Royal Conservatory in the city, and served in the Canadian navy during the second world war. On discharge, he went to the University of Toronto, paying his way by working at a variety of jobs, including driving a taxi and occasional acting.

After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree, in 1950 he set off with $140 on a tramp steamer to the UK, where he landed a job with the BBC, acting and writing scripts. On his return to Canada two years later, he joined the rapidly expanding television industry, producing and directing variety shows for the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

Jewison was spotted by the William Morris talent agency and invited to New York, where he signed with CBS and was given the unenviable task of rescuing the once successful show Your Hit Parade, which was by then displaying signs of terminal decline. He revamped the entire production and took it back to the top of the ratings. He directed episodes of the variety show Big Party and The Andy Williams Show, and specials for Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Gleason and Danny Kaye. 

On the Belafonte special, Jewison had white chains dangling above the stage, an image that displeased many southern TV stations, which refused to screen the show. This was the first indication of his stance on racism.

Success brought him to the notice of Tony Curtis, who had his own production company at Universal, and Jewison began a three-year contract with 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), starring Curtis. This was followed by the likable but light Doris Day comedies The Thrill of It All (1963), Send Me No Flowers (1964) and The Art of Love (1965).

In 1965 he got out of his contract to make the first film of his choice, MGM’s The Cincinnati Kid, starring Steve McQueen (the Kid) and Edward G Robinson (the Man) and centring on a professional poker game between the old master and the young challenger. He took over the project from Sam Peckinpah, tore up the original script by Paddy Chayefsky and Ring Lardner, and commissioned Terry Southern, the result getting him noticed as a more than competent studio director.

In 1966 he made the beguiling but commercially unsuccessful comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, about a Russian submarine stranded off the coast of Cape Cod. This was at the height of the cold war and gained him a reputation for being a “Canadian pinko”, although it was nominated for a best picture Oscar.

In the Heat of the Night was followed by The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) in which McQueen and Faye Dunaway played thief and insurance investigator respectively and engaged in a chess game that evolved into one of the longest onscreen kisses, as the camera swirls around and around above their heads. The theme song, The Windmills of Your Mind, was a hit and the film a success.

Fiddler on the Roof, with a silk stocking placed by Jewison across the camera lens to provide an earth-toned quality, won Oscars for cinematography, music and sound, and a nomination for Chaim Topol in his signature role of Tevye. 

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), his adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera, and Rollerball (1975), starring James Caan, were followed by F.I.S.T. (1978), a tale of union corruption starring Sylvester Stallone as an idealistic young organiser who sells out, and And Justice for All (1979), starring Al Pacino, a deeply ironic portrayal of the legal world.

A Soldier’s Story (1985), based on the Pulitzer prize-winning play and including an early performance from Denzel Washington, dealt with black soldiers who risked their lives “in defence of a republic which didn’t even guarantee them their rights”, and some of whom had internalised the white man’s vision of them.

Moonstruck, a somewhat daft love story but a tremendous box office success and for the most part a critical one, won the Silver Bear and best director for Jewison at the Berlin film festival and was nominated for six Oscars, winning for best screenplay, best actress for Cher and best supporting actress for Olympia Dukakis.

Then came Other People’s Money (1991), a caustic and amusing comedy on the new world of corporate finance and takeovers, in which Danny DeVito played a money hungry vulture, made largely in response to Reagan’s era of deregulation, and The Hurricane (1999) in which Jewison again worked with Washington, who played the real life boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, falsely convicted of a triple murder and imprisoned for years before the conviction was quashed. The latter film aroused controversy over its alleged manipulation of some facts and, despite its undoubted qualities, this fracas probably contributed to it being commercially disappointing.

In the early 1990s, Jewison had begun preparations for a film on the life of Malcolm X, and had secured Washington to play the title role, when Spike Lee gave his strongly expressed opinion that only a black film-maker could make this story. The two met, and Jewison handed over the film to Lee. 

Jewison’s last film, The Statement (2003), starred Michael Caine as a Nazi war criminal on the run. He was also producer for films including The Landlord (1970), The Dogs of War (1980), Iceman (1984) and The January Man (1989).

He had returned to Canada in 1978, living on a ranch north of Toronto with his wife Dixie, whom he had married in 1953. There he reared Hereford cattle, grew tulips and produced his own-label maple syrup. In 1988 he founded the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies, now known as the Canadian Film Centre, in Toronto.

He was a confirmed liberal, a man of integrity who turned in his coveted green card in protest at the Vietnam war and saw film not only as entertainment but also as a conduit for raising serious issues.

Dixie (Margaret Dixon) died in 2004. In 2010 he married Lynne St David, who survives him, as do two sons, Kevin and Michael, and a daughter, Jennifer, from his first marriage.

• Norman Frederick Jewison, film director, producer and screenwriter, born 21 July 1926; died 20 January 2024

• Sheila Whitaker died in 2013 

Sir Chips Keswick, scion of the Jardine Matheson dynasty who chaired Hambros and Arsenal – obituary

Sir Chips Keswick, who has died aged 84, was born into the dynasty that built the Far Eastern trading empire of Jardine Matheson, but made his own path to become chairman of Hambros Bank and Arsenal Football Club.

Keswick’s rise to become, in 1986, the first non-family leader of the 153-year-old merchant banking house of Hambros followed a split between directors led by its fifth-generation chairman Rupert Hambro, who wanted a more nimble, deal-led business, and those who were cautious of change in the “Big Bang” era of City reform.

When Rupert and his brothers Richard and James (with their father Jocelyn, the bank’s elder statesman) left to form their own boutique firm, tensions ran high. But all parties respected the integrity of Keswick: large and forceful but always courteous, he shouldered responsibility and never shied away from difficult decisions.

Hambros sailed on under his leadership, bolstered by estate agency and insurance interests: in 1993, the Telegraph called it “one of the City’s most blue-chip banks… worth £633 million”. But it lacked capital and strategic strength to compete in the cut-throat marketplace of the mid-1990s, in which rivals such as Barings and Warburgs fell.

An entanglement in a speculative takeover bid for the Co-op (for which Keswick issued an unprecedented public apology) was seen as a sign that Hambros was losing its way. In December 1997 the group was broken up, its banking business sold for £300 million to Société Générale of France. 

 

Keswick in 1999: starting out as a young bank clerk, he found out 'what everybody who was anyone was doing in London, who they were having affairs with… what bets they had at the bookies' - Nick Rogers/ANL/Shutterstock© Provided by The Telegraph

Meanwhile, a close friend of Keswick at Hambros was Peter Hill-Wood, who headed the bank’s investment division and inherited, from his father and grandfather, the chairmanship of Arsenal – where Keswick had been a fan since first seeing the team play in 1949, declaring among his heroes the Compton brothers Denis and Leslie and (as a budding keeper himself) the goalie George Swindin.

In 2005, Hill-Wood persuaded Keswick to join the Arsenal board. If the pair were sometimes depicted as cigar-smoking patricians from an earlier era, they guarded the club’s best interests with high skill and diplomacy, particularly in relation to manouevres for control by the oligarch Alisher Usmanov and the US sports billionaire Sam Kroenke, who eventually gained full ownership.

As the club itself put it, Keswick was “the natural choice” to succeed Hill-Wood as chairman from 2013 – and it was typical that he did not duck the decision to part company with the veteran manager Arsène Wenger when the club’s fortunes were fading in 2018.

Having passed 80, Keswick retired from the chair in 2020 – Arsenal’s FA Cup final victory against Chelsea shortly afterwards marking a fitting end to his tenure. 

 

Keswick marking manager Arsène Wenger's 20th year at the club in 2016 - Alan Walter/Arsenal FC via Getty Images© Provided by The Telegraph

John Chippendale Lindley Keswick was born in Shanghai on February 2 1940. He was the second of three sons (followed by a daughter) of Sir William “Tony” Keswick and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Francis Lindley who was British ambassador in Tokyo. Always known as Chips, he liked to attribute his name to the Chinese Chippendale bed in which he was conceived. 

The Keswicks descend from a sister of William Jardine, who with James Matheson began trading in tea, silk and opium at Canton in 1832. Tony Keswick combined his role as director of Jardine Matheson in Shanghai with chairmanship of the Municipal Council of the International Settlement – but Chips was still a toddler when the family returned to England after the Japanese seizure of power.

In his own words, Chips was “a late starter”. After Eton, he failed to gain a place at Cambridge and was despatched by his mother in 1959 to the university of Aix-en-Provence – “because my uncle had a vineyard there” – where he spent two years playing bridge and rugby.

His elder brother Henry had already joined Jardine Matheson; his younger brother Simon would follow, both in due course to be taipan (resident head) in Hong Kong. But their father steered Chips into banking with Glyn, Mills & Co, where as a clerk in Child & Co, its private clients arm, he was privy to “what everybody who was anyone was doing in London, who they were having affairs with… what bets they had at the bookies”. 

When it became clear he had no future with Glyn, Mills, his mother intervened again: this time with her Essex neighbour Silvia Hambro, whose husband Jocelyn had recently taken Hambros’ helm and who offered Chips a berth in 1965.

Still he thought of himself as no more than “a punctual Hooray Henry”. But a posting to New York when he was 29 was the making of him: “I learned about risk… It showed me I am a hunter.” At 34, back in London, he was running Hambros’ banking division and grappling with the legacy of bad Scandinavian shipping loans that was a long-term blight on the bank’s balance sheet.

Having retired from Hambros’ chair in 1998, he remained an adviser to Société Générale until 2000. From 1993 to 2001 he was a non-executive director (as his father had been) of the Bank of England; he also sat on the boards of the De Beers and Anglo-American mining businesses and the housebuilder Persimmon. 

 

Sir Chips Keswick with the then Duchess of Cornwall in 2012 at the Emirates Stadium - Shutterstock© Provided by The Telegraph

Keswick had a range of private passions besides football. He loved fishing on the Test, taking a serious interest in river improvement as chairman of the Test & Itchen Association. He played competitive bridge at the Portland Club, in laconic style, sometimes four afternoons a week. And he kept horses in training with Jamie Snowden at Lambourn.

When Present View won the Cheltenham Novices’ Handicap Chase for him in 2014, Keswick was with Arsenal in Germany for a match against Bayern Munich – and legend said he stopped the team bus to watch the race. Another Cheltenham winner was You Wear It Well in last year’s Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle. He also owned horses in partnership with the Queen, an old friend of his wife Sarah.

Perhaps most of all he loved the landscape of south-west Scotland, where he spent boyhood summers on his father’s Glenkiln estate. At his own nearby domain, Auchendolly in the Urr valley, he kept a fine shoot, discreetly entertained the King and Queen, and was highly regarded as a benevolent employer and landlord.

He was knighted in 1993 and was a member of the Royal Company of Archers, the sovereign’s bodyguard for Scotland.

He married, in 1966, Lady Sarah Ramsay, daughter of the 16th Earl of Dalhousie, who survives him with their sons David, Tobias and Adam – for whom he was a devoted and generous pater familias. Lady Sarah is one of the Queen’s six appointed Companions; Adam Keswick is an executive director of Jardine Matheson. 

Sir Chips Keswick, born February 2 1940, died April 17 2024 

Ted Toleman obituary

Ted Toleman, who has died aged 86, gave Ayrton Senna his introduction to grand prix racing. The team bearing Toleman’s name entered Formula One in 1981 and got off to a faltering start, but three years later they came close to giving the great Brazilian, a future triple world champion, a spectacular first victory in only his fifth race at the top level. 

Rain fell heavily during the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix. Senna, then aged 24, started from the 13th slot on the 20-car grid and used all his precocious skill in the treacherous conditions to overtake one rival after another on the tight two-mile street circuit until he found himself in second place behind Alain Prost’s McLaren.

Prost, runner-up in the previous season’s world championship, disliked racing on wet tracks. With barely a third of the scheduled 76 laps completed, he began waving furiously to the clerk of the course, the former Formula One ace Jacky Ickx, every time he crossed the finish line. Eventually Ickx was persuaded by Prost’s gestures and showed the red flag to halt the race at the end of lap 31.

Senna, who thrived in the rain, had been catching the Frenchman hand over fist. When Prost saw the red flag, he continued around the course before stopping his car on the finishing straight. Having closed to within a handful of seconds, Senna flashed past at full speed to cross the line, believing he had won, only to be told on returning to the pits that the rules said the finishing order was determined at the moment the red flag was shown. 

Although Senna’s third-place finishes at Silverstone and Estoril later in the season provided further evidence of the team’s progress, the Brazilian announced his intention to move to Lotus. At the end of 1985 Toleman sold his Oxfordshire-based outfit to Luciano Benetton, the Italian clothing manufacturer. As Benetton, the team went on to win titles with Michael Schumacher in 1994-95 and, after being sold on to Renault, with Fernando Alonso in 2005-06.

Born in Manchester, the infant Ted was adopted by Albert and Kathleen Toleman, with no record of his birth parents. Albert was the son of Edward Toleman, whose company had been started in 1926 to deliver Ford cars from their UK factory to dealers and distributors. Albert took over the reins in the 1950s, and when he died in 1966 Ted assumed the chairmanship, becoming joint managing director with his younger brother, Bob. Together with another director, Alex Hawkridge, they extended the business into Europe. 

Attracted by motor sport, the Toleman brothers and Hawkridge also took lessons at Jim Russell’s racing drivers’ school. Bob died from head injuries inflicted in an accident at Snetterton in 1976, while Ted’s appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year, undertaken “to satisfy an itch to drive down the Mulsanne straight at 200mph”, ended in a crash on his first lap.

Nevertheless he and Hawkridge saw their team work its way through the lesser categories before arriving in Formula Two, using Ralt cars. For the 1980 season they constructed their own machines, designed by Rory Byrne and John Gentry, with engines specially built by Brian Hart. The team’s English drivers, Brian Henton and Derek Warwick, finished first and second in the European championship.

Under Hawkridge’s supervision, the in-house design team came up with their first Formula One car in 1981, but it proved to be overweight and unreliable. Using a turbocharged version of Hart’s F2 engine, it was also underpowered, and Warwick and Henton struggled to qualify for grand prix starts, even after a redesigned version with a lighter carbon-composite chassis had been produced.

A further redesign for 1983 enabled Warwick to claim the team’s first championship points with seventh place in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

Senna’s performances in 1984 provided evidence of a steady improvement, but the mid-season announcement of his impending move to Lotus, without having notified Toleman and Hawkridge of his intention to activate the buy-out clause in his three-year contract, led to an acrimonious departure.

A dispute with their tyre supplier forced the team to miss the opening races of 1985, and although the Italian driver Teo Fabi took pole position at the Nürburgring, his 12th place at Monza was the team’s only finish that season. By then negotiations for a change of ownership were under way.

Toleman was also a successful powerboat racer. In 1985 he teamed up with Richard Branson to captain the Virgin Atlantic Challenger I, built with the objective of setting a new record for the fastest surface crossing of the North Atlantic. The 65ft, 4,000-horsepower boat had covered 2,973 nautical miles and was 130 miles from the finish when it sank after hitting a submerged object off the Isles of Scilly. All nine crew were rescued by a passing banana boat. 

Following the sale of the transport company and while in dispute with the British tax authorities, Toleman moved with his wife, Diane (nee Prior), and their twin sons to South Africa, where he owned a banana plantation. After the death of his wife and the murder of one son, Gary, then aged 40, in a car-jacking incident in 2003, he moved first to Australia’s Gold Coast and then to Manila in the Philippines, where he spent his final years.

He is survived by his second wife, Maiti (nee Villarreal), his other son, Michael, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

• Ted (Norman Edward) Toleman, entrepreneur, born 14 March 1938, died 10 April 2024