People,Places and Things

Linda Pugach, blinded in infamous NYC crime, dies
NEW YORK — Linda Pugach, who was blinded in 1959 when her lover hired hit men to throw lye in her face — and became a media sensation after later marrying him — died on Tuesday. She was 75.

The infamous New York City crime was detailed in the 2007 documentary “Crazy Love.”

Pugach, who hid behind dark glasses for the rest of her life, died Tuesday at the Long Island Jewish Hospital in Queens. The cause was heart failure, said her husband, Burton Pugach, who spent 14 years in prison for hiring the thugs to attack his then-girlfriend Linda Riss after she spurned him. He was married at the time, and the heinous attack became an instant tabloid sensation.

After his release, Pugach divorced his first wife and convinced Riss to marry him in 1974. He proposed to her on live television.

“This was a very fairy tale romance,” a sobbing Pugach told The Associated Press on Thursday.

After the release of “Crazy Love,” Pugach praised filmmaker Dan Klores for revealing a story that for the first time “has colors — it was no longer black and white.”

Two decades after his release from prison, Pugach was accused in another case with chilling similarities but acquitted of the charges in 1997. He had been accused of threatening and harassing another lover after she tried to end their five-year affair. That woman testified that he threatened to make it “1959 all over again.”

He told the AP in an interview at the time: “Haven’t you ever threatened to kill your husband? Did you mean it? Of course not. ... This has been blown out of proportion like I’ve never seen.”

Linda Pugach testified at that trial, describing her husband as a good man. Under cross-examination by Pugach, a disbarred lawyer who defended himself, she said couldn’t have sex with him after undergoing heart surgery in 1990.

“He was a naughty little boy and he was caught,” she said as she left the courtroom on his arm. She said he was an adulterer, not a criminal.

Hoffman does divas in directing debut ‘Quartet’
TORONTO — At least Dustin Hoffman is honest when asked why it took him so long to make his directing debut.

“I don’t know,” Hoffman said.

The 75-year-old Hoffman went behind the camera for “Quartet,” starring Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins as aging British opera divas at a retirement home for musicians who put aside past differences for a reunion concert.

“Quartet,” which premiered at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, opened in a handful of theaters Jan. 11 and expands to wider release Friday.

Hoffman told cinematographer John de Borman to let him know if any interesting scripts came his way for the actor to direct. Soon after, de Borman called Hoffman about “Quartet,” which had been adapted by screenwriter Ronald Harwood from his stage play.

Hoffman read it on the plane flying home and was hooked. While his lead players are actors, Hoffman filled up the retirement home with real aging opera singers, “people who had performed in places like La Scala, but no one has rang their phone or knocked on their door in 20 years,” he said.