Overlooked No More: Renee Carroll, ‘World’s Most Famous Hatcheck Girl’
From the cloakroom at Sardi’s, she made her own mark on Broadway, hobnobbing with celebrity clients while safekeeping fedoras, bowlers, derbies and more.
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Overlooked
Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
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Highlights
Credit Overlooked No More: Willy de Bruyn, Cycling Champion Who Broke Gender Boundaries
A premiere cyclist in women’s competitions, he helped pave the way for future athletes when he announced that he wanted to live the rest of his life as a man.
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CreditCollection Fonds Suzan Daniel Overlooked No More: Ursula Parrott, Best-Selling Author and Voice for the Modern Woman
Her writing, from the late 1920s to the late ’40s, about sex, marriage, divorce, child rearing and work-life balance still resonates.
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CreditInternational Newsreel Photo, via Darin Barnes Collection Overlooked No More: Otto Lucas, ‘God in the Hat World’
His designs made it onto the covers of fashion magazines and onto the heads of celebrities like Greta Garbo. His business closed after he died in a plane crash.
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CreditEvening Standard, via Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Overlooked No More: Lorenza Böttner, Transgender Artist Who Found Beauty in Disability
Böttner, whose specialty was self-portraiture, celebrated her armless body in paintings she created with her mouth and feet while dancing in public.
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Creditvia Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art Overlooked No More: Hansa Mehta, Who Fought for Women’s Equality in India and Beyond
For Mehta, women’s rights were human rights, and in all her endeavors she took women’s participation in public and political realms to new heights.
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Creditvia Mehta family Overlooked No More: Bill Hosokawa, Journalist Who Chronicled Japanese American History
He fought prejudice and incarceration during World War II to lead a successful career, becoming one of the first editors of color at a metropolitan newspaper.
By Jonathan van Harmelen and
CreditCloyd Teter/The Denver Post, via Getty Images Overlooked No More: Min Matheson, Labor Leader Who Faced Down Mobsters
As director of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, she fought for better working wages and conditions while wresting control from the mob.
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Creditvia Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation<br /> and Archives, Cornell University Library Remarkable People We Overlooked in Our Obituaries
The poet Sylvia Plath and the novelist Charlotte Brontë. Ida B. Wells, the anti-lynching activist. These extraordinary people — and so many others — did not have obituaries in The New York Times. Until now.
By Amisha Padnani and
CreditClockwise from top left: Chicago History Museum/Getty Images; National Portrait Gallery, London; Roz Kelly/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images; Lacks Family/The Henrietta Lacks Foundation, via Associated Press; Paul Fearn/Alamy; James Burke/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
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Overlooked No More: Lizzie Magie, the Unknown Inventor Behind Monopoly
Magie’s creation, The Landlord’s Game, inspired the spinoff we know today. But credit for the idea long went to someone else.
By Gavin Edwards
Overlooked No More: Henrietta Leavitt, Who Unraveled Mysteries of the Stars
The portrait that emerged from her discovery, called Leavitt’s Law, showed that the universe was hundreds of times bigger than astronomers had imagined.
By Kirk Johnson
Overlooked No More: Yvonne Barr, Who Helped Discover a Cancer-Causing Virus
A virologist, she worked with the pathologist Anthony Epstein, who died last month, in finding for the first time that a virus that could cause cancer. It’s known as the Epstein-Barr virus.
By Delthia Ricks
Overlooked No More: Miriam Solovieff, Lauded Violinist Who Suffered Tragedy
She led a successful career despite coping with a horrific event that she witnessed at 18: the killing of her mother and sister at the hands of her father.
By Sarah Weinman
Overlooked No More: Betty Fiechter, Pioneer in the World of Watches
She started out at Blancpain as an apprentice and eventually took over as an owner, a move that one industry insider noted was “totally unprecedented” for a woman.
By Rachel Felder
Overlooked No More: Pierre Toussaint, Philanthropist and Candidate for Sainthood
He became wealthy working as a hairdresser in New York, then used his funds to free enslaved people, build churches and house orphans of color.
By Elizabeth Stone
Overlooked No More: Henry Heard, Tap Dancer and Advocate for People with Disabilities
With one arm and one leg, he upended assumptions that disabled people could not lead fulfilling lives, and his artistry had audiences clamoring for more.
By Meisha Rosenberg
Overlooked No More: Beatrix Potter, Author of ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’
She created one of the world’s best-known characters for children, and fought to have the book published, but she never sought celebrity status.
By Jess Bidgood
Overlooked No More: Cordell Jackson, Elder Stateswoman of Rock ’n’ Roll
A pioneering record-label owner and engineer, she played guitar in a raw and unapologetically abrasive way. “Whatever song it was,” she said, “I always creamed it.”
By Howard Fishman
Overlooked No More: Ethel Lindgren, Anthropologist of Reindeer Herding Cultures
She is best remembered for importing reindeer to the Scottish Highlands centuries after they were hunted to extinction. About 150 roam there today.
By Naï Zakharia
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