Acting

KAYSVILLE — Students of the Spanish and French languages put their knowledge on display Thursday morning, performing fairy-tale plays for their peers.

Fairfield Junior High students, who are in their third year of studying the languages, have been working on the foreign language fairy-tale theater for several months.

LOS ANGELES — Ian Abercrombie, 77, the British character actor who played Elaine’s demanding boss, Mr. Pitt, on “Seinfeld,” died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his friend Cathy Lind Hayes. He suffered complications of kidney failure and recently had been diagnosed with lymphoma.

NAPLES, Fla. -- For his role as a nationally renowned cardiologist and researcher, actor Tom Riska read his 100-page script for roughly three hours, stumbling on a few medical words. After boning up during a lunch break, Riska, 60, was confident with his script's medical jargon -- and his part as Dr. Rajendra H. Mehta went off without a hitch.

This wasn't a medical TV show or soap opera. Riska was "testifying" as an expert witness in court, where a surgeon and his physician assistant were on trial in a medical malpractice case.

OGDEN -- Bernie Diamond, a co-founder of the Management Training Corporation that runs Clearfield Job Corps, and who once estimated he brought 10,000 jobs to Weber County during his career in business and with the then-Ogden Chamber of Commerce, died Tuesday. He was 89.

Diamond also is known to fans of the former TV shows "Everwood" and "Touched by an Angel." After he retired from business, he took up acting, appearing in a wide range of TV shows, films and commercials.

Diamond's daughter, Judie, said Tuesday he was preparing for a role in an upcoming film about the New Testament being made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.