This week: a prize-winning playwright, an action-movie star and a pioneer of rockabilly

THE renowned playwright and screenwriter Janusz Glowacki, pictured, who has died aged 78, won top prizes for his bitter, ironic analysis of the difficult lives of immigrants.

Popular in New York and Polish artistic and intellectual circles, Glowacki was the author of award-winning plays Antigone in New York and The Fourth Sister, which set classic themes in the contemporary world. A keen observer of reality, his works are permeated with sarcasm but also with sympathy for the often-futile struggles of his characters.

Born in 1938 in Poznan, western Poland, he made a name for himself in the 1960s with short stories and screenplays, including for the movie Hunting Flies by Poland's leading film-maker Andrzej Wajda.

His dark and absurd humour was also helpful in protecting his works from censors, like the 1970 movie The Cruise that in a convoluted way showed the absurdities of life under communism in Poland.

He settled in New York in the early 1980s, choosing not to return to Poland after its communist authorities imposed martial law. He was in London for the opening of his play Cinders when the clampdown was announced.

Glowacki returned to Warsaw after the 1989 ending of communist rule.

In 1987, his drama Hunting Cockroaches won the Hollywood Drama League Critics Award.

Antigone in New York was awarded the Le Balladine Award in Paris for the best play of 1997, and The Fourth Sister won the main Grand Prize at the International Theatre Festival in Dubrovnik in 2001.

Glowacki is also survived by his daughter, Zuzanna Glowacka, and his ex-wife, Ewa Zadrzynska.

THE actor Sonny Landham, who has died aged 76, was a muscular action-movie star who appeared in Predator and 48 Hrs.

He was a brawny, deep-voiced actor and stunt man who played a bit part in Walter Hill's 1979 street-gang thriller The Warriors before the director cast him as the trigger-happy criminal Billy Bear in 1982's 48 Hrs.

Landham, who was part Cherokee, was perhaps most known for playing the Native American tracker Billy Sole in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Predator.

Landham entered the movie business after working in pornography in the 1970s. Later in life, he attempted brief and unsuccessful political campaigns.

He is survived by his son, William, and daughter, Priscilla.

THE musician Albert "Sonny" Burgess, who has died aged 88, was an early pioneer of what became known as rockabilly music and with his band, the Pacers, created some of the most memorable rockabilly tunes of the Fifties.

Burgess was among a group of singers in the mid-1950s who mixed rhythm and blues with country and western music. The sound became known as rockabilly and included Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Born in Newport, Arkansas, in his youth Burgess led a boogie-woogie band, and after a spell in the army, formed the Pacers. They toured throughout the Sixties, often with Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash. Burgess eventually signed with Sun Records in Memphis, where Presley, Cash and Lewis were among the artists under contract.

He released two albums in the 1990s which brought him to a new audience and reunited with the Pacers for several tours.

He was a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of Europe.