Mary Carolyn Hickey Shinobu Hashimoto, screenwriter for Kurosawa

Stratford — Mary Carolyn (Crine) Hickey, 93, entered into eternal rest on Tuesday, July 24, 2018, at Carolton Convalescent Hospital. She was a resident of Stratford for 67 years. Born in Matawan, N.J., she was the daughter of the late John and Susan (Reid) Crine. She was predeceased by her beloved husband of 51 years, James.

Carolyn loved to laugh and had a good sense of humor. She was very proud of her Irish heritage. When her health allowed, she was an active parishioner of Our Lady of Peace Church. She enjoyed spending her free time going out to eat with her family, watching the New York Yankees and the New York Giants, as well as completing every crossword puzzle she could get her hands on. She will be very sadly missed.

Carolyn is survived by her five devoted children, Maryann Roach and her husband Rob of Lyme, Kevin Hickey of Stratford, Jeffrey Hickey of Stratford, Jeanne DeLaura of Mystic, and Julie Bastarache and her husband Mark of Newtown. She is also survived by her sister Helen Crine Mahon, her two beautiful grandchildren, Tate DeLaura and Lily DeLaura, several nieces and nephews, and longtime friend of the Hickey family, Tommy Agvent.

In addition to her husband, Carolyn was also predeceased by her brother James Crine, and close family friend, Amy Knott-McDonald.

The family wishes to express their sincere thanks to the staff at Carolton. They are also very grateful to Marie, Stephanie and Minon, Carolyn’s private aides at Carolton, for the loving and compassionate care they provided to her during the last year of her life.

Services are private and will take place at the convenience of the family.

Donations in her memory may be made to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society at www.nationalmssociety.org.

Shinobu Hashimoto, a screenwriter whose creative partnership with director Akira Kurosawa helped launch Japanese cinema to international prominence in the 1950s, died July 19 at his home in Tokyo. He was 100.

The cause was pneumonia, according to Japanese news media reports.

Working into his 90s, when a stroke effectively ended his career, Hashimoto wrote more than 70 screenplays for acclaimed directors including Tadashi Imai, Masaki Kobayashi and Mikio Naruse. But he was best known for his work with Kurosawa, in widely imitated films that ranged from the sword-fighting period piece “Seven Samurai” (1954) to lyrical explorations of justice and mortality in “Rashomon” (1950) and “Ikiru” (1952).

In a process of creation-by-committee, Kurosawa worked with a stable of writers that included Eijiro Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni, who batted ideas around the table at the director’s home in Komae. Yet few writers worked as closely with Kurosawa as Hashimoto.

While it opened to mixed reviews in Japan, “Rashomon” won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and received an honorary Academy Award for best foreign film. Its release marked a pivotal movement in film history: Kurosawa was catapulted to cinema stardom, and his Japanese forerunners, most notably directors Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, were given wide attention for the first time.