Engagement Broken. John Jacob Astor III, 21, great-great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I, heir to $3,000,000 last August; and Eileen S. S. Gillespie, 18, Manhattan debutante (TIME, Dec. 25). Reason: undisclosed. They were to have been married Feb. 6.

Married. Graham McNamee, 44, radio announcer; and one Ann Lee Simms, 22, actress; in Elkton. Md.

Married. Albert Russel Erskine Jr., 25. Chicago advertising man, son of the Studebaker Corp. president who died by his own hand last summer (TIME, July 10); and Florence Meredith Howard, 24, showgirl; in Manhattan.

Awarded. To Dr. Harlow Shapley, astronomer, director of Harvard Observatory: the (British) Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal*, for studies on the structure and dimensions of the galactic system (conglomerations of stars, such as the Milky Way).

Birthday. Henriette Klein Dannenbaum, 100. Believing herself and her sister to be the oldest twin sisters in the U. S., Mrs. Dannenbaum was hostess and guest of honor at a birthday dinner in Atlantic City, heard hundreds of congratulatory messages, was not told that her sister died in Manhattan last month (TIME, Jan. 1).

Died, Dr. George Tryon Harding, 55, Columbus, Ohio neuropsychiatrist, brother of the late Warren Gamaliel Harding; of heart disease and cerebral hemorrhage; in Columbus.

Died. Harrison Fisher. 56, magazine cover artist; after long illness; in a Manhattan hospital. Brooklyn-born, he joined the San Francisco Call, retouched photographs, made lifelike portraits of corpses in the morgue. By 1910 he had started the "Harrison Fisher Girl'' on her long and decorous magazine-cover career. He never married, said he saw too much of women in his work.

Died, William H. Wall. 58. longtime private policeman who helped capture Leon Czolgosz (President McKinley's assassin); of automobile accident injuries; in New York City. After the capture Czolgosz was hurled to the floor of a carriage where Wall sat on him with drawn revolvers during the ride to the Buffalo jail.

Died, Frank Ellis Campbell. 61, famed Manhattan undertaker, director of the funerals of Rudolph Valentino, Jeanne Eagels, Oscar Hammerstein. William Dean Howells, Anna Held, Yernon Castle, Frank W. Woolworth, Texas Guinan, Fatty Arbuckle, Francesco de Pinedo and many another celebrity; of heart disease; in Manhattan. Born in Illinois, he sawed casket lumber for a local undertaker, went to Manhattan with no money, plenty of ideas. He was credited with introducing the "funeral church," motorized hearses, scattering ashes from airplanes, high-pressure publicity ("A simple and refined service, suitable for all persons"). He had nine Rolls-Royces and three chauffeurs, a $400,000 yacht on which he once jocosely ran up a flag bearing skull & crossbones.

Died. Joseph ("Wee Joe") Devlin. 61, longtime Irish Nationalist leader, brilliant orator; of cancer of the throat; in Belfast.

Died. Edward Jackson Brundage, 64, Republican politician, twice Attorney General of Illinois; by his own hand (pistol); in his Lake Forest home. As Attorney General he prosecuted Governor Len Small for embezzlement, pushed the civil suit so inexorably after the Governor was acquitted that Small settled for $650,000 in 1926. Brundage killed himself shortly before a trial of 18 defendants for racketeering, in which he was to have been No. 1 prosecution witness.

Died. John Henry ("Uncle John") McCooey, 69, Democratic boss of Brooklyn since 1909, Democratic National Committeeman from New York; of myocarditis; in Brooklyn. A rotund, jovial man with sweeping white mustaches, he kept his machine firmly allied to Tammany Hall except for one quickly healed break in 1925. With the Fusion victory of last November he found his dominion slipping, saw Federal patronage dispensed in his own demesne without his consent.

Died. Louis Minsky. 73, Manhattan realtor, father of the famed four horsemen of burlesque, Abraham, Herbert, Morton and the late Billy Minsky; of pneumonia; in Manhattan.

Died, Helena Paderewska, 74, wife of Pianist-composer Ignace Jan Paderewski; after two years' illness; in the Paderewski villa at Merges. Switzerland. She became the pianist's second wife in 1899 and until her illness was his constant companion on all his tours, sitting backstage at every concert. In Wartime she started looking after Polish ''War brides" and their children, established an asylum for 500 of them at Warsaw.

Died. Nathan Simms, 80 plus, Coatesville. Pa. negro believed to have unwittingly helped Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth to escape; in Coatesville. Simms said he held a fresh horse for Booth at the Washington boardinghouse of Mary Surratt, a Booth accomplice.

Died, "Blue Boy," prize hog, film actor, star of the Phil Stong-Will Rogers cinema State Fair (TIME, Feb. 6); of overeating and overgrooming; in Hollywood.

*Considered the world's top astronomical prize, it has been awarded to only 19 U. S. scientists since 1824.

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