Monday, Aug. 23, 1954
Born. To Jennifer Jones (real name: Phyllis Isley), 35, doe-eyed, Oscar-winning (The Song of Bernadette) cinemactress, and David O. Selznick, 52, Hollywood producer (most famed for Gone With the Wind), her second husband (No. 1: the late Cinemactor Robert Walker): their first child (his third, her third), a daughter. Weight: 7 Ibs. 8 oz.
Marriage Revealed. Minot Frazier (Mickey) Jelke, 24, chubby Manhattan playboy convicted a year and a half ago on two counts of compulsory prostitution; and Sylvia Eder, 26, the willowy blonde who was with him when police triggered the case by raiding his apartment at 1:30 a.m.; in Folkston, Ga., on June 22, five weeks after his conviction was set aside by the New York Appellate Division.
Married. Gloria Grahame, blonde (The Bad and the Beautiful] cinemadventuress, 25; and radio-TV's Boy Wonder Cy Howard, 38 (My Friend Irma, Life with Luigi); she for the third time, he for the second; under an olive tree in the patio of his Beverly Hills home.
Married. Sally Rand, 52, tireless fan-dancer; and Fred Lalla, 35, former Los Angeles plaster contractor; she for the third time, he for the second; in Las Vegas, Nev. One hour after the ceremony, she discarded her wedding dress and stood coyly nude on the stage of Las Vegas' Silver Slipper Saloon.
Died. Gerhard A. Puff, 40, German-born bank robber who made the FBI's Top Ten in 1952; of electrocution; in Sing Sing. Sentenced to the chair for killing an FBIman in a 1952 Manhattan gun fight, deadpan Gunman Puff ordered two of the most sumptuous "last meals" in Sing Sing history, had been visited by no one in his 14 months, 23 days in the death house.
Died. Vito Marcantonio. 51. six-term Congressman from New York's East Har em; of a heart attack; on a rainy street in Manhattan. Tough, fiery little Vito fought his way up from East Side poverty, hung on to the fluttering coattails of Fiorello La Guardia, succeeded him in Congress in 1934 on a Republican-City Fusion ticket. In his district, Vito was an indefatigable favordoer; in Washington, a slavish follower of the Communist Party line. Finally beaten by a 1950 Democratic-Republican-Liberal coalition, he still remained powerful and popular in his district, drew 20,000 mourners to his bier. His funeral was conducted by a Methodist minister, because the Roman Catholic Church refused him burial on the ground that he had not practiced his religion for many years.
Died. Lloyd Morris, 60, author, critic, social historian; of cancer; in Manhattan. In the '20s, studious ("Reading is my major vice"), Manhattan-born Morris was a notable Paris expatriate, at one time or another wrote in nearly every prose form, but achieved his real success in the late '40s as a nostalgic recorder of 20th century America ("the most exciting place in the world") in Postscript to Yesterday and Not So Long Ago.
Died. Dr. Hugo Eckener, 86, next to the late Count Ferdinand Zeppelin the greatest dirigible expert in aviation's history; of a heart ailment; in Friedrichshafen, Germany. A onetime journalist, stolid Aeronaut Eckener joined Count Zeppelin in 1909, worked fanatically to prove his conviction that the lighter-than-air ship was safer, more practical than the airplane, saw his dream explode with the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, N.J. in 1937. Self-taught, he developed uncanny skill as a pilot (Said a friend: "He was born knowing what the weather would be"), captained the Graf Zeppelin in its triumphal round-the-world flight in 1929, won a hatful of aeronautical medals and international homage until the Hindenburg disaster and the opposition of the Nazis ruined his airship and him. He spent his last years as a lonely, bitter, jet-age misfit.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.