Monday, Dec. 17, 1956
Married. Diana Lynn (real name: Dolores Loehr), 30, dimpled movie ingenue; and Mortimer Hall, 32, president and general manager of Hollywood radio station KLAC; both for the second time (his first: Cinema Siren Ruth Roman); in Tijuana, Mexico.
Died. James Crawford (Jimmy) Angel, 57, crash-scarred oldtime bush pilot who joined the Canadian Air Corps at 16 in World War I, afterward soldiered in China, stunted in Hollywood and in 1935 discovered Angel Fall, the world's highest (3,212 ft.) waterfall, while chasing down a gold mine over Venezuela; after six months in a coma following a cerebral hemorrhage suffered while he was recuperating after a plane crash; in Balboa, C.Z.
Died. John Philip (Phil) Weyerhaeuser Jr., 57, publicity-shy (since 1935, when his son George was kidnaped and ransomed for $200,000) president of the $300 million Weyerhaeuser Timber Co., the Northwest's largest (with 2,500,000 acres of timberland in Washington and Oregon), who pioneered selective cutting, tree farming, changed U.S. lumbering from a looters' pillage to a responsible business; of leukemia; in Tacoma, Wash.
Died. Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, 63, round-faced, tempestuous champion of India's 60 million untouchables and principal author of India's constitution (adopted in 1949), which makes discrimination against untouchables a crime; in New Delhi. Himself an untouchable (and thus so repugnant to some high-caste Hindus that his shadow was considered polluting), Dr. Ambedkar warred with Gandhi over the Mahatma's gradualism in righting caste discrimination, entered Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's Cabinet as Minister of Law in 1947, resigned four years later in protest over delay in anti-caste legislation. Two months ago Hindu Ambedkar renounced his caste-perpetuating religion, claimed it stood for "inequality and oppression," led 300,000 followers in a mass conversion to Buddhism.
Died. Herbert Earle Gaston, 75, onetime (1939-45) Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, later (1949-53) head of the Export-Import Bank; in Los Angeles.
Died. Geoffrey Parsons, 77, longtime (1924-52) chief editorial writer for the New York Herald Tribune, who won the Pulitzer Prize (1942) for "clearness of style, moral purpose and power to influence public opinion"; in Manhattan.
Died. Princess Franziska Josepha Louise Augusta Marie Christiana Helena, 84, last surviving granddaughter of Queen Victoria, oldest member of Britain's royal family and longtime grande dame of London society, whose autobiography. My Memories of Six Reigns, was published last month; of bronchitis; in London.
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