Friday, Jan. 26, 1968
Married. Roman Polanski, 34, Polish director of many a chilling and fascinating psychological film (Knife in the Water, Cul-de-Sac); and Sharon Tate, 24, one of the boozy, bosomy denizens in The Valley of the Dolls, also featured in one of Polanski's lesser efforts, The Fearless Vampire Killers; he for the second time; in London.
Died. Howard Lebow, 32, U.S. concert pianist; of injuries suffered in an automobile accident; in Amherst, Mass. One of the youngest and most promising of U.S. pianists, Lebow toured 15 countries after his 1963 Manhattan solo debut, played the works of such modern composers as Edward Levy and Erich Kahn with an adventurousness that sometimes startled the critics but more often won their applause.
Died. Major General Charles M. Eisenhart, 53, vice commander of the 15th Air Force and much-decorated combat veteran; of injuries when his KC-135 jet tanker crashed while attempting a takeoff in heavy fog, killing twelve of 13 aboard; at Minot Air Force Base, Minot, N. Dak.
Died. Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr., 60, son of the Michigan Senator and Republican internationalist, who managed his father's campaigns and in 1952 headed the Citizens for Eisenhower Com mittee; of a heart attack; in Miami.
Died. Billy Moll, 62, songwriter who in the 1920s composed Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams, and I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream; in Stoughton, Wis.
Died. Leopold Infeld, 69, Polish theoretical physicist; of a heart ailment; in Warsaw. At Princeton during the 1930s, Infeld helped his friend Albert Einstein develop the general theory of relativity; with Einstein he also shared the work of writing The Evolution of Physics, a 1938 text so fascinating to laymen that it hit the bestseller lists. At the University of Toronto, Infeld did pioneer work on the unified-field theory of magnetism and gravitation; then, in 1950, he suddenly returned home to teach--and proved something of a problem to the Communists, often criticizing Warsaw's scientific censorship.
Died. Bert Wheeler, 72, vaudeville, Broadway and Hollywood comedian; of emphysema; in Manhattan. Gifted with a rubberized grin, a quavering voice, and a talent for leaking torrents of tears on cue, Wheeler was a comic fixture ever since 1911 when he played in George M. Cohan's 45 Minutes from Broadway. He went on to the Ziegfeld Follies, then to Hollywood, where he teamed with the late Robert Woolsey in some 30 comedies.
Died. Joseph Hudnut, 81, articulate architect and longtime (1935-53) dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Design; of pneumonia; in Norwood, Mass. An uninhibited critic, Hudnut dismissed the Jefferson Memorial as "an egg on a pantry shelf in the midst of a geometric Sahara." His passion was for the functional line of modern architecture, a style he popularized by bringing to the U.S. such Bauhaus architects as Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, whom he installed as chairman of his school's architectural department.
Died. Elmo N. Pickerill, 82, pioneer in air-to-land communications; of an apparent heart attack; in Mineola, L.I. After working on the first radios with Marconi, Pickerill realized the potential of wireless communication in flying, talked the Wright brothers into giving him lessons, and took off from Mineola in 1910 to become the first man to broadcast a radio message from the air, during a onehour, 20-mile flight.
Died. Bob Jones Sr., 84, Protestant evangelist and founder of South Carolina's Bob Jones University; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Greenville, S.C. Few would argue with "Mr. Bob's" description of his school as "The World's Most Unusual University." In 1927 he set out to build a college "to win people to the Lord Jesus Christ," based his courses on the literal truth of the Bible, banned dancing, drinking and smoking, and closed his doors to Negroes. With a strong arts program to bolster his fundamentalism, he built enrollment to 3,400. His most celebrated student was Billy Graham, who later earned Mr. Bob's wrath for holding integrated rallies.
Died. Ray Harroun, 89, winner of the first Indianapolis 500-mile auto race; of a heart ailment; in Anderson, Ind. Although he preferred to be known as inventor of a "hot spot" carburetor (which uses exhaust gases to preheat fuel), Harroun earned fame when he stepped into his six-cylinder, single-seated Marmon Wasp and buzzed around Indy's brick oval in 1911 to beat 39 other racers at the then astonishing average of 74.6 m.p.h.
Died. Joseph H. Choate Jr., 91, Manhattan lawyer and chairman of the Federal Alcohol Control Administration from 1933 to 1935; in Mount Kisco, N.Y. An outspoken foe of Prohibition who once called the 18th Amendment "an ass's head clapped upon our Constitution," Choate was drafted by F.D.R. to reorganize the liquor industry after repeal in 1933, quickly and efficiently revised revenue laws, set up licenses for all importers, and required full and accurate labels for all liquor on the U.S. market.
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