Monday, Dec. 09, 1974
Married. Bob Woodward, 31, Washington Post's investigative Watergate reporter; and Frances Barnard, 28, reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram; both for the second tune; in Washington, D.C. Woodward's enterprising colleague, Carl Bernstein, who only learned of the secret marriage with an hour to spare, provided boutonnieres niched from a hotel flowerpot. qed Died. Cornelius Ryan, 54, bestselling chronicler of World War II (The Longest Day, The Last Battle, A Bridge Too Far); of cancer; in Manhattan. Born in Dublin, Ryan studied the violin at the Irish Academy of Music before becoming a war correspondent in 1941. He covered the D-day invasion for the London Daily Telegraph; he reported postwar atomic tests in the Pacific and the Israeli 1948 war for TIME. A return to Normandy in 1949 rekindled his fascination with Operation Overlord. Ryan did ten years of painstaking research and conducted more than 1,000 interviews before finishing The Longest Day.
"What I write about," he later explained, "is not war but the courage of man." Stricken with cancer in 1970, Ryan waged his own last battle against recurrent pain to complete A Bridge Too Far, a history of the disastrous 1944 airdrop at Arnhem, which was No. 2 on the bestseller lists when he died. qed Died. Rosemary Lane, 58, Hollywood's "Betty Coed" of the 1930s; of pulmonary obstruction and diabetes; in Hollywood. One of the "singing Lane sisters" who broke into movies with Bandleader Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, Rosemary starred in the 1937 musical Varsity Show, appeared with Rudy Vallee in Gold Diggers in Paris, and Time Out for Rhythm. She also played in such popular B-grade films as She Couldn't Say No and Always a Bride.
qedDied. U Thant, 65, third Secretary-General of the United Nations (1961-71); in Manhattan (see THE WORLD).
qedDied. James J. Braddock, 68, heavyweight champion of the world (1935-37); in North Bergen, NJ. After a promising start as a middleweight in the '20s, Braddock's luck faltered. During the Depression he worked on the docks and went on the dole, but he kept on fighting --and losing. After a surprise victory in 1934, he disposed of three strong contenders for the heavyweight crown and earned a shot at Champion Max Baer's title. Braddock skillfully outboxed Baer for 15 rounds, winning a unanimous decision and Damon Runyon's sobriquet "the Cinderella Man."
qedDied. Cyril V. Connolly, 71, erudite English critic and editor; in London.
Friend and schoolmate of George Orwell and Cecil Beaton, Connolly came down from Oxford with ambitions of becoming a novelist or an epic poet. Instead he wrote mostly critical essays, which soon established him as a powerful influence among English intellectuals. In 1939 he founded the monthly magazine Horizon, which became a literary showcase, publishing the likes of T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster and Andre Gide.
In 1945 Connolly's diary-anthology of essays and epigrams, The Unquiet Grave, won acclaim from Critic Edmund Wilson as one of the best books out of wartime England. After Horizon's demise in 1950, Connolly became a critic for the London Sunday Times. Snobbish and witty, he once said that "the books I haven't written are better than the books other people have."
qedDied. H.L. Hunt, 85, reclusive Texas oil billionaire; in Dallas (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS).
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