Died. Michael Flanders, 53, gruff-voiced English musical comedian best known for his long partnership with Schoolmate Donald Swann in their wacky At the Drop of a Hat revues; of an apparent heart attack; while vacationing in North Wales. Crippled by polio during World War II, the bulky, bearded Flanders performed from a wheelchair, while the spindly, cricketlike Swann hunched over his piano diffidently, squeaking multilingual ballads. Their routines were a confection of bluff nonsense ("If God had meant us to fly, he'd never have given us the railway"). Flanders and Swann entertained cabaret and theater audiences in Britain and elsewhere for twelve years with songs such as Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud and I'm a Gnu, until the pair split in 1966 to pursue separate careers.

Died. Richard Conte, 59, veteran Hollywood heavy; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. An Italian barber's son from the mean streets of Jersey City, Conte started out on Broadway, then went on to a 30-year film career playing gangsters (Cry of the City), grim-faced war heroes (Purple Heart, Guadalcanal Diary) and other macho roles (including Susan Hayward's sadistic husband in I'll Cry Tomorrow). Although he struggled to break into romantic or comedy leads, Conte remained typecast in hard-guy roles, most recently as the tight-lipped Mafia chieftain Don Barzini in The Godfather.

Died. Larry Parks, 60, journeyman film actor who became a celebrated casualty of McCarthy-era antiCommunism; of a heart attack; in Studio City, Calif. A B-movie player in the early 1940s, Parks' fortunes rose sharply after his brilliant performance as Singer Al Jolson in the 1946 hit The Jolson Story, which earned Columbia Pictures more than $8 million and brought him several more starring roles. But his career was shattered in 1951 when he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating Communist influence in Hollywood. Parks became the first of dozens of actors, writers and directors to admit publicly to party associations, and was forced to name several colleagues as Communists. Columbia dropped his contract, other acting jobs grew scarce, and Parks was compelled to take up a new profession: selling real estate. -

Died. Clyde Tolson, 74, J. Edgar Hoover's almost inseparable No. 2 man at the FBI for 42 years; of heart disease; in Washington, D.C. A taciturn lifelong bachelor, Tolson joined the fledgling bureau in 1928 and soon became what Hoover called "my strong right arm." Though his title was associate director (he was responsible for administration and investigation activities), Tolson handled a pistol convincingly in many of the spectacular arrests that built the FBI's G-man image in the 1930s. But mainly he was the director's loyal alter ego: he shared J. Edgar's bulletproof Cadillac, his meals, his afternoons at the race tracks, and inherited the bulk of his $551,500 estate when Hoover died at 77 in 1972.

Died. Fredric March, 77, towering stage and screen actor; of cancer; in Los Angeles. Born Frederick Mclntyre Bickel in Racine, Wis., March abandoned his plans for a career in international finance in 1920 when David Belasco gave him his first one-line part on Broadway. After years as a successful juvenile lead with touring theater companies, March moved to almost instant stardom in films with the arrival of the talkies. Tall, lean and sonorous-voiced, he won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; later he demonstrated his versatility in scores of widely acclaimed performances, ranging from the war-weary sergeant in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which he won his second Oscar, to the long-suffering father in the original 1956 Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's epic Long Day's Journey into Night. In Journey and other plays, March shared top billing with Florence Eldridge, his actress wife of 47 years. Resolved to "keep acting even if I had to get on the back of a truck," March last appeared in 1973 as the hard-bitten Harry Hope in the movie version of The Iceman Cometh, his 69th film.

Died. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 86, Indian philosopher-statesman; of a heart attack; in Madras. A high-caste Hindu who was educated in Christian missionary schools during India's colonial period, Radhakrishnan determined to "find out what was living and what was dead" in his native religion. His search unfolded over the years in dozens of papers and books on Hinduism, most notably his definitive, two-volume English-language magnum opus, Indian Philosophy (1923-26), which won him worldwide recognition and helped to make his ecumenical case that Eastern and Western religions are "two sides of the same mold." At the urging of Jawaharlal Nehru, who had studied his works in British prisons, the shy, self-effacing philosopher turned from scholarship to statecraft after India gained independence. The country's second President, he served in the largely ceremonial post of head of state for a turbulent period (1962-67), encompassing wars with China and Pakistan, the death of Nehru, and the accession to power of his former student, Indira Gandhi.

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