MARRIED. Guenter Grass, 51, eminent German novelist (The Tin Drum, The Flounder); and Ute Grunert, 43, an organist; in Wewelsfleth, West Germany; both for the second time.

DIED. Blue Mitchell, 49, lyrical jazz trumpeter who performed and recorded with Horace Silver's combo for six years (High Heeled Sneakers) and most recently with his own Blue Mitchell-Harold Land Quintet (Smooth as the Wind); of cancer; in Los Angeles.

DIED. Colonel Arthur ("the Bull") Simons, 60, legendary veteran of World War II and the Viet Nam War, who was once described by an admiring John Wayne as someone who plays in "real life the role I play in the movies"; of a heart attack; in Dallas. Green Beret Commander Simons won the Distinguished Service Cross in 1970 after flawlessly leading a helicopter raid on a heavily guarded P.O.W. camp near Hanoi only to discover to his chagrin that there were no Americans there to be rescued. Last February the retired colonel led a more fruitful rescue mission on behalf of his old friend H. Ross Perot, who asked him to free two of his Electronic Data Systems employees from a fortress-like Iranian prison. Simons succeeded after arranging for a street mob to storm the prison, from which 11,000 prisoners escaped.

DIED. Gordon M. Smith, 72, foresighted director of Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery from 1955 to 1973; of a heart attack; in Buffalo. By boldly purchasing works by such contemporary painters as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns and Arshile Gorky before they were widely bought by larger, more affluent museums, Smith and the museum's angel, Woolworth Heir Seymour H. Knox, assembled a collection of abstract expressionist art that is virtually unsurpassed.

DIED. Ben W. Fortson Jr., 74, Georgia's dauntless, raspy-voiced secretary of state since 1946; of a heart attack; in Atlanta. Though doctors predicted he would not live more than ten years after a crippling auto accident in 1929, "Mr. Ben" proved to be one of his state's most durable politicians, surviving numerous changes in administration during his record tenure in office. As Georgia's top election official, he was often at the volatile center of political disputes. When newly elected Governor Eugene Talmadge died in 1946 before taking office, Fortson kept pretenders to the throne at bay by hiding the state seal under his wheelchair cushion until the succession battle was resolved. In 1968 Fortson again demonstrated his determination by defying the wishes of Segregationist Governor Lester Maddox and lowering state flags to mark the death of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr.

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