MARRIED. Steve McQueen, 49, tough-guy actor; and Barbara Minty, 26, a model; he for the third time; in Santa Paula, Calif.

DIED. Robert Ardrey, 71, dramatist and self-trained anthropologist whose works on man's origins and behavior, among them African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative (1966) promoted popular interest in the once-obscure field that he made his specialty; of lung cancer; in Kalk Bay, South Africa, where he had lived since 1978. Many of the plays (Thunder Rock, Shadow of Heroes) and movie scripts (Madame Bovary, Khartoum) that the Chicago-born Ardrey wrote, beginning in the 1930s, showed the fascination with man's roots that later led him into anthropology. It was his notion that man is a "risen ape" whose drive to acquire power, defend territory and make war is inherited, rather than a learned response. This idea, like others Ardrey embraced, stirred wide controversy among scholars and laymen--which, in a way, was his purpose.

DIED. Sir Cecil Beaton, 76, English photographer, designer and arbiter of elegance; of a heart attack; in Broad Chalke, England. A tall, epicene dandy whose sartorial trademarks were silk scarves and broad-brimmed hats, Beaton was best known professionally for his portraits of the British royal family and the dazzling costumes and sets he created for operas, ballets, Broadway (My Fair Lady, Coco) and films (Gigi). Offstage he was celebrated for his frolics with the famous, including a 1940s dalliance with Greta Garbo. (Said she: "He was the only man I ever allowed to touch my vertebrae.") What he did live by passionately was his dictum: "Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore."

DIED. Andre Kostelanetz, 78, Russian-born maestro who dedicated 50 years to popularizing orchestral music in America and American music in the world; of a heart attack; while vacationing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Though Kostelanetz fled war-ravaged Petrograd, where he had conducted opera, for New York City in 1922, his U.S. career did not bloom until eight years later when he was hired to lead the CBS symphony orchestra on radio's Chesterfield Hour. After making the program a hit, he added to his celebrity by marrying Opera Diva Lily Pons in 1938 (they divorced in 1958) and by cutting more than 200 discs with Columbia (life time record sales: 52 million). He commissioned works by Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and other Americans that became repertory standards. And while he would outrage purists by making a medley of a Tchaikovsky movement and a pop tune, "Kosty" had his reasons: "Criticism is upsetting, but if what I do expands the meaning of music in terms of attendance, that's all that really matters."

DIED. Finn Ronne, 80, American polar explorer; of a heart attack; in Bethesda, Md. The son of a Norwegian sailmaker who had gone to Antarctica with Roald Amundsen and Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Ronne joined Byrd's 1933 expedition there as a radio operator and dogsled driver. Over the next 25 years, he returned to the South Pole eight times (thrice with his wife Edith, one of the first women to make the trip). On a 15-month trek in 1946-48, he disproved the notion that the continent was divided in two, and finished charting the Weddell Sea coast, the earth's last unsurveyed shore.

DIED. William 0. Douglas, 81, former Supreme Court champion of individual rights; of kidney and respiratory troubles; in Washington, D.C. (see LAW).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.