ENGAGED. George Abbott, 96, venerable Broadway author and director who contributed to yet another hit this year, the Tony Award-winning revival of On Your Toes; and Joy Moana Valderrama, 52, Philadelphia furrier. The wedding, planned for later this month, will be his third, her first.

CONVICTED. Angelo Buono Jr., 49, onetime auto upholsterer; of murder in six more of the Hillside strangler sex killings; in Los Angeles. Buono was accused of the 1977-78 slayings of ten young women (ages twelve to 28), most of whom had also been raped or molested. After a two-year trial, he was convicted of two "strangler" murders and acquitted on one of them two weeks ago. At week's end the jury of five men and seven women was still deadlocked over the final murder. But Buono already faces California's death penalty or life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

DIED. Ashley Bailey, 14 months; of biliary atresia, a liver disease; in Fort Worth. In a July radio address, President Reagan appealed for a liver-transplant donor for Ashley. More than 5,000 phone calls resulted, but no compatible liver could be located for the infant. Reagan's appeal, however, has been credited with finding seven donors for other needy patients.

DIED. James Hayden, 29, promising actor of stage and screen; of a heroin overdose; in New York City. In the current Broadway production of David Mamet's American Buffalo, Hayden won critical raves for his meticulously wrought portrayal of a confused drug addict. A runaway at 14 from his family's home in Brooklyn, he lived for a time on the streets, served with the Army in Viet Nam, then spent ten years as an actor. His career was set to take off on the strength of Buffalo, a critically praised performance last year in a Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, and a featured role in the forthcoming movie Once Upon a Time in America.

DIED. Lloyd McBride, 67, unassuming president of the United Steelworkers since 1977 who skillfully but futilely fought to salvage the jobs of some 700,000 union members in the fading domestic steel industry; following heart surgery; in Whitehall, Pa. After quitting school at 14, he went to work in a St. Louis foundry for 250 an hour, became an active unionist who rose through the ranks and survived a bitter insurgency fight to inherit I.W. Abel's mantle only to see the Steelworkers' membership plummet by half during his term from a 1979 high of 1.4 million.

DIED. Alfred Friendly, 71, managing editor of the Washington Post from 1955 to 1965; by his own hand (he shot himself apparently because he was suffering from cancer); in Washington, D.C. During his decade as boss of the Post, he expanded the paper's parochial "government town" view by increasing international coverage and science reporting. In 1966 Friendly became a roving correspondent and won a Pulitzer Prize for his frontline dispatches during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

DIED. Mordecai Kaplan, 102, founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement, which sees Judaism as an evolving civilization and not just as a religion; in New York City. A professor at Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary (1909-63), Kaplan was Orthodox by upbringing, but came to believe that Judaism is a synthesis of religion, race and culture. The practical effect of this view was to see the synagogue as a center for Jewish communal life that stressed the humanistic rather than the solely religious aspects of heritage. Kaplan's ideas were viewed as a divisive force by many Orthodox Jews, and in 1945 a panel of Orthodox rabbis issued a religious ban against his Reconstructionist Sabbath Prayer Book, which excised references to the Jews as a chosen people and to the divine revelation of the Torah. His influence was widely felt in the Reform and even Conservative branches of the faith, not least in the perception of the role of women; in 1922 Kaplan introduced the bat mitzvah ceremony for 13-year-old girls, giving them a larger role in religious practices. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.